A magical tale of intrigue, danger, magic and young love

The House of Sapphire Magic: Breaking Glass, the second novel in John Booth’s Magic Series, focuses on an evil project of Max Drexel, a powerful business tycoon. On the surface, the project looks respectable; after all, it is presented to the public as an orphanage for children who have no relatives who could care for them. Under the surface, the project is much more sinister: the orphans are guinea pigs in an experiment.

It isn’t long before the two eldest Grange children, Mandy and William become involved, as Max Drexel is out to buy their property and tear down their house. Glass, one of the  magical house guardians, uncovers the plot when she accidentally stumbles into the real world, thus discovering the magic powers of the sapphire ring that Mrs. Grange gifted her.

This is a fast-paced, action-packed little novel. If you enjoyed John Booth’s The House of Silver Magic, you are sure to love this one. I understand his Gold Magic: Terror in Mind  has recently been published, so give that one a look also. 

John Booth is a magical writer, with several series of novels, all very much worth reading, and all involving magic in one way or another.

The House of Sapphire Magic is a definite 5 star read.

A gem of a movie, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

When I first read Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo a couple of years or so ago, one of the first thoughts I had was what a great movie it would make. All the right ingredients were there: Fast-paced thriller, family drama, a deeply scarred young woman (Lisbeth Salander), a brilliant and flawed investigative reporter (Mikael Blomkvist). But what really intrigued me was what a movie might do with Lisbeth Salander, whom official society has labeled incompetent and in need of a guardian. 

I was right about its movie potential. Directed by David Fincher from a screenplay by Steven Zaillian, a dark ambient soundtrack by Trent Raznor and Atticus Ross and starring Daniel Craig & Rooney Mara in the roles of Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander, the movie is an absolute gem. The music pulses, throbs, seduces and, in the final song, “Is your love strong enough”, expresses the ache in Lisbeth’s heart for someone whose love is strong enough to love her, and does it in a way that will bring tears to your eyes as it did mine.

Some people have said the movie is better than the book. Though they are quite different, I don’t agree that the movie is better. What Steven Zaillian’s screenplay does is pull the core drama of Larsson’s massive novel and condenses it into a dramatic masterpiece that takes two hours and thirty-eight minutes to watch. The novel is far more complex and massive than the story that revolves around the Vanger family.

I would love to see a movie of Lisbeth’s story as it is told in the second and third books of Larsson’s millennium trilogy, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest. Lisbeth Salander is one of the strongest and most intriguing women in fiction; definitely not one you want to get on the wrong side of.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is a definite 5 star movie. I’ll be surprised if it doesn’t show up among this year’s Oscar nominees. If you haven't  yet seen it, do. And do not leave until all of the credits have scrolled through, because the final song, "Is your love strong enough" is such a perfect finale, connected to the heart of that last poignant scene when Lisbeth throws away her gift to Mikael that it will bring tears to your eyes as it did mine.

Murder, village intrigue, pedophilia -- WHO is the villain?

“Little Fingers” is a truly remarkable novel. Opening as the main character Julia Blackburn is being interviewed by police Inspector John Frampton. “There is a serial killer out there. He is living in that brain of yours as an unrecognised memory, a shadowy computation, and he must be stopped.” Inspector Frampton is a doggedly patient man who must get at the truth and stop the killings going on in the village of Hanburgh. Julia is the most recent person to have seen recently murdered Tom Willows. He is determined to tease the truth from Julia’s mind. Who is this mysterious woman? He persists doggedly forward. “That is what makes you a policeman,” she says; “You have the mind of a drill bit.”

Life in the little village of Hanburgh was relatively tranquil until Julia Blackburn arrived and rented one of the largest houses in town. Who is she and what does she want from the people here?

There is Mary, Julia’s friend and lover; Mary Knightly, wife of George and adopted daughter of Dr. Beringer, local physician and pedophile. There is Samantha, whom Mary Knightly calls “a bastard daughter of a whore”. Not to be outdone, Samantha calls Mary Knightly “a jumped up little poisonous turd.” No love lost there. There is Brenda, waitress at the local pub, a fund of knowledge about everything going on in Hanburgh. Who is Julia Blackburn, and what is she doing here? It isn’t until late in the novel that we find out who the killer is, and why. The killer’s purpose? To exact revenge on the people who made or her life miserable when she lived in Hanburgh. But ... who is the killer? At one point in her interrogation with Inspector Frampton, Julia asks :”If I am the fall guy, who is the murderer?”

