TexasFella

I hate when a John Sandford novel ends.

Revisado: 11-30-21

Narrator Richard Ferrone always makes Sanford's terrific novels even more fun. A story by John Sandford about Lucas Davenport or Virgil Flowers is about the most dependable crime novel entertainment you can buy, rivaled only by Michael Connelly (Bosch). The stories are exciting and suspenseful and often funny, with great dialogue. Be warned he can be brutal, and Certain Prey has one scene of harsh violence told in painful detail. (Eyes of Prey and Silent Prey are especially grisly.) If you are one of those people complaining about realistic language and conversation, you won't be happy here, but you will be missing some amusingly profane dialogue. No spoilers but it's safe to say there are two very intriguing villains in this book.

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Excellent summary; short, well written & read

Revisado: 01-29-19

I have both Kindle and Audible versions, and this review is for both. This book is - obviously - a summary, not a detailed history. It is only 100 pages to cover the four years of the war, from the Archduke's assassination to the aftermath, so of course it does not go into great detail for WWI buffs. But if you, like me, have some knowledge but want a quick overview to tie it all together, this does that perfectly. I learned many things that I didn't know or was confused about. Author Rupert Colley - who has a long series of these History in One Hour books - does a very concise job. He is English and so, yes, he has an English/Allies point of view, though there are interesting tidbits from the German and Russian view sprinkled in. There's little time for more. The Kindle version has a photo every 2-4 pages, so maybe 2-3 dozen. Most are portraits, but there are also some of things like planes, ships or women in armament factories. (You can easily enlarge tiny Kindle photos with your fingers on most devices.) The Audible reader, English actor Jonathan Keeble, has done many of these and other audios. He has a very clear, easy to listen to and understand voice, with a mild English accent. He does just the right amount of voice drama (he's good with irony) and accents without being distracting or attention getting. The Audible book is 82 minutes, so more than an hour. I have since bought others in the series.

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Inglis is excellent reading Tolkien’s prelude classic

Revisado: 12-01-18

While it seems minor compared to his epic The Lord of the Rings, it is an essential and usually charming piece of the tale. Rereading it now, decades later, I’m surprised by how much I had forgotten, and pleased to have been back in Tolkien’s world. He wrote this for his kids when they were young, so it is much lighter than LotR, but has much that became a part of that story.
I loved the LotR films, but I was saddened by the overblown mess of a trilogy made of this little book.

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Good, concise, clear account of crucial battle

Revisado: 03-05-18

The Coral Sea fight is always in the shadow of the later Midway battle. It was there that the US Navy learned tremendous lessons that would make victory at Midway possible. And the losses-in carriers and confidence-to the Japanese greatly weakened them for the coming battle at Midway. The work of key code breakers before this battle gave the American high command confidence in them, that lead to successful preparation for Midway. This short version has plenty of detail, makes clear the significance, includes several personal stories and never feels padded. The reader is very easy to understand with no annoying tendencies of speech.

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Pleaseant, slow-paced, different from Grantchester

Revisado: 07-07-17

These are enjoyable mystery stories more in the British "cozy" mystery style of, say, Agatha Christie than the somewhat faster-paced, more romantic, edgy and slightly noir-ish British mystery TV series, "Grantchester". I am talking degrees here, the basic people and situations are the same, but it may be enough difference to disappoint some fans of the TV series. Probably most Americans, like myself, try the book series because we so enjoy the TV series. I have enjoyed this first book in the series, but to a lesser degree than the TV series. (My mystery reading tastes are usually more hard-boiled, but on the other hand, I also like Jane Austen.) On TV the excellent pairing of James Norton as Chambers and Robson Green as the detective, and their friendship, adds tremendously to the interest in the series.
Without giving any specifics, there is a quite different emphasis on Sidney's various romantic interests, at least through this first book and the first part of the third series on TV; the same people but different focus. Though you will certainly find Amanda and "the German widow", Hildegard. For example, in this first book, at least, Sidney is much less challenged by his robust romantic inclinations for attractive women, although that is certainly touched on. Leonard, the curate, so far shows no particular sexual orientation,as he does on TV. Perhaps some of these things will show up in the later books.
Sidney still loves jazz, thank goodness, perhaps even more than on "Grantchester". (It can be murder.)
I bought the book on Kindle and Audible, and mostly listened to it. The audio reader, Peter Wickham is quite good actually, and his British accent is not at all hard for American ears, but his tone is so relaxed in the way he presents these stories that I find him somewhat lulling on this material.
By the way, the book is really a series of several long short stories, each three or four chapters, with its own mystery, not always a murder. But the stories are designed so they all flow smoothly together, so this is arguably as much a novel as short stories. Each story is very well done and has a lot of material about the time period (1950s in the first book; the decades change in later books) and Sidney's inner thoughts and turmoils. These often have nothing to do with the mystery. That's true in the TV series also, but not to the same extent.

