Storm Front by John Sandford

Storm Front (A Virgil Flowers Novel) by John Sandford

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Somehow Sandford has transitioned from writing "crime capers" to pure "capers". I found this book more funny than believable, but the laughter was enough.

Ya just gotta love that fuckin' Flowers.

Incidentally, the archaeological find that underlies this whole story doesn't actually reveal anything new: the connection between the Egyptian Siamun and the Jewish King Solomon has been made before.

I am, however, concerned with Sandford's apparent use of co-writers without credit. Michele Cook merely gets a mention in the dedication, but apparently wrote the first draft. C'mon, this is the same sort of thing that has turned "internships" into slavery. If she did the work, credit her as a co-writer!

It's also another example of the execrable work of the folks who write cover blurbs: "… an Israeli cop [is] tailing a man who’s smuggled out an extraordinary relic—a copper scroll revealing startling details about the man known as King Solomon." WTF? It was a bowling-ball-sized stone!

Breaking Point by C.J. Box

Breaking Point by C.J. Box

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I had a few problems with this. It's a good story, but with some serious, and some not so serious, errors that made it really hard to buy the whole plot. I'd give it 3 stars for the story, if not for the fact that the circumstances that kick it off are so unbelievable.

We start with two (armed) EPA agents travelling to small town Wyoming to serve papers—papers that should have been served a year earlier—the men promptly turn up dead. The crime that the EPA is fighting is supposedly the illegal development of a wetland: except that everybody knows there is no such wetland. So we're asked to believe that, first, the EPA has ordered a developer (verbally) to stop work on a "wetland" and to restore it to its natural condition immediately, and that fines of $70,000 a day will be imposed until the site is restored.  In an afterword, Box says that this has really happened to a couple named Sackett in Idaho, and as far as it goes, this is true. However, in the Sackett's case, nobody—except perhaps the Sacketts—denies that the property really was a wetland and a compliance order was issued, which latter didn't happen in this fictional version.  It's also true that only the EPA can define what constitutes a wetland under the Clean Water Act, and that they claimed the Sacketts had no right of appeal. The US Supreme court ruled that they did have a right of appeal in March 2012, well before this book was published. So, really, no, I don't think the scenario described here could have happened.

For the far less consequential, we're told this town is too small to have even one taxi, but a young hooligan that Joe Pickett is looking for is the son of an Episcopalian Bishop. You think? My experience is that Episcopal diocesan seats are in rather larger centres. In Wyoming's case, that's Caspar: population 55,000.

Towards the end of the book, Joe's riding a log down a river that even the best whitewater kayakers only tackle in the spring runoff. That's not the way it works, Mr. Box: if it's dangerous in August, it's worse when the water's high. Think about it. There's more water, moving faster, in the
spring runoff than during the dry part of summer : Energy = ½mass*velocity²  — more energy = more danger.

So, that's all a long winded way of saying that I was pretty short on the willing suspension of disbelief.

Outside of that, I enjoyed it….

A Blind Goddess by James R. Benn

A Blind Goddess by James R. Benn

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I don't read Billy Boyle for the mysteries. The mysteries are no better than "okay"—far too much coincidence for my taste. But I love mysteries set in authentic historical settings, and Benn's WWII settings are as authentic as they come.

That said, once you get past the coincidence of Billy being asked by a friend to investigate one murder, and being sent to the same location by his bosses to investigate another, the mystery is pretty well done.

The most annoying thing about the book is the cover: it depicts Billy being hit over the head and pushed into a canal. A crime that occurs but is never solved in the book. The cover shows the assailant as being another soldier. Why? It seems a little too specific for the usual excuse: which is just that the artist didn't actually read the book.

There are no happy endings. As with most of Benn's books, this is his way of airing historical dirty laundry: in this case the shameful treatment of black American soldiers during WWII—as Benn points out: to the serious detriment of the war effort.

Police by Jo Nesbø

Police by Jo Nesbø

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Always enjoyable mysteries, though this one got a little too convoluted toward the end.

Don't Know Jack by Diane Capri

Don't Know Jack by Diane Capri

I just purchased "Don't Know Jack" as an e-book. I'll probably read it, because I paid for it, but because of the outrageous "License" terms, I won't review it, and I won't be buying any more of your books.

"This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people". I refuse to accept any author's or publisher's right to apply "terms" to the way I read books. I don't "share" ebooks. I don't post them on websites. But I absolutely reserve the right to give away my only copy, just as I would with a paper book. I actually support the idea of paying royalties on every transfer of any work of art (though how it would ever work, I can't imagine), but authors and publishers neither have a moral right nor (in most countries) a legal right to demand that I can not give away a book I have purchased.

I do not "agree" to your terms.

Never Go Back by Lee Child

Never Go Back by Lee Child

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

For all the incredible feats Reacher accomplishes, I don't generally have a problem with suspension of disbelief. I just treat it as fantasy. In this particular story, taking on eight hillbillies at once or disabling two men in a full commercial airliner, without anybody else noticing, isn't the problem. The thing that really didn't work was getting a law firm receptionist to give up the address of a client (without violence). Sorry, that just wouldn't happen!

Still, I love the stories and will keep reading them as long as Child keeps writing them.

A Tap on the Window by Linwood Barclay

A Tap on the Window by Linwood Barclay

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This hit all my buttons for a mystery.

I despise mysteries that rely on coincidence for a solution—all the clues should be available in the text, and a careful reader should reach the same conclusion as the protagonist. If the author is really good, even a brilliant reader won't get there too soon.

