Book Review : Murder On The Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Book review - murder on the orient express by Agatha Christie
I’d like to start with a confession some of you may find rather surprising given that I mainly review crime fiction.

I’ve never read any Agatha Christie .which means I’m in a class of about 10 because everybody’s read Agatha Christie at some point, she was and is without question the most successful crime writer ever , infact she’s only outsold by the bible and  the person who ruined English lessons for everyone  , William Bloody Shakespeare .

 A few months back however i decided I needed to address this so I took the plunge and ordered what might be the most famous Christie novel ever. Murder on the orient express.
Here’s a basic run down of the plot , just in case you’re a Martian or something and you didn’t already know

The most elegant train of the 1930s, the Orient Express, is stopped by heavy snowfall, with many passengers. A murder is discovered.
This next bit contains spoilers

Poirot is faced with the fact that the victim, Mr Ratchett kidnapped a child int the 1930’s in the hope of being paid a large ransom in exchange for her safe return. This it turns out is the motive for Mrs Hubbard, the hysterical American woman who discovered Ratchett to commit murder , with the help of the other 12 passengers. Yep. They all did it , well, everyone except Poirot obviously.


Funnily enough I actually suspected that all the passengers on the train had a hand in ratchets murder , which means I managed to correctly guess the outcome of a crime novel. There’s a first time for everything.

All in I’m kicking myself for not reading Agatha Christie earlier. I can’t believe how much I enjoyed Murder on the orient express, especially given that it was written in 1934. I guess it goes to show that great literature never ages. My first Agatha Christie. But certainly not the last.

Question is . Which one next ?
I’ll throw that one out to you lot . Leave a comment below.
Verdict. Cracker

Book Review : Resurrection Men By Ian Rankin

Book review : resurrection men  by Ian rankin

Resurrection men is the 13th book in the John Rebus series by ian rankin. But as is tradition with long running series I'm reading them completely at random.

After launching a mug of tea at a superior in the previous book rebus is sent back to school for ‘retraining’ or to put it another way, he's on his last chance.  Rebus is paired with three other veteran coppers and as part of the course they get given an old unsolved case to work on. Naturally one or all of them have secrets of their own.

Meanwhile DS Shibhoan Clarke is investigating the murder of a respected art dealer, this brings her into contact with rebus’ longtime enemy Big Ger Cafferty. Naturally rebus gets dragged into work on the case (albeit unofficially) and the scenes with him and Cafferty verbally sparring with each other are a joy to read.

Pace wise though it doesn't really pick up until the last few chapters where rebus finds himself in a situation where even he doesn't think hell get out alive, I'll say no more because I might end up spoiling it for you.

Overall Resurrection men probably isn't the best place to start for a Rebus newbie but longtime fans won't be disappointed.

No one does Scottish crime fiction quite like Ian Rankin, he's one of, if not the best in the business. Small wonder rebus has been with us for over 30 years now, he's just so bloody likeable.

Verdict : Very Good

Book Review ; You Only Live Twice by Ian Fleming

Book review ; You Only Live Twice by Ian Fleming

You Only Live Twice or YOLT  as bond geeks call it is the 12th novel to feature the greatest fictional character of all time . Bond . James Bond. this one picks up directly after the heartbreaking ending of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service where Bonds wife of only  a few hours is brutally gunned down and killed.

You Only Live twice kicks off 8 months after that with bond spiralling out of control and drinking and gambing heavily. As a last resort M decides to give Bond a final chance and dispatches him to carry out a mission in Japan.

Once there bond is told to kill a man known only as Dr.Shatterhand , Bond soon realises that this “Doctor” is Blofeld in  disguise and blinded by inconsolable rage sets out to kill his greatest adversary

That sounds like the recipe for the perfect revenge thriller , unfortunately though it's all a bit disappointing . for me it starts going wrong the second Bond gets to Japan ,the book starts to read like a travelogue and it seems that Fleming was showing off his knowledge of Japanese culture , normally i love that sort of detail in bond books but here it was tiresome.

