The Sherlockian

 

Having been steeped in the writings of Sir Author Conan Doyle as a boy from The Lost World to Sherlock Holmes immediately seeing this book’s title prickled the hair on the back of my neck. How could someone think they can emulate or worse still try to copy one of the greats.  So I was pleasantly surprised to find Moore’s version of events quite within the realms of possibility.

A well thought through approach, obvious research in the private life of Doyle, and information only a Sherlockian would be aware of are self-evident throughout. A Sherlockian is a member of a group that devotes themselves to the study of Sherlock Holmes, quoting passages  as some folks quote famous movie lines, and holding occasional meetings to study and discuss the famous detective. Doyle would have been disgusted at such loyalty to his creation, after all, as the books points out, Doyle killed Holmes off because he had become bigger than Doyle. The author was playing second-fiddle to the character he wrote about.

The Sherlockian starts with a meeting of the devotees, whose organizer claims to have discovered the missing diary of Doyle; the one that has had everyone talking for months. Doyle apparently kept a very detailed accounting of his life and the missing chapter would be of great interest to historians, let alone this group of readers. Unaccountably the diary is stolen and the finder apparently murdered before he can bring to light his findings. Smelling a rat, Harold White, an ardent student of Holmes’ techniques, and Sarah Lindsay, the journalist who was to report on the findings of the diary, pair up to track down who killed their esteemed leader and to find out where the missing diary might be now. If this mystery wasn’t enough to keep one turning the pages, Moore switches back and forth between current times and the nineteen hundreds, every other chapter, so the reader is finding out for himself exactly what is transpiring that Doyle wrote about so ardently that will make the discovery of these lost months so important to his fans of today.

The back-and-forth ploy is a tremendous asset to the novel and it kept me up late into the night unable to stop reading until I turned the file pages to discover the final ending to this astutely written historical thriller.

Missing Persons - a review

O’Donohue puts her journalistic skills to work building her new character, Kate Conway, a Chicago television reporter and begins her second series with a rollicking good start.
Conway produces one of those true crime local cable shows and is used to dealing with dead bodies and missing people but when the dead body is her soon-to-be divorced husband who just happens to die while she is starting up a fledgling new show on finding missing people then local homicide detectives find cause to question her motives and alibi.
Throw into the mix the husband’s new fiancé, who all of a sudden wants to be Kat’s new ‘best friend’,  a old high school jock friend and unhappy in-laws Kate finds her personal life as much as a juggling act as the new television show. When the body of the girl she is reporting on as missing shows up and Kate starts to receive death threats of her own she has to figure out is the hidden danger from the results of her reporting or from someone a little closer to her personal life.
O’Donohue exhibits a masterful approach with her classic red-herrings and carefully placed foreshadowing as she drags us through the muck-racking of yellow journalism but still finds a way to keep as close as family when worrying about her protagonist. This novel kept me interested and still left room for unexpected twist in the end. This will be a series worth collecting.

Consequences: The Criminal Case of David Parker Ray - a review of a True Crime

When a young woman is found running naked down a country road in Elephant Butte NM with nothing but a collar and a chain fastened around her neck the killing and torture spree of David Parker Ray came to a halt.
Cindy Vigil, was one of the lucky ones. Only a few had survived at the hands of the criminal sexual sadist and those that had where so drugged on ametriptoline as to not remember little to anything of their experience. When authorities followed their leads back to the home of DPR they were all flabbergasted at the extent of the crimes committed.
Along with his torture chamber, labeled The Toy Box, they also found extensive diaries describing in great detail all the gruesome tortures and murders he had committed over a forty-four year span starting when he turned fifteen
This true life crime saga is told in clinical detail covering all the known facts, as horrific as they are, and the subsequent trials of DPR, his girlfriend, daughter and other known associates. It makes for a gruesome read and a look at a little slice of America that we all would prefer to forget existed.
Hard to rate it, cant say I liked it but found it fascinating, well told and a good research avenue for novelists who are writing abut aspects of S&M  or BDSM

Bourne Dominion - A review

One assumed with Robert Ludlum’s untimely passing that Jason Bourne passed on with him, however the character is alive and well and in the capable hands of Van Lustbader.

From South America to Europe and back to the Middle East, Bourne helps track down and kill the worst bad guys in the world while apparently being marked for death by the Russian spymasters, FSB-2, who send the one man Bourne has ever trusted, Boris Karpov as his assassin.

Meanwhile, Severus Domina, an underground secret terrorist group, is out to attack America again in her homeland. This multi-faceted group has agents in every part of the world, imbedded in government and business, all with one goal in mind, world domination.

As usual nothing in Bourne’s life is as it appears. From the diabolical female triplets to the Mossad agent masquerading as an airline stewardess there are obstacles and assistance placed in his path at every turn. And let’s not forget the murderous Columbian drug dealer that just won’t let matters rest either. I don’t think Bourne ever has a restful night, but then again who needs sleep when the country’s sole survival is on your shoulders.

There are so many interwoven complex plots, secret organizations, inter lapping characters, and dead people who really aren’t that the reading of this novel about scrambles the brain. I already had a hard enough time truly understanding the twists and turns that Ludlum took us through with Bourne and so I was interested in seeing where Van Lustbader would take the character. Would he simplify matters and allow us to see inside Bourne for who he really is or use the same mad-scramble style of storytelling of his predecessor? If you liked Ludlum’s Bourne then you are in luck, you will love this new edition of Jason Bourne too.

