Dead Famous by Ben Elton

Description from Amazon:

One house. Ten contestants. Thirty cameras. Forty microphones.

Yet again the public gorges its voyeuristic appetite as another group of unknown and unremarkable people submit themselves to the brutal exposure of the televised real-life soap opera, House Arrest.
Everybody knows the rules: total strangers are forced to live together while the rest of the country watches them do it. Who will crack first? Who will have sex with whom? Who will the public love and who will they hate? All the usual questions. And then, suddenly, there are some new ones.

Who is the murderer? How did he or she manage to kill under the constant gaze of the thirty television cameras? Why did they do it? And who will be next?

 

I really wanted to love this as I’ve found some of his other books funny and this plot sounded good. But honestly, it was a slog to read it. I kept going just to find out who the murderer was.

It’s basically Big Brother with a murder and you’ve got the police looking at all the footage of the show that was not aired, trying to figure out what happened. Reading it thus is two timelines as you have the police watching it now, with what is happening in the house on the recordings in the past. However, the rest of the cast are still in the house as the show went on even after the murder.

What’s frustrating is you don’t find out who was murdered until quite far into the book, and unless you are open to some crude language and actions this one is not for you. Picture a bunch of drunk people naked stuck tightly in a hot box together for four hours in the dark and what they could get up to.

When the murderer is caught it’s a proper “raise your eyebrows” moment because it’s quite a lot to swallow. The edited footage also goes to show what gets manipulated for the public but to have the reader buy into what happened takes it a bit too far.

The characters themselves are all unlikable and their dialogue childish. This could have been done so well but it feels like a good plot wasted.

South of Nowhere by Jeffery Deaver

Description from Amazon:

When a levee collapses in Hinowah, a small town in Northern California, Colter Shaw is brought on by his sister, Dorion, a disaster response specialist, to help locate a family swept away by the raging water, with mere hours to survive.

But after a surprise attack along the river obstructs Colter's urgent search, the siblings are forced to consider a new reality: Is the levee at risk of failing from natural causes, or is someone sabotaging it? Colter and Dorion must race against a ticking clock to uncover the truth and save the citizens before the village washes out completely, destroying everything and everyone in its path.

 

Okay, I admit that the Colter Shaw character has grown on me. I think it’s because the survivalist rules his dad imparted are not used as often in the later books – it felt like the first book was full of them.

But in saying that, this felt a little all too over the place. Part of the story here and part of the story there. In fact, it seems that there were about five subplots to the main one and yet Shaw manages to solve them all! There was a lot of technical stuff about the flooding and it did feel like wading through the flood reading parts of it.

Getting to know Dorion more helped the story along, but Mary’s response to the new family member seemed too easy. I guess each to their own.

The author in the car at the front before the collapse has an interesting storyline, but adding in so much of her book took me out of the actual book, so going from action and shooting and chasing people on bikes to chapters from a fantasy book was odd.

All in all, the usual twists and turns and misdirection but this is becoming predictable too. And as for the character who is the mayor and temporary police chief who has to be told not to fiddle with the loaded weapon in his holster? Um, nope.

The ending sets it up for a new story. But this was an average one for me...

Missing Person by Sarah Lotz

Description from Amazon:

Missing-linc.com comprises a group of misfit sleuths scattered across the States. Their macabre passion is giving names to the unidentified dead. When Ellie Caine starts investigating the corpse known as the Boy in the Dress, the Boy’s killer decides to join the group. The closer they get to the truth, the closer he will get to them.

The Boy was Teddy Ryan. He was meant to have been killed in a car crash in the west of Ireland in 1989. Only he wasn’t. There is no grave in Galway and Teddy was writing letters from New York a year after he supposedly died. But one night he met a man in a Minnesota bar and vanished off the face of the earth.

Teddy’s nephew, Shaun, is no hero, but he is determined to solve the thirty-year-old mystery. He joins forces with the disparate members of Missing-linc to hunt down the killer. The only problem: the killer will be with them every step of the way . . .

 

It sounds like a fabulous idea, right? A decade’s-old mystery suddenly getting a new lead, with the possibility of the mystery being solved. But there is just something missing to tie it all together.

You are introduced to the members of Missing-linc, all of whom have usernames without actually knowing each other in real life. And of course, each person in real life has their own issues. Early on we know that the killer is one of them and it becomes a race to see whether they can solve the case and unmask the killer, or whether the person will use the clues to try to lead them astray, or indeed get rid of one of them or Shaun, who has come over from Ireland.

Little red herrings are thrown into the mix to make the public want revenge for the killing and then finding out that the victim might not be who everyone thinks he is. So each page is a bit more of a is he / isn’t he and will they figure it out.