And while there is action scattered. throughout the book it's all over before it gets started .

However once bond sneaks his way into blofeld’s castle containing ‘the garden of death’, a popular suicide spot for the Japanese the whole thing goes completely batshit . Amongst other things you get the hilarious spectacle of Blofeld hunting down Bond in a suit of armour ,sadly the final confrontation between the two results in Bond *spoiler* strangling Blofeld to death , shortly after which Bond falls out of a hot air balloon and is presumed dead by MI6. Fleming even goes to the trouble of writing a rather touching obituary for Bond , which is by far my favourite part of the book.

There's a rumour on the internet that You Only Live Twice or at least the garden of death part will form the some basis of the much delayed Bond 25 and as hilarious as Christoph Waltz running around the grounds of  a castle in a suit of armour sounds, i think it's best left alone. i think Bond going on revenge missions has been done to death And there's much better untapped literary bond material they could use. * actually this would have been way better than what they came up with for no time to die f

This is only the first time i've read you only live twice so i probably will revisit it at some stage and i may well change my mind  but i'm afraid to say it left me a little bit cold, it's not all bad but like the film version its a disappointment .

Verdict : Good

Best books of 2018

Top 5 Books of the year

i read a lot of great books this year and this list could even have gone into double figures but i decided a top 5 would be more reasonable

1.Forever And A Day by Anthony Horowitz

A new james bond novel is always a treat , and Forever and a day is no exception. The novel tells the story of how Bond goes from trainee agent to getting his 00 number ,after the old 007 washes up dead on a beach in the South of france.  Forever And A Day is shot through with classic Bond elements ,glamourous locales ,beautiful strong women, sneaking around , gambling , the obligatory bollocking from M and so on .

Like the novel that went before it Trigger Mortis Horowitz has had some help in the form of unseen material from Ian Fleming , the one that gets featured this time round isn't as well fleshed out as the one from trigger mortis but its entertaining all the same.

Forever And A Day is a rare beast , its a book i simply couldnt fault .

2. Call To Arms By Rachel Amphlett

The fifth entry in this fab series sees kay hunter tackle her most personal case yet. With Kay's mentor and friend Devon sharp suspended from duty after the events of the previous book. To try and clear sharps name Hunter takes on a cold case ,linked not only to sharp but the person who got him suspended in the first place. We also get the chance to see a softer side to DCI Larch, who's world gets turned upside down by a family tragedy.

This is the first Kay Hunter novel to not feature the storyline with Hunter's nemesis Joseph Demiri. It gets mentioned but it's very much been wrapped up now .  Call To Arms features a cold case, a first for this series and its nice to see Hunter and the team take on something a little different but still proves to be as challenging as a newly committed murder.

All the Kay Hunter books are brilliant but this one might just be the best yet… until the next one.

3. Past Tense by Lee Child

The 23rd Reacher  book sees teacher stumble upon a roadsigh to the place where his father grew up, but when he gets there  and starts asking around he discovers that no one called Reacher ever lived there.

Intrigued, Reacher decides to start shaking the family tree , just to see what comes tumbling out. Is Reachers father everything his son thought he was?

4. On The Edge by Richard Hammond

The autobiography of everyone's favourite televisual short arse. On the edge goes right the way from Richard Hammond's childhood,to his school and art college days ,local radio and then making it big on Top Gear. There are some hilarious stories in here as well as some truly heartbreaking ones as told by Hammond's wife Mindy ( they wrote the book together). What results is quite simply my favourite autobiography of all time. Apart from Roger Moore's obviously.

5. The Hanged Man by Simon Kernick

The second book in the Bone Field series sees maverick detective Ray Mason and The legandary Tina Boyd attempt to bring down the Bone Field Killers once and for all.  When bodies are discovered at a remote country house and the man who witnessed the murders on the run Ray Mason and Tina Boyd team up to find the witness before the killers do…..

Simon Kernick is one of those writers you can always rely on for a good read and the Hanged Man is no exception , it's violent , funny ,has well constructed villains and even a bit of a love story and the final third of the book is best described as a blood bath. I loved it.

