Book Review Past Tense by Lee Child

Book Review Past Tense by Lee Child

The 23rd Jack Reacher book starts with Reacher wandering aimlessly through new hampshire when he spots a road sign for the town his father grew up in. Being reacher he has nowhere to go and plenty of time to get there , so he decides to take a detour an have a look around. Except when he starts asking questions , it transpires that no one called Reacher has ever lived there….   

Meanwhile a short while away a young couple named Patty and Shorty are trying to get their knackered old honda civic from canada to new york to sell a chest full of ‘treasure’ but when they break down outside a motel in the middle of nowhere it quickly becomes clear that something isn't right. And the motel owner isn't exactly keen to help them as he has something truly barbaric in mind for his ‘guests’  after they make several botched attempts to escape from trying to mend their junker of a car to stealing a quad bike to good old fashioned making a run for it.

As the two seemingly unconnected storylines come together ,Past Tense goes from Reacher’s episode of who do you think you are? To one of the darkest novels Child has ever written , its not quite as dark as the horrific events in Make Me but it gets close.

In amongst all the darkness though past tense is shot through with all the bar fights and dry humour and plain eccentricity that Reacher has become famous for and there's even a tip of the hat to the #metoo movement . 

Overall Past Tense is a classic Reacher novel and serves as a reminder of why even after 23 books and counting Lee Child is the finest crime writer working today  and when he inevitably ends the series it will be a very sad day.  That's for damn sure.

Verdict. Cracker

Book Review: Bridge To Burn by Rachel Amphlett

Book review: bridge to burn by Rachel amphlett

 The Kay Hunter series is something of a must for me, every time a new one comes out everything else gets put on hold whilst I blow through it in a few days and the seventh entry in the series, bridge to burn is no exception.

In bridge to  burn Kay and the team are faced with their most unusual case yet When a mummified body falls through the ceiling of a recently redeveloped office building , the main question being , how in the name of bloody hell did it get up  there?

As always nothing Is ever quite as it seems, as the investigation progresses the criminal underbelly of the construction industry rears its ugly head with dodgy working practices, theft , blackmail all come into play and the list of suspects is varied, unpredictable and gets longer as the book goes on.   

Away from mummified bodies falling through ceilings Kay’s personal life also takes a turn for the worse when she’s thrown into  a hospital room with her mother , who openly despises her daughter’s career choice and the danger it puts her in. but in bridge to burn its nice to see the ice melt a little.

Bridge to burn is unique in the series because it focuses on just one death and it soon becomes clear that it may not have been a murder at all , was it an accident,? a robbery gone wrong? This is the tangent the book goes off in towards the end and the conclusion to the story is ….. shocking, positively shocking.

Bridge to burn is another home run from Rachel Amphlett ,im starting to wonder what her secret is but I suppose if writing crime novels was easy we’d all be doing it…..

Verdict cracker

Movie review: The Rhythm Section

 Movie review: The Rhythm Section It's notoriously hard to get a new action franchise off the ground these days, taken. November man and Jack Reacher have all either flopped, run out of ideas or switched to TV within the space of a movie or two.

 Launching a female led action franchise, despite the screeches of people on the Internet cesspit that is twitter is so difficult that most producers sadly don't even bother.
 So the question is can Blake Lively playing Mark Burnell's Stephanie Patrick succeed where Tom Cruise, Pierce Brosnan and Liam Neeson all failed? The early signs are good. The Rhythm Section is produced by Barbara Broccoli, yes that one. And is directed by Reed Morano.
 But don't be fooled by the Bond connection, the rhythm section is unashamedly its own thing.
Yes some of the locations have popped up in Bond films. London, Tangier, Scotland, France and err Surrey
 I'm not going to give away any spoilers here , go see the movie. But the gist is that Stephanie Patrick loses her family in the worst way imaginable, a “plane crash” over the Atlantic .
Three years later while working as a prostitute in London she's visited by a journalist who has evidence which points to the fact that it wasn't a plane crash at all, it was terrorism and the cell who carried out the attack is still out there.
 That news pulls Patrick out of her slump and she vows to kill every single person responsible. After a few months training in Scotland with Jude Law’s ex mi6 agent known initially as “B” , a likable Bond type character who reluctantly takes Stephanie under his wing and teaches her hand to hand combat,driving ,shooting and even makes her swim across a freezing cold loch .
He tries to convince Patrick that vengeance isn't all its cracked up to be “ even if you do succeed it won't be worth it” Taking on the alias of Petra, a dead female assassin, murdered by Jude Law’s character whose body was conveniently never found.
Patrick slowly grows from a scared drug addicted ex prostitute into a someone with the makings of a cold blooded assassin.

