Hoofball Reading Log 2014

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1)
Author: Scott Turow

Title: Identical

Comment: Only an OK novel from Turow. 25 years ago Dita Kronon was murdered and her then boyfriend, Cass Gianis, confessed. He has served the full 25 years and is now due to be released but Dita's brother Hal is still trying to find out what exactly happened the night of the murder. Cass is a twin and his brother Paul is running for Mayor and Hal is convinced that Paul had something to do with the killing. There are some twists in the book that are mildly surprising but despite a lot of character development I never really grew to like or dislike any of the characters. Worth a read if you have nothing else on the shelf. The major twist near the end was a little too much out there as well.

Score: 6/10

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2)
Author: Kathy Reichs

Title: Bones of the Lost

Comment: This is the 16th novel in the Temperance Brennan series and this is a good story. Brennan is investigating a young hit-and-run victim when she is asked to travel to Afghanistan to check if a soldier on trial for murder was telling the truth when he said that two locals were running towards him when he shot and killed them. The two cases eventually become linked in a fairly unbelievable manner as the coincidence is really a stretch too far. There is also a lot of padding in the story, describing flights and travel etc. An OK read as well.

Score: 6/10

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3)
Author: Patricia Cornwell

Title: Dust

Comment: There was the slightest nugget of a good plot here but it is ruined by the overly long story around it. This was at times tortuous to read, it takes nearly 200 pages to get going. The author draws out the simplest things for no apparent reason, this book runs for 500 pages and could have easily been cut down to about 250 without losing anything. A body is found on a playing field in MIT and the way it is posed raises suspicions that the murder could be linked to a serial killer who has been operating up to now in Washington. It picks up towards the end but I'll be hard pushed to want to read the next one.

Score: 6/10

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4)
Author: James Patterson & Mark Sullivan

Title: Private LA

Comment: I quite enjoy the "Private" series of books and this is the 7th book. Private is an investigation company that has a world wide presence and they often get called in by the police to help out in investigations. In this novel Jack Morgan, the head of Private, is directly involved in the investigation. His brother is up on a murder charge and one of his clients calls him when four bodies are found in front of his beach house. To add more pressure one of hollywoods biggest couples are kidnapped along with their adopted kids. This is a good read and the story zips along. As usual with these books you'll have to stretch the boundaries of belief, but it's worth trying out.

Score: 8/10

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5)
Author: Jay Martel

Title: Channel Blue

Comment: I picked this book up because the front and back covers piqued my interest even though it's not really my usual kind of book. Earth is a playground and reality TV show for aliens and they can't get enough of the boring day-to-day details of human life. But the ratings for the show start dropping and it's about to be canceled and Earth wiped out. Perry Bunt is the "hero" who has to save the Earth, but can he. This is a comedic novel with some funny parts but written humour is very hard to pull off. It's a simple but interesting premise, the characters are likeable and well written, I'm still just not sure on it.

Score: 7/10

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6)
Author: David Eggers

Title: The Circle

Comment: The theme of this book, social media in life being taken to the extreme, is quite an interesting one, and should make for a good novel. Unfortunately in this case it does not. I really don't know what book people were reading when they gave this tripe 4 or 5 stars. This is the authors 7th book but it reads like a debut. The writing is stilted, the characterisation very poor and the plotting (for what there is of it) is abysmal. A woman called Mae joins a company called the Circle and they are attempting to join all strands of life via social media so that everything is linked together. This novel could have been so much better, for the first 200 pages nothing happens except repetitive descriptions of job functions at this company. I kept waiting for something to happen but alas nothing did. Some of the "twists" were so transparent they were like cling film. Avoid this book like the Black Plague, I give it a 3 purely for the interesting theme and some half decent ideas

Score: 3/10

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7)
Author: Jonathon Kellerman

Title: Killer

Comment: At last - a decent book this year! This is the 29th (!!) book in the Delaware series and this is as fresh as the first few. Kellerman is really back on form after a slight slump. He gets back to basics in this novel, decent plotting and characters you care about. Delaware is involved in a custody battle between two sisters and gets drawn into a plot where the losing sister threatens to kill him and then she ends up dead herself not long after. As usual Kellerman gets into the why people do things and not just the uncovering of killers. An excellent addition to this series and you could read this as a stand alone as you do not need to know any of the previous back stories. I'm giving this a high score as I really enjoyed this one and was wishing for it not to end.