Julia belabors the Inspector’s ears with philosophical asides. “We do such trivial things with all that intelligence we have been lavished with. We could work towards a better world, towards making even the smallest of differences, and we waste our time worrying whether somebody of no importance likes us or not.” “We are not balanced. We go from peaceful intentions in peacetime to murderous ones in war. We are easily provoked to hatred by the simplest of cynical exploiters. We fall for the same trick a thousand times without recognising it... You would think that we would  have reached satiety with all that we cram our homes with and later take to the dump. Apparently not. Rather than counsel ourselves that enough is enough, we carry on accelerating our desires, and cheering on people whose only intent is to profit from them. We may be decent, but we are certainly stupid.”

Rather than distracting from the story, these monologues add to the picture of Julia’s mind. Is she ...? You’ll have to read the novel to find out. It’s a remarkable piece of fiction that you won’t soon forget. I certainly won’t.

A clear 5 star read.

Available in paperback and Kindle.

A gripping tale of adventure and intrigue

If you’re looking for a well-written novel filled with adventure, romance, intrigue and plenty of gripping, gritty action involving the U.S. Navy, Coast Guard, bureaucratic turf wars, Russian spies, terrorists and submarining, this is definitely a novel you will want to read. No nonsense Lt. Commander Mollie Sanders, an exceptionally bright officer young who gets her way because she’s the most qualified knows very well how to handle herself, and in this adventure, she has a whole lot to handle. Prickly, she has her vulnerable side, like all of us do. In my book, she’s the kind of officer I’d be proud to serve under. I sure as heck wouldn’t want to end up on her “S” list.

The story is cinematic, which is not surprising, as it is an adaptation of two screenplays written by the authors. I look forward to reading their next adventure ... and perhaps seeing this one on the Big Screen or TV.

***** stars.

A good book that needs some work

The story opens on 23 October 1935 as hard-boiled private eye Errol Black is tucking into a nice, bloody porterhouse steak. Then someone walks into the restaurant and begins shooting and his dinner with partners Dyke Spanner and Terry Shadow is blown all to Hell. So are Terry Shadow and the two intended victims, notorious mob boss Dutch Schulz (who lives for 23 hours) and one of his henchmen.

The story then shifts to 1945 and the mid-town Manhattan offices of Black and Wentz Detective Agency where we find Errol Black alone in the office doing paperwork. The door opens and a beautiful young woman named Claudia walks in seeking help. She suspects her fiancé of cheating on her. Is she trouble, or isn’t she? Young, beautiful, flirtatious and naive, she’s just the kind of gal hard-boiled detectives fall for. I kept warning him off, but of course he didn’t listen, In spite of his personal failings, he’s good at his craft of detecting, the case is an interesting, convoluted one, and he finally solves it after many convoluted twists and turns. Living happily ever after is a different matter for a hard-boiled,PI, but we already knew that when we started. The many-splendored thing called love is something that eludes hard-boiled guys. Black Shadows is an enjoyable read and I’m glad I read it.

That said, would benefit greatly from some further editing. The story Begins in 1935 with the shoot-out, then shifts to 1945. Though it appears to remain in that year, it isn’t clear: reference is made to an article written in the 1960s; a two-foot thick solid steel door is opened by touching a red button on a keypad on the wall; Errol Black takes Claudia out to celebrate her birthday on July 3,1940; and soft rock is heard on a radio. And I am confused.

Other problems are as follows: A South American man can’t understand a man who is talking to him because he has a poor grasp of Guatemalan. (There is no such language.) In several places the names of two Chinese characters -- Wang and Ping -- are mixed up, once in the same paragraph. As Black is talking with Ping, Ping’s name suddenly changes to Wang. In another place Weeny Jung Ping is called “Weeny Wang”; this should to have been caught (or explained), but wasn’t.

