Friday, August 31, 2012

Friday Book Report: 212 by Alafair Burk



Alafair Burke takes real life headlines and weaves them into her story to create the crime novel 212.  The third installment of the Ellie Hatcher series is full of compelling storylines, current events and the underlying theme that human instinct isn’t always what it seems.  This book was published in 2010 by HarperCollins Publishing.
Detective Ellie Hatcher and her partner J.J. Rogan are called to investigate a homicide in one of New York City’s hippest new buildings, the 212.  As it turns out, the man murdered was a bodyguard of a wealthy and famous entrepreneur in his own penthouse.  Sam Sparks, bachelor playboy and real estate mogul is unwilling to cooperate with their investigation, and thus Hatcher and Rogan are forced to put this case on the backburner when another murder lands on their desk.

Megan Gunther is a New York University sophomore that finds personal threats posted on a website specializing in campus gossip.  She’s disturbed by the posts and the anonymity of those posting threats about her.  She takes her case to the police for help, but there’s nothing they can do for her.  Her friends think it’s just a joke, but suddenly Megan ends up dead and now it’s up to Ellie and her partner to find justice for the young college co-ed.  Hatcher and Rogan investigate all the possibilities of Megan’s death, but it isn’t until another woman is killed that a link between the two is formed and the race is on to find the killer before another young woman dies.

Crime novels aren’t particularly my favorite genre, but I did enjoy this book.  It’s obviously not my favorite book ever, but it kept me interested and it didn’t take me long to finish, so it did hold my attention.  This book reminded me a lot of the show Law & Order, what with the crime and the ensuing investigation that almost always leads to something more than just a simple case of murder.  There are a lot of twists and turns, and lots of red herrings to sort through.  Three seemingly unrelated homicides start to link together as Ellie and Rogan piece the puzzle together, and it’s up to them to solve the mystery before another homicide is added to the list.  I could almost hear the Law & Order theme music in my head while reading this…almost.
I liked the character of Ellie Hatcher, she was strong and resilient and very determined to do her job well.  She has her flaws but for the most part she’s well rounded and not your clichéd “screwed up” cop with issues.  I thought she was very well developed and even though this is the third book in the series (and I have not read the previous two), I didn’t feel like I was missing out on a lot.  There were some backstory moments where reading the first two books would’ve helped, but they weren’t necessary and this book works very well as a stand-alone.  I liked the little character details that Burke adds in to give Ellie a personality; how she always illegally parks when arriving at a crime scene, that she always orders the same drink, the hints about her musical tastes that give the reader a little more background on who the real Ellie is, and not just Detective Hatcher.

I liked that Burke took recent events as used them as background for her story.  There are a lot of similiarities to the the “Craigslist Killer” as well as numerous other political scandals that never seem to go away.  And while she does use current headlines, it never felt like her story was just copying what was written in the newspapers.  While I like the “ripped from the headlines” story Burke had going on, I thought perhaps she used too many headlines to form her storyline.
This is a mystery/suspense crime novel, and therefore there is supposed to be a lot of mystery involved before the real culprit is revealed.  However, I felt this book had way too many twists and turns in the plot to make the story believeable.  This story had so many red herrings, and the investigation of the murders jumps from one suspect to the next, winding and spiraling around that the original plotline starts to become clouded and convoluted.  With so much going on, the reader has to process all kinds of information and dead ends while trying to formulate an actual theory as to “whodunit” and why.  I understand the main concept of a mystery novel is to keep the reader guessing, but in this case I think the author took it a bit overboard.  And instead of allowing the reader to form their own ideas, Burke has Ellie and her partner lay out nearly all the possibilities that lead to the crimes they were investigating.  I’m sure this was an attempt to accurately depict how detectives work in solving crimes, but as for me the reader; I felt that the author was trying to purposely sway me from forming my own opinions and giving me Ellie’s instead.  I would have rather had all of Ellie’s theories kept to herself so I could think about the crimes and try to solve the mystery myself, without the “help” from the author.  I suppose it was meant to distract from who really did it, but instead it frustrated me.

