A Demon Slayer, a Lizard King and White Rage Power the Start of My September Reading

Over the first eight days of September, I finished three books, bringing the total number of books I have read in 2017 to 41. Goodreads says that I am back on pace to read my projected goal of 60 books. The three books I finished are……

The Night of the Living Demon Slayer by Angie Fox

Ok or it’s not War and Peace, but it’s more fun! I have never read War and Peace but I don’t think there are any necromancers, voodoo priestesses or granny motorcycle riding witches in it. So what fun is that!

From Amazon….

Lizzie Brown is all for letting the good times roll…until a dark voodoo church rises up in the bayou outside of New Orleans. Now ritual fires are burning long into the night and the dead are having a hard time staying that way. 

Lizzie goes in undercover to put a stop to the madness. Good thing she can count on her sexy shape-shifter husband, as well as her Grandma’s gang of biker witches. Too bad nobody’s watching her trusty dog, Pirate, who has become way too friendly with the phantom haunting a long-forgotten Victorian séance room. 

Secrets and spirits abound. Nothing is what it seems. And when legions of the dead threaten the city, there may be no stopping them. 

Ok or it’s not War and Peace, but it’s more fun! I have never read War and Peace but I don’t think there are any necromancers, voodoo priestesses or granny motorcycle riding witches in it. So what fun is that!

Bottom line: Ratings Goodreads 4.3    A Sixties Man 3.5

I gave this book a rating of 3.5 out of 5. My reasoning is that while Angie Fox’s books are always filled with great dialogue and interesting characters. They aren’t War and Peace. i.e. while the books are great fun, they will never be mistaken for great literature. And actually that is not a bad thing!!

Author’s Website

Paradise Valley – C J Box

Paradise Valley is the fourth book in The Highway Quartet from C.J.Box. The series started with Back of Beyond, where  readers met Cody Hoyt. Hoyt travels Back of Beyond to save his son from a killer who may be leading a multi-day wilderness horseback trip into the remote corners of Yellowstone National Park that his son is on. In this book the reader meets a young fourteen year-old girl Gracie Sullivan.

In book two of the series Cody has lost his job as a detective after falling off the wagon but he sets out to discover what happened to two young teenage girls who vanished on a lonely Montana highway. One of the girls is young Gracie Sullivan, Cody works with his old rookie partner Cassie Dewell to track down the girls The main suspect is a long-haul trucker who may have snatched the girls. And it may not have been his first kidnapping and he may not be working alone!

In book three Badlands, Cassie moves to North Dakota and again confronts the killer from The Highway now known as The Lizard King. The name comes from the many prostitutes he has killed on his long-hauls across the country.

Finally book four comes full circle and Cassie eventually follows the Lizard King to Paradise Valley for potentially a final confrontation.

Bottom Line:  Ratings Goodreads 4.3    A Sixties Man 4.5

As always C.J. Has written a page-turning story with great characters. I love the way Box connected the last book back to the first book.

While The Highway Quartet may conclude that quartet of books, I hope it is not the end of Cassie Dewell. Maybe the offer from “Bull”!Mitchell’s daughter who is a lawyer for Cassie to become an investigator for her opens a new avenue for Box to explore. Maybe Cassie can even join Joe Pickett for an adventure!  You can listen to C.J. Box talk about Paradise Valley here. In the interview CJ. discusses the possible future of Cassie Dewell

White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide – Carol Anderson, Ph.D.

In the short and powerful White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide author Carol Anderson traces the racial divide in America from the end of the Civil War through the election of our first black president Barack Obama. While this book is quite short (164 pages) it is very powerful and super information Actually I would be hard pressed to list be the number of times I thought “I didn’t know that or that is unbelievable” while I was reading this book.

Natasha Trethewey, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Native Guard and two-time poet laureate of the United States wrote this about the book

” White Rage is a harrowing account of our national history during the century and a half since the Civil War. – even more troubling for what it exposes about our present, our deep and abiding racial divide. This is necessary reading for anyone interested in understanding and perfecting – our union.”