Book Review : The Word Is Murder By Anthony Horowitz

Diana Cowper walks into a funeral directors to plan her own funeral..... 6 hours later she's been strangled to death.  The case is immediately passed to detective Daniel Hawethorne a man of almost sherlock holmes levels of eccentricity and genius .
Every good detective needs a good partner or sidekick and Hawthorne's sidekick is..... Anthony Horowitz himself , albeit a fictionalised version.  the two characters are hilariously mismatched but i think that's the reason it works so well.  Hawethorne is the genius detective and the fictionalised Horowitz is comically out of his depth.

Horowitz putting a fictionalised version of himself in his own book works rather well the idea being that the fictional Horowitz follows Hawthorne around while he tries to solve one of the most baffling murders i've ever read about.

I consider it a badge of honour that i can read crime novels and try to guess who the murderer was and getting it completely and utterly wrong, happily with the word is murder i got it wrong  my money was on the father of the children that Diana Cowper mowed down in a tragic accident , killing one and leaving the other severely disabled. Or was it the famous son ? Or even the funeral director himself?  Hawthorne soon realises that Diana Cowper had no shortage of enemies. 

There is a fair bit of name dropping in the word is murder but it hasn't been overdone, the scene where Horowitz takes a meeting with stepehen spielberg, only for Hawethorne to barge in   is particularly amusing, as is the scene at Cowpers funeral where an alarm clock playing a  children's nursery rhyme goes off from inside the coffin, i may be going to hell for laughing at that as much as i did.
Overall the word is murder is the most original and  ridiculously entertaining thriller i've read in a long time and i cant wait to see what Horowtiz has in store for the next book in the series.

Also worthy of a mention is the brilliant Narration from Rory Kinnear .
Verdict : Cracker

Book Review : Hell To Pay By Rachel Amphlett

The Kay Hunter books are something of a rarity for me, a series i've been reading right from the start . The books only seem to get better with every installment

The first three books were  stand alone thrillers with a sub storyline about an investigation that went wrong when crucial evidence went missing.

That story line has run alongside the main plot of the first three books but in hell to pay Amphlett brings it to centre stage . Cleverly tying it in with a grisly car accident at the begining ,when the team find something in the boot of the car that really shouldnt be there...... a body.

Kay's tormenter throughout the previos books is  a gangster , the menacingly named Jozeph Demiri. A nasty bastard who deals in everything from strip clubs and drugs to selling snuff movies on the dark web.

What follows is a near breathless game of cat and mouse between Hunter and Demiri culminating in a terrifying seaside showdown that really makes you question if Hunter will get out of this one alive.....

Hell To Pay is a cracker of a thriller and it does a nice job of tying up the storyline that’s been running through the previous book

 Kay Hunter is now right up there with my two favourite detectives, John Rebus and DCI Alan Banks . I wonder what would happen if those three found themselves having to work together.....

Hell to pay is one of my standout books that I’ve read this year so far  . The other one being the new James Bond novel. If that isn’t high praise I don’t know what is.

Verdict 

Cracker

Book Review : Sleeping In The Ground By Peter Robinson

Book Review : Sleeping In The Ground By Peter Robinson

 The 24^th DCI Banks novel starts with  a wedding and a funeral. Banks is attending the funeral of his first love , Emily leaving him in a bit of a sombre mood . Back in Eastvale meanwhile a beautiful local model called Laura Tindall is getting married ,then an assassin opens fire and the man banks and co think pulled the trigger is later found dead in his basement , having apparently committed suicide.......

 Naturally its not quite the slam dunk that banks and the team were hoping for as it seams that the dead suspect Martin Edgeworth may not have committed the atrocity at all , so the question that plagues Banks is if he didn’t do it who did?