Score: 9/10

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8)
Author: Linwood Barclay

Title: A Tap at the Window

Comment: This is a good read and up there with his best. A private investigator named Cal Weaver drives past a local bar in a small American town. There's a knock on his car door and a young girl is standing there in the rain. He gives her a lift and then she runs off - the next day a girls body is found. Cal needs to find out what has happened and he is also trying to find out what happened to his son. Some aspects of this book are really well written, particularly the interactions between Cal and his wife. Barclay throws in his usual twists and this kept me engaged throughout. The ending was a bit dark which I didn't quite expect.

Score: 8/10

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9)
Author: Andy Weir

Title: The Martian

Comment: NASA is setting up expeditions to create a station on Mars. On the third such mission an accident means that one of the astronauts, Mark Watney, is left behind on Mars on his own. Some are criticizing this book for the bad language (which I believe fits with character) or for the mistakes in some of the technical details. If you just read the book and don't get too caught up in the technical stuff and how unlikely it may be then you will get a thrilling read. It doesn't go into the whole psychology of being over 50 million KM from the next human being but it does give a gripping and sometimes funny account of trying to survive in a hostile environment. The story goes back and forth between Mars and earth as well which gives rise some of the more interesting challenges facing the astronaut. My only slight gripe is that the ending is too quick but I won't say any more on that.

Score: 9/10

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10)
Author: Nelson Demille

Title: The Quest

Comment: A massive disappointment from one of my favourite authors. In the preface to the book he mentions that he first wrote this book back in 1975 when he was in college (it shows) and he was recently persuaded to rewrite and republish it. I'd like to meet that publisher and ask him what possessed him to suggest that. This is 460 pages of nothing, a mildly interesting story with endless repetition and over use of certain images and language. At the end of the book in the acknowledgements he says that the editor suggested more romance when she read the first drafts of the rewrite, well he made a real hash of that as well. The female protagonist is one dimensional and "romantically" flits between two of the male characters and at the end of the book I could not stand her odious character. There is somewhat of a plot but when they get to the end of it, nothing happens, and I mean absolutely nothing. Avoid, avoid, avoid. I only finished it as I can't leave a book half-read.

Score: 1/10

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11)

Author: Clive Cussler & Justin Scott

Title: The Bootleggers

Comment: This is the seventh book in the Isaac Bell series, about an early 1900's detective agency. This story is set around the prohibition era and as per the title involves bootleggers and what were called rum-runners. I found this book a bit harder to get into that the previous ones but I still enjoyed it. Isaac Bell is a larger than life hero and is a bit too unstoppable at times. A light good read.

Score: 7/10

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12)

Author: John Connolly

Title: The Wolf in Winter

Comment: This is an excellent read and a good addition to the Charlie Parkers series (number 12 in it). Not quite as dark as the last novel but still quite chilling. This series is best read in order as there is an arc to the whole series. This novel has the old and familiar characters such as the Collector, Louis and Angel. The town of Prosperous is a place with a dark secret which they will do anything to keep hidden. Charlie gets involved with the town when he is looking into a case for an old acquaintance and it may cost him his life. Connolly is one of the better writers that I am reading at the moment, he is great at language and plotting. He is definitely worth a try.

Score: 8/10

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13)

Author: Harlan Coben

Title: Missing You

Comment: Kat Donovan is a detective with the NYPD and her friend sets up a profile on a dating web site for her as a present and she gets match with her ex-fiance Jeff. When she contacts the man in the profile all is not what it seems and she gets dragged into a plot which is a bit of a stretch. Her father was also a cop who was murdered years before and this ties into the plot as well. This is a half decent book and zips along but the plot is a bit outlandish and the ending is a bit silly and I saw it coming from near the beginning of the book. Worth a read but I still prefer the Bolitar novels and some of the earlier stand alone thrillers.

Score: 7/10

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14)

Author: James Patterson & Maxine Paetro

Title: Unlucky 13

Comment: I mentioned after reading the 12th in this series that I thought it was running out of steam and this pile of mess proves that it is. The characters are one-dimensional and nothing seems to go wrong for them. There are too many plot strands interwoven in this book and they are all seperate and not linked. This means that none of the plots get expanded on in too much detail. The main plot is to do with capsule bombs being hidden in food and then exploding in peoples stomachs, a previous villan comes back for revenge and there is a completely nonsensical plot of a cruise ship being pirated in Norway which is never really explained with respect to motivation. The worst in the series by a long shot, but it's still an OK read.

