Thursday, November 12, 2020

Mysteries and Thrillers: Mini Reviews

 Over the past weeks, I filled in my more serious reading with some mysteries and thrillers. I feel that this kind of reading gives us a sort of satisfaction because those that deserve it get what is coming to them. So I give you some mini reviews of the ones I have read.


The Fallen Angel, Daniel Silva, HarperCollins, 2012, 464 pp

I keep thinking I am going to get tired of Silva's formula. Well, not yet.

Gabriel Allen, the Israeli assassin, and his wife are living in Rome. He is getting some well deserved rest from his last mission, actually restoring a painting at the Vatican, a Caravaggio. 

Of course, someone dies, a woman, in St Peter's. It looks like a possible suicide but neither Gabriel nor the Pope's private secretary think so. It is a delicate matter so Gabriel is on the job again.

Involved are Hezbolla, the Vatican Bank, and a huge act of terrorist sabotage. As always in Silva's books, the plotting is superb. Though Gabriel is in no shape to attempt death defying moves, he can run the operation. A great plot twist just when the Office (Israeli intelligence) thinks they have won ramps the plot up even further.

I was glad to be back fighting terrorism with Gabriel and his team. I have been reading this series for a while and only have eight more to go.


High Country, Nevada Barr, G P Putnam's Sons, 2004, 301 pp

Once again, a best ever in this series featuring Anna Pigeon, National Park Ranger.

Anna goes undercover as a waitress at Yosemite National Park to investigate the disappearance of four young park employees. She sets off into the snowy wilderness only to encounter life threatening events. There is always a bit of romance in Nevada Barr's mysteries. Though Anna is now engaged she finds herself attracted to a chef in the kitchen of the famous Ahwahnee Hotel.

Extreme suspense but of course she solves the case, which boils down to drug dealers. I loved being in Yosemite with her since my husband and I have driven through the park and eaten in that famous restaurant. 

I read this one in two days. It is #12 in the series and I have seven more to go.


Count Zero, William Gibson, Arbor House, 1986, 246 pp

Count Zero follows Neuromancer as the second book in Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy. Sprawl is his term for a future mega-city stretching from Boston to Atlanta, connected by a cyber network populated by jackers, criminals and various semi-religious beings that include AIs.

As wild as this must have sounded in the 1980s, one gets the sense these days that such guys might actually exist in the world.

I liked this one even a bit more than Neuromancer because the main characters had more humanity to them. Like you can be a keyboard cowboy and still have a heart? Plus this time I felt more at home in Gibson's crazy world.

Count Zero is a new character, a misfit high school boy who wants to play in the cyber network and ends up helping Turner, the main character in the earlier book, out of his next hot spot.

 A good technopunk adventure.


Airs Above the Ground, Mary Stewart, Fawcett Publications, 1965, 255 pp

This one came from the 1965 list of My Big Fat Reading Project. It was nominated for an Edgar Award and I have been following her novels through a couple of decades. 

Vanessa March has agreed to escort her best friend's 17 year old son to Austria. Actually she herself is on a mission to track down her husband who is supposedly in Stockholm on business but is worryingly out of touch. Vanessa has just seen his picture in a newsreel story about a circus fire in Austria.

Naturally she fears the worst: that he is with another woman. She and the boy, Timothy, visit the scene of the fire at the circus and stumble into a web of stolen goods, international drug smuggling and the disappearance of a famed Lipizzaner stallion after his groom died in the fire.

In true Stewart fashion, we learn plenty about circus life, dressage and life in an Austrian village. Vanessa and Timothy, on the trail of the stallion, stay in an old castle, now a hotel. The atmosphere there is distinctly Gothic. The details of the horse with his ability to do the dressage movement called "airs above the ground" is woven into the story, which sometimes interrupts the suspense but it always gets back to the mystery soon enough.

I was captivated all the way by this page turner of a mystery.

Have you read any of these books or others by this author? What mysteries or thrillers have you enjoyed lately?

23 comments:

  1. I read 'Count Zero' back in the late 80's a few years after publication. To be honest - at that time and at that age - it was like breathing pure oxygen. VERY exciting and deeply prescient SF. I've been a confirmed fan of Gibson and Cyberpunk ever since despite/because of so much of their speculation so swiftly catching up with reality!

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    1. I love your metaphor: it was like breathing pure oxygen! Yes, that is why I like such books. How did he do it? I will be continuing my reading of all Gibson's novels.