As I read White Rage I thought, this should be required reading in most High School classes and definitely in all college history or political science classes!

In the book Ms Anderson looks at the struggle for black equality and justice through Reconstruction, the Great Migration, and he aftermath of Brown vs  Board of Education. As well as, the Civil Rights movement and the rolling back of those Rights from Nixon to Reagan. Particularly disturbing was the section of Reagan and the creation of the crack epidemic!

Ms Andersen also discusses the effect of the election of our first black president. And the Republican’s subsequent attempts and success at voter suppression. All aimed at disenfranchising black and Latino voters.l

Read More about Carol Anderson Ph. D.  here

Bottom Line:  Rating:  GoodReads 4.39   A Sixties Man : 4.75

Definitely required reading for all Americans who are concerned about the current racial divide in our country. It is a divide that must be closed. Particularly, if we as a nation want to live up to our national ideals. Especially the ideal -“that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”!

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Three Mysteries and a Historical Fiction Highlight My March Reads

  In March, I mainly focused on exercise. I worked hard to increase the intensities of my workouts. In addition to adding more movement to my morning exercise routine, I added anywhere from five to fifteen minutes of dance to the beginning of the routine. I also continued to run. However, because of the weather and some other commitments, I ran less days in March than I did in February. The good news is that I lost five pounds!   The bad news is that I didn’t read as many books as the previous two months!

Still, I managed to read four books, which brought the total number of books read to 17. That kept me two books ahead of pace to reach my goal of 60 books for 2017. Below are the four books that I read…..

 Chris Holm and Ward Larsen authors of Red Right Hand and Assassin’s Silence are authors who I discovered this year. While Michael Koryta author of Rise the Dark has been a favorite of mine for several years.

 If we were to play a game of which book is different from the other, The Last Days of Night would win. While I enjoy historical fiction, it is a genre that I only dabble in! But, because Moore did such a great job bringing the feud between Edison and Westinghouse alive, I may need to do more dabbling in the future.

March Reads – Mysteries……

Rise the Dark (Mark Novak #2) – Michael Koryta

Author’s Website

I must admit that I had a little trouble getting into this novel.The story starts with two story lines. First there is a kidnapping of a young wife  in Montana.  Meanwhile in Florida, the main character Mark Novak finds out that the man the he believes murder his wife is being released from prison. The man, Garland Webb, who was never tried for the murder of Novak’s wife had been serving a prison sentence for assault of a different woman. Upon his release he sends Novak a note concerning the murder of Mark’s wife that sets Mark on Webb’s trail with revenge on this mind!

Soon the ransom for the wife is that her husband a high-wire electrical worker must do a task for a Eli Pate, an environmental fanatic that will create havoc in the western states of the US! Soon Webb and an associate are off to Montana to join Pate with Novak on their trial. Can Mark stop them before Pate releases his havoc??

When I started reading Rise the Dark I forgot that it is the second book in the Mark Novak series. I had pre-ordered the Kindle edition of the book several months before its release. I figured I had plenty oof time to read the first book Last Words before Rise the Dark was released. Wrong! But Last Words is now on my to be read bookshelf!!

Anyway back to Rise the Dark. I  really did like the book and found it to be a real page  turner right up until the end. I liked the main character Marcus Novak and his dysfunctional family. Once the story got going it was great! I thought the end, which has a sad surprise was done well. I also look forward to reading Last Words, because even though Rise the Dark stood on its own, I am interested in seeing what happened to Mark in his first adventure,

Rating: Four Thumbs Up out of Five!

Red Right Hand (Michael Hendricks #2) – Chris Holm

Author’s Website

Unlike Rise the Dark , Red Right Hand started off with a bang – literally! Moments before a tugboat loaded with explosives crashes into the Golden Gate Bridge a young family set out to make a video as an anniversary present for their parents and grandparents. They asked a disheveled man to take the picture. When he starts the video he has the camera backwards filming himself first. He then turns the camera around and films not only the family but the terrorist attack.