All in all it was an entertaining read.  I give this book a B- grade because it did keep me interested enough to read through quickly, the storyline was well thought out for the most part, and I really enjoyed the character of Ellie Hatcher.  This is a crime novel, and there is some harsh language and disturbing scenes.  This book isn’t for children and I wouldn’t recommend to anyone younger than 17 or 18.  If you are a fan of the mystery/crime genre you just might enjoy Ellie Hatcher in 212.  I’m not particularly a fan of the mystery/crime genre, but I still enjoyed Ellie Hatcher, and I just might have it in mind to read a few more books involving her to see what else she has in store. 


Friday, August 24, 2012

Friday Book Report: World War Z by Max Brooks




Max Brooks provides us with a very believable and hauntingly realistic “oral history” of just how a war with Zombies could ever happen.  It reads as if it was a documentary on BBC or the History Channel, a very different and interesting way for a novel such as this to be written.  World War Z was published in 2006 by The Crown Publishing Group.
Max Brooks’ alter-ego (he is never named in the novel, and the reader is left to assume it is Brooks conducting these interviews) travels all across the globe to interview first-hand survivors after the Zombie War.  His journeys take him from the Plains of America to the Middle East to the Antarctic and everywhere in-between.  He interviews war veterans, critical members of various governments and even your everyday regular bloke that just happened to get caught in the middle of the most atrocious event to ever happen to humanity.  Brooks interviews men and women trying to help make a difference in the fight, but he does not discriminate and even interviews those that took advantage of the fears of humans to make money during humanity’s most trying times. 

This is one of those books that; we all know is science fiction and would never ever happen, but the writing is so good and Brooks thought of everything that this book has you thinking, “Zombies aren’t real…and yet.”  The Zombie genre has been around for decades, with authors and screen-writers all putting their spin on those mindless brain-eating buggers, but Brooks actually explains how his zombie infestation would work, and just how such an infestation could go global in a matter of days.  It’s very intriguing.  The breakout takes place in a remote village in China, once the Chinese government gets word of what’s going on, a cover-up of sorts is in place to keep other countries from really understanding the dangers.  Infected but not yet turned humans are fleeing the country to escape quarantine, getting smuggled out of the country by the thousands and therefore bringing the disease to the next country…and then the next…and so on and so forth.  I’ve never once thought that there would be anyway that The United States would ever be overrun by zombies (if such a thing existed) because we have too much firepower and so much land to cover, but Brooks actually made me believe that zombies could infest our country and initially succeed.
Brooks was able to really capture all the emotions of everyone he interviewed, and you could almost feel through his writing that you were there living through all of this with them.  The major themes of this book had to do with human nature and the irrational emotions that separate humans from the living dead.  The fear and irrational panic that everyone has at some level created not just a fear of zombie infestation, but also secondary threats that put the human race at danger.  Unpreparedness and fright caused humans to turn on humans, governments turning on their citizens and countries waging war with each other when they should have been coming together to fight the common enemy.  It’s truly an engaging book about what could happen in a post-apocalyptic earth, no matter if zombies are the cause or not. 