There are plenty of odd characters, from ordinary next-door neighbours to outright “ijits”, and in my book if you kick a dog, you on my list of evildoers!

There is a big clue as to how the book will end – if you read into it carefully. But by the time it ends it feels rushed and like it wasn’t properly finished off. Most of the characters’ issues are dealt with throughout the book, so at least it’s not just a book based on one plotline alone.

The idea behind amateur sleuths solving crimes that the police can’t is not new but this is an interesting take on it. The story needed more to finish it off (round it off) and insert the characters more to the point where I believed their individual stories. Unfortunately, just average for me. A long haul for an ending that petered out... 

The Three by Sarah Lotz

I wrote this review in 2015 but didn't put it on my blog and since I've just finished another of hers, I thought I'd post it here for context.

Four simultaneous plane crashes. Three child survivors. A religious fanatic who insists the three are harbingers of the apocalypse. What if he's right?

The world is stunned when four commuter planes crash within hours of each other on different continents. Facing global panic, officials are under pressure to find the causes. With terrorist attacks and environmental factors ruled out, there doesn't appear to be a correlation between the crashes, except that in three of the four air disasters a child survivor is found in the wreckage.

Dubbed 'The Three' by the international press, the children all exhibit disturbing behavioural problems, presumably caused by the horror they lived through and the unrelenting press attention. This attention becomes more than just intrusive when a rapture cult led by a charismatic evangelical minister insists that the survivors are three of the four harbingers of the apocalypse. The Three are forced to go into hiding, but as the children's behaviour becomes increasingly disturbing, even their guardians begin to question their miraculous survival . . .

I picked this book up due to the very positive reviews in the leisure books catalogue. It was not the horror or suspenseful book I was expecting but still enjoyed it.

Four simultaneous plane crashes which should leave no survivors do in fact leave three children alive and a voice mail message from a fourth person before passing. This leads to all sorts of theories as to why the planes crashed and how the children survived. With a possible fourth child alive the world goes into overdrive to put the links together.

The story is told via news articles and interviews which makes it a little difficult to pick up the story if you were reading something else at the same time. It does however work for being able to cover so much information. While not a horror it does show how the world can get caught up in fanaticism and blindly following the "loudest person" when believing the world is about to end.

A bit anti climactic but still makes you question a lot of the world around you and definitely makes you think about choices you would make. Not a book that made me go wow but still very thought provoking.

Face Last Seen by Jeffery Deaver and Isabella Maldonado

Description from Amazon:

When a dangerous AI weapon disappears, all hell breaks loose in a high-stakes thriller by New York Times bestselling author Jeffery Deaver and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Isabella Maldonado.

A high-stakes theft draws federal agent Carmen Sanchez and brilliant hacker Jake Heron into the hunt to recover the stolen Epsilon Core, a revolutionary autonomous weapon engineered to operate beyond human control.

An enemy in the shadows is assembling the final components to unleash it, causing unimaginable casualties. To stop the unthinkable, Carmen and Jake—experts in exposing intrusion and threats—must track down a mastermind who hides in plain sight behind a perfectly chilling disguise.

Racing against mercenaries, arms dealers, cult conspiracies and a nemesis from Jake’s past, the unlikely partners must navigate a complex and increasingly personal relationship—one put to the test when Jake himself falls under suspicion.

As the clock runs out, and the Epsilon Core’s devastation looms, Carmen must decide if she can trust her partner, a man she may not even recognize anymore.

 

This is book three in the series, and while some might say it can be read as a standalone, I don’t think enough of the intrusion aspect is explained in this one, so new readers might not completely understand what Heron does and how I-Squared came about.

There are two threads running through this story. One has the team chasing up on the missing Epsilon Core, and the other is the cult that Heron’s parents bought into.

The storyline around the Core and the AI behind it can become bogged down in tech speak at times, but when you start learning more about it and the ramifications of self-choice by AI, it starts looking a little scary. Heron is still only just off the naughty chair, and shouldn’t really be as involved as he is, but what with Reynolds, I-Squared’s overseer, seeming to be more interested in positive publicity and putting himself front and centre, it’s up to the team to sort out the real issue. This is one of those books where you can’t trust what you see, and the consequences for real life are frightening.

The cult section, with the reader learning more about the behind-the-scenes punishments for not toeing the line, is horrific, and the meaning behind the jewellery welded onto them and the brainwashing behind it brings home how different life is out there for others.

But as with good thrillers, things don’t always go to plan, and here we find villains behind villains, which made the threads move in some interesting misdirections. The writing is slow in places and speeds up elsewhere so there is a good mix of both. But I’m not sure it’s a standout for me.