When the video goes viral FBI Agent Charlene Thompson realizes that the man in the video is a major informant against the crime organization the Council who had stumbled into the Phoenix FBI office three years earlier. He claimed was the Red Right Hand and he was set to bring the council down. But prior to his testimony he was thought to have been killed in an explosion at the FBI office! So now Thompson turns to killer for hire Michael Hendricks to find and save the informant before the Council can eliminate him!

Unlike Rise the Dark I have read The Killing Kind book one  of the Michael Hendricks series and I do believe that it really helps to have done so before reading Red Right Hand. The Killing Kind establishes the relationship between both Charlene Thompson and Hendricks and Hendricks and the Council.

The bottom line though is that Red Right Hand is another winner from Chris Holm. The Killing Kind won several awards including an Anthony Award. Red Right Hand should bring him more awards, accolades and fans!

Rating : Four Thumbs up out of Five!

Assassin’s Silence (David Slaton #3) – Ward Larsen

Author’s Website

Assassin’s Silence like Rise the Dark took some time to get into.. Similar to Rise the Dark, two story lines open the book. The first story line revolves around the purchase and reconditioning of an abandoned airplane in Brazil. The buyers obviously plan use it in a terrorist attack. While in the second ex-Mossad assassin David Slaton’s is leading a quiet life as a stone mason after the events that transpired in Assassin’s Game. But his quiet life is disrupted, by an elite special forces team that is sent to kill him!

 Soon Slaton is fleeing across Europe with the team hot on his trail! David fears not only for his own life, but for that of his wife and son who for their own protection think that David is dead. So to protect them he asks a follow ex-Mossad agent to stay with them and protect them. But that may not be a good to do!!

Eventually, both stories intertwine and it’s a wild ride to the finish! Assassin’s Silence is book three in the David Slaton series.  I have read and enjoyed both of them. I still need to read book one The Perfect Assassin though because I still think I’ve missed something. Like how did it come about that,  at the start of Assassin’s Game, an Ex-Mossad  assassin was living life as a stonemason in Virginia!

Bottom line is again that Assassin’s Silence was a page-turner for me once the story got crank up. I like the character of David Slaton. Like Michael Hendricks he is a man who does what he does. He may not like what he does but he knows that he has to do it to survive. I also liked that Larsen brought a character Jammer Davis, from another of his series, into the story. As an aircraft crash investigator, he fit right into the story!!

Rating: Four Thumps Up Out of Five

So now it’s on to April’s reads. I just finished my first book in April The Blood Strand -(Faroes #1) by Chris
Ould and like the above it was a good one! I am also about 30% through a science fiction book The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu that I am also enjoying!!

March Reads – Historical Fiction…..

Last Days of Night – Graham Moore

Author’s Website

Since I have rambled on for far too long in this post I will tell you that you can find my full review of Last Days of Night here. Last Days of Night is a novel about the rivalry between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse. It brought alive their legal battle over electricity that I knew very little about!

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Book 2  of 2017 – A Return to the World of Matthew Scudder….thanks to Lawrence Block

One of my Reading Challenges for 2017 is to catch up on a few of the mystery and thriller series that I am behind on. The series that I had in mind include: Daniel Silva’s Gabriel Allon series, Steve Berry’s Cotton Malone  or maybe Alex Berenson’s John Wells series. What I didn’t envision was going back to a series whose last book I read in, oh, 1994!  Anyway, that’s what I did this week when I read In the Midst of Death – book number 3 in Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder series. I really didn’t set out to read the book. It just happened to be sitting out on a pile of books in the basement, when I was looking for something. Anyway, I picked it up, and didn’t put it down until I finished it!  Lucky for me it was only 246 pages long!!!