Faces of the Gone - A review

Even in notorious drug–infested cities such as Newark, NJ four bodies, killed gang-land style and stacked like cordwood, still pulls headlines for the local press. Carter Ross, investigative journalist for the Newark Eagle-Examiner catches a break when he feels that the local police have drawn a hasty conclusion to the reason for the killing and his leads take him to the dark under-belly of the city.

Making a connection with all four dead gang members through a special kind of heroin, almost pure and the best on the street, leads to dire consequences for not only the families and friends of the people he interviewed to get the story correct, but for himself too. A lucky rendezvous with a horny editor finds Carter not sleeping in his home when it is blown to smithereens.

Rather than be warned off, Carter takes aim with both barrels while being helped by his gay, Cuban side-kick intern, a plucky local stripper with nothing to lose. With a nudge from local gang members wanting to help keep their name out of the police blotter for being involved with selling drugs, manages to outwit the Federal Drug Bureau and the local police by getting to the source to get the real story on the front page as an exclusive.

Parks, drawing on his experience as a journalist, takes us on a page-turning, stomach-churning race across Newark. The humor dispersed through the sarcastic vein that Ross expels had me chuckling aloud and reading paragraphs to whoever would listen within the first three or four pages, and continues throughout in rich fashion. This debut novel has a plot that is solid and well developed. For lack of a better word, the story rocks! A page turner that I finished the same day I started, I just couldn’t put it down.

The Devil's Star - A Review

After writing half-dozen best sellers in Scandinavia and Europe, Norway’s answer to the next rising star of Scandinavian thrillers is Jo Nesbo and he brings the pounding beat of “The Devil’s Star” to take America by storm.

Detective Harry Hole, is climbing out of the wrong side of the drunk-tank trying to recover from his partner’s murder and the demise of his long term relationship with Rakel. To make matters worse, Hole suspects the detective he is forced to partner with now, as being implicated in his partner’s death and is generally a crooked cop.

When the initial investigation unearths a dead woman with a missing finger and a small, red, star-shaped diamond under her eyelid, the crew is stumped. With no leads and no new information, they are surprised when five days later the finger of a missing woman shows up with a red diamond ring. Correctly, they surmise a serial killer is on the loose. By the time the third woman shows up dead with a missing finger and a red diamond, they have pin-pointed evidence to who they refer to as the Courier Killer. A man on a bicycle is acting as a deliveryman to gain access. Hole has to determine whether these are random killings, or where these woman chosen for a special reason.

It all centers on the diamond, a red pentagram that when diagrammed and placed on a map, leads them to the time sequence and the place where the final killing while take place. With no PD support, Hole has to strike out on his own. As we peel through each layer of witnesses and suspects the tension builds. With the killer closing in and his partner trying to kill him, too, Hole is on his own. By the time he finally unmasks the sociopathic murderer, we have been treated to a story like never before. This is a police procedural for the ages.

Unsinkable - A review

Expectations are a terrible thing because so often they let you down. I started this book really wanting to love it. I mean what's not to love here. A wonderful story of grit and determination in a teenage girl, who at sixteen isn't even a woman yet, striving against all odds to break the world record as the youngest female to single-handedly sail around the world non-stop. That she does not succeed is not the story here the story is thee fortitude and perseverance she demonstrates having to repair the ship, following instructions over the phone from hundreds of miles away in the worst conditions imaginable, and the will to survive when her yacht almost capsizes and then the disappointment when her mast snaps off leaving her drifting in a spot on the Indian Ocean just about as far from land as she could be. My heart broke along with hers when she had no choice but to activate the emergency beacon and summon help.

The problem is that I just gave you the entire book in one paragraph. It would have been longer obviously if the trip had not been cut short, so the preparation for the journey is dwelt on too long to give the book some filler. We are a third of the way through the book before she even sets sail. Now I am going to assume that, like any other athletic event, the party performing the feat has trained. it would really be a story if they did the deed without preparation. The only book I had read that I could compare this one too was Dove (Sunderland mentions having read this herself) a story of Robin lee graham, who sailed the world as a sixteen year old over thirty years ago. He was a pioneer in this type of single-handedly sailing the world and an inspiration to the author here. His book spends the first chapter on the preparation and the rest on the journey. Unsinkable should have followed suit.

The other problem, and it is because of the elongated beginning that this is even discussed are the parents of the author. I recall when this journey actually took place and the press questioned whether or not she was capable and if the parents were out of their mind letting her do this trip. Now Sunderland showed all of us she was capable, level-headed and courageous. However, the fact that she had to call for help pack to her dad and the team she had assembled rather than being able to figure it out or jerry-rig the boat shows that perhaps she was really not a 'seasoned salt' and could have used a little more time in real life before sailing on this trip. The book does little to convince me of that fact and the parents somehow take the blame in the court of the people for not realizing this fact.

Anyway, hats off to Abby Sunderland for surviving her adventure and for being able to tell us all about it in this stirring book. It should be proposed reading for all teenagers that are sitting around each summer bored. They don’t have to sail the world but they can apply themselves whole-heatedly to some task or other, and that is the lesson Sunderland brings us. I salute her efforts.