Tag Archives: thriller

The Dark Rose – Erin Kelly

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darkroseSO ANNOYED! I had an awesome review of this book written and when I posted it all that posted was what is below between the **…and I am tired and never going to be able to recreate what I had written and I could SCREAM.

So, briefly:

39-year-old Louisa and 19-year-old Paul are both working on the restoration of a ruined Elizabethan garden in Kelstice, a small town northwest of London. She’s hiding out – as she has done for the past twenty years or so – because she’s still obsessed with the guy she was in love with when she was 18. Paul’s hiding out because his best friend, Daniel, will soon be on trial for murder and he’s the star witness for the prosecution.

Paul’s had a traumatic childhood. He lost his father in a rather traumatic and gory accident which he witnessed. Then he started to get picked on in school and Daniel became his saviour.  He’s really a decent guy who just made some stupid choices because of his loyalty to Daniel.

**It’s also impossible not to relate to Louisa – at least I could relate to her. She falls madly in love with Adam Glasslake, lead singer of the band Glasslake and the more distant and unattainable he is, the more she wants him. What 18-year-old hasn’t been on that roller coaster ride?

After they make love for the first time and after Adam falls asleep, Louisa

…inhaled the thick oily skin between his shoulder blades where he smelled most like himself. If you could distill and bottle the essence of a human being, if you could crush skin like petals , then she would do this with Adam Glasslake. The vetiver scent was faint now, but his neck still bore the visible traces of the oil he had anointed himself with earlier. It was a faint dark green. Below this, on his clavicle, she had marked him for herself, a vivid red circle, half kiss, half bite. She felt intensely female and powerful, like a witch.

Louisa and Adam’s relationship is rocky at best and ends badly and years later she still gives in to a ritual that requires liquor and a few tatty mementos.   The first time she sees Paul she is so overcome that she felt that “the strength of her longing had finally called him [Adam] into being, that she had conjured his spirit.” She is so overcome she “would have smashed through the glass walls of the greenhouse to get away from him.”

When Louisa and Adam’s separate but equally compelling lives intersect, things don’t turn out at all like you might expect. And I mean that in a good way. Kelly does an admirable job making both Louisa and Paul into characters that you actually kind of root for thus elevating The Dark Rose  from run-of-the-mill thriller to literary page-turner.

The Dark Rose is my first encounter with Erin Kelly, but I will certainly be reading more of her work.**

Creep – Jennifer Hillier

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creepDumbest. Book. Ever.

Seriously…I can’t even believe I read it.

So, Dr. Sheila Tao, she of the velvet lips, is a psychology professor at Puget Sound State University. Apparently she’s an expert in human behaviour – except not so much because she doesn’t realize that Ethan Wolfe, the 23-year-old teaching assistant she’s been sleeping with for the past three months, is actually bat-shit crazy. That’s probably because she’d been blinded by lust. He’s HAWT. Oh, also, she’s a sex addict but until her father died (trigger) and she took up with Ethan (couldn’t resist the hawtness), she’d been living sex-free.

Anyway, she’s fallen in love – for realsies.  His name is Morris and he’s an ex NFL player and an ex-alcoholic and just an all-round great guy. He doesn’t know about Ethan, or Sheila’s addiction to sex. He’s also apparently never questioned why his 39-year-old, once-married girlfriend won’t have sex with him. He kinda likes that about her.

Okay, so Sheila’s got a problem. She’s now engaged to Morris so clearly she has to dump Ethan. Which she does…on page five. Understandably, Ethan doesn’t take it too well. Obviously: he’s a psychopath. Nevertheless, I knew I was dealing with crazy people pretty early on – like when Sheila becomes infuriated when Ethan turns the tables on her and announces that he’d “never wanted this to be a long-term thing. But you were so goddamned needy. You kept telling me not to go.” Really? Who cares who breaks up with whom? Move on, Sheila.

