My take away: an author has manifold challenges in writing a second book building upon an earlier one. How much does he delve into the past as detailed in the last book? Can one presume that the majority of readers would have read the earlier book? What about those who have never read the earlier book? Or, those who may not have heard of the principal character before, since he was much in the limelight in the 1970s and 1980s? These are some of the interesting points that came to my mind as I read, “The Trail of Ted Bundy: Digging Up The Untold Stories” by Kevin M. Sullivan. Continue reading ““The Trail of Ted Bundy” by Kevin M. Sullivan”
Category: Book Reviews
TWA’s Flight 3 , a Douglas DC-3, crashed one evening in January 1942 on Mt. Potosi, Nevada. The commercial flight carried twenty two passengers including the famous Hollywood actress, Carole Lombard, wife of the reigning “King” of Hollywood, Clark Gable . Until this day how this crash took place remains shrouded in mystery. Author Robert Matzen explores all aspects pertaining to this crash in his exciting new book, “Fireball: Carole Lombard and the Mystery of Flight 3”. Matzen is well known for his series of books centred around Hollywood.
It is ironic that the feisty actress Lombard, often described as a “fireball” in the super-competitive world of Hollywood, should have come down in a fireball of flames following that ill-fated flight. Continue reading ““Fireball: Carole Lombard and the Mystery of Flight 3” by Robert Matzen”
The outcome of World War II changed on June 6, 1944 with the start of the much awaited Allied Invasion of Europe. That day went down in history as ” D-Day”. Many books have been written about the tumultuous events of that period. They have described the strategies adopted by the military planners and experts, the contributions made by Allies of many nationalities and naturally of the battles that followed the invasion of Normandy. What sets Jonathan Mayo’s “D-Day” apart is that it describes incidents relating to the battles on that day on a virtual minute-by-minute basis. The blurb describes it so well: “One historic day, hundreds of unforgettable stories.” Continue reading ““D- Day”: by Jonathan Mayo”
I have read and reviewed, “The 7th Canon” by the New York Times bestselling author, Robert Dugoni elsewhere in this blog. Having enjoyed that, I eagerly took up another of his thrillers recently called, “The Trapped Girl.” This features Detective Tracy Crosswhite of the Seattle Police Dept’s Violent Crimes Section, who apparently appears in several of his books. A gripping start gets you hooked to the story. A young man illegally fishing for crab in Puget Sound finds early one morning that the unusually heavy crab pot he is hauling in was not because of large-sized crabs but because of a human body. Continue reading ““The Trapped Girl” by Robert Dugoni”
Another book read. Another author appreciated. This time the book is, “The Agent Runner” and the author is Simon Conway. The book has an intriguing current theme with the characters being from Pakistan, the United Kingdom, and Afghanistan. Conway served in the British Army, in the Black Watch and in the Queen’s Own Highlanders no less, so he knows based on his own experience all about clandestine warfare, sniping, terror attacks, bomb blasts and the works. This is the first book by Conway that I read but I hear he received a lot of acclaim including the CWA Steel Dagger Award in 2010. Continue reading ““The Agent Runner” by Simon Conway”
Although this book was published in 2007 by ECCO, an imprint of Harper Collins Publishers, I must confess rather sheepishly that I just read, “India After Gandhi” by Ramachandra Guha-in October 2016. The by line is an apt description of the book, “The History Of The World’s Largest Democracy.”
