Quick Book Reviews Blog

Those of you who know of Agatha Christie are probably acquainted with some of her more famous novels, such as And Then There Were None , formerly known as Ten Little Indians (with the original title using language considered racist by today’s standards), Death on the Nile or Murder on the Orient Express . However, Agatha Christie had already started making giant waves in the world of literature with her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles .

Geiger is a man with a most unusual life. For starters, he remembers nothing before the moment he came to New York on a bus. What’s more, he turns out to have a very useful gift: being able to instantly tell if someone is lying. As such, he has become employed as an agent in charge of extracting information from people, and needless to say, he has a whole bag of tricks up his sleeve to make that happen.  While some of his methods are physical, Geiger truly flourishes when it comes to "convincing" people to say the truth via fear rather than pain. However, he is not all ruthless as he does have one principles he always abides by: never work with children. 

The previous two entries in the Child 44 trilogy by Tom Rob Smith were each unique in their own rights, and now that everything has been fully-fleshed out and developed, the time has come for our beloved Leo Demidov to set out on an epic journey of vengeance in the name of his family, who met a very tragic end after being lured to New York City under the pretense of being invited to a "Peace Tour".  With absolutely nothing left to lose, Leo Demidov sets out with the determination of a juggernaut to find out the truth about the conspiracy he and his family found themselves in neck-deep. Being denied the request to formally investigate his family’s murder, Demidov understands that it’s up to him to find out what happened. 

In the previous novel by Tom Rob Smith, Child 44 , we were presented with an unbelievably strict and authoritarian Soviet Union where the government and law enforcement agencies reigned supreme. Thankfully however, even dictators are human and can succumb to death, which is precisely what happened in the second part of the trilogy, The Secret Speech .  The year is 1956, and with Stalin’s death some sizable reforms are expected to arrive to the Soviet Union, with his successor, Khrushchev, promising things to be different from now on… and oh boy, he couldn't be more right. With the iron fist having considerably loosened its grasp, many have seen an opportunity to truly live and blossom.

Even though Stalin ’s Soviet Union may not have lasted a very long time, at least in comparison to other political regimes, it hasn't failed to leave quite a sizable mark on our history, mostly due to the genocide of dozens of millions of people.  Despite the fact that it was a tyrannical reign which broke the lives of countless people, it remains a somewhat fascinating look at what life would really be like should be we be subjected to the iron-fisted and law-driven rule of madman. In Child 44 , Tom Rob Smith explores life in this setting through Leo Demidov, a war hero and security officer who strongly believes in the rule of law and in Stalin’s righteousness.

Scott James is an officer with the LAPD (The Los Angeles Police Department) who has had a very difficult eight months, with the problems starting when a group of mysterious assailants attacked him and his partner, Stephanie, killing her, and very nearly killing Scott himself. After this incident, somewhat understandably, Scott is filled with rage, hatred, and a very deep sadness, making him quite unfit for duty, even of the desk variety.

I believe that regardless of what it is we are doing with our lives, every single person on Earth has the same goal: to achieve happiness. Naturally, what makes a person happy is really something which ought to be studied case-by-case, but the fact remains that we are all chasing after a certain feeling. If you are anything like me, then chances are moments of happiness serve as interludes to a great, long-lasting period of problems and frustrations.

Those of us who know about Scientology content ourselves by referring to it as that crazy religious sect with beliefs so out-of-this-world that it’s not even funny. More prominently, there are a few celebrities, such as Isaac Hayes and Tom Cruise , who have openly embraced the Church of Scientology, which did make a few of us raise our brows in disbelief.

Even those who spend their lives working hand-in-hand with the law must wonder from time to time whether the law actually enforces justice, or if there are way too many holes in it for it to stay that way.  This is kind of what we are treated to in The Good Lawyer by Thomas Benigno, which is actually somewhat based on a real story, that of a young and ambitious lawyer who sought to make a name for himself outside of the confines of his family’s long history of ties with the mob.

I've already written a couple of reviews of Agatha Christie’s books, so I won’t go spend as much time as I did earlier telling how much of an impact she had on the murder mystery genre, single-handedly revolutionizing certain aspects of it and setting the bar higher than ever before. While it may be true that some of her novels were groundbreaking, it also has to be noted that on many occasions she preferred to stick to the rules she knew best, and in my opinion it kind of shows in Murder on the Orient Express .

Agatha Christie is celebrated around the world as being one of the best and most influential contemporary writers, having left quite a noticeable mark on the world of murder mysteries, introducing many new concepts and raising the bar for writers of the future. While many of her novels are indeed widely celebrated, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd may very well be the one which really put her in the spotlight.

I’m sure that many, if not all of you are to some extent familiar with the name Agatha Christie. If you aren't she is perhaps the world’s most popular detective fiction writer, writing some of the most well-constructed murder mysteries by anyone’s standard, and even giving birth to two of literature’s most capable investigators, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Without a doubt her most famous novel is And Then There Were None (the original title had a word in it which by today’s standards would be considered racist), with there being multiple movie adaptations of the story.

