JackM Crime 2013

[dex]

Anyone know (A) How or (B) If it's worth selling books online as I want to get rid of. The Wheel of Time 1-13 and Cross (not trial)

[Athena]

Lots of people sell books on Ebay or Amazon but I don't know if it's worth the hassle or not. Personally I'm more inclined to give a lot of my copies to the charity shop. It does depend though if the condition of your books is good or very used and how close the post office is, or wherever you have to go to get them send (I have no idea, I've never sold anything online). Hopefully someone else can help you better.

[dex]

Richard Montanari - The Killing Room - Deepest Winter , Darkest Philidelphia.
A murder shocks the frozen city - The most spectacular homicide in it's 300 year old history: An ex- cop has been lured into the basement of an abandoned chapel , wrapped in barbed wire - and kept alive for ten days.

Twenty- four hours after the discovery, Detectives Kevin Byrne and Jessica Balzano find another victim in another church, encased in a block of ice. And then a third is forced to swallow stones and suffocates.

Someone is transforming the city's cathedrals into killing rooms, someone who is determined to raise hell on earth.

 

104/434, enjoying it so far. 168 now.

I really liked it, it did remind me of some of the other books and it did take me a little longer to read it than I normally would, I was probably recovering from last weekend's readathon.

Edited July 15, 2013 by dex

[dex]

Time for some shelf clearing, I'm going to give roger my Alex Cross Books, I'll give my 5 John Grisham books to charity and probably also , 4 Frederick Forsyth and 3 Dan Brown , Possibly Matthew Reilly aswell.

Edited July 15, 2013 by dex

[dex]

The Siege - Simon Kernick

London. The Stanhope Hotel. A normal afternoon.
The Manager. Newly engaged Elena Sarenko has just made a life-canging decision to quit her job and start a new life in Australia.
The Guests. Upstairs, a young woman waits for her lover; A visiting family prepare for an evening out; and a sick man contemplates his own mortality.
The Assassin. High up amongst the penthouse suites, a skilled and dangerous killeris hunting a quarry who's eluded him for far too long.
The Siege. What none of them know is that a group of ruthless gunmen are about to burst into The Stanhope, shooting indescriminately and seizing hostages.
As darkness falls and the gunmen become increasingly violent, only one question matters.
Who will survive?

Page 230 and it's reading well. I'm enjoying it and Tina Boyd has made an appearance now. 

I enjoyed this one.

Edited July 19, 2013 by dex

[dex]

Ultimatum - Simon Kernick

211 Chapter 34

Looks like Siege 2 to me

 

The Threat, 8am: An explosion blasts through a cafe in central London.

The Ultimatum, Minutes later, a call from an unknown terror group warns that a far greater attack will be launched in 12 hours' time.

The Prisoner, William Garrett, AKA Fox, is awaiting trial for mass murder. He claims he can name the bombers. But only at a price.

The Clock is Ticking, It's a terrifying race against time for DI Mike Bolt and DC Tina Boyd as they chase their targets across the city in a desperate bid to stop a major atrocity - before it's too late...

 

I enjoyed this one.

Edited July 20, 2013 by dex

[dex]

The Savage Altar - Asa Larsson

 

A church in the glittering frozen wastes of northern Sweden. Inside, a sacrifice: the body of a man - slashed to pieces, hands severed, eyes gouged out.

The victim's sister, Sanna, is the first to discover the body and immediately finds herself the police's only suspect. Terrified and confused, she calls on a friend: hot-shot city lawyer Rebecka Martinsson.

Rebecka hardly wants to return to Kiruna - the small town she fled in disgrace years ago. But Sanna is frightened and she needs a loyal friend to clear her name. Someone not scared to dig deep and find the real killer.

Yet Rebecka is not especially welcomed into the closed-lipped community. She might know the town, the people and how suspicious they can be of strangers but she has to find out how dark the town's secrets have become in her absence.

 

P.143 , The chapters aren't numbered, The story seems to be spread throughout a week. It is like Steig, in that the murder has taken place in an isolated closed community, Someone is constantly being referred to as mad. Pregnancy isn't belaboured too much, unlike in Lackberg.

Edited July 22, 2013 by dex

[dex]

Asa Larsson - The Blood Spilt

 

Under the midnight sun murder will be done...

Midsummer in Sweden, the sun never sets and the only darkness lies in the recesses of the human mind. For a priest Matilda Nilsson - has been brutally killed and lawyer Rebecka Martinsson, who thought she'd done with Kiruna, the little town of her birth, is dragged back there to stop a killing spree.

Yet the shadows that surrounded Matilda - the hurt and healing, sin and sexuality, lethal sacrifice - will come to engulf those like Rebecka who seek the truth.

 

 

This one's start is more personal stuff about Rebecka .

Overall this was okay, Asa decided for this second book that Rebecka would return to her Home area after the events of the first book affecting her so badly. She initially returns accompanying a partner who is trying to negotiate a deal to represent the local churches legal affairs, whom she quickly ditches. The murder really seems to take the backseat to the events happening to Rebecka and about Halfway through I knew who the murderer was.

 

If I called this a re- write, what would you call it?

Edited July 30, 2013 by dex

[dex]

A problem has arisen

 

 

[Little Pixie]

Ooh, read The Bat - I`ve not read any Jo Nesbo, but I`m wondering if I should start with the latest published/first written one.

[dex]

The Bat - Jo Nesbo - The First Harry Hole Novel

 

Harry is out of his depth

Detective Harry hole is meant to keep out of trouble. A young Norwegian girl on a gap year in sydney has been murdered, and Harry has been sent to Australia to assisst in any way he can.

He's not supposed to get too involved...