Which is not to say coincidence can't have a part—the odds just aren't that good that anybody, even a big city cop, could stumble into these scenarios. So, A Tap on the Window does begin with a coincidence: Cal Weaver just happens to be in front of Patchett's when a young girl is hitchhiking in the rain, and she knew his son. But that's where the coincidence ends; the rest is tightly plotted detective work.

Throughout the story there are anonymous interludes letting us know about the crime that's being covered up, but we're carefully kept in the dark about who the perpetrators are, and there are multiple candidates. I worked it out, but not so soon that it would ruin the story for me. If it's too easy, it just gets boring.

There's just one thing that jarred: "He looks like a child who’s been promised a trip to Santa’s Village." Really, Barclay? Do you think the kids of Griffon, NY, dream of a trip to Santa's Village? I'm not sure anybody does any more, but it's a Southern Ontario thing, probably best remembered by those of Barclay's and my age.

Silken Prey by John Sandford

Silken Prey by John Sandford

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's hard to keep interested in a series that has reached 23 volumes now, but somehow Sandford keeps doing it. This time, he ties in all three of his major series characters. Almost since the debut of his Virgil Flowers series,"that fuckin' Flowers" has made cameo appearances in the Prey novels, but in this one we also get a major contribution from Kidd — Sandford wasn't even Sandford the last time he wrote a Kidd novel! And Kidd (and Lauren/Lu-Ellen) is seriously cool!

There's some hinting that he's trying to wrap up Davenport — or at least send the series in a new direction — with the suggestion that Davenport is now tainted by politics, and a change of administration will force him out of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, but I'm cool with that. There's always that fuckin' Flowers...

Guilt by Jonathan Kellerman

Guilt: An Alex Delaware Novel by Jonathan Kellerman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I never miss an Alex Delaware novel. I'm mostly highly sceptical of psychologists and psychiatrists – prodding around inside peoples heads, without a very clear understanding of what really happens in there. But, of course, fictional shrinks aren't taking stabs in the dark, they know as much as their authors want them to, so Alex is the perfect shrink. That might seem manipulative and not conducive to the reader's suspension of disbelief, but ironically I find it makes Kellerman's mystery/thrillers easier to believe than many others.

Face it, any mystery novel has to take short cuts – if the cops could solve a murder in the time it took me to read this book, it wouldn't be much of a mystery. Many other writers rely on massive coincidence to create those shortcuts. Alex, through his understanding of other people, gets to manufacture his coincidences.

A Corpse in the Koryo by James Church

A Corpse in the Koryo by James Church

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I read these mystery/thrillers set in foreign lands as much for the insight into another culture as for the mystery, so this novel was a disappointment when I learned almost nothing about North Korea. It's an authoritarian system. Great. I didn't even get much of a sense of "asia-ness" about it. As for the actual mystery - nobody actually seemed to care about the "Corpse in the Koryo" hotel, and it's solution was a throwaway at the very end.

Dismissed With Prejudice by J.A. Jance

Dismissed With Prejudice by J.A. Jance

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a classical whodunnit, dun right.

We're introduced to all the characters fairly early, so there's no sudden introduction of the killer 90% of the way through the book. Everything follows logically, without outrageous coincidence (as detective Beaumont says, the police don't believe in coincidences, so why should mystery readers be expected to), and naturally, I didn't figure out whodidit, even with all the clues. 

I must say though that it was terribly dated - this library e-book had a copyright date of 2005, but the dead-tree-book was published in 1989. Nobody has cell-phones (Beaumont has a car phone), everybody apparently uses actual answering machines, and computer technology is primitive. How did we ever manage?

Second Son by Lee Child

Second Son by Lee Child

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A very interesting peek at the life of young (13 years old) Jack Reacher.

Reacher admits to a military-base bully that he's probably a psychopath, and he's probably right — but as Elliott Leyton, author of Hunting Humans: The Rise of the Modern Multiple Murderer, tells us, the majority of psychopaths aren't Hannibal Lecter. As with any psychological diagnosis, there must be a range of psychopathy, from those who are merely empathically challenged to those who have no empathy at all. Young Jack Reacher exhibits many of the signs of psychopathy, but he does care for his family. Can he empathize with them? Perhaps not, but he fakes it well.

Another Canadian Elliott, Elliott Barker, says of The Partial Psychopath: "For about half a century, we have known one unfailing recipe for creating psychopaths -- move a child through a dozen foster homes in the first three years." I wonder if it even requires foster families: could moving a child as frequently between military bases, even with a loving but emotionally stunted mother, have some of the same effect.

This story shows that, even at 13, Reacher was dividing the world into Us & Them, and consequences to "Them" were never important, while he would protect "Us" (his family) at all costs. For the rest of his life, the attitude clearly never changes, though his definition of family does.

The Dogs of Riga by Henning Mankell

The Dogs of Riga by Henning Mankell

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I understand that there's so little crime in Sweden that a mystery writer has to look to redder fields, but the whole Latvian plot is so incredibly unbelievable! Why on Earth would Wallander agree to help a bunch of people who repeatedly refuse to tell him what's going on? How could he ever trust them?

I'll stick to Brannagh's Wallander, thanks.

To be fair to Mankell, this is early Wallander and I like newer stories much better.

Mad River by John Sandford

Mad River by John Sandford

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A little different from the usual Sandford: this is no mystery - we know whodunnit from page one.

And I was disappointed that Virgil was not once referred to as "That fuckin' Flowers", which is the way he is usually introduced.

Still, Sandford's characters are, as always, well drawn and funny, and there's nothing quite like spending a few short hours ripping through another episode in the lives of Virgil, Davenport and their colleagues.