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Starts well enough, ends like a bad action movie

Revisado: 07-01-17

I like the writers general tone and ability to create the feel of a genuine Holmes story, but he was very slow paced in the beginning and had a silly action climax right out of grade B melodrama. The reader was good, though he was a slow speaker which took a little getting used to.

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If you want to understand how World War II evolved

Revisado: 04-06-17

This is an old classic that was a huge best-seller in 1971. I read it first ages ago, and it's one of those that really holds up. It is fiction, but through his fascinating Henry family, Wouk manages to have us in all the right places to see the "Big Picture" and the small details of pre-World War II, all in a very entertaining way. This is the book that become the huge TV event mini-series, and it's even better than that excellent series. Unless you are a real history buff, you will learn a lot of fascinating background you never knew or had forgotten about WWII, and have a fun read doing it. This time I read most of it on Audible, and Pariseau's performance(s) is excellent. In case you don't know, Wouk continued the war, and the Henry family saga, in War and Remembrance, which I hope to get to again very soon.

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A bit different, but still the best-Harry Bosch

Revisado: 04-06-17

This is a review of the audio version. Titus Welliver, who plays Bosch on the Amazon Prime series, Season 3 coming this month, also reads the novels (of late) for audio. It took me a few episodes to like him as Bosch on TV, but here I found him perfect right away. Not super dramatic in his reading, but he has the right Bosch tone.
In this novel, Harry is now retired from LAPD, working (volunteering) in another town's dept., and doing some P.I. work. This leads to what seems at first like a no-murder tale, mixing a lost heir search as a P.I., and the pursuit of a serial rapist for the cop job. But Connelly's tales are always beautifully detailed and fascinating and, of course, filled with surprises. Several.
I read all the Connelly novels, finding him the best blend of character, story, drama and entertainment out there in crime writing, not that I know all the writers. But this guy is consistently good.

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Fascinating, powerful view on late Pacific War

Revisado: 06-05-16

Robert Gandt gives a good mix of very personal views and the overall big picture of the horrific battle in the last months of World War II, from both American and Japanese sides. There is, due to the recurring type of events, some repetition, but he usually makes it interesting and fresh. There is also repetition of a certain stylistic quirk in Gandt's writing (it seemed like the worst attack was over. It wasn't!) that is mildly annoying, but that is a minor thing. This book is best when describing air action and the intensity of shipboard defense, less compelling in the description of land action, which was clearly secondary to the writer. Still, it brings home the madness of war, especially when one side was often willing to die for honor. Pruden is a good, clear narrator for the audio version.

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Problematic reader. Amusing and light pulp parody.

Revisado: 04-07-16

Here's the deal, Mac: You are only likely to "get" this book if you are a fan of mainly old time hard-boiled tough-guy American detective fiction (40s, 50s, 60s) of the pulp/Chandler/Hammett genre. If you are, you will recognize this as more loving parody than the genuine article. That's not knocking it; I enjoyed the book, and actually laughed out loud several times at some of the outrageous examples of hard-boiled dialogue and descriptions. But I almost gave up early on this novel because of the reader, Maynard Villers. I see he reads a lot of genre books, including a number of Shell Scott novels. By the end of the book, I was OK with him, but with an asterisk. His voice was pretty good for the characters, but he is at times an excruciatingly slow reader, not because he talks slowly, but because of long, unnecessary pauses between sentences. It's like he lost the next paragraph, repeatedly. It makes Scott and the scenes seem flat. He was especially bad about this in the first half of the novel, then suddenly seemed to get better. Maybe the audio director said let's move this buggy along. But this is supposed to be a lively, energetic story, and he reads so slowly, that he DE-energizes it. But I found the cure. On Audible, you can change the reading speed. After Villers speeded up his pace in the middle, he was better, but what really helped is when I moved the Audible reading speed to 1.25x. From there on, I hardly noticed the slowness. (Be sure to move it back to 1x for your next book.) Now, back to the book: This is NOT literature, like, say, Chandler. I have read a lot of pulp detective fiction, but this is my first Shell Scott novel by Richard S. Prather, though I was well aware of the books (and their goofy original covers) and that they were considered amusing and light. So I am only reviewing this book, not the whole long series. The detective story here, including plot and twists, was so-so, but the pace and humor were good and I may try another. Scott is an enjoyable character, rugged and a tad cocky, but also likeable and not a belligerent jerk. He loses some fights, and sometimes tries to avoid others. Sexist? Well, yeah, this is written in 1950, and it's a parody, but he does seem to actually like women as people, unlike, say, Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer. And they aren't stupid. There was some vaguely implied sexual activity, but Prather was hilariously oblique in describing it, like a 1950s movie. So, this is a mixed bag, and only for those who read lots of old-school, tough-guy detective fiction and don't take it seriously.

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