Anyway, Ethan threatens to expose their affair with some video he’d apparently taken of them doing the deed and so Sheila has no choice but to let him remain her T.A. But then that’s not enough for Ethan, he’s got to kidnap her and hold her hostage in the retro-fitted basement of the mansion he paid for with cash and you see where all this is going, right? Oh…and he’s a master of disguise, people. A master – with like amazing custom-made silicone masks and make-up skills etc.

It’s just all ridiculous. All of it. What does Ethan do with Sheila once he has her all chained up in his basement. Um. Nothing. He keeps her drugged and makes her wear adult Depends. That is until he finally lets her go to the bathroom and that, my friends, is one reason to steer clear of this book. It’s meant to be scary. A thriller. No, no. This is what we get:

It was ridiculous to be embarrassed about a fart – after all, she was being kept here against her will, and what could be worse than having to urinate in adult diapers – but she was ashamed nonetheless.

We get to hear about her cramps and the stench and how grossed out Ethan is.

He was looking at her with such shock and disgust that, despite her abdominal pain, she couldn’t resist a chuckle.

“Well, what did you expect? I’ve been here for days, you cocksucker.” Sheila grunted again. “I’m not done. I suggest you get the fuck out.”

Even Sheila has to admit that it was “quite possibly the world’s stupidest conversation.” One of many, Ms. Hillier.

Critics loved this book. Loved it. There was nothing frightening, suspenseful, or creep-y about it. Stock characters, a deux ex machina visit from Morris’s estranged son, Randall…I’m just…gah. Hillier is compared to Chelsea Cain. Please read Heartsick instead.

Blood – Patricia Traxler

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BloodNorrie Blume, the protagonist of Patricia Traxler’s debut novel, Blood, is a thirty-five-year-old painter who has taken a leave of absence from her job as a graphic artist to focus on her art. To do that, she has accepted a Larkin fellowship at Radcliffe in Boston and has moved into one of the residences. It is there that she meets two other Larkin fellows, Clara, a journalist from Chile and Devi, a poet from London. Norrie doesn’t make friends easily and she is used to a certain degree of isolation – partly because of her vocation and partly because of her relationship with Michael Sullivan, a best-selling novelist who just happens to be married. It’s not like they can hang out in public. Nevertheless, she likes Devi immediately and sees all Clara’s character flaws just as quickly.

I have mixed feelings about Blood. Generally speaking, I liked it. The writing was decent and the story moved along. My problem had to do with a certain degree of uneveness.

Norrie tells the reader, “Though it’s true there’s a killing in my story, its principal violence is, I think I’d have to say, the violence of love.”

True enough: Norrie and Michael can’t keep their hands off each other and in one respect, Blood is a relatively explicit examination of infidelity. Of course, while  there’s no real honour in adultery, Michael does genuinely seem to love Norrie and wants a future with her. On the other hand, he can’t quite seem to get his shit together enough to leave his wife of 25 years. And why should he when he can have his cake and eat it, too.

Much of Blood is given over to the push/pull of Norrie’s top-secret relationship with Michael (no one, not even her best friend Liz, knows about him even though they’ve been together for two years.) And that might have been quite enough for one novel, but Traxler also delves into the mysterious world of female relationships and that’s where Clara and Devi come in.

Clara is clearly passive-aggressive and Norrie alternates between feeling sorry for and irritated by her. When she meets Devi, however, her feelings are immediately of the warm and fuzzy variety. This strangely dysfunctional threesome makes up the other third of the novel’s narrative. It’s also what, apparently, drives the book’s suspense – not to say that I didn’t turn the pages, but towards the end it did get a little, um, silly.

Not content with all those relationships, Traxler also dips a brush into the whole world of creativity. Traxler herself is an award-winning poet and so she likely knows a thing or two about the creative process, I’m just not sure that as it was written here is added any value to this story.

I guess that’s why when I came to the end of Blood I couldn’t really say I loved the book. I might have liked it a whole lot better if it had been about just Norrie and Michael, or just Norrie and Clara and Devi or even just about Norrie and her struggles to create art. As it was, the canvas was just a little too crowded for me.