One of the more interesting characters in the novel is Dutch Schultz’s half-brother, “known colloquially as The Portly Gangster,” a cultured, hugely overweight, vain, and greedy man who has spent his life looking for a blue diamond, said to have been Dutch Schultz’s. No matter how hard I try, “the portly gangster” isn’t a likely colloquialism in Big Apple or New Jersey criminal or popular culture of that day. “Fats”, “Fatty” or “Fatso” yes, but “The Portly Gangster”? I can see someone like Margery Allingham using it, as it fits the upper middle class British culture she wrote about back in the 40s, 50s an 60s.

So ... as good a novel as I think Black Shadows is, I can only give it 3 *** . If someone can show me that I’ve gone terribly wrong, I’ll be happy to change my rating. I look forward to seeing some more of Simon Swift’s work.

A gripping tale of intrigue set in WWII Europe

A gripping tale of intrigue.

Robert Craven’s Get Lenin is the kind of novel that pulls you in the minute you pick it up and won’t let you leave until you’ve finished, it, sit back and say “Wow, what an adventure!” The title comes from a very intriguing and very mad idea: Seeking for a way to assure his place in Hitler’s inner circle, Dr. Joseph Goebbels hatches a plan so secret it is even kept from Hitler. The plan? To sneak into the Soviet Union ahead of Hitler’s armies, steal Lenin’s sarcophagus, and spirit it into Germany. What a trophy, and what a propaganda coup if it succeeds! Does it? You have to read the book to find out.

The book opens in Munich in1938 when a young Polish spy named Eva Molenaar stumbles onto the plot and reports it to her handlers. From there the story picked up speed and pulled me into it in a way that made me feel that I was a participant in the action. Robert Craven has created a story and cast of characters that are wholly real and believable in a setting that is so well-researched that reading Get Lenin was like watching a newsreel.

I’m glad I bought this book; I’ve been recommending it to everyone, and It’s certainly on my “read-it-again” list.

A solid ***** for this one.

Available in both paperback and Kindle

An outstanding new novel by an outstanding writer

Nigel Lampard is a very good writer, and “Pooh Bridge” is a very, very good book. Billed as a murder mystery, it is also much more than that: it is a story of love lost, love born and intrigue that takes place in England, Germany, Brunei and back to England. In its richness it reminds me of some of the best of John le Carré and Hakan Nesser. I expect to see a lot more from Nigel Lampard; he is really that good.

And now about the book. Marine engineer Richard Blythe has recently lost his wife to cancer. Grief-stricken, he quits his job, sends his teenaged twins Isabelle (Bella) and David off to their boarding school, has his wife’s parents look after his house, and sets off trekking through Derbyshire’s woods to grieve his tremendous loss and recover a sense of who he is and what he wants to do with his life.

Other than being a loving father, Richard Blythe is lost. And then he stumbles over the body of a young Asian woman in the underbrush and it gets interesting. “She was lying in the undergrowth, just off a well-trodden track. If I hadn’t decided to walk that particular track, in that particular wood, I would never have found her.”

Life sometimes has a way of doubling-down on troubles. The police, of course, have suspicions. And from there the story gets very interesting.

“Pooh Bridge” is a book with a cast of characters that I won’t soon forget. I look forward to the next from Nigel Lampard. He has written thirteen novels, so I don’t expect it will be too long before the next one appears. This one is slated to become an easy best-seller. Available in paperback and Kindle.

Rating – a ***** read

An unforgettable, can't-put-it-down novel by a first rate writer

Sheila Doherty, Philomena (Phil) Maguire and Mary Branagh: you'll remember their names long after you've finished this wonderful first novel by award-winning Irish poet Gerry McCullough.   
Romance, thriller, political intrigue and murder mystery, Belfast Girls  is the story of modern Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic where drugs and drug gangs have infiltrated every level of society as they have everywhere else. 

Sheila, Phil and Mary are the kind of characters that stick in your mind and bring you back for further visits. They just stick with you. I know I'll be back to get to know them better in the weeks and months to come. 


Gerry McCullough is one fine writer. I look forward to her next novel.

A definite 5 star read.

"Pinpoint" -- an extraordinary novel by an a remarkable new writer

Strangeways Prison, Manchester, England (September 1994). “I’ve represented many murderers and am often surprised at how normal they appear. But this one is different. As he walks into the interview room he stops dead. His mouth drops open.  His eyes bulge. His elbows clamp to his sides as though a knife has plunged into his back. And he looks straight at me unlike most who bow their heads until I say something to make them feel at east, and who look past me when they tell me their stories. Not this one.”

