Books

Sleeping Beauties: Stephen & Owen King

The Aurora virus is a world wide virus that breaks out in the world like some fairytale enchantment. It seals the women inside fibrous cocoons and leaves the men seriously disturbed. There are riots outside the White House; an apocalyptic gang war in the streets of Chicago. Meanwhile, in Dooling, West Virginia, the battle of the sexes boils down to a joust between Clinton Norcross, a harried prison psychiatrist, and Evie Black, a supernatural girl drifter, jailed for the violent and oversized murder of a pair of crystal meth cookers. The clock is ticking, things aren’t looking good.

While the entertaining Sleeping Beauties – written by Stephen King togetherwith his son, Owen – doesn’t quite last for ever, but it does extend to 736 pages. It’s a bulging storyline; filled with supporting characters.

The women of the world are sleeping but they must not be disturbed. Tear off the cocoon (or even prick it) and the females awaken as zombies and immediately start murdering their husbands and sons…whatever . Evie – whom the Kings refer to as “the black angel” – clearly regards this response as a kind of payback.

Clinton is struggling to save his marriage and watching as his sheriff wife, Lila, doses herself with caffeine and cocaine in a vain attempt to stay awake. Then, when Lila goes under, her post is filled by Frank Geary, a former pest-control officer with a hair-trigger temper. Geary is determined to save his daughter and rightly believes Evie Black is the key. And yet Evie, for all her prominence, remains the vaguest, least fleshed-out member of Dooling’s cast of hundreds. She is a plot device in the guise of an “enchanted being” written in to dispense the clues. Even the forest fox who trots his furry self through the storyline has more emotional range. (Not sure of his role.

At times I found it to be a cumbersome read, I had to make notes of characters and even felt it could have been cut down. Was it padded out? I felt so.

May 24, 2018 0 comment

Books Featured

Dark In Death by J.D. Robb

written by Peter Sutton

It’s hard to find a new way to murder, or a different take on why murders are happening. But in this latest novel by J.D. Robb, there is a twist. Life imitating art. Or Murder imitating a good novel.

It starts straight forwardly enough. A murder. But its a twisted scene. A woman is murdered in a cinema with an icepick while watching Pyscho, a film with an ice pick. There is not apparent motive. It’s no random act of violence and poor budding actess Chanel Ryan, didn’t stand a chance.

Eve and her sidekick, Detective Amelia Peabody, have barely started to question the obvious witnesses when “really famous novelist” Blaine DeLano comes to the station to advise that one of her thrillers provided a detailed blueprint for the murder—and indeed for the killing of Rosie Kent, who was strangled a month ago in a scenario clearly borrowed from another of Blaine’s bestselling novels.

Eve and Peabody stumble over a second murder and realise they have a seriously disturbed individual on their hands. And you have to like the murderer/ She is deliciously oddball, so well fleshed out that, you can see her rationale. It’s so perfectly logical! Loxie Flash doesn’t stand a chance! Number three goes down in a blaze of poisoned drinks, well aware she is the next target but stupidly blind to then danger posed by Elizabeth Smith, the crazed seamstress with the poisoned mind.

July 16, 2018 0 comment

Books

Being Elvis: A Lonely Life

written by Peter Sutton

Ray Connolly

As the world’s first “rock star” there was no one to tell Elvis what to expect, no one who could help him, guide him, or advise him. On the outside he was full of charm, sex appeal, confident on stage and gifted in the recording studio. He had it all. With his voice and style influencing generations of musicians, he should have been able to sing any song that he liked, to star in any film he was offered and to tour in any country he choose. But he wasn’t.

The circumstances of his poor beginnings in the American south, lack of education left Elvis with a life long vulnerability. His teaming up with ‘Colonel’ Tom Parker, was a disaster and he lost control over his own life. The book covers all, in an easy to read and informative stye.

‘Being Elvis was published on the 40th Anniversary of his death. It is an easy read and fills in the details, especially around his relationship with his mother,drug addiction, the Memphis Mafia, time in the army, movies, and his wife (ex) Priscilla.

Muhammad Ali put it best: “I felt sorry for him…he didn’t enjoy life. He stayed indoors all the time. I told him he should go out there and see people. He said he couldn’t because everywhere he went, they mobbed him.”

-Hachette Australia

December 8, 2016 0 comment

Books Featured

Emperor of the Eight Islands by Lian Hearn

written by Cecilia Sutton

When you go to the publisher’s website five weeks after publication and find that a title is ‘out of stock’, it probably means that this review is unnecessary. Lots of you have found the book, and then encouraged your family, friends, neighbours and anybody else you meet to go buy it and read it. Who am I to disagree with this plan? But now, I will simply say – the e-reader version is still available. And maybe your library will have a copy (somewhere in the system). But with the second book in the series due out in July, – Get it and Read it.

Shikanoko is an unlucky lad. His mother dies when he is young, his father is killed before he is old enough to take over the estate, so his uncle attempts to murder him in order to claim his land. His luck turns when a dear breaks his fall and he is found by a hermit and nursed back to health. At the same time, Shikanoko begins his training as a sorcerer, unwillingly. Circumstances continue to conspire against him and somehow he is always in the wrong place and the wrong time and everybody is pushing him to study, train and gain more and more magical power. Meanwhile, another powerful family from the islands has murdered the true emperor and is hunting down the heir to the throne. The pieces are in position for a civil war, but what part will Shikanoko play in the drama?