Score: 14/10

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That last score should have been a 4 and not 14

15)

Author: Steven Erikson

Title: The Devil Delivered and Other Tales

Comment:
I'm again cursing my inability to just throw down a book I hate, I just can't do it and need to finish every book. This was a big struggle to read and took me nearly four weeks to finish as it was painful. There are three stories in this and from looking at the back of the book the three looked promising.


The Devil Delivered:
This is set in a near future in America and the country is suffering under a huge hole in the ozone layer. Scientists are trying to figure out what is going on and an anthropologist travels around the land. Maybe it's just me but I'd like a story to actually go somewhere and have a plot line that makes sense. The way this is written I just couldn't understand where he was going with the story and it kept hopping between different characters.



Revolvo:
The description on the back of the book says: "On an alternate Earth, evolution has taken a curious turn and now a secretive, nepotistic society of agencies, bursaries and peer-review boards allows self-proclaimed artists to survive without an audience ". There is no plot or decent characterisation in this one and maybe you need to be a bit more intellectual than I am to understand it. The story seems to go around a theme that art has become even more elitist and only a select few get to view it and the elite get to pick what artists will be famous and for how long. For some reason a neanderthal appears in this one and hunts people to eat. Too strange and out there for my liking.



Fishin' with Grandma Matchie:
I thought this was going to be the best story of the bunch but this one annoyed me more than the other stories. The author makes up words which worked for about the first 2-3 pages but then got really annoying very quickly. The story was very confusing and possibly because it took me so long to get through it I just didn't get it. The blurb is: "A nine-year-old boy recounts the story of a summer holiday that began as an ordinary trip to visit his grandmother and became a fantastical journey into the imagination of Grandma Matchie"



In summary I hated reading this book and view it as four weeks wasted when I could have been reading better things. Unfortunately I have to give this a zero as I thought it was confusing and pretentious writing and it just didn't get me interested in it and it's not for me. I won't be trying any of this authors other books.

Score: 0/10

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16)

Author: John Grisham

Title: Sycamore Row

Comment: An old man who is terminally ill hangs himself in the deep south and leaves a handwritten will leaving most of his money to his housekeeper. This story returns to Jake Brigance (A Time to Kill) and so is a white vs black story at it's heart. An OK story but not much action in this one and I saw the ending coming a mile away.

Score: 6/10

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17)

Author: David Baldacci

Title: The Target

Comment: This is the third book in the series featuring the American government operatives Will Robie and Jessica Reel. It's an OK read but has two unrelated plots in it and I felt that it would have been better to concentrate on one. The plot is a bit weak when it comes to the North Korea strand and is fairly unbelievable. The other plot related to Reels father is much more interesting and could have been played on a bit more. Worth a read.

Score: 6/10

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18)

Author: Chris Pavone

Title: The Accident

Comment: This novel is the second from this author and is a decent enough story. A literary agent in New York receives a manuscript from an anonymous source and is purported to be a factual account of the life of Charlie Wolfe, a powerful media giant with political aspirations. This manuscript supposedly details his involvement in the death of a young woman after a drunken night out while Wolfe was a college student. He will do anything to ensure the manuscript doesn't see the light of day. Worth reading

Score: 7/10

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19)

Author: Stephen King

Title: Mr Mercedes

Comment: This is a straight forward suspense thriller about a retired detective who cannot stop thinking about the case where a crowd of people queueing for a jobs fair are mown down by a person driving a stolen mercedes. The plot starts when Bill Hodges receives a letter from someone claiming to be the killer. Hodges starts investigating the case again to try and stop the killer from striking again as he is claiming he will. This is far from Kings best work and the characters seemed a bit flat to me and not well-rounded out. It felt to me like a short story that he wrote a long long time ago and just expanded it out into a novel. Only an OK read but it did keep my interest.

