The Telltale Heart
Edgar Allan Poe
First read this in high school and heard a version on 78 RPM Record.
And the moral of the story if such you would find is: Be sure your sins will find you out.
Tuesday, February 18, 2025
Monday, February 17, 2025
Wish You Were Dead
Roy Grace #17.5
Wish You Were Dead
Peter James
The Graces go on vacation. I've stayed at campgrounds that resembled the haunted mansion they arrived at here. Web sites often guild the lily. Prospects are often daunting. Like the screened in veranda at the visitor's centre with a long aisle of insect repellents or the O fic sign with the missing letters and the washroom with the non-functional plumbing or the trailer surrounded by hundreds of empty Bud Light Cans and the nearby sewage lagoon.
But nothing the match of this horror show.
Saturday, February 15, 2025
The Lady, or the Tiger?
The Lady, or the Tiger?
Frank R. Stockton
What do you call it? Modern Fairy Tale or horror story.
Door number one or door number two. Either a live tiger or forced marriage. No word on the damsel's willingness to participate in this weird procedure. In a sense a trial by ordeal in an arena packed with an audience.
The only question here is does the princess want her lover eaten by a tiger or married to her competitor for his affections.
Friday, February 14, 2025
Open Season
Joe Pickett #1
Open Season
C.J. Box, David Chandler (Narrator)
Sounds like a pen name. The author is male. There are 26 books in the series.
Local cops accept the easy, lazy explanations for a crime that lands a dead outfitter on Joe's woodpile and another in a cabin with two dead hunters. In a town where everyone hunts a game warden is not the most popular man in town.
Twelve Sleep is fictitious, Ten Sleep is a real city. An endangered ferret in Wyoming is about as popular as Spotted Owls in BC.
Thursday, February 13, 2025
Dead Simple
Roy Grace #1
Dead Simple
Peter James
Depending on the edition this book runs to nearly 500 pages. That's quite a commitment. That the writer and his detective is old horse-faces' favourite is hardly a recommendation to this reader. Not something that appealed to me when I commended this book to my local library's attention. The series is set in Britain where Bobbies were traditionally an unarmed service.
What those outside the police service tend to forget is that detectives are people with insecurities, hopes and dreams, egos, and hungers just like everyone else. The stag party in progress as the book begins goes horribly wrong and the collision at the centre of the tale makes Roy Grace miss his latest dating opportunity.
The groom at the centre of the stag stunt is buried in a coffin with an air hose, bottle of rye, flashlight, walkie talkie. Three of his four buddies are killed in a collision, the fourth unconscious in intensive care. The matching walkie talkie picked up by a tow truck driver's retarded son.
Roy Grace is a detective superintendent with a past, a missing spouse, and a mystery with little to go on as the clock is ticking on Michael, the groom. Always the suspicion that the people who are interviewed know more than they're telling.
And like all good murder mysteries this one has plot twists, car chases, and double dealing.
Saturday, February 08, 2025
The Event Horizon Murder
The Event Horizon Murder
Greg Hickey
For the record the freebie offered was a court scene that featured the cross-examination of an officer's testimony. The interesting aspect of it all is that the pair are on a cordial first-name basis out of court.
The book is being offered in serial format as a chapter by chapter download via e-mail not unlike Dickens' serials printed in newspapers. In Dicken's case it ensured he got payment for his work as he wrote before copyright ensured his works would not be pirated. Finally the whole book is offered as a single download.
Carver describes the process of giving evidence in court as making him feel dirty.
The Event Horizon of the title is supposedly a black hole area of Chicago created by locals taking down the CCTV Surveillance cameras in their slum neighbourhood. It is a high crime area.
The story leaves one feeling betrayed as the Detective involved was framed.
Friday, February 07, 2025
The Royal Ranger
Ranger's Apprentice: The Royal Ranger #1
The Royal Ranger
John Flanagan, John Keating (Reader)
A balladeer and a knife thrower seek admittance to a fortress castle where a rival's son is held captive.
We don't get to meet the mission's objective until the closing pages of the adventure.
The narrator's flat tone makes the tale almost boring.
Worse the book ends with a cliff-hanger ending leaving the reader hanging from a tower.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)