This book is filled with extraordinary characters, some based in Japanese mythology. The whole conception, birth/hatching, and rearing of the Spider Children is simply incredible. And my heart simply goes out to Aki, who was certain of her future until during a palace coup she is thrust into the guardianship of the true Emperor (at six years old). She falls in love with Shikanoko (who wouldn’t?), but her duty forces her to leave him. Then there is Hina – the survivor.

Readers who are familiar with her Tales of the Otori will be familiar with setting and style, but this time Hearn is much more comfortable dealing with magic as well as adventure. In the previous series, magic almost seemed a plot device to get out of a tricky situation. Here magic, spiritual power and the like are integral to the story and simply work beautifully.

Now I just have to wait until July.

April 20, 2016 0 comment

Books Featured

The Chemist by Stephanie Meyer

written by Cecilia Sutton

Oh boy! Meyer doesn’t hold back with her principal character in this novel! , an new adult thriller “The Chemist.”

Alex is a medic and an interrogator who worked for a shadowy branch of the US government torturing terrorists before her bosses turned on her. Now she is a fugitive. Having already seen off three would-be assassins from” the agency,” she sleeps wearing a gas mask in whichever nondescript room she’s renting, various deadly chemical compounds rigged up to go off if anyone breaks in. That’s a main character!

Known as “the Chemist,” because she used to squeeze the truth out of her suspects with excruciatingly painful drug concoctions, she was brilliant at her job, “batting a thousand”, she’s told at one point, with a perfect record. “I am the bogeyman in a very dark and scary world,” she says. “I frighten people who aren’t afraid of anything else, not even death. I can take everything they pride themselves on away from them; I can make them betray everything they hold sacred. I am the monster they see in their nightmares.”A little like “Miss Marfple of old, , we first meet her in a library, where she’s reading spy novels for ideas to keep her safe from her former employers. She doesn’t know why they want her dead, but she’s getting tired of running, and when she reads an email asking her to take on one last job for the agency, because “many, many lives” are on the line, she hopes her days as a fugitive might be at an end. At least, she hopes, she’ll be able to find out what they have on her. But as Alex delves deeper into the case – it involves biological warfare, and she’s able to rig up a few scenarios where her own particularly dark talents are made use of – she finds that nothing is as it seems, and that the corruption goes right to the highest levels.

The Chemist is not Meyer’s first adult novel – that was The Host, a story of alien invasion. There are no traces of the supernatural here, unless you count the preternaturally intelligent German shepherd that saves the day on more than one occasion. Rather, Meyer, clearly a major fan of the genre, has dreamed up a fast-paced thriller, and a tough, mysterious heroine with a penchant for decking herself out in dangerous jewellery, concealing syringes of poison in her belt and switchblades in her shoes. There are some great pitched battles leading up to a conclusion that it’s easy to imagine in the cinema

April 30, 2017 0 comment

Books Featured Uncategorized

Right Behind by You Lisa Gardener

written by Cecilia Sutton

It was comfortable getting back with Quincy and Rainie, and this story was a very acceptablefor these two characters.

Telly and Sharlah, brother and younger sister, have bounced around in foster care after the deaths of their parents. They’ve been separated for eight years. Sharlah is about to be adopted by Quincy and Rainie, but Telly is close to aging out of the foster system. Then two bodies are discovered at a convenience store, and the plot is off and running.

Lisa Gardner can tell a story! She supplied information that led me down a path, then she made me stop to think on just where this was going? Several ideas on plot line came to mind. I read some more and I had to stop and evaluate. So that was wrong! .I would adjust my thinking and continue.

Telly and Sharlah were immediately working on my emotions. Their memories and their stories, although they experienced the same event, were so very different. These two characters were enjoyably well written. With one of the trackers, Cal, my feelings wavered. I was not sure about him. And I have to mention Luka; he was an interesting addition to the plot.

Although this is part of a series, there is a big gap between this book and the previous books. This one works very well as a standalone.

May 1, 2017 0 comment

Books Featured

Stephen King: End of Watch

written by Peter Sutton

“End Of Watch” is the final book in the “Mr. Mercedes” trilogy. You can take it as part of that series or it stands the test as a stand-alone novel about madness, the Supernatural, detective novel or comment on modern society. It ticks all the boxes.

Retired Detective Bill Hodges now runs a two-person firm called “Finders Keepers” with his partner Holly Gibney. They met after murderous killer Brady Hartsfield has run down and killed a queue of people waiting in a line for jobs.

Time moves on as does Book 23 in the series where Brady is clobbered to an “unresponsive mental state,” by Holly trying to avoid another Brady style massacre.

But Brady isn’t dead, or unresponsive. Unable to move, we discover Brady’s supernatural power to control others and a particular skill to manipulate through a game device known as a “Zappitt.”