I really enjoyed this book.  My one complaint is that there were too many interviews and not enough depth or explanation.  There are some really great interviews, but just when they started to get good and pull you in, Brooks stops and goes on to the next interview.  At times it was frustrating to read about one person’s experience but never hear the whole story.  There were so many characters and so many stories you could never get focused or engaged enough to truly care about that specific person’s experience.  I would have preferred less interviews but with more depth and progression in the stories that Brooks told.  Brooks does try to tie it all together in the end, but by that time the reader is left trying to remember what person goes with which story and its importance to the overall book.  I get that all the stories are important to the whole story, and he does put them in chronologically according to how the zombie war started but it was difficult at times to focus on the story when you have all these characters and experiences running around throughout the book.
Overall I liked this book a lot.  Brooks gives us a plausible and very realistic version of the Zombie Apocalypse.   It’s not just the believability that makes this book so darn good; it’s the human emotion and the resolve of the human spirit that makes this book worthy of all the praise it has received.  I wish the individual stories were better explained, but overall this book gets and A- from me.  It’s very well written, the zombie infestation is explained brilliantly and the war on the zombies is so in-depth you actually feel like this is something that really happened and not just a work of fiction.  Any fan of the zombie genre should read this book, and I believe any zombie fan will find this book as hauntingly realistic as I did.

Friday, August 17, 2012

US Airlines Scam



Today we recieved a letter with our address handwritten,it was postmarked from Phoenix, Arizona.  It was addressed to my husband, so he gave me a look that I immediately knew was his "this is something stupid" look and opened it up.  In the process he got a paper cut, so he was already perturbed before he even read the letter.  Sure enough, our initial impressions were correct.  According to the letter from "US Airlines" (which doesn't exist, by the way) we "qualified" for an award of 2 roundtrip tickets.  Cool!  I love traveling!  Problem is, this is a scam, and not a very well thought out one at that.

Above is a picture of the letter we recieved (our address blocked out just to be safe) and if you can't read it, this is what it said:

NOTE:  You must respond no later than August 22nd, 2012.

Dear Daniel,

I am pleased to inform you that you have qualified for an award of 2 roundtrip airline tickets.  Congratulations.  These tickets are valid for travel anywhere in the Continental U.S. from any major international airport.  The retail value of this award is up to $1298.00.  Certain restrictions apply.

We have attempted contacting you several times without success.  This is our last attempt.  If we do not hear from you soon, we may need to issue the ticket vouchers to the alternate.

Please call me today at 1-866-568-9312

Regards,

(signed name here)

Joanne Cane

Vice President

There were also two letters and five numbers that I'm assuming was supposed to be some kind of confirmation number at the bottom of the letter.  Anyway, of course we didn't call because this is so obviously a scam there was no need for further action.  Grammar aside, there were so many things wrong with this despite how official they tried to make it, there is nothing official about this letter.  It was printed on cheap printer paper, I would expect fancier cardstock from a national airline.  There was no return address, and no US Airlines address anywhere at all on this letter or the envelope.  I am sharing this to do my duty to my fellow Americans to spread the word that this is a scam and do not call that number.  There is a youtube video that you can find here if you really want to know what this scam is about.  My advice is to just throw it in the trash, but make sure you spread the word so no one falls for this hoax. 

I did a google search for US Airlines scam and there are a lot of hits, one from another blogger that you can find here for more information.  Apparently this type of scam has been going on for a few years with different airline names and different forms of letters/vouchers. 

If you get a letter similiar to this one, it's a scam and don't fall for it!  And be sure to spread the word about this to all your friends and family so they know, too. 


Friday Book Report: Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie



Agatha Christie is known as “The Queen of Mystery” for good reason.  In the novel, The Murder at the Vicarage, the character of Miss Jane Marple makes her debut as an amateur investigator trying to solve the mystery of the murder at the vicarage.  This book was first published in 1930.
In the tiny village of St. Mary Mead nothing ever happens, until one day Colonel Protheroe is found dead in the vicar’s study.  Colonel Protheroe isn’t a very popular man within the village, even the vicar, Len Clement has voiced his opinions that the world would be a better place if Protheroe was no longer in it.  That casual remark comes back to haunt him when he finds Protheroe laid out across his writing desk with a bullet in his head.  In a town such as St. Mary Mead, gossip and rumors start flying around, and everyone has a theory as to who shot the Colonel.  Miss Jane Marple, elderly spinster and busybody with her talent for human observation and deduction believes there are at least seven residents of the town with a motive to kill the Colonel, and as the clues start to come in, Miss Marple uses those powers of deduction to try and solve the town’s biggest mystery to date.