He’s After Me – Chris Higgins

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When smart but plain Anna meets Jem in Chris Higgins’ novel He’s After Me, her life is falling apart. Her parents have recently separated, her mother has retreated from the world and her younger sister, Olivia, is suddenly dressing far too provocatively and hanging out with kids that Anna doesn’t particularly like.

Jem is, well, electrifying. “…his smile faded and our eyes held and that’s when it happened. A charge passed through me like an electric shock.”

The first person narration sweeps the reader along and allows us to see both Jem’s many charms and also Anna’s growing doubts about the intensity of  her first serious relationship. Her best friend Zoe sees it though. “He’s got inside your head, Anna! He controls you. Can’t you see it?” she says.

But Anna can’t – or won’t see it. As Jem leads her further and further away from the safety of her life, she takes risks and chances she would never have previously considered.

That might have been enough to drive this YA novel’s breakneck pace – but there’s more. Someone seems to be watching Anna and Jem.

And so love’s arrow finds its target.

And she’d seemed like such a sensible girl too, not the kind to lose her head over some bloke.

That’s love for you.

Anna is a likeable character. I found myself really turning the pages to find out what was going on – wavering between believing in Jem’s charms and wanting to scream at Anna for not seeing through them. The anonymous third person kept me guessing, too. So, in that respect – good little page turner.

But I didn’t like the ending much.

Before I Go To Sleep – SJ Watson

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What are we, if not an accumulation of our memories?

Memories are a bit of a problem for the protagonist of SJ Watson’s debut novel Before I Go To Sleep. Twenty years ago, Christine was in a serious accident that left her without the ability to retain memories. That means every morning she wakes up in a room she doesn’t recognize, with a husband she doesn’t remember and in a body she’s troubled to discover is twenty years older than it should be. She muddles through the day, trying to piece her fractured life back together – with the knowledge that she’s going to have to do it all over again the next day. That’s right: she goes to sleep and her brain erases all the memories of the day.

Before I Go To Sleep was my book club’s first read for 2012 and was also my pick. We had a lively discussion about the book’s merits and I am happy to say that with a few minor caveats, the women in my group (except for one) generally enjoyed the book.

The general concensus was that Watson did an admirable job of writing a convincing female – not an easy task, I don’t think. We had a little bit of a debate about the novel’s structure. At least one person was put off by constantly having to re-read the story, rediscovering memories as Christine did. I actually think that it was deftly handled. If I am feeling frustrated by having to hear stuff over and over, imagine how trapped by her circumstances Christine must be feeling. 🙂

I alo think Watson was striving to write something more than just a thriller – although he did that quite handily. I think he was trying to say something about memory and how our memories shape us. It’s a fear of mine, really, to be old and not know my children or the other people who have been important to me. Christine’s situation means that she is forced to learn painful information over and over again – and it’s heartbreaking.

The book had me in its iron grip until the last 50 or so pages- when I have to say that it fell apart for me. It wasn’t that I didn’t buy a certain part of it (and, really, it’s  almost impossible to talk about without giving anything away), let me just say this: too much convenient exposition. Too neat.

That said, Before I Go To Sleep was a great way to kick off our 12th reading year.

SJ Watson talks about the book and his writing here.

21/365

 

Too Close to Home – Linwood Barclay

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Linwood Barclay has been compared to Harlan Coben. I’ve only read a couple Coben novels and they were okay. Too Close to Home is okay, too. But just okay.

Jim Cutter used to drive the mayor of Promise Falls around. The mayor’s a bit of an ass and Jim’s just not the kind of guy to put up with his shenanigans. Now he owns a lawn care company, but the book makes it clear that Jim’s way too smart for the job. His wife, Ellen, organizes a big literary festival for the local college, the president of which is a literary phenom- except for the youth part and the fact that he’s only written one book.  Jim and Ellen have a teenage son, Derek.

The action of Barclay’s novel starts straight away. There’s no simple way to explain it: Derek is hiding at the next door neighbour’s house when they’re all shot and killed. Instead of fessing up to being an almost-witness, he acts like he was somewhere else. Jim tries to figure out why anyone would kill the Langleys, but then comes to realize that perhaps the Langleys weren’t the intended target after all.

