George V. Reilly

Review: Wayne of Gotham

Title: Wayne of Gotham
Author: Tracy Hickman
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
Publisher: It Books
Copyright: 2012
Pages: 304
Keywords: superhero, crime
Reading period: 10–12 April, 2015

Someone keeps throwing the events of Dr Thomas Wayne's life into his son Bruce's face. The murder of his parents when he was a boy ultimately led to his becoming the Batman. Now he realizes that he knew less than he had thought about his father.

Hickham does a good job of filling out the story of the Wayne family and the mark they left on Gotham.

Review: Macbeth: A Novel

Title: Macbeth: A Novel
Author: A.J. Hartley, David Hewson
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Copyright: 2012
Pages: 328
Keywords: historical fiction
Reading period: 5–6 April, 2015

Macbeth is an honorable Scottish lord who serves an ignoble king. When Malcolm finally goes too far, Macbeth and his wife convince themselves that Malcolm must die. (Encounters with a trio of strange women also swayed their minds.) Macbeth himself becomes king but guilt and paranoia start eating away at him and his wife.

Hartley and Hewson retell Shake­speare's classic play as a novel, providing psy­cho­log­i­cal motivation for Macbeth's usurpation and downfall. Their Lady Macbeth is more sym­pa­thet­ic and less nakedly ambitious than she is usually continue.

Review: Sullivan's Sting

Title: Sullivan's Sting
Author: Lawrence Sanders
Rating: ★ ★ ★
Publisher: Berkeley
Copyright: 1990
Pages: 368
Keywords: crime
Reading period: 8–9 April, 2015

The charmingly amoral David Rathbone leads a small group of Palm Beach conmen. A task force of police and federal agents are trying to take them down, and Rita Sullivan goes undercover and flirts her way into David's bed. Sullivan and some of the other undercover cops start losing their per­spec­tive and get a little too close to their targets.

Review: The Good German

Title: The Good German
Author: Joseph Kanon
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ½
Publisher: Picador
Copyright: 2006
Pages: 482
Keywords: historical fiction, spy, WWII
Reading period: 7 March–April 4, 2015

Jake Geismar is an American war cor­re­spon­dent who lived in Berlin before the war. He returns there in July 1945, ostensibly to cover the Potsdam Conference, but actually to find his lover, Lena. Before he finds Lena, he finds the body of a murdered American officer at Potsdam, which—s­trange­ly—no-one is interested in. Then he gets caught up in the race between the Americans and the Russians to take possession of Lena's estranged husband, a rocket scientist.

The war is barely over but already the Russians and Americans continue.

Review: Written in Red

Title: Written in Red
Author: Anne Bishop
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
Publisher: Roc
Copyright: 2013
Pages: 512
Keywords: paranormal fantasy
Reading period: 6–7 April, 2015

In a world where the "Others"—w­ere­wolves, vampires, elementals, and more—have the upper hand and live in proximity to humans, they have need for some human staff to interact with their neighbors. Meg Corbyn takes the job, but she has a secret. She is a Blood Prophet on the run from those who have controlled her all her life.

Bishop provides an in­ter­est­ing­ly different spin on werewolves and vampires that I found en­ter­tain­ing.

Review: My Sister's Grave

Title: My Sister's Grave
Author: Robert Dugoni
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Copyright: 2014
Pages: 416
Keywords: mystery, thriller
Reading period: 4–5 April, 2015

Twenty years after her dis­ap­pear­ance, the body of teenager Sarah Crosswhite is found. Her older sister Tracy, now a Seattle detective, believes that the man convicted of Sarah's abduction was framed, and sets out to overturn his conviction. But some people in her hometown are not happy about this.

Dugoni is an en­ter­tain­ing sto­ry­teller. The plot moves along briskly, with enough twists and turns to keep one on the hook. However, the story was pre­dictable and not par­tic­u­lar­ly original.

Review: Cape Fear

Title: Cape Fear
Author: John D. MacDonald
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
Publisher: Ballantine
Copyright: 1957
Pages: 214
Keywords: crime
Reading period: 31 March–3 April, 2015

Fourteen years ago, Sam Bowden testified against Max Cady. Now Cady is out of prison and waging a war of terror against Sam and Carol and their children. Cady is cunning and ruthless and sooner or later he's going to start killing them. Bowden has always been a strong believer in the law, but until there's proof, there's little the law can do about Cady. Sam and Carol have to dig deeper to unearth their primal survival instincts.

Review: Asking For The Moon

Title: Asking For The Moon
Author: Reginald Hill
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
Publisher: Dell
Copyright: 1994
Pages: 323
Keywords: crime, mystery
Reading period: 26–30 March, 2015

Four long novellas about Dalziel and Pascoe: "Fat Andy" Dalziel, the crude and wily Yorkshire su­per­in­ten­dent, and Peter Pascoe, the university-educated, much politer detective inspector. The stories include their first meeting and their last case, set in the future of 2010, in­ves­ti­gat­ing a murder on the moon. The stories are en­ter­tain­ing, combining decent plotting with good char­ac­ter­i­za­tion.

Review: HMS Ulysses

Title: HMS Ulysses
Author: Alistair MacLean
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
Publisher: Harper Collins
Copyright: 1955
Pages: 480
Keywords: historical, WWII
Reading period: 21–24 March, 2015

The Arctic convoys, which took much needed supplies from North America and Britain to their besieged Russian ally in World War II, were brutally dangerous. Between the Arctic weather, the cold seas, and the German U-boats and bombers, many ships were lost. As HMS Ulysses opens, the crew are mutinous, having endured more than a year of such relentless conditions with far too little rest. They have to put to sea again, to escort one more convoy. This will be the worst trip of all, as bad weather, ill continue.

Review: House of Cards Trilogy

Title: House of Cards Trilogy
Author: Michael Dobbs
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
Publisher: Source­books Landmark
Copyright: 1989, 1992, 1994
Pages: 1000
Keywords: fiction
Reading period: 15–20 March, 2015

The Netflix series House of Cards is based on a BBC series made in the early 1990s, which in turn are based on three novels—House of Cards, To Play the King, and The Final Cut—by Dobbs. In the first book, Francis Urquhart, tired of being overlooked for a Cabinet position, schemes and murders his way to becoming Prime Minister. In the second, the new PM feuds with the idealistic new king. In the final book, after ten years in office, Urquhart wants to continue.

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