Score: 7/10

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20)

Author: Robin Sloan

Title: Mr Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore

Comment: Clay Jannon loses his job as a web designer and while looking for a job comes across one working the night shift at Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. Fairly quickly it becomes obvious that this is not a normal book shop as there seems to be only a few customers and they seem to just borrow books. He analyses the pattern of borrowing and discovers a secret which draws him into investigating a secret cult with some of his closest friends. This did keep me turning the pages but the plot is fairly outlandish and the constant references and details about Google became quite annoying and distracting. Starts well but chugs over the line

Score: 6/10

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21)

Author: Lincoln Child

Title: Deep Storm

Comment: I'm gonna take the description from Amazon for this: "formal naval doctor Peter Crane is summoned to a remote oil platform in the North Atlantic to diagnose a bizarre medical condition. But when he arrives, Crane learns that the real trouble lies on "Deep Storm," a research facility on the ocean floor. Deep Storm has been designed for one purpose: to excavate a site that may hold the key to a mystery steeped in centuries-old myth."

This is a great adventure story, but slow to being with but moved at a rapid pace after that. There's enough twists and turns to keep you guessing as to what is going on and the plot is ok. The ending is a bit out there though but I won't say any more on that so as not to spoil it.

Score: 7/10

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22)

Author: Jeffrey Deaver

Title: The Skin Collector

Comment: An improvement over the last book but Deaver needs to wrap up this series as he is really running out of ideas. Rhyme is investigating some murders where the perpetrator is using poison instead of ink to tattoo his victims. Rhyme and Sachs discover that the scene has been scrubbed clean of nearly all evidence but a scrap of paper is found that connects this case with one from their past. The plotting on this seems to be all over the place as well with some disjointed story lines involved and some of Deavers trademark twists are also present in this book but they are either laughably stupid or blatantly obvious from miles before they happen. The ending seemed tacked on and is a clear bridge to the next book.

Score: 6/10

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23)

Author: Lincoln Child

Title: The Third Gate

Comment: A team of archaelogists are hunting for the tomb of a pharaoh called King Narmer. They think that his crown might be buried with him and no crown of an Egyptian king has ever been found before. The site is located in a place called the Sudd in Sudan, which is supposed to be a swamp/marsh with very thick rotting vegetation throughout it. Professor Jeremy Logan is brought in to help with investigating some strange occurrences and he finds out some strange and worrying things. An OK enough thriller but some of the plot is just a bit too unbelievable. I could see the ending coming from a fair bit away as well. I would recommend this one.

Score: 7/10

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24)

Author: James Patterson & Marshall Karp

Title: NYPD RED 2

Comment: A serial killer in New York is killing people whose have escaped justice for their crimes. The victims are all kidnapped, dressed in a certain way and made to "confess" to their crimes on video which is then posted on the internet. The latest victim is a member of a wealthy and powerful family so the famous NYPD Red detectives are called in as they specialise in crimes against the rich/famous. This is an OK book but the ending was blindingly obvious from a good way out.

Score: 7/10

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25)

Author: Hugh Howey

Title: SAND

Comment: This is not on the same level as the "Wool" trilogy. It has a similar premise in that it is set far into the future but in this case it's set in a world which is covered in sand and the people have a constant struggle to stop the sand from covering everything. There are "sand divers" who dive into the sand to get to the old world of skyscrapers/planes/airports which are now buried deep under the ground. A lot of things are never explained in the book and one which annoyed me is how a basic society came up with the technology to move the sand and dive through it in the manner in the book. The story also takes too long to get going and the end comes a bit too abruptly. An OK story but hard to engage with it.

Score: 7/10

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26)

Author: Alan Groghan

Title: Disorganised Crime

Comment: The author has apparently turned his life around but I'm still not sure what to make of him. At several times in the book you just get the impression that he never wanted to stay in one place for too long. He was out robbing cars at 8 years of age and by 16 had racked up 35 convictions but never spent a day in prison. Once he eventually got locked up he spent pretty much 9 out of the following 10 years in prison. It's hard to feel any sympathy for Croghan but he is extremely honest in the book when telling what he did back then. An interesting read.

Score: 6/10

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27)

Author: Jack Bowman

Title: High Rollers

Comment: It was the cover of this book caught my attention and it's a good read. Tom Patrick is a NTSB investigator who is essentially a maverick with a big mouth. He's been demoted from investigating plane crashes and is stuck with pipeline leaks. He gets sucked into a poker consortium in the plot as well. This is an interesting story with a well thought out plot but the ending was just a bit too ludicrous for my liking and far too much of a coincidence. Worth a read though.