The Rhythm Section is not a perfect movie but Reed Morano and Blake lively have laid the foundations of a possible franchise here and it seems like MR Bond has a worthy stablemate in Stephanie Patrick and i take my hat off to Barbara Broccoli for taking a chance and making it . Verdict : Very Good

 

book review cleaning the gold by lee child and karin slauhgter

Cleaning the gold by lee child and Karin slaughter

Cleaning the gold is a short story featuring 6ft5 brick shithouse jack reacher and will trent , an undercover cop investigating a 22 year old murder . His main suspects name? Jack Reacher.  Reacher is on a mission of his own , to bring down a criminal gang operating at the heart of the American military .  Naturally there’s something much bigger at play something neither of them could have anticipated. Question is, can reacher and trent team up and play nicely?

Those of you who’ve read this blog before will know that I’m something of a fan of Reacher or Sherlock Homeless as I like to call him however I’ve not read anything by Karin slaughter before so I was keen to give cleaning the gold a go. Naturally being set at fort knox there’s a few Goldfinger references in there , sadly though that’s about as much as I can remember about the whole story , in fairness Its been a few months between reading the story and writing this .

To be  honest I found cleaning  the gold to be rather underwhelming , it felt rushed and I know its  meant to be short but it seemed to stop just as it was getting going , lots of short stories seem to suffer from this which is why I rarely bother with them. 

Happily one good thing I can remember is that the banter between trent and reacher was top drawer and I couldn’t tell who wrote what , normally when two best sellers team up you can but not so here.

Overall cleaning the gold is ultimately disappointing but its worth a read if you fancy something short and quick.

Verdict : average

Top 5 fictional characters

Top 5 fictional characters

Since I have no book reviews finished at the moment I thought I’d do a quick list of my top 5 fictional characters of all time

1.       Bond. James. Bond

The fact that Ian Fleming’s ever green gentleman bastard is my favourite fictional character ever will come as a surprise to precisely no one.  I can still remember watching Gold finger on TV.   As a kid with my late granddad . so there’s sentimental value there too.  The books are still ridiculously entertaining even 60 years on and the films have repeatedly pulled me out of some pretty dark places mentally. Sometimes I find my love of bond hard to explain but hey, a Blu Ray  Bond box set is more fun and  cheaper than therapy.

2.       Jack Reacher

Okay, this one won’t come as a surprise either, given that Lee Child is probably the author I review the most around these parts. Imagine if James bond was a hobo , that’s how I explain reacher to people and almost all of them give the books a try and end up loving them.  We’ll gloss over the movies because whilst they were very good Tom Cruise was too bloody short .

3.       M .

Another Bond character ends up in this list because of two words. Judi Dench. Need I say more? She stole the show as M right from the get go. I like to think that Dench’s M is the only person Bond was ever really scared of. No actor, and im taking precisely no arguments on this has ever played M better than Judi Dench and probably never will until they inevitably cast Olivia Colman in the role

4.       Detective Kay hunter

Another one that shouldn’t come as a surprise. I’ve been following this series since it started in 2016 and it just gets better and better with every book, which is rare for a series of this type, most of them have peaks and troughs but somehow Rachel Amphlett manages to avoid the troughs and just hit home run after home run. Why this hasn’t been snapped up for a Bosch style box set ive no idea.