Sam Smith is the name of this psychopathic killer, or is it? Could he be …? “There’s an almost imperceptible smile on his face. That smile. And those eyes. I grip the desk. I can’t breathe. My skin turns cold, clammy. My fingers tingle. A fragment of long forgotten memory skitters through my head then vanishes …” Who is he? No, it can’t be … but can it? Is he?

So begins this haunting, magnificently written tale of murder, intrigue, mystery, childhood sexual abuse, loss, survival and love. Solicitor Julia Grant’s job is to defend this psychopathic killer of young women. And she must find out who he really is because she is haunted. A widow with a six year old daughter, she has a busy, complicated life. Detective Chief Inspector Paul Moxon is there to help her. But she has to go it alone.

Pinpoint is one wonderful book, Julia Grant is one of the most memorable characters I’ve encountered, and Sheila Mary Taylor is one fine writer. I’m sure we'll be enjoying her books for many years to come. She has the kind of story-telling talent that not only has wide appeal; it lasts, like a good Agatha Christie tale. Even the title “Pinpoint” is shrouded in mystery.

This one is a clear five star book.
*****

An Intriguing and Very British Novel

Tim Roux: Shade + Shadows. Night Publishing, using CreateSpace. May, 2010. Paperback 262 pages, $11.95

The novel opens on an argument/discussion between Jane and Alan Harding, a middle-aged married couple who are clearly fond of each other. They use this light-hearted spat to relax party guests and get them in a lighter mood. Alan calls these little spats “the cyclical celebration of [our] being a cohesive unit.” This is representative of his way of speaking and thinking: formal, bland and rather detached. In Alan’s words, his and Jane’s relationship is “impenetrably harmonious.” It makes their daughter Sarah crazy. If they would only show some level of irritation with each other, but they don’t. Most people don’t behave the way they do, but they are not most people, they are Alan and Jane Harding.

A very successful chiropractor, practitioner of alternative medicine and healer, Alan is able to cure everyone’s ailments by combining homeopathy, kinesiology, distance healing, prayer achieve miraculous results that even he sometimes doesn’t understand. Some of his methods, which would be illegal in any medical and psychological practice, present no problem for him due, it seems, to patient loyalty.

Then, halfway through the novel Alan’s idyllic world begins to unravel due to some hidden secrets in his life as a young medical practitioner stationed in Saudi Arabia. There are some very ugly people involved, it isn’t very pretty, and it challenges Alan’s detached manner. Is all lost? You’ll have to read the book to find out, as I’m not giving the secret away.

The only problem I have with the novel is its voice which, because it is Alan’s voice, is as detached and bland as he is. But it is very much in line with similar characters I’ve encountered in British literature, movies (“Remains of the Day”) and BBC sitcoms, some of them beautifully parodying them (“Fawlty Towers” and “Keeping Up Appearances” being two of my favorites). That aside, I think it is well-worth the read, and for readers who really like this style, very much worth it. The story itself is an interesting one.

Waiting A While For Greeneyes

Marian Van Eyk Mcain's novella is an intriguing little emerald gem. Mystery, mysterious, sci-fi (or is it?), intriguing, Ms. McCain has woven a wonderful little tale that leaves you wondering "Who (or what) is "Greeneyes" exactly.

Have you ever participated in an experiment and then begun to wonder whether it was a wise decision? It sounded so intriguing that you couldn't resist, especially when it's proposed by a woman you've never met, a woman who acts as if she knows you, but for the life of you you don't remember who she could be. 

Starting from there the story gets really interesting, as expected. But who is she? And just when the story seems to come to an end ... does it? 

This is one of the most intriguing little tales I've ever read. There is magic in it and in the telling. I keep coming back and back to it to see what I missed the first few times. There's got to be ... 

One last comment, and that's about the book's format and size. I remember when paper back books fit in one's shirt pocket. That's why they came to be called "pocket books". This is a genuine pocket book that fits nicely in my shirt pocket. It's published by the UK-based publisher Leaf Books, and is available from amazon.com and, more conveniently and more readily available, from The Book Depository, http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/ which ships to over 90 countries worldwide with no charge for shipping. For a complete catalog of Leaf Books, go to www.leafbooks.co.uk.