Score: 6/10

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28)

Author: James Patterson & David Ellis

Title: Invisible

Comment: Another jointly written novel from the Patterson school. This is another fast paced story with twists and red herrings. The problem with trying to always come up with a shocking twist is that authors nearly always give it away when their misdirection is too obvious. Emma Dockery is an FBI research analyst who believes that there is a mass killer using fire as a means to cover up their crimes and each time the fire is being written off as accidental. Her own sister died in a fire like this and she sets out to prove that there is a killer out there.

Score: 7/10

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29)

Author: Linda Fairstein

Title: Terminal City

Comment: The main characters are getting annoying in this series and are turning into caricatures of what they used to be earlier in the series. A game of cat and mouse in Grand Central terminal leads to plenty of showing off of the amount of research the author obviously did for this novel with seemingly never ending facts about the terminal. It's an OK read, not sure how it would come across as a stand alone or first read from the series though, it may be better

Score: 6/10

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30)

Author: Lee Child

Title: Personal

Comment: A poor effort from Child on this outing for Jack Reacher. The plot in this is even more outlandish than the 18 previous books and is a bit silly to be honest. This reads as if it was written by someone else and with a screenplay in mind. Someone has taken a shot at the French president and it somehow turns into a potential threat against the whole G8 group. The action takes Reacher to Paris and London but it's all getting a bit stale at this stage. The author needs to come up with something fresh for the next novel.

Score: 6/10

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31)

Authors: James Patterson & Ashwin Sanghi

Title: Private India

Comment: The next book in the Private investigation agency series is based in Mumbai, India. Santosh Wagh is the head of the office and he has a troubled past in which he cause the death of his family and now has a drink problem. He needs to bring his skills to bear when a series of murders follow a pattern which Santosh himself figures out. Jack Morgan (the owner of Private) also turns up in India himself during the story. A lot of this book is filler about Mumbai and India and it's obvious who wrote all those parts. The "plot" is only OK and is fairly weak in places and it's the first Private novel that feels like it had hardly any input from Patterson. Just an OK read but I wouldn't bother if you'd something better lined up.

Score: 6/10

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32)

Author: Kathy Reichs

Title: Bones Never Lie

Comment: This is a decent read and is about the killer that got away years before. Recent evidence uncovered has linked some cold cases with Anique Pomerlau, a serial killer responsible for the murder and torture of young girls in Canada 10 years previously. Another girl has now gone missing and things seem to point to Pomerlau. Ryan also makes a return in this book but I think a bit too much was made of trying to get him back involved. I'd prefer a bit less of the back story for the characters and more on the plot of the novel. A few twists and turns keep this interesting but one twist was a bit too convenient.

Score: 7/10

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33)

Author: James Patterson & Michael Ledwidge

Title: Burn

Comment: This is the 7th book in the Detective Michael Bennett series. The Bennett family returns to New York after having to hide out during the trial of the crime boss that Bennett took down. He is screwed over by the new chief of detectives who is an old enemy and given command over a new outreach squad in Harlem. This part of the plot never really gets going as he is dragged off that assignment fairly quickly to investigate a burnt body that was found in an abandoned building. This is an OK book but the plot tries to do nearly too much and the ending is a bit poor. Worth the read though.

Score: 7/10

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34)

Author: Linwood Barclay

Title: No Safe House

Comment: In this book, Barclay returns to the characters from a previous novel, No Time for Goodbye. We get to see how Terry, Cynthia and Grace Archer have coped since the events 7 years previously. Cynthia is living separately from the family and the daughter Grace is starting to act out. Then two elderly retired teachers are murdered and Grace breaks into a house with her boyfriend and events take off from there. The criminal who helped them the last time, Vince, also appears in this book. The story flies along and the plot is decent enough. My major problem is that Terry is a school teacher and some of the decisions he makes in the book just don't make sense for the character. Overall it's a good read, just not one of his best.

