Kate Brannigan normally in­ves­ti­gates white-collar crimes, but re­luc­tant­ly agrees to find popstar Jett's lost muse, Moira. When Moira is murdered at Jett's mansion six weeks after Kate finds her, Jett engages her again to discover which of his entourage did it.

Kate is engaging and cheeky and it's fun to ride along with her.

For two tumultuous years of the Depression, 1933 and 1934, the first war on crime caught the American imag­i­na­tion. John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and the Barkers robbed banks and killed people, mostly across the Midwest. The war on crime also caused the FBI to rise from obscurity.

The movie of the book con­cen­trat­ed on Dillinger and Melvin Purvis of the FBI. The book itself tells a broader, more nuanced story, skipping between its subjects in chrono­log­i­cal order.

Hoover's FBI comes off badly. Staffed …continue.

Sequel to The Sunrise Lands. The travellers continue to head eastwards across post-apoc­a­lyp­tic America. They encounter many obstacles and not a few enemies on their quest.

En­ter­tain­ing enough that I read it in one day. Scourge did not fall prey to Middle Book Syndrome.

A faceless corpse has been found in a remote valley in the Yorkshire Dales. Is it connected to another murder there, five years earlier? Chief Inspector Alan Banks in­ves­ti­gates in the village of Swaineshead, which leads him to Toronto to dig into the dead man's background.

Competent, thoughtful police procedural told from the viewpoints of Banks and Katie Greenock, the doormat wife of one of the villagers.

Farthing is set in a world where the British agreed to a peace with Hitler in 1941, eight years ago. This book starts out like a classic British murder mystery: a prominent right-wing politician is murdered at the Farthing country estate and Scotland Yard are called in. The story is told from two viewpoints, that of the secretly homosexual Inspector Carmichael and that of the daughter of the house, Lucy Kahn, who married a Jew. The dead man has a yellow star pinned to his chest, making David Kahn a likely …continue.

Kylar Stern ap­pren­tices himself to Durzo Blint, the city of Cenaria's most ac­com­plished assassin. A truly successful assassin can have no friends or emotional at­tach­ments, something that Kylar struggles with.

This coming-of-age story set against a backdrop of intrigue and sorcery is en­ter­tain­ing but somewhat clumsy.

Sonchai Jit­pleecheep is a devout Buddhist, half Thai and half American, and one of the few Bangkok cops who is not on the take. An American marine is murdered grotesque­ly in a manner that ac­ci­den­tal­ly kills Sonchai's partner and soul brother. Sonchai must help the FBI in­ves­ti­gate and seek his own revenge. The trail takes them through the foulest gutters and the palaces of the wealthy. We encounter pros­ti­tutes, monks, shemales, jade collectors, and gangsters in a tour of the Thailand that most Westerners barely glimpse.

As part of my personal conversion to Git, I read Swice­good's Git book. It's a decent in­tro­duc­tion to Git and you learn how to do all the basic tasks as well as some more advanced topics. The examples are clear and well-paced.

I would have liked to see more about col­lab­o­ra­tion and workflow in a DVCS world, perhaps a few case studies: how is Git used in the Linux kernel de­vel­op­ment process; how a small, dis­trib­uted team uses Git and GitHub; how a collocated team migrates from …continue.

Third in a series, but the first that I've read.

Prince Roger and his Marine bodyguard have been marooned on an alien planet for six months. With local allies, they fight their way halfway around the world to the spaceport. And then the trouble really starts.

Well-done military SF: plausible, hard-bitten char­ac­ter­s; good plotting; and exciting battle scenes.

Nathan Oliver is a great writer, but a horrible man. Adam Dalgleish of Scotland Yard is called in when Oliver is found murdered on an island that is ex­clu­sive­ly reserved for VIPs. Only a handful of people could possibly be the killer.

P.D. James adds psy­cho­log­i­cal insight to a tightly plotted classic mystery. Dalgleish is both a poet and a detective. Both aspects are required to get to the heart of what happened on Combe Island.