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    2. I had the same reaction reading Nietzsche! It's as if your synapses *have* to speed up to keep up with the ideas/information flooding it. Reading books like that is really exhilarating. It's *one* reason why I read so much! [grin]

      Gibson certainly has *something* going on that allows him to really see beneath the surface of things and envisage a future (or a 'present' in his other books) that is so real that people try to make it real (hence becoming self-fulfilling) or he can see the themes and flows of techno-culture and extrapolate a few years into the future accurately enough to seem prescient. Plus he tells a really good tale!

      BTW - I am impressed by your breadth of reading. It's pretty rare I find...

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    3. Me too to all you say! I am like you in that I also have a burning need to know stuff and I love asking awkward questions. Once when I was in my mid 20s I had the blinding realization that I could know everything there is to know. I am not there yet but I am getting closer.

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  2. Yeah it's good to mix in some thriller/mysteries. I need to try a Nevada Barr! Sometimes I like these kinds books on audio -- for my walks with the dog, they pull you in good. I've got Leave the World Behind going now ... and we will see where it goes.

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    1. You can pretty much pick up any one of Nevada Barr's National Park books and she will take you away! I have heard mixed things about Leave the World Behind. I am curious to read your experience with it.

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  3. Judy, I recently downloaded a few Mary Stewart books that I've wanted to try for years. What happens when I buy and eBook, it gets lost among other unread eBooks. It's easy when you see books to the bookcase....for me at least.

    I've read several Nevada Barr books in the past and the only one I did not care for was What Rose Forgot - her most recent I think.

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    1. I have the same problem, Diane. I make a tentative reading plan at the beginning of each month. You have reminded me that I need to look at my eBooks shelves as well each month and add them in.
      What Rose Forget, which I have not read yet, is I believe outside of her Anna Pigeon/National Park series. I take it the ones you liked were from that series?

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  4. as a sort of change of state i read Mary Roberts Rinehart's "The Bat"... i like her work in general and this one was no exception: action and confusion at its optimal...

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    1. Thanks for answering my question. Glad to know you do read the occasional mystery!

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    2. oh sure, but mostly old ones, like from the thirties and before... oppenheim and wallace are good... usually...

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    3. Due to the constraints I have put on myself for My Big Fat Reading Project, I rarely read books published earlier than 1940, except for certain classics. I have had to face the fact that I can't read everything! I am glad to know someone, especially yourself, is reading those books published earlier and your reviews of them are invaluable to me.

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  5. Thrillers have been a let down for me lately, but I have not read any of these.

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    1. Yes, I just saw one of your reviews of a thriller that let you down. I make a distinction between current psychological thrillers which almost always let me down, big time, and political/spy/crime thrillers where the good guys and girls bring justice to the bad ones!

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    2. I have read some really good psychological thrillers and that is why I am willing to give a few more a chance. Other than that though, my shelves are so full there isn't room for any other kind of thriller at the moment...all though I suppose I should be realistic about the fact that I am never going to get to read every book on my TBR...

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  6. It's been a while since I've read a thriller or a good old-fashioned mystery. I don't read too many of those but I do enjoy them. Love that fast-paced, edge-of-the-seat feeling, and of course, the justice (sometimes) at the end. All these books are new-to-me though the authors do come highly recommended.

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    1. You have nicely summed up what pleasures such books can give.

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  7. The Nevada Barr book sounds great, the setting sounds perfect!

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    1. It is so great and is one of my favorite series.

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  8. Judy, like you, I enjoy reading thrillers! I began reading The First Counsel by Brad Meltzer on Saturday, November 7th and am roughly 100 pages into this novel about a lawyer for the White House and his date with the first daughter, where they witness something they weren't supposed to see. This is the first novel by Brad Meltzer I've decided to read and so far it's entertaining... I stopped reading it the past week though as I've read three other shorter reads.

    I like your Nevada Barr reviews and will have to try one of her Anna Pigeon novels.

    Airs Above the Ground by Mary Stewart sounds like a good read. My husband and I saw a Lipazzner Stallions show in Santa Barbara quite a few years ago and loved seeing them perform.

    I also like your idea of doing mini reviews... I've listened to 20+ Audible Originals this year, which I have yet to review.

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    1. Thanks, Lisa. Mini reviews are keeping me, sort of, caught up.

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