Score: 7/10

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35)

Author: Lauren Oliver

Title: Rooms

Comment: Richard Walker has left his house in the country to his ex-wife and children. They arrive to look after the arrangements and to decide what to do with the house. His ex-wife Caroline, daughter Minna (with her child Amy) and son Trenton arrive and start to sort through the things in the house. They are not alone there however as Alica and Sandra are ghosts of previous residents who are "bound" to the house. Another new ghost of a young girl arrives and Trenton can sense and hear her. The premise is very interesting but unfortunately it feels quite flat in this book. There is never any tension in the story and the characters are just plain unlikeable. The way the story is written, with each chapter from the perspective of a different character gets a bit confusing. Overall an OK read but it's not really a ghost story as such.

Score: 6/10

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36)

Author: A.R. Torre

Title: The Girl in 6E

Comment: It takes a while for this book to start making sense as the plot isn't really apparent in the beginning. Jessica Reilly is a recluse who hasn't left her apartment in over three years and hasn't had any physical contact with another person in that time. She makes a lot of money from her webcam sex site and she orders anything she needs online or over the phone. The first third of the book is a bit repetitive and goes on about the webcam side of things, it could have been edited a bit tighter at the start. Some of the start of the book is quite explicit, the author normally writes erotica.

The main plot kicks in when she has client who has a very disturbing fantasy using the name Annie. When she then sees on the news that a little girl called Annie has gone missing, she's convinced he's responsible for the girl's disappearance, so she leaves the apartment and does after him.

Score: 6/10

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37)

Author: Ben Mezrich

Title: Seven Wonders

Comment: Mezrich is a good author usually and this thriller is an OK read. The blurb on Amazon is: "When the reclusive mathematician Jeremy Grady is murdered, it’s up to his estranged brother Jack to find out why. His search leads him on a far-flung journey - from Brazil, India, Peru, and beyond - as he unravels the mystery that links the Seven Wonders of the World, and discovers that Jeremy may have hit upon something that has been concealed for centuries. With the help of scientist Sloane Costa, they discover a conspiracy to hide a roadmap to the Garden of Eden - and the truth behind a mythological ancient culture."

The problem with this book is that it tries to fit in too much in its 300 pages and the pacing is relentless. There are a few plot holes as well which are fairly glossed over such as why an academic instutition (Sloanes) would fund all these flights for them to race around the world.

Apparently this is the first in a trilogy so I'm hoping the pacing is better in the second. Worth a read in any case.

Score: 6/10

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38)

Author: James Patterson

Title: Hope to Die

Comment: This is the 22nd (!!) novel in the Alex Cross series and it's one of the darker ones for Cross personally. It's the follow up book to the cliffhanger in "Cross my Heart" so I won't say too much about the plot in either book. One of the plot devices made no sense whatsoever to me given the psychopath that Cross is chasing. I can't say anything else without giving away a major part of the plot but it was glaring to me. Other than this it was a good read and a return to form. However, I think Patterson needs to shake this series up a bit with some real unexpected twists.

Score: 6/10

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39)

Author: Patricia Cornwell

Title: Flesh and Blood

Comment: This was only OK, as mentioned before the characters are becoming caricatures at this stage. Scarpetta comes across as neurotic and self centered, Lucy is acting weird again, Marino is angry all the time and Benton is the silent strong type who always knows more than what he says. While some of the story gets back to what was good with this series, the pathology side of things, all too often it goes off on rubbish tangents. The ending just annoyed me as well, if the plotting had been tighter this could have been wrapped up in one book. I'm not giving too much away by saying this has a cliffhanger ending.

Score: 5/10

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40)

Author: Stephen King

Title: Revival

Comment: This was a disappointing read from King and felt like a short story or novella that was padded out to become a full novel. A young boy, Jamie Morton, in a New England town in the 60s befriends the new minister that comes to town, Charles Jacobs. The minister experiments with electricity and shows Jamie what can be done. The novel then proceeds to meander along for a couple of hundred pages where nothing, and I mean nothing, happens. There is little character exploration and just repetition of annoying phrases. The ending is just a bit too much out there and seemed to come out of nowhere. I'd say you'd be best to avoid this one unless you have to read everything by King.

Score: 4/10

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41)

Author: David Baldacci

Title: The Escape

Comment: This is the third book in the Puller series from Baldacci. John Puller is in the Criminal Investigations Division in the Army. His brother Robert, who was also in the army, is in prison for treason and he escapes. John Puller is drawn into the investigation to find him. This zips along a fair bit but the plot is a bit of a stretch with too many coincidences happening.

Score: 6/10