Jane Nichols, burnt-out MI5 agent and novelist, has gotten out of the Service, but she wants revenge on the man who caused the death of her lover. The target, Jim O'Neil, is a re­spectable busi­ness­man in Savannah, Georgia. Jane rents a room from the Savannah chief of police, sexy Alex Callaghan, posing as the novelist she is, so that she kill O'Neil. She gets tangled up in Callaghan's serial killer case too.

En­ter­tain­ing, fast-paced thriller with a likeable and believable lead character.

Three people are nearly all that's left of the elite “Meshed” caste. They stay one step aside of the hunters and live off the proceeds from making and selling the highly addictive “Staze”. They flee to a long-abandoned planet and discover a new lifeform, which takes over in both meatspace and the shared virtual reality, infecting the dreams of the Staze-addicted.

While there were some in­ter­est­ing ideas in this book, I didn't enjoy it very much.

An NSA analyst spots a suspicious cor­re­la­tion between the NSA station chief in Ankara and a crusading journalist, and she reports it to the director of the NSA. The station chief promptly dies in a car crash and the journalist is abducted by Syrian terrorists, and she starts to worry. As the ever-more au­thor­i­tar­i­an director goes further off the deep end, her worry grows—with good reason. And the director's hatchet man who is assigned to monitor her un­ex­pect­ed­ly turns out to have human feelings.

This is a classic …continue.

Ray Dudgeon is a Chicago PI hired to guard a Hollywood location manager who witnessed the Outfit at work. The client is murdered, Ray gets caught up in a Mafia power struggle, and the body count rises.

A well-written, fast-paced story that I gobbled up.

A quirky novella about Com­mis­sario Montalbano of the Italian Polizia. A series of “ac­ci­dents” have been happening at con­struc­tion sites. Montalbano receives an anonymous letter warning that another “accident” will happen, too late to prevent it. He attempts to cover it up, while still in­ves­ti­gat­ing, and realizes that he's infringing on the carib­inieri's ju­ris­dic­tion, a no-no.

Moderately en­ter­tain­ing.

Pinkerton agent Frederick Chase arrives at Re­ichen­bach Falls just after Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty have plunged to their deaths. With Inspector Athelney Jones of Scotland Yard—­sure­ly one of Holmes's most ardent stu­dents—he travels to London on the trail of an American master criminal, Clarence Devereaux. De­v­ereaux's gang is moving quickly and ruthlessly to seize control of the vacuum left by Moriarty. But not all is it appears and the American gang receive bloody setbacks. Could Moriarty be alive after all?

While I mostly enjoyed the book, I was ex­as­per­at­ed …continue.

Mother London is well written and it has some fine scenes and three in­ter­est­ing characters. I wanted to like it but it never engaged me because the story goes nowhere. I rarely abandon books, but I gave up on this two-thirds of the way through.

Mother London follows three out­pa­tients from a mental hospital, between 1940 and the 1980s: Josef Kiss, a larger-than-life performer, David Mummery, a writer, and Mary Gasalee, a housewife who spends fifteen years in a coma, after the Blitz. All three seem to be psy­chi­cal­ly sensitive to the …continue.

Deadpool is the role that Ryan Reynolds was born to play, the "Merc with a Mouth" anti-hero who breaks the fourth wall and breaks heads with equal facility. It's very funny, very twisted, and very violent, and it fully deserves its R rating.

Wade Wilson, a former mercenary, has terminal cancer. He undergoes a treatment that not only cures his cancer and renders him capable of re­gen­er­at­ing quickly from any wound, but leaves him horribly scarred. The treatment was actually intended to turn him into a super slave. Wanting both revenge and a cure for his dis­fig­ure­ment, he suits up and tracks down his former captors, leaving dozens of dead henchmen in …continue.

A disparate group of necro­mancer hunters and artists are trekking through the desert. They're out of food and the artists must compete not to be eaten by the strongmen by telling stories by the campfire. It's the Canterbury Tales crossed with Scheherazade. The narrator shows how he skillfully and shame­less­ly ma­nip­u­lat­ed the various parties. His stories within stories sow doubt and dissension. There's black humor and art criticism and enough suspense to keep you going, once you get past the in­ter­minable beginning.

New private in­ves­ti­ga­tor Sam Ireland is hired to track down a gangster-turned-memoirist. She can't find him, but she's not the only one looking. His lethal nephew also wants to find him, after dealing with two hit men. All of this searching is drawing unwelcome attention to long-held secrets, and more blood will be shed.

A darkly amusing, frenetic tour through Glasgow's underbelly.