It’s a convoluted plot, people. Maybe consumers of this type of story like it that way and despite the fact that Barclay’s ducks do end up in a row by the conclusion, it all seemed – well –  a little silly to me.

I did like Jim Cutter, though. He isn’t perfect, that’s for sure, but he isn’t a pushover either. He is smart and tenacious and often quite funny – especially in his dealing with the smarmy mayor.

I’m not a literary snob. I like a rollicking good suspense thriller as much as the next guy who likes suspense thrillers…but Too Close to Home just didn’t quite do it for me. I have another Barclay novel on my tbr list and I’ll certainly get to it at some point…but I’m not in any hurry.

 

Heartsick by Chelsea Cain

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heartsick

What prevents Chelsea Cain’s debut novel, Heartsick, from being a run-of-the-mill psycho killer story?  I mean, truthfully, it has all the ingredients: troubled, lead detective; smart-cookie reporter with a past, crazy killer who targets high school girls, red herrings.

Heartsick opens with a flashback. Detective Archie Sheridan has been tracking the ‘Beauty Killer’ for ten years and he has finally caught her; or rather, she’s caught him. Held captive in her basement, Gretchen Lowell spends ten days torturing Archie in a variety of inventive and gruesome  ways. Strangely enough, Archie and Gretchen form a bond and it is that relationship which separates Heartsick from other novels in the genre.

Instead of killing Archie at the end of ten torturous days, Gretchen saves him by bringing him back to life and then calling 911. Then she does something even more remarkable- she turns herself in. She agrees to spill the beans about all the murders she’s committed over the years, but she’ll only talk to Archie. Their twisted relationship permeates all other aspects of his life, including his relationship with his wife, Debbie, and their two children. It’s also the most interesting thing about the book.

Archie is called back into service to lead a task force tracking a new serial killer. That part of the story treads familiar ground and is really only a framework for Cain to explore Gretchen and Archie’s co-dependancy. Archie is a complicated character; he loves his wife and children despite the fact that he no longer lives with them, he’s addicted to a variety of pain killers and sedatives, he’s as smart as hell. Gretchen is beautiful and cunning and one of the most evil characters you’re ever likely to meet. If you pick up Heartsick, do it because watching Gretchen and Archie navigate their twisted boundaries makes for riveting reading.

Desert Places by Blake Crouch

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desert

Okay, I admit it. I have a kinda thing for psycho-killer novels. You know, some crazy person who chews up the landscape doing unspeakable things to innocent people. The best one I’ve ever read is Intensity by Dean Koontz. I could not put that book down.

Blake Crouch’s debut novel Desert Places isn’t nearly as good as Intensity, but it’s pretty darn good. It tells the story of successful mystery writer Andrew Thomas. One day Andy gets a letter in his mailbox: There is a body buried on your property covered in your blood. And we’re off. And so is Andy on a harrowing ride which cuts pretty close to home. I don’t want to give away a pivotal plot point, even though it comes fairly soon in the novel. Suffice to say, Andy is about to have a very bad few weeks.

Books like these fail or succeed (for me at least) because of a couple important ingredients. First of all, I want the good guy to be someone I want to root for. He doesn’t necessarily need to be the nicest guy, but he has to be decent in a way that the bad guy is not. Andy, the writer, is decent enough. He visits his mother faithfully, has a good friend. He’s smart and human. I also like the bad guy to be scarily bad. I want to feel afraid when I read a book like this, otherwise what’s the point? Trust me, this book is scary….especially the first third of it.

I am not sure that Desert Places delivered on its early promise, but that won’t stop me from checking out Crouch’s other books.

A Cold Dark Place by Gregg Olsen

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Oh dear.

I picked up Gregg Olsen’s book A Cold Dark Place on a whim. It wasn’t on my to-read list; I hadn’t heard anything about it. I’ve been on a bit of a mystery-suspense thriller kick and this one sounded good.

When you’re talking about this kind of book, you don’t want to give too much away. I mean, generally speaking, suspense thrillers aren’t literary gems. I read them because they’re