The hard bound edition ( which my friend Divakar Kaza said would improve my biceps before I was done with this tome) runs into 759 pages, followed by nearly 100 pages of well-researched notes. The cover flap says, “massively researched and elegantly written, India After Gandhi is at once a magisterial account of India’s rebirth and the work of a scholar at the height of his powers.” I would agree. It certainly is extensively researched and most elegantly written though I would have said, “height of his prowess” speaking of the author’s talents rather than his “powers.” Continue reading ““India After Gandhi” by Ramachandra Guha”
Peter Donley, a San Francisco lawyer, is the main protagonist of “The 7th Canon” by the best-selling author, Robert Dugoni. He worked for a law firm run by his uncle, Lou Giantelli in the Tenderloin District. A heart attack sends Giantelli to a hospital bed and Donley is swamped with more cases than he had bargained for. This story begins with the arrest of Father Thomas Martin whom once the San Francisco Examiner had called, “The Priest of Polk Street.” Father Tom was the antithesis of your conventional priest. He wore blue jeans with holes in the knees, had a shaved head, tattoos and a diamond-stud ear-ring. He now ran a shelter for boys which was approved by the Church. One stormy night, as he is shutting the shelter Father Tom finds the body of Andrew Bennett, a boy who had signed in the shelter and seemed to have checked out. He has been viciously stabbed to death. Father Tom who was the first to see the body is soon arrested as his killer by Detective Dixon Connor. Continue reading ““The 7th Canon” by Robert Dugoni”
I had heard of the author Ruth Ware and her debut novel, “The Dark, Dark Wood” but hadn’t got down to reading it. I was therefore delighted to get this opportunity to read and review another thriller by her called, ” The Woman in Cabin 10.”
Laura “Lo” Blacklock is a journalist with Velocity a travel magazine. She is thrilled when she is assigned a task she seldom gets, to cover a luxury cruise on Lord Bullmer’s private cruise ship, “Aurora.” Ordinarily, her boss Rowan Lonsdale would have made the trip. However, her pregnancy came in the way of this cruise and the opportunity fell, as it were, into Laura’s lap. It couldn’t have been better timed because she was under tremendous stress following an argument with her long-standing boyfriend, Judah Lewis. She had also undergone a traumatic experience when a burglar had crashed into her apartment when she was having a shower. The cruise along the Scandinavian coast promised to be a most welcome change for Laura.
Everyone knew that Bullmer had the blue blood and the title but the money came from his wife Anne, the Lynstad heiress. The others on the cruise were largely his personal friends, moneyed and sophisticated, making Laurar feel a bit diffident on how she could hold her own in their midst. Fortunately for her, another passenger happens to be Ben Howard who had earlier worked with her in Velocity. Welcomed warmly aboard, Lo is assigned Cabin 9, the Linnaeus Suite, which is as charming and luxurious as the rest of the ship. The trip promised to be incredibly exciting.
The trip turns out to a terrible experience for Laura when one night she sees the body of the woman being thrown overboard from the balcony of the adjoining Cabin 10. What makes it worse is her seeing so much blood on the deck which suggests the woman must have been killed and thrown into the sea. The nightmare becomes progressively worse when no one believes her story least of all Nilsson the Security Chief of the Aurora. He and the others take pains to impress upon her that neither the passenger list or the staff roster has a woman matching the description of the one in Cabin 10 Laura gave to anyone who would listen to her.
Ware deftly carries you through the twists and turns in the fast paced story. The plot is interesting and the characters believable but one I feel that Lo Blacklock was too bitter towards everyone in the world, even when there was no need for her to be so. The story reaches an unexpected climax and leaves you totally satisfied with the read.
Set in Britain during the early years of the Second World War, Madalyn Morgan’s, “The 9.45 to Bletchley” is an interesting book which has elements of suspense and leads to a fitting climax. Ena Dudley is a young woman who works in the engineering firm called Silcott’s. She is engaged in top-secret work and knows that the products manufactured by their firm are contributing to the war effort, though she doesn’t quite know how all the pieces fit in. Much of what they do is governed by the war-time Official Secrets Act. Her boss entrusts her to transport her output, which he usually used to carry himself, to the secret defence establishment at Bletchley. Continue reading ““The 9.45 to Bletchley” by Madalyn Morgan”
If the beginning of a book has to be good enough to grab your attention, “Sam Giancana: The Rise and Fall of a Chicago Mobster” by Susan McNicoll has such a start. The six-year-old Sam is beaten periodically by his father, Antonio Giancana. He is tied to an oak tree in the backyard and whipped with a razor strap until he bled. McNicoll writes, ” the beatings at the oak tree were gruesomely regular, from then on but perversely, this abuse spawned in the boy a ferocious driving force. There was nothing he could not withstand, there was nothing he could not do. And the world paid heavily for the man that boy became.” Continue reading ““Sam Giancana: The Rise and Fall of a Chicago Mobster” by Susan McNicoll”
Prem Rao : Stories from a Story Teller 