Elsewhere banks finds finally finds out why Emily dumped him after an old friend of theirs reveals all,  wont but lets just say it rocks him a bit and makes him reconsider his whole life

So, whats the verdict then ? well Sleeping In The Ground starts well but it goes down hill after 150 pages or so because , well? Not a lot happens really , its not boring it just bogs down a little . that said though the last 100 pages or so more than make up for it , the final act takes place in an almost monsoon like rainstorm with new recruit Gerry Masterson going after a gun wielding maniac all by herself with no back up. its masterfully written and easy to on screen.

All in sleeping in the ground is an enjoyable entry to the Banks series and is worth a read . and it serves as proof that after 24 Banks novels Peter Robinson is near the top of the crime writing game, which as a fellow Yorkshireman makes me very, very happy

Vedict : Good

Reacher Ranking

Ranking: The Jack Reacher Books

This post has been some time in the writing as it was going to be a ranking of all 22 Jack Reacher books but that proved to be way too difficult  , so here’s a more reasonable top 5:

1: Bad Luck and trouble

Bad Luck And Trouble sees Reacher reunited with his old army buddies to get revenge after one of their old unit was thrown out of a helicopter. From start to finish its classic Reacher, small wonder it’s the world’s second favourite Reacher book and is , apparently the next in line to be made for the big screen. Bring it on.

2.Worth Dying For

Worth dying for follows 61 hours in a sort of series within the series with Reacher, trying to get back to his old military unit in Virginia to meet up with his successor Major Susan Turner. He does get there but not in worth dying for or the book after that. Worth dying for is a completely stand alone story apart from the Turner connection.

Like all good Reacher books this one starts with Jack minding his own business when he stumbles across trouble ,a small farming village is being terrorised and blackmailed by the Duncan family who use violence and intimidation to keep people in line . naturally Reacher is pissed off by this and sets about busting the rich family and their thugs heads one by one , but it’s the 20 year old case of a missing young girl that Reacher can’t let go .

3. Personal

When a sniper attempts to assassinate the president if France from an impossibly long distance Reacher knows there are only 4 men who could possibly have done it, 3 are accounted for . 1 isn’t. The main suspect is a man who Reacher put away any years ago and only Reacher can find him. Personal is bit different form the other books in the series as Reacher finds himself in Paris where amongst some almost spy like action there’s a rather sweet scene where Reacher visits his mother’s grave. Afterwards its a hop over the channel for Reacher’s second visit to England for a grand finale in the glamourous English holiday resort of erm, Romford, where Reacher faces down a gang imaginatively named The Romford boys. And his biggest enemy yet . literally.

Its classic Reacher and feels almost like a James Bond novel

4.The Midnight Line

The Midnight Line starts with Reacher stumbling across a tiny westpoint class ring in a pawn shop, Reacher immediately realises it belongs to a woman . he buys the ring and sets about getting it back to its rightful owner .  Naturally , being a Reacher novel it  gets more complicated than that  , the result being one of the best Reacher books In years.

5.  Gone Tomorrow

Gone Tomorrow starts in an unusual fashion Reacher is one a subway train and spots one of his fellow passengers displaying all the signs of a potential suicide bomber , who refuses Reacher’s encouragement to give herself in and decides to explode instead. And that’s just the first chapter. The rest ? its classic reacher and in a refreshing change the main villain is a woman , the fabulously deranged and deadly Lila Hoth.

Book Review : One To Watch by Rachel Amphlett

Book review : One To Watch By  Rachel Amplhlett

One to watch is the third entry in the detective kay hunter series following on albeit indirectly from scared to death and will to live .

Sophie Whittaker shared a terrifying secret. Hours later, she was dead.

Detective Kay Hunter and her colleagues are shocked by the vicious murder of a teenage girl at a private party in the Kentish countryside.

A tangled web of dark secrets is exposed as twisted motives point to a history of greed and corruption within the tight-knit community.

Confronted by a growing number of suspects and her own enemies who are waging a vendetta against her, Kay makes a shocking discovery that will make her question her trust in everyone she knows.

This is the third book in the kay hunter series and it may well be the best yet.