5.        Thomas The Tank Engine

My childhood can be summed up in three characters , Bond ,Harry Potter and the worlds favourite steam engine . like Bond I can vividly remember watching Thomas for hours on end with my late granddad , he even gave me a  the entire railway series as a birthday present one year . I still have it and apart from an old Accurist watch its my most prized possesion.  I still love thomas to this day and dont mind admitting that is still watch it now and again. a few yearsa s ago i had a bash at a thomas short story , which i might revisit and publish on here.

Book Review The Hangman’s Hold by Micheal Wood

The hangman’s hold is the fourth book in the Matilda Darke series . And being the straight talking Yorkshireman I am I’m not going to piss about . This is the best book I’ve read this year so far. 

When a convicted peadofile is found hanged in his living room after a date it’s down to DCI Matilda Darke and her team to find the killer before he strikes again, but when a second and third murder quickly follow it becomes apparent that to Darke that she’s go5 a vigilante on her hands .  With the body’s continuing to pile up Matilda and the team come under pressure from all sides to catch the killer, but with no obvious suspects, could the murderer be one of Matilda’s own team.?

Even though it deals with a pretty dark subject matter, several of them actually, The Hangmans hold is shot through with gallows humour, I actually laughed out loud in a few places.  

Another thing I loved about this book is Matilda’s boss, ACC Valerie Masterson , she’s tough and compassionate in equal measure and is just at home giving Matilda a bollocking as she is at picking her up when she’s down.  She’s a genius character a reminds me of Judi Dench’s M in the bond films. She deserves a stand-alone novel all to herself.

This is the first Matilda Darke book I’ve read,and I’ve already got the others on the kindle . Michael Wood may only be a handful of books into his series but hopefully there are many more to come because he could end up doing for Sheffield what Ian rankin did for Edinburgh and put his home city on the crime fiction map.

 Verdict : cracker

Book Review Forever And A Day by Anthony Horowitz

Forever And A Day by Anthony Horowitz

After blowing Sebastian Faulks, Jeffrey Deaver and William Boyd's Bond books out of the water with Trigger Mortis I wasn't exactly surprised to hear Anthony Horowitz had been asked to pen another 007 adventure. Question is, could he live up to Trigger Mortis?  Simple answer? Yes. 

Forever And A Day goes right back to the beginning, when 007 is washed up dead on a beach in Marseille and 2 other agents out of action M is forced to bring in some new talent. His name? Bond. James Bond.  After successfully carrying out his first 2 kills Bond takes over the 007 designation and is instructed by M to find the men who killed the old 007 

Forever and a day mainly takes place in the South of France but not the glamorous parts we've all seen a million times before, instead Horowitz takes bond to the grotty criminal underbelly. 

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 shot through with classic Bond elements ,glamourous locales ,beautiful strong  women, sneaking around , gambling , the obligatory bollocking from M and so on. Madame sixteen, the main Bond girl /woman /lady   I'm not sure what we're meant to be calling them now. Introduces bond to Moorland cigarettes, shaken not stirred martinis and even gives him a cigarette case with "forever and a day" engraved on it.
I  loved Madame 16 and would love to see her in one of the movies someday. Actually, I'd wager that Forever and a day will become the first continuation Bond book to be made into a film. 

I said in my top 5 books of 2018 round up that I couldn't fault forever and a day. But in the last few months I've thought of something wrong with it, it simply isn't long enough. 

Verdict : Cracker 

*No Time To Die spoilers*  actually its all over the news so it's not a spoiler and it's related to forever and a day. Promise. 

You've probably found it hard not to notice that the 007 codename is all over the news at the moment. Apparently Pheobe Waller - Bridge's big idea is that bond at the beginning of the movie at least is replaced as 007 by Lashana Lynch. 

 Think about it. Bond retired at the end of spectre so M would have had to replace him. Just as M in forever and a day had to replace the old 007 with Bond. 

Now I have no problem with this, let's face it She'll either die or be given another 00 number at the end of the movie and order will be restored

For the benefit of people who read the daily mail and the sun SHE'S NOT PLAYING BOND. BOND IS STILL A BLOKE. And…. Breathe. 

 Now we won't know if its true until the movie comes out in April but if its true one can only imagine where she got that idea from…… 

Book Review : Call To Arms by Rachel Amphlett

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.

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