Sacred by Dennis Lehane
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Easily the weakest Kenzie/Gennaro book, and I don’t know why. On this, like every other, re-read, I’ve tried to a. convince myself I really like this one or b. put my finger on what seems wrong with this one, and I can’t do either.
Drives me crazy.
Oh well, Gone, Baby Gone is up next.
Darkness, Take My Hand by Dennis Lehane
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I’ve read this 4 or 5 times now, still got tense at all the right spots (thankfully, it was the middle of the day this time so I wasn’t quite as jumpy as usual). Pretty sure that’s a sign of an author who knows what he’s doing. Not the best of the series, which isn’t taking away anything from this one, just saying how good some of the others (like Gone, Baby Gone) are.
A Drink Before the War by Dennis Lehane
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
wanted to read these before #5 comes out next month, just to get back in that world–it’s been too long since I’ve read a Lehane I liked. Took me less than a page to remember why I got into Kenzie/Gennaro, and within 5 it was like I’d been reunited with a long-lost love. This is a great read–the language, the plot, the characters…really can’t ask for more.
Bad Luck and Trouble by Lee Child
Series: Jack Reacher, #11
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Here’s what you know going in:
Will Reacher win? Yup.
How many of the bad guys will get what’s coming to them? All of them.
What don’t you know? What kind of bad guys are there? What bad stuff are they up to? Who will Reacher’s allies be?
Nice look at a couple of years in Reacher’s backstory along with a typically gripping, pedal-to-the-metal thriller.
The Hard Way by Lee Child
Series: Jack Reacher, #10
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The thing about a Reacher book is that the instant the conflict is introduced (this time, a kidnapping), you know the major plot points for the book: Reacher will rescue the kidnapped people; there will be some physical altercations and at least 1 gunfight; he will meet (and likely bed) an attractive woman; and the Bad Guy will be vanquished (likely forever); justice will triumph.
Knowing a;; this, which pretty much eliminates all suspense, you also know that it’ll still be a fun, intense, edge-of-your-seat read.
How does Child pull that off?
Don’t know. Don’t care, as long as he keeps it up.
One Shot by Lee Child
Series: Jack Reacher, #9
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Darn satisfying read. Pure Child gold. Some nice twists and turns along the way, but from the time that the suspect says “Get Reacher” you know that 1. He’s absolutely innocent and 2. The bad guys are going to pay. Just that simple. So why bother going on? Cuz the next 300+ pages will be impossible to turn away from, you will be sucked in the entire time and have a blast the whole time.
That’s simply Child’s way.
Persuader by Lee Child
Series: Jack Reacher, #7
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
It’s really hard to say something about a Jack Reacher book–in a very real sense, if you’ve read one, you’ve read ’em all (maybe this changes after book 7, but I doubt it). But dang it all if you don’t come back for more and more and more — like Pringles, or Fritos, etc. Great action; totally outlandish, but (in the moment definitely) believable plot; lots of testosterone-y fun.
Two things I’d like to mention about this book.
First, there’s this fad in TV lately where you watch a scene or two at the top of the show, and then the chyron flashes “X days earlier” and you get to see how events led up to this, and even get a better picture of what happened. It’s a tired and overused gimmick. But in ’03 when this was published, it wasn’t. And even if it was tired then, Child does it right, and I would’ve been totally on board with it then. Great hook to begin the book. Really great.
Secondly, I couldn’t help but be impressed with the way that Child laid out Reacher’s motivation to hunt down this particular criminal in bits and pieces, scattered throughout the present day action. Sure, it was predictable after a certain point, but it was skillfully done. Giving Reacher the proper motivation each time to go after the baddie has to be a struggle, especially since it has to be sufficient motivation to get him to perform superhuman tasks. This was one of Child’s best efforts in that regard.
One more thing that I just thought of–since Parker’s God Save the Child and The Judas Goat I’ve been a sucker for a fight between big, tough hero and impossibly huge, strong, psychotic villain, and the one here delivers the goods in spades. Loved it.
Without Fail by Lee Child
Series: Jack Reacher, #6
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Taught thriller, starts off strong and snowballs into an adrenaline-filled blast. Pure popcorn fun.
After taking a book off from it, Child develops Reacher’s character a bit by bringing him into contact with people who knew his brother before he killed. Which is nice and commendable, but it’s not his strong suit.
Most of the time, he does what he does best: he puts a target in front of Reacher, gives Reacher juuuuust enough info to keep stumbling from one clue to the next, getting closer and closer to his prey. And when he tracks his prey down things really start going Reacher’s way.
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Blast it all, Larsson made me eat my words — many of them, anyway — about his ability to write a decent thriller with his third Millennium book. If anyone else had written this, I’d probably have given it 2.5-3 stars, but in comparison to his first two books, this one looks sooo much better.
A lot of the weaknesses of the first two books are still present–the persistent eye for irrelevant, and momentum slowing detail; an overabundance of characters; plotlines that do little-to-nothing to serve the main plotlines; stock characters abound; etc., etc.
But we see some real growth in Lisbeth, some potential growth in Blomquist, and a courtroom scene at the end that makes one wonder if there’s another female character that’s supposed to be the real hero of this set. In my book, that scene covers a multitude of crimes against fiction that Larsson committed.
Am I glad I slogged through the series? Not really. But having made it through the first book, and suffered through the second, I really enjoyed this one.
But man, am I so glad there’s not a #4
The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
ugh. Really? Really world? This is the kind of thing you buy by the dozen? (or so it seems)
Okay…let’s go with the positives. This was better than The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The way that Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol was better than Police Academy: Mission to Moscow.
I like Lisabeth Salander — yeah, in many ways she’s cliched…but in enough ways she isn’t. The parts of the book that focused on her — not the investigation into her, but her, are far and away the best parts of the novel. Actually, if you cut away the rest of it — which is almost wholly dead weight, it’d be readable.
Now, the problems…well, some of them.
There are just too many characters. Well, there are too many names tied a quick description and some sort of quirk which supposed to equal characters. You could eliminate 30-50% of them and not do a darn thing to the plot.
There are plot lines that do nothing other than chew up space. The whole new job for Berger thing, for instance. Sure, this might come back to mean something in book 3, but I can’t see how.
There’s just too much wasted ink. We don’t need three paragraphs describing someone leaving the house to go get a hamburger and that’s it. Doesn’t advance the plot, doesn’t reveal anything about a character (other than to buttress the theory, based solely on this work, that all Swedes eat McDonald’s obsessively).
I had a laundry list of things to whine about–but who wants to read that (much less write it)? Let’s just leave it as, an over-written, over-long, dull book with one heckuva good, mostly wasted, character.
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