How many times has it happened that you took a liking for a person you met, but the more time you spent with them, the more you discovered their true self, learning that your first impressions couldn't have been more wrong.  This is especially the case for situations where the heart is involved; somewhat unfortunately, emotions don’t have eyes or brains, and it is not until they fade that the logic and rational thinking can start to kick in. This is somewhat akin to what happens in Paper Towns , a novel by two-time Printz Medalist and New York Times bestseller, John Green.

Many of the great murder mystery and horror stories which have been written over the years, whether in literature or in movie format, have been successful because of one main element: they played with our innate fear of isolation, especially in a time when we are all used to living amongst thousands, or even millions of other people in a city. Just to give a few examples, consider Murder on he Orient Express , And Then There Were None and Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie, or perhaps, if discussing movies, I could point you to Friday the 13th , The Evil Dead , The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Silent Hill .

While it seems as if the sport of cycling isn't really popular in North America, chances are that very few people out there haven’t heard of the name Lance Armstrong , who many consider to be the face and frontier man of the sport.  Having won more championships than anyone and overcome more harsh conditions than most, if not all of his teammates and competitors, Lance was on top of the world for some time. However, the threads started to unravel and it was discovered that Lance used performance enhancing drugs during his career.

Low Pressure by Sandra Brown tells the story of Bellamy Lyston, who at the age of twelve witnessed her older sister Susan being killed on Memorial Day during a very stormy night.  The shocking events, coupled with Bellamy’s fear of storms, contributed to partially erasing her memory and modifying her memory of what happened on that day; the best she can manage to remember are brief, fractured and seemingly senseless flashbacks. Now being a woman of thirty years of age, Bellamy decides to write a book chronicling her experience on that night. To protect her family’s identity from rabid fans and the media, she used pseudonyms. However, a sneaky tabloid reporter soon figures everything out, and of course exposes the family’s identity in relation to the book, bringing down a media scandal upon them. 

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger has become such a highly-praised novel that it has even been made into a mandatory reading for various school systems around the world. However, despite it being seen as one of the greatest classics of literature, there are many, many people who see this book as being boring and unworthy of its status.  Well, everyone is certainly entitled to their opinion, but the problem, the way I see it at least, is that most people don’t really have any well thought-out arguments to support their complaints of the book being boring.

Some people insist that anything in life is possible as long as you work hard enough for it; well, it seems those people are quite disconnected from the reality of things, one where external factors you cannot control dictate your success and failure, depending on what you do.  Such is the life of Oscar Wao, a tragically-overweight Dominican nerd who lives in a New Jersey ghetto, with aspirations of becoming known throughout the entire world as the Dominican Tolkien.

George Saunders, for those who do not know him, is one of the most original and eye-opening writers of this generation, at least in my opinion. Every single one of his works exudes style and intelligence, something very few authors out there are actually capable of. It seems that he has taken a liking to writing books with multiple stories in them centered on a main theme, and his latest novel, Tenth of December , is no exception to that. The first story, titled “Victory Lap”, follows the story of a young boy who suddenly witnesses an abduction attempt on the girl next door. However, years and years of sheltered and restrained upbringing force him into an internal battle with himself; can he force himself to break the psychological shackles keeping him at bay before it’s too late?

For those of you who aren't acquainted with Patterson and Sullivan’s works, he has written Private novels in the past and they are centered around the best investigative agency on the planet called Private. The agency has headquarters set up in numerous parts of the world, and each of the books, so far at least, has taken place in different countries.

Before talking about the book itself, I feel like I have to note that Katherine Boo is a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service winner, which was awarded to her as a result of her series of reports on group homes for mentally-ill people, back in the year 2000. However, she didn't stop her exploration of the human condition there, which eventually led her to write Behind the Beautiful Forevers , the result of many years of on-site reporting in Annawabi, Mumbai, India. In Behind the Beautiful Forevers , we follow the lives of five different families, each one of them living in a slum of Annawabi located right next to the grandiose Mumbai airport and the many luxurious hotels next to it. The reports take us through the period when India started to prosper, igniting the flame of hope in even the poorest members of the slum. 

Before talking about the book, I’d just like to point out that Beautiful Chaos by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl is the final entry in the Beautiful Creatures trilogy, so if you haven’t read the first two books,, I suggest you take a look at my reviews which you can access by clicking either of the following titles: Beautiful Creatures and Beautiful Darkness . If you don’t, you are going to read spoilers here, and needless to say, they make literally any story less exciting. Now that this is taken care of, on with the show. Beautiful Chaos is once again centered on Ethan Wate and Lena Duchannes as they try to live out their lives in Gatlin. However, unlike before, it seems as if the supernatural powers lying beneath Gatlin are getting quite agitated; intense storms, unprecedented heat waves, and swarms of locusts turn the town in what seems to be a crude reenactment of the Ten Plagues. As if that wasn't enough, Lena and her entire family of Supernaturals are starting to lose c...

