They broke the mold after Dumas wrote “The Count of Monte Cristo.” There will never be a revenge plot as ambitious, as smooth, as Rube Goldbergian, as violent, as tense, or as passionate as this. This is the Ur Revenge Plot. I devoured this book. Inhaled it. And it’s partly because my brain melted a bit after the election, and then I was doggedly rebuilding my spirits with Solnit’s “Hope in the Dark” (TBR) (GET OFF MY BACK), and then it was Thanksgiving, and I […]
Turow’s sequel to Presumed Innocent should be called Presumed Guilty
In this sequel to Turow’s Presumed Innocent, Judge Rusty Savich is back with his brilliant but rage-filled bipolar wife Barbara, anguished over the state of his marriage, fearful of his imminent 60th birthday and once more vulnerable to the call of the wild—this time, with his lovely young assistant Anna. In the first book, Savich’s lust-filled affair preceded the woman’s horrible rape/murder and Savich barely escaped conviction for the crime. In Innocent, Savich’s new love affair flares, but his guilt overwhelms him and he eventually […]
Deaver’s Skin Collector is unfortunately NOT The Bone Collector
Once again, we see Deaver at both his best and his worst. I am a long-time fan of Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme/Amelia Sachs forensic mysteries, and despite the fact that this latest novel contains Deaver’s hallmark thrills and chills and surprise twists and turns, I felt let down by the end. Perhaps it was because Deaver has such a complicated overlapping of plots that, in order to solve them all, he has our hero make 13th-hour leaps to conclusions which are simply not justified by the […]