One to watch differs from the previous two books as the killer only strikes once. The poor victim being 18 year old Sophie Whittaker murdered at a purity party . Her murder opens up the proverbial can of worms and exposes a spiders web of secrets .

The main plot revolves around purity pledges and since this isn't something i know a great deal about it was interesting , if a little creepy to read about .

Revolving around a single crime means that you get an entire cast of characters to play the who dunnit game with and as ever i got it completely wrong  and i guarantee you will too.

Alongside all this is the subplot involving kay’s mission to identify and expose the people who very nearly cost her her job after an investigation gone wrong  , in one to watch Amphlett really turns up the wick with this subplot and i can't wait to see where it ends up.

On the whole One To Watch proves to be the exact opposite of a difficult third album , each book is more interesting, twisted,intriguing and funnier  than the last .

I can't  help but feel that One To Watch is the perfect way to describe this rising star of a crime series. All in its yet another home run for Rachel Amplett.

Verdict : Cracker.

Book Review : The Midnight Line by Lee Child

The Midnight Line is  the 22nd Reacher book following on indirectly from the sensationally good Make Me. In the Midnight Line Lee Child shows the world he's properly got his mojo back after a few hits and misses over the last few years. The Midnight Line is more like a  detective thriller than the previous book.

It starts innocently enough   with Reacher finding a tiny little westpoint class ring in a pawn shop.  Reacher immediatley sees that it belongs to a woman and being a westpointer himself  , he knows what she went through to earn that ring and is  intrigued to know what caused her to give it up and determined to give it back to its rightful owner.

Naturally enough it gets more complicated than that and Reacher ends up teaming up with the ring owners sister and private detective Terry Bramall who is the best Reacher ally in years .

Between the three of them they find the rings owner Rose Sanderson an ex army vet badly and gruesomely injured by an IED in Afghanistan .  The book also touches on the issue of injured army vets who end up being drug addicts when they get discharged and the opiod crisis going on in the states at the moment .

The Midnight Line is one of the best Reacher books in years . Better than Night School but not quite as good or violent as Make Me . Lets hope this years book has a few more bar fights . Though in this one Reacher does a pretty straight re enactment of the bar fight in the first Reacher movie
Verdict : Good

Book Review : The Time To Kill by Mason Cross

Book review. The Time To Kill By Mason Cross.
The time to kill( titled Winterlong in some countries) is the third entry in the Carter Blake series. Following on from the killing season and the Samaritan. Both of which are brilliant. So , is this the difficult third album? No. Absoloutley fucking not.
Plot:
It's been five years since Carter Blake parted ways with top-secret government operation Winterlong. They brokered a deal at the time: he'd keep quiet about what they were doing, and in return he'd be left alone.
But news that one of Blake's old allies, a man who agreed the same deal, is dead means only one thing - something has changed and Winterlong is coming for him.
Emma Faraday, newly appointed head of the secret unit, is determined to tie up loose ends. And Blake is a very loose end. He's been evading them for years, but finally they've picked up his trace. Blake may be the best there is at tracking down people who don't want to be found, but Winterlong taught him everything he knows. If there's anyone who can find him - and kill him - it's them.
The thing I like most about this plot is that Blake spends most of the time on the run from Winterlong and their  agents. A greedy IT buff named Byrant , who gets dragged into the whole sorry mess when Blake tracks him down.
Blake and Byrant could not be more different so the two of them have an interesting dynamic that starts off with a scepticism and fear on Byrant’s part and then a sort of begrudging respect toward the end.
He also manages to get Blake to open up a little and spill a few details about what he got up to in his winterlong days. Which made interesting reading and makes me wish Cross would write a full blown prequel with Blake before he left winterlong.

As ever with the Blake books the chapters are fairly short making it an ideal beach read , which incidentally is where I actually read the thing.

The action is there’s no other word foe it. Sensational. Especially the Bond film esque train fight sequence.
All in the time to kill builds on the reputation of its predecessors for being a thumping good read.
If Mason Cross delivers belters like this time and time again Jack Reacher is going to have to watch his back.
Verdict. Cracker.