This was my first Christie novel and while it wasn’t what I was expecting, I still did enjoy it.  It’s a straight up mystery, which isn’t my favorite genre, but it was still an enjoyable read.  And at least now I can say I have read a Christie mystery novel.  All of the characters are well developed and most play a very important role in the plotline.  While the book is about a murder and the investigation to find who killed the Colonel, I found I was more interested in the fascinating characters that made up the town of St. Mary Mead.  The vicar and his wife added some humor to an otherwise grim storyline, Inspector Slack was your quintessential police investigator, and Miss Marple is in a class all her own.
Miss Marple, the elderly neighbor of the vicar and his wife, has a knack for observation – or spying, depending on your viewpoint – and she excels at evaluating human nature.  She’s very clever and cunning, and while most people would simply disregard the speculations of an elderly woman, her conclusions about human behavior are so precise that it’s hard for any of the investigators to ignore her theories.

This book is written from the point of view of the vicar, Len Clement, which I wasn’t expecting at all.  I mean, it’s a Miss Marple novel and I just assumed it would be from her point of view, but it’s not and Miss Marple isn’t in this book as much as I thought she would be.  I wasn’t expecting that, but it actually makes sense once I sat down to think about it.  In the 1920’s, an elderly woman wouldn’t be privy to all the information that the vicar received while the murder was being investigated, and in fact the main source of information for Miss Marple was the vicar, otherwise I doubt Miss Marple would’ve collected enough of the facts to help solve the case.  So, while it was unexpected to have the point of view of the vicar instead of Miss Marple’s, it completely makes sense and is actually more believable written this way.

What would have otherwise been a so-so book for me turns into something rather enjoyable because of the vicar Clement and his younger wife, Griselda.  They make this story for me.  The mystery is all well and good, and Miss Marple is a charming dear, but its Len and his wife that are the stars in my mind.  Griselda is much younger than her husband, she isn’t the demure housewife one would expect a parson to marry, the two couldn’t be any more different, and yet he absolutely adores her, and she him.  The vicar’s narration is brilliant, and his character analysis of all the inhabitants of St. Mary Mead is spot-on, even if it isn’t the most charitable given his profession.  I thoroughly enjoyed their story, and if I knew they were involved in other Christie novels, I would definitely pick up a few more to read.

The mystery genre isn’t my favorite, if there’s a mystery in the book I usually like it if there’s more than just a mystery to figure out.  It’s a bit like reading 250 pages of the board game Clue, and that isn’t really my thing, but for all that I did enjoy this book and I really enjoyed finally reading a Christie novel.  It’s hard for me to rate this book because mystery isn’t my genre, but the writing and the story and the characters are all worthy of a solid B grade.  While this book was written well and the mystery developed nicely, you never really knew who did it until the end (at least I didn’t) which is what you want in a mystery novel, I found the book just didn’t pull me in like I thought it would.  It took me longer than it should have to read this book, and it’s not because I didn’t like it, I just wasn’t as enthralled in this book and I took my time in finishing it.  Still, anyone that’s a fan of mystery novels should enjoy this book, and any fan of literature has got to read at least one Miss Marple story by Agatha Christie; who is without a doubt a literary icon.

Friday, August 3, 2012

Friday Book Report: The Stolen Crown by Susan Higginbotham



Susan Higginbotham dives deep into the Wars of the Roses in The Stolen Crown.  Full of intrigue, betrayal, secrets, and deception, Higginbotham brings to life the characters involved to create a compelling and fresh look at just what happened to the Princes in the Tower.  It was published in 2010 by Sourcebooks, Incorporated.
One day in 1464, six-year-old Katherine (Kate) Woodville sneaks out of her chambers late at night and finds that her older sister Elizabeth is in the midst of marrying King Edward IV.  That one night changes everything for Kate and for England as well.  At seven, Kate is married to eleven-year-old Henry (Harry) Stafford, the second Duke of Buckingham; and the two are able to form a friendship and a deep bond as they grow up together.  But politics can create strange bedfellows; and Harry and Kate find themselves in the middle of a battle for the throne that could destroy not just their beloved country, but their marriage as well. 

