If you choose Ellroy, read The Black Dahlia before Hollywood Nocturnes.
The Name of the Rose is a good choice too, though.
What Crime/Mystery/Thriller book are you reading?
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If you choose Ellroy, read The Black Dahlia before Hollywood Nocturnes.
The Name of the Rose is a good choice too, though.
You and I seem to have similar tastes - in fact I think you recommended Morell's stuff to me a couple of years ago. You might also enjoy Sara Paretsky's books.
I've also been reading a lot of Douglas Preston/Lincoln Child's books.
Cool. KRAD's book is very good, so I think you'll enjoy it. I need to read the Kaminsky CSI: NY novels--I haven't yet. KRAD's novel was actually the first one I'd read.
I felt the same way, especially when they went down the tired, old "she was abused as a kid" route. I was hoping for something far more original than what I found. I also thought Susan's character was just so-so--another cliche. I did like the twist at the end though, because I was starting to think it was all annoyingly coincidental.
But yeah, I'll read the sequel, too. Hopefully it will be better.
I've almost finished reading Erica Spindler's Bone Cold. Not my usual type of book, but an enjoyable read. A hollywood starlet's daughter is kidnapped and later escapes, the kidnapper is never caught. 23 years later she is a novelist living in New Orleans and her life comes crashing down around her. It's standard fair and the characters can be a little stereotypical, but it's a solid book. 6/10
I read (in alphabetical order) Lawrence Block, James Lee Burke, Raymond Chandler, Robert Crais, Jeffrey Deaver, James Ellroy, Dashiell Hammett, Elmore Leonard...
Oddly enough they all seem to be from the first half of the alphabet...
Oddly enough they all seem to be from the first half of the alphabet...
Christopher Fowler's Seventy-Seven Clocks. Which is odd, because in fact I generally don't read mystery thrillers, but I happened to pick this off one of my girlfriend's bookpiles and got sucked in. Part of a series, it's set in the 1970s but written from the point of view of the 2000s, so every so often the narration will note that such-and-such social phenomenon hadn't taken hold yet. The interaction between the two leads, a vaguely Dickensian older police detective and his younger, more modern partner is funny.
Got that series, but haven't read that one yet...
Just finished The Max by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr. It's the third book of a trilogy published by Hard Case Crime: the first two books were Bust and Slide. If you like hard-boiled prose, gratuitous Irishness, and dark, dark humour, then these are the crime-thrillers for you.
Neon Rain's the first one.
I'm waiting for Steven Saylor's Triumph of Caesar, latest instalment in his Roma Sub Rosa series of historical mysteries. I last read Janet Evanovich Fearless Fourteen. Before that, Thomas H. Cook's Master of the Delta. I catch every new Robert B. Parker, Sue Grafton, Stuart Woods that isn't Stone Barrington, Tony Hillerman novel I can find.
Just finished The Dead and the Dying, the third trade paperback in Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips's comic book series Criminal. Fantastic as usual.
I finished Sweetheart and found it much, much better than Heartsick, maybe because Gretchen plays a more immediate role in the book. It's still not as in depth as the best thrillers, but I think it's really a lot better than Heartsick, which was good but not gripping. I couldn't put this one down!
ooh, these sound fascinating - I shall have to try and get them. Have you read Henning Mankell? His novels are set in Sweden.
I have the same problem - it always seems to me that once authors get famous, they must stop listening to their editors or something and the books drop in quality.
The only author who I think has kept up the same level of very high quality throughout his novels is Ian Rankin.
I think Jeffery Deaver does the same as he's always done, his books are always top notch
Really? Good. I'm behind on reading his books - I'll keep an eye out at the library for them.
Deaver researches for eight months or so and then writes the book. That's the way he started doing it, and that's the way he still does it. IMHO, the Lincoln Rhyme books are the best, and the only ones he writes these apart from the odd one or two. Start with The Bone Collector (which was made into a film with Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie, but the book is far more complex) and see what you think.
I recently read a book called Kill Me by Stephen White. Although White has written quite a few books, this was the first of his I'd read. It won't be the last! He's definitely on my 'find and read everything he's written' list after that one.
The plot is like something Stephen King might have written in his non-supernatural days. A man signs up to an exclusive organisation who promise to kill you, should you ever develop a fatal illness or suffer a deterioration in your quality of life. Trouble is, when he develops a brain tumour - he finds he's not ready to die ... but the contract is irrevocable. Superbly written and gripped like a vice (to deploy my cliche for the day).
The plot is like something Stephen King might have written in his non-supernatural days. A man signs up to an exclusive organisation who promise to kill you, should you ever develop a fatal illness or suffer a deterioration in your quality of life. Trouble is, when he develops a brain tumour - he finds he's not ready to die ... but the contract is irrevocable. Superbly written and gripped like a vice (to deploy my cliche for the day).
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