As always, just when you think Heron and Sanchez have their issues sorted and things have worked out the best way possible, there is a curveball thrown in that sets a thread up well for the next book.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of the book.

Such a Quiet Place by Megan Miranda

Description from Amazon:

We had no warning that she would come back...


Welcome to Hollow’s Edge - a picture-perfect neighbourhood where everyone has each other’s backs. At least, that’s how it used to be, until the night Brandon and Fiona Truett were found dead...

Two years ago, branded a grifter, thief and sociopath by her friends and neighbours, Ruby Fletcher was convicted of murdering the Truetts. Now, freed by mistrial, Ruby has returned to Hollow’s Edge. But why would she come back? No one wants her there, least of all her old housemate, Harper Nash.

As Ruby’s return sends shockwaves through the community, terrified residents turn on each other, and it soon becomes clear that not everyone was honest about the night the Truetts died. When Harper begins to receive threatening, anonymous notes, she realizes she has to uncover the truth before someone else gets hurt... Someone like her.

 

Honestly, with a description like that, who wouldn’t want to read the book? Turns out the hype was not worth it at all... And I don’t like being mean to authors as I know how much work goes into writing a book. The problem is you need to grab your audience and keep them there!

So here Ruby has been convicted of a double murder but let out because of a mistrial and has just pitched up at Harper’s house, where she used to live. As we move through Harper’s POV, we see how she sees Ruby as manipulative, and the rest of the neighbourhood don’t want her there at all, as they believe she is the murderer.

This could have played out very cleverly but there were strikes against it from the beginning. First, none of the characters were written in a way I could connect with them. I felt nothing for any of them, so whatever happened to one or all of them made no difference to me. I need to feel something for at least one character to make me believe the story. Here was a wishy washy version of all of them.

Second: it was very drawn out with far too many arbitrary things happening in the story. If this is meant to be filled with suspense or a thriller, then keep me on my toes throughout and don’t let me want to put it down in case I miss something. With this book, I questioned picking it up again.

Third: there are smart whodunnits and plots put together so cleverly you never see them coming. Here it was not a shock and actually a little silly. I got to the end and wondered if I was really supposed to believe this was the ending.

I’m all for a slow burn but there was never really fire happening here. A bunch of paranoid people, scared of anything happening (but patrolling the neighbourhood in the dark on their own at night?), keeping watch on cameras, and NOT TALKING TO EACH OTHER! If someone had just said something, it would all have come out!

I’ve heard her other books are better but based on this one, I won’t be reading any more of hers. A pity...

The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown

Description from Amazon:

Accompanying celebrated academic, Katherine Solomon, to a lecture she’s been invited to give in Prague, Robert Langdon’s world spirals out of control when she disappears without trace from their hotel room. Far from home and out of his comfort zone, Langdon must pit his wits against forces unknown to recover the woman he loves.

But Prague is an old and dangerous place, steeped in folklore and mystery. Little can Langdon know that he is being stalked by a spectre from that dark past. He must use all of his arcane knowledge to navigate a shadow city hiding in plain sight, a city which has successfully kept its secrets for centuries and will not readily give them up...

 

I had stopped reading Dan Brown novels for a while. The first couple were really clever but then they started being “samey” so when I saw this doorstop of a book, I figured why not. Okay the title is rather daft. I know it gets explained in the book but it’s still really silly.

The content is heavy. Truly cerebral stuff. And you have to concentrate super hard on what they are saying most of the time just to understand the sentence, let alone the contents.

So Katherine was about to publish a book that could have put a lot of people in danger / brought scientific discoveries to light that should not have been let out. And we all know there are people on levels above other people who pull strings and keep things quiet. So the powers that be swoop in in an elaborate scheme to protect their experiments while eliminating threats. And these have been years in the making.

The addition of The Golem and the ether experienced along with the stories behind Prague made for some good historical reading. All the descriptions were lovely and vivid and truly transported you to other times and places.  

But the book itself. Yikes. Too many clues trying to be cryptic. Too many side plots on side plots. Too much information on the subject matter itself (and repeated over and over) that it was beginning to feel like a journal article. Sometimes it felt like I was a child and being spoonfed the information in case I didn't understand it. For example someone would say something in dialogue and then Langdon would have a thought explaining it all so that there was exposition for the reader. As if he'd be thinking like that! I hate it when reading a book becomes slogging through it, but I pushed ahead as the chapters were not too long and he cut them in places where you did really want to find out what would happen. But with ludicrous parts like Langdon seeing and smelling something that was described in a dream and running back to his hotel, then setting off the fire alarm, and jumping out of the hotel window into an icy river, well then, you know ludicrous it shall be the whole way through.

That’s it for Dan Brown for me! You join my pile of “no more”...