Told from the alternating point of view of Harry and Kate, this is a very fascinating story about that secret marriage and the catastrophe that follows in its wake.  I of course had heard about the Wars of the Roses and the Princes in the Tower, but was Americanly unfamiliar with all the history and events that happened during this particular time period.  The more I read historical fiction, the more fascinated I become regarding events that happened hundreds of years ago.  If a particular historical fiction novel interests me, I find that while reading the book I’m also doing a little research to learn more about the events and characters I’m reading about.  I did this for The Stolen Crown.  This book was wonderfully written, and it’s the perfect blend of historical fact and fiction.  
I really enjoyed reading the perspective of Harry and Kate during these tumultuous times, and I found that their characters were both believable and well-developed.  Reading about the two and their relationship from their youth and beyond was very interesting and provides a little romantic storyline to go along with all the betrayal and scandal developing around those two.  While this book is told during the secret marriage and the events that led up to the Princes in the Tower, this is essentially about Harry and Kate and their relationship.  Harry is the second Duke of Buckingham and he wants more power and control, and when Edward IV doesn’t relinquish he grows complacent and edgy.  Kate is a loyal subject to Edward IV and a loving sister to the Queen, and it’s interesting to see how Kate and Harry react toward each other when certain alliances can become treasonous.

Anyone that knows their history, or has an ability to go online to Wikipedia (or wherever) will know what the end result of this secret marriage will be.  I sort of knew what happens, but that didn’t deter me from wanting to finish this book.  This book is more about the relationship of Harry and Kate and their thoughts and reactions to the events surrounding them.  The Princes in the Tower and the Wars of the Roses just provides a backdrop setting to the story of their relationship.  Instead of just writing a historical fiction about this time period, Higginbotham gives the reader a fresh viewpoint of those events and the perspective of Kate and Harry, who aren’t really documented all that much in the history books.
This book is structured very well and the research involved writing this book is very apparent in the writing.  Historical fact was blended so well with fiction in this book and Higginbotham knew when to be fictitious and when to be factual and when each was essential to the telling of the story.  Higginbotham was descriptive when needed, but very blunt and to the point when description wasn’t necessary.  I loved that she was able to balance that out and it made this book all the better in my mind. 

My only real complaint is that I think there were way too many characters and it was hard to keep up with all of them.  All the characters having multiple names and titles just added to the confusion.  I felt like I needed a family tree next to me so I could remember who was who and what their relationship was to the main characters.  But, that isn’t really Higginbotham’s fault, and in fact she did provide a list of characters at the beginning of the book, but I read this book on my Nook, so going back and forth wasn’t really feasible for me.  There were just a lot of Lancaster’s and York’s and Duke’s and Duchesses and it was hard to keep track of all of them. 
I also felt that there were a lot of big events that didn’t get quite as much attention as I thought they should have, whereas some other little incidents seemed to get more notice than needed.  But, like I said previously, it wasn’t the events that really mattered in this book; it was the relationship between Harry and Kate that was the main focal point.  So, I can’t really complain too much, I just wanted to learn more about some of those happenings that weren’t described as much as I thought they should have been in this book.

Overall, a very well thought out, well researched book that any fan of historical fiction would enjoy.  I say it’s a romance, but it isn’t really, it’s about Harry and Kate, but it’s about their relationship more than it is about the romance in their life.  I give this book a solid B+ grade and am seriously contemplating picking up a few of her other novels because this one was so very well done.  If you enjoy historical fiction I strongly recommend this book to enhance your book collection.