There are millions upon millions, if not billions upon billions of different books on this planet, and yet it feels as if many novels are very similar to each other, in content, structure, characters, and even dialog in some cases. However, that is not (always) done as an attempt to cash in on a rip off… rather, people tend to try and follow conventions, which doesn't leave too much room for originality. Fortunately, there are some authors out there who don’t mind taking risks and going on their own path, authors such as George Saunders. In his second collection of stories, Pastoralia , George Saunders looks at three different plot-lines, all of them set in the same universe: an America ravaged by capitalism.

I have already discussed Beautiful Creatures , the first book in the trilogy by the same name. If you’d like to check it out, you can do so by reading my Beautiful Creatures review . If you haven’t done so and are planning on reading this one, I heavily suggest you take a step back and start at the first book, for this review will contain spoilers about the first part. You have been warned.  In any case, the second book in the trilogy by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl is called Beautiful Darkness, and once again, we follow the adventures of Lena Duchannes, a Caster who still hasn't been claimed by light or darkness, and Ethan, the mortal she fell in love with.

Even though the concept of amnesia has been incorrectly represented in movies and literature for God-knows how long (in practically all cases the sufferer forgets something specific as a result of a tremendous shock, rather than losing huge chunks of memory), it has been used time and time again as a plot device which prompts characters to go on journeys of self-discovery to remember their own lives (take the Bourne Trilogy for example). While the use of this device may feel somewhat clichéd today, I have no doubt that most of you still enjoy it, at least when you are looking to relax for a moment and shut your brain off, and that’s exactly what Shadow Woman by Linda Howard gives its readers.

The town of Gatlin is known by people as being a small and quaint place where anyone can live out his or her life in peace and quiet. The town isn't very technologically advanced, with those living in it preferring to let nature take its course; there are plenty of overgrown gardens, forgotten graveyards and swamps no one has traveled in for ages. However, things are far too simple and quiet; the peace and silence found in this town almost feel ominous, and not without reason. As it happens, there is a dark and ancient secret hidden somewhere in it, and it is only a matter of time before someone stumbles upon it.

FBI agent Pendergast has spent the last twelve years in grief over the accidental death of his wife. However, someone comes into his life and brings new, very important information to him: his wife hasn't perished in an accident, but rather, she was murdered. However, the story takes another, very sudden turn when Pendergast actually discovers that his wife is alive, but seconds before they could unite, she gets kidnapped.

I think I don’t have to tell you about who Neil Young is, but just in case you aren't acquainted with the name, think of him as one of the greatest and most celebrated musicians of the 20th and 21st centuries. His legendary guitar-work electrified countless crowds, taking music to boundaries it has never seen before.  Needless to say, it would be a shame for such a man to go without revealing what kind of life led him to be the man he was. Fortunately, it’s not something that will happen seeing as how Neil Young wrote Waging Heavy Peace , what one could call an autobiography.

The Golds and the Hartes have been living next door to each other for years and years, to the point where they have become inseparable, practically merging into one family. It came as a surprise to no one when their children starting dating each other.  It seemed as if Chris and Emily had the brightest and most hopeful future there is ahead of them, but as is usually the case in works of fiction, it seems it just wasn't meant to be. A phone call comes in at three in the morning, alerting both families about a tragedy: Emily was shot to death… by Chris. As it seemed, that foolish action was part of a suicide pact, although Chris hadn't gone through with it. 

Before getting started with this review, I’d simply like to point out for those who don’t know that The Great Gatsby is one of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most celebrated works of writing, becoming one of those world-renowned classics that gets translated into virtually every language.  Regardless of what impression my review may give you of it, keep in mind that it is only my take on it, and if it somehow dissuades you from reading it, then all I can say is that you’ll be missing out on something terrific. 

If you have read James Patterson and Mark Pearson’s previous works, then you probably already know about Private, the world’s most resourceful and technologically-advanced detective agency, at the head of which sits Jack Morgan. Quite recently the authors have published their latest novel, Private London , and as you can probably tell, this time around, we get a look at how the organization operates in London, where an obviously-deranged killer is kidnapping, mutilating and murdering women on the streets, not unlike Jack the Ripper a few decades ago.

Miles "Pudge" Halter is a fairly uninteresting sixteen year-old who really hasn't experienced much of anything in life. However, he constantly wonders about what could be, what experiences the world still holds for him. In an attempt to find what the French poet Rabelais refers to as "The Great Perhaps", Miles sets off for Culver Creek Boarding School, and just like that, his life changes drastically.  As he makes new friends and falls in love with the adorable yet dangerous Alaska Young, Miles starts not only to experience what the world has to give him, but he also learns valuable lessons about human nature, and most importantly, himself, especially when an unforgettable tragedy strikes the boarding school.