When the team unearths a string of unsolved murders and disappearances, nothing will stop Harry from finding out the truth. The Hunt for a serial killer is on, but the murderer will only talk to Harry.

...But he might just be the next victim

 

I'm on p.216 and it's good so far, a few suspects have been crossed off the list. There seems to be just the one live case and the rest are cold cases. He hasn't written from the killers viewpoint really, either yet. Here's hoping he invented the long ending in his first Holy novel.

He's definately "A brilliant writer who knows how to build a story" ,but can he finish it as well in150 pages? P.375. Er 275 - Ch.37.

P.363 Ch.50, He's still serving up suspects, If I get it finished I think I'll have a rest day before the readathon.

It was like a poirot episode, where after every 10 minutes or so, there's a new suspect. He does do this to the end of the book.You can see the characters basic back story, which he adds to in later books. So with the lack of his later style, I did find this was a weaker effort.

Edited August 1, 2013 by dex

[Little Pixie]

Dun-dun-derrr !!!

[dex]

Readathon

Plan 1
The Matthew Scudder Mysteries - Lawrence Block

The Sins Of The Fathers - Read 3/5
In The Midst Of Death - Read 2/5
Time To Murder And Create , Didn't start

Plan 2
Steve Vail - Noah Boyd - The Bricklayer 3/5
Steve Vail - Noah Boyd - Last Chance To Die, Page 26 and I'm read out .

 

I only Managed 3 books for 698 Pages this time. I should have started earlier.

Edited August 4, 2013 by dex

[Little Pixie]

.

 

I`m agog.

[dex]

McCormack sat with his fingertips pressed together. He hadn't said anything for a long while. "Did you know, that way out there in New Zealand, live the most stupid people in the world? They live alone on an island, with no neighbours to bother them, just a load of water. Yet that nation has participated in just about all the major wars there have been in the twentieth century."

Nice of Jo Nesbo to give you a mention.

[itsmeagain]

That`s so unfair and unpleasant to poppy.....  

[poppy]

That`s so unfair and unpleasant to poppy.....  

 

  Thank you for jumping to our defence Itsme but we've got pretty broad shoulders  You have to remember dex that we are part of the Commonwealth (most of us are of British, Scottish or Irish descent) and were obliged to get involved in World Wars. We weren't quite as isolated as McCormack states, a Japanese submarine was sunk in our largest city's harbour during WW2 and they'd bombed Darwin.....Australia is not that far away from us. Latterly we have mostly only been involved in peacekeeping missions.  We do make stands about things though and have refused any nuclear powered sea vessels into our waters. This has made us quite unpopular with certain governments.

[dex]

Noah Boyd - The Bricklayer 3/5

 

Steve Vail is a maverick

A trained killer and former agent, Vail despises authority and has never met a rule he didn't break. These days he's working as a bricklayer.

Now, Deputy Director Kate Bannon of the FBI desperately wants his help.

Because someone is killing their operatives - in complex, subtle, twisted ways - and the body count is rising fast. Someone who holds a fatal grudge against the agency, knows how it works, and wants a bloody revenge.

And it might be an inside job.

To stem the tide of murders, Vail must re-enter a world he hoped he'd left behind long ago - his own past..

 

I expected this was going to be quite a quick read, but for some reason it wasn't. It did have it's daft moments, but overall I enjoyed it.

[dex]

Noah Boyd - Last Chance To Die

 

Forget life and death: this is a matter of national security, And Steve Vail is running out of time.

A Russian agent makes an offer the FBI can't refuse. He can identify traitors leaking government intelligence. All he wants is $250,000 a head, in cash.

Assistant Director Kate Bannon needs former agent Vail to hint down the leads. He's been fired twice, and considered out for good. But then the informant vanishes. The Russians have him, and once they get the names, they will show no mercy.

Reaching the targets first will push Vail to breaking point. And once he finds them, it's going to get downright deadly.

  
This one starts strangely with an attack on Kate Bannon, then it switches to a

child abduction, which is very quickly solved

and then turns into something of a spy thriller, like Red Rabbit or Cardinal Of The Kremlin.

[dex]

I liked Barry Foster in Van Der Valk and Micheal Gambon in Maigret. Are Simenon's Maigret books any good?

[dex]

I see that Camilla Lackberg's - The Lost Boy is out now.

[dex]

I'm going to read The Black Path - Asa Larsson next and then Hanging Hill by Mo Hayder.

[dex]

The Black Path - Asa Larsson

 

A body on the ice

The body of a woman is found in a fishing hut on a frozen lake in far northern Sweden. She has been tortured, but the killing blow was clumsy, amateur.

A black path straight to hell

The body is quickly identified, raising hopes of an open-and-shut case. But when a six month suicide is disinterred, Rebecka Martinsson andAnna -Marie Mella find themselves investigating corruption at the heart of one of Sweden's biggest mining companies - one with powerful enemies of it's own.

 

It's reading quite well at the moment. Diddi just spot a jacob in another book, they seem to be getting everywhere recently.

 

Probably best read as standalone books between other books on your shelf.

It's sort of how I feel about Linwood Barclay as well.

Edited August 11, 2013 by dex

[Little Pixie]

I liked Barry Foster in Van Der Valk and Micheal Gambon in Maigret. Are Simenon's Maigret books any good?

 

They are brilliant, imo. I`ve read 6 or 7 of them, and you get a nice portrayal of French life plus an intricate mystery.

 

BTW, pity that The Bat didn`t seem too good - I suppose that`s why they started translating the later, better ones.

[dex]

Yes, I'm not going to bother with the second one, The Cockroaches.

 

Okay Thanks, Little Pixie for letting me know about Simenon. He did write quite a few didn't he. I looked on W.

Edited August 9, 2013 by dex