2 thrillers, 1 crime fiction
May. 12th, 2008 04:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eviltammyall authors I've read before - all good, but none their best.
Delusion by Peter Abrahams - Nell Jarreau's world gets turned upside down when Alvin Dupree is set free. Her eyewitness testimony is what sent him to prison, but in the aftermath of a recent hurricane, a videotape was found in a police locker that proved he couldn't have been the man who murdered her then-boyfriend Johnny. Nell is now married to the Chief of Police, who had been the lead detective on the case. And the tape was found in his deceased partner's locker. Nell must figure out who she can trust - and what exactly she saw - to save her life and that of her & Johnny's daughter. Kind of a faux post-Katrina New Orleans setting, with some interesting looks at hurricane aftermath, but not a huge part of the story. As one reviewer noted "entertaining but not much suspense". Dupree, though innocent of this crime, is unlikeable. And Nell is just too good to be true. Not as good as his other books, but since it was a library book...
South of Shiloh by Chuck Logan - billed as a thriller, it's a bit more of a mystery. But not a whodunit - you know who did it. More of a "why exactly and will they catch him and what the hell are all these other people doing?" A Civil War re-enacter gets killed by a real bullet. But when his widow finds out that the bullet was meant for the man next to him, a local cop combining re-enacting with working security at the event, she gets her former lover, a danger junkie photographer/journalist, to investigate. Set in a small fictional town with a fictional Civil War battle - has a great sense of place and the difference in views between northerners and southerners, lots of Civil War & gun lore, and photography info, plus some local info on Buford Pusser. Probably a little much for one book :) but I enjoyed it.
Dirty Money by Richard Stark - newest Parker book. A follow-up to 2 books ago - Nobody Runs Forever, where Parker & company robbed an armored car and hid the money in an abandoned church. They only escaped by leaving almost all of the money and still one man was captured after spending some of the money he took - it was marked. Now that guy has escaped after killing a U.S. Marshal. Parker and the other guy involved, along with the bounty hunter who got involved, are curious to find out if the money is still there and safe. Parker's not quite as violent in this one - maybe since there are so many cops around, but the caper part is still crisp and concise. Now if Westlake would only write another Dortmunder...
all books: 100 books
Delusion by Peter Abrahams - Nell Jarreau's world gets turned upside down when Alvin Dupree is set free. Her eyewitness testimony is what sent him to prison, but in the aftermath of a recent hurricane, a videotape was found in a police locker that proved he couldn't have been the man who murdered her then-boyfriend Johnny. Nell is now married to the Chief of Police, who had been the lead detective on the case. And the tape was found in his deceased partner's locker. Nell must figure out who she can trust - and what exactly she saw - to save her life and that of her & Johnny's daughter. Kind of a faux post-Katrina New Orleans setting, with some interesting looks at hurricane aftermath, but not a huge part of the story. As one reviewer noted "entertaining but not much suspense". Dupree, though innocent of this crime, is unlikeable. And Nell is just too good to be true. Not as good as his other books, but since it was a library book...
South of Shiloh by Chuck Logan - billed as a thriller, it's a bit more of a mystery. But not a whodunit - you know who did it. More of a "why exactly and will they catch him and what the hell are all these other people doing?" A Civil War re-enacter gets killed by a real bullet. But when his widow finds out that the bullet was meant for the man next to him, a local cop combining re-enacting with working security at the event, she gets her former lover, a danger junkie photographer/journalist, to investigate. Set in a small fictional town with a fictional Civil War battle - has a great sense of place and the difference in views between northerners and southerners, lots of Civil War & gun lore, and photography info, plus some local info on Buford Pusser. Probably a little much for one book :) but I enjoyed it.
Dirty Money by Richard Stark - newest Parker book. A follow-up to 2 books ago - Nobody Runs Forever, where Parker & company robbed an armored car and hid the money in an abandoned church. They only escaped by leaving almost all of the money and still one man was captured after spending some of the money he took - it was marked. Now that guy has escaped after killing a U.S. Marshal. Parker and the other guy involved, along with the bounty hunter who got involved, are curious to find out if the money is still there and safe. Parker's not quite as violent in this one - maybe since there are so many cops around, but the caper part is still crisp and concise. Now if Westlake would only write another Dortmunder...
all books: 100 books