Through his ability to move into the minds of others, he plans another range of murders and it is up to Bill, Holly and Jerome to win the day.

“End of Watch,” is a good read. Not so far fetched as to be unbelievable and with an uncanny ability to predict the future, I found King’s latest novel to be especially relevant in what is happening in the world today. Mowing down innocent people with a heavy vehicle, youth’s dependancy on eletronic media that overrides their common sense, all seem very reral even if you don’t accept the supernatural side. But heck it wouldn’t be Stephen King withouty the Supernatural would it? And the best aprt of the “Supernatural” event is that it is not beyond belief, it merely stretches it.

“End of Watch” is up with the first of the seriers, beats the second book, and paints characters you can relate and ejoy.

-4 Stars

July 22, 2016 0 comment

Books Featured

Apprentice in Death by JD Robb

written by Cecilia Sutton

Lt Eve Dallas is used to murder in New York, but when she gets a call to the scene of a triple homicide in Central Park, she discovers a crime unlike anything she’s seen before. A clinical hit, it could only be committed by a professional-military and/or police trained. So she calls in some favors. Sorting through all the evidence, Eve is shocked to discover there isn’t one killer, but two. A mentor and a trainee. And Central Park is only the beginning.

Eve Dallas is back and facing one of her greatest challenges to date in the forty-third installment in J.D. Robb’s long-running futuristic mystery/thriller In Death series. Apprentice in Death opens the door to more action, mystery, and excitement as Eve and the NYSPD find themselves racing against time to stop a pair of deadly snipers whose still unknown agenda spells death for New York and its citizens.

Even forty three books in, Robb continues to combine solid writing, intriguing subplots, and dynamic characterization to keep her world evolving but familiar and comforting. Strong police procedurals keeps readers firmly engaged while subtle bits humor and lighter moments helps to offset some of the darker moments of the storyline.

It’s pretty clever! Robb flashes between the police and the killers, allowing us to view Mackie and Willow as they set up for their next hit while Eve uses all her wits and talents to piece together the clues and evidence to form a picture that shocks even this hardened cop.

Robb begins to cross the two storylines and merge them together towards a climactic finale. Eve and her team must work fast in order to try and predict where they will strike next. As per Robb’s style, a majority of the book focuses on the investigation of the case with well laid immersions of Eve’s personal life into the storyline.

Apprentice in Death is another intriguing addition to this series, giving readers an emotionally complex mystery to solve while enjoying the timeless couple whose love affair continues to capture our attention even forty three books later. Per usual, I love revisiting Robb’s version of the future and look forward to the next installment-Echoes In Death-set to release February 7, 2017.

May 26, 2017 0 comment

Books

The Underground Railway by Colson Whitehead

written by Cecilia Sutton

isbn9780708898376 I don’t often read literary fiction. Most of my reviews are of mystery novels, fantasy, adventure, or anything else that is strong on story and light on thinking. But in the last few weeks I have read two novels that have really made me think ‘big’ ideas. The first of these is Whitehead’s latest novel, superficially about the experience of slavery in 19th century America, but really about how humanity treats those who are different.

Cora, our protagonist, is a young slave on a plantation in the South. Her mother ran away when she was a young child and she was raised by her grandmother whose philosophy was ‘don’t make a fuss and you will be alright’. After her grandmother dies, Cora tries to live by this ideal, but circumstances conspire against her. Circumstances and her own sense of justice. So about the time that she gets noticed by the Manager, she is approached by Caesar, who asks her to join him on the Underground Railroad, an escape route to the north.

In Whitehead’s world, the Underground Railroad is much more than the series of safe houses and guides that history tells us. Here each safe house leads to a platform, station, rails and locomotives. Cora and Caesar escape and begin an incredible journey, stopping in several locations, each with a radically different relationship with slaves/freemen/people of colour. At each place Cora interacts with some individuals for a time, and gradually comes to recognise the truth about each relationship.

Unsurprisingly this was recommended by Oprah’s Book Club. In the States, where society is still struggling with the after effects of slavery, this book could become an important cultural landmark. But why bother to read such an ‘American” novel if you live anywhere else in the world? Simply because this book is more about how humanity treats those who look or think differently. Whitehead’s world could be uncomfortably similar to where we live now. And that bears thinking about.

4 1/2 stars

October 22, 2016 0 comment

Books

Precious & Grace by Alexander McCall Smith

written by Peter Sutton

You really have to be a people person to understand and enjoy this latest novel about the “The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency.”
How Alexander McCall Smith, an English Medical Professor, manages to capture the essence of Bostwana is amazing, but you just grow to love Mma Ramotswe and her offsider Mma Makutsi. Then there are the fabulously named Fanwell, Phuti RaRadiphuti, J.L.B. Matekoni, Violet Sephotho and Mma Potokawni. There are plenty of cups of tea looking into a gentle, kindly lifestyle, where the main cases are lost dogs,a lost woman looking for her past, the “Fat Cattle Club” pyramid selling scheme and the niceties of Botswana middle class life.
“Precious and Grace” take you on a collective visit into their lives and how a white male medico manages to write this wonderful stuff is a story into itself.
4 Stars.

November 3, 2016 0 comment

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