Now when I stopped reading the Matt Scudder books, I didn’t stop reading books by Lawrence Block. What I did was switch series and read his Bernie Rhodenbarr series, The Burglar who….. These books had a lot lighter reading than the Matt Scudder books. They were fun! Anyway I read seven of those books up until book 9 The Burglar in the Rye published in 1998.checking with Goodreads I see  that there are three more books in the series. Hmm, maybe I wll come back to that series!!

Matthew Scudder Books I’ve Read

Anyway back to Matthew Scudder. I started to read that series in 1988. Good God! almost 30 years ago!  The first book I read was When the Sacred Gin Mill Closes, book number six in the series.Somehow then  I missed book  7 Out on the Cutting Edge and next read books 8 and 9  A Ticket to the Boneyard and A Dance at the Slaughterhouse, respectively. Cheery titles, eh?  I guess after those I went for the lighter  stuff!!

In The Midst of Death 

From Amazon:

Bad cop Jerry Broadfield didn’t make any friends on the force when he volunteered to squeal to an ambitious d.a. about police corruption. Now he’saccused of murdering a call girl. Matthew Scudder doesn’t think Broadfield’s a killer, but the cops aren’t about to help the unlicensed p.i. prove it — and they may do a lot worse than just get in his way. Read More

My Thoughts on In the Midst of Death

I really enjoyed this book and am now harboring thoughts of re-entering the world of Matthew Scudder. Which is the gritty side of New York City. Matthew is a an ex-cop. He seen life at it worst and for many years used alcohol to get him through it. It’s not until book #5 in the series  Eight Million Ways to Die that Matthew comes to terms with his alcoholism. Matthew is a flawed man but he sees his flaws  and tries to make amends.

Overall the pace of the book was good. The story line never dragged or gave you a reason to put it down. The plot had enough twists and turns  to keep you guessing as to who the murderer was. And as I’ve already said Matt and the other characters are terrific!

Lawrence Block Thoughts on Series Characters in Mystery Scene Magazine

In the holiday 2016 issue of Mystery Scene Magazine. Lawrence Block wrote an article titled “Some Thoughts on Series Characters”. In the article Block compares the characters of Bernie Rhodenbarr and  Matthew Scudder. Her describes the Bernie Rhodenbarr series as a static series.

“Both Bernie and the private universe he inhabits stay essentially the same forever. i’ve never been specific about his age., but he is somewhere in his mid-30s in the first book . Burglars Can’t Be Choosers, first published in 1977 – and he is the same age almost 40 years later.

Bernie doesn’t age – and neither does he change. He’s not stuck in 1977, his home town of New York is up to date in whtever book you encounter him, and he has to be concerned about security cameras and high-tech locks, but he still leads the same life, earns the same unlawful living and has the same doomed relationships with women.”

“…..Matthew Scudder, on the other hand, has aged in real time from one book to the next. . That was never my intention when I began writing about him. I really didn’t give it much thought. but I assumed he’d go on drinking at Jimmy Armstrong’s Saloon as long as his liver held out.

But I discovered he had to age and he had to change. Unlike Bernie Rhodenbarr, Matthew Scudder lived in a far more realistic universe,  and the books I was writing about him hewed to a more realistic line. How could  he fail to be affected by the  experiences he had in his previous adventure?”- From Mystery Scene Magazine Holiday 2016 p 28

Block goes on ti o discuss how in Book 4 (next up for This Man?) A Stab in the Dark. Matthew finds that his alcoholism was becoming more of a problem and  ends with Matthew walking in, and then quickly leaving an AA meeting.

So I know that most of the series I read are not static. The characters change and evolve and that’s what I love about  series. Joe Pickett and his family are not the same family that I met in Open Season  sixteen  books ago!  Nor  is Cork O-Connor and his family. Now Stephanie Plum I don’t know about!

How about anyone else? Have your favorite characters evolved or are they static?

Links for the Further Exploration of the Books of Lawrence Block

Author’s Website
Facebook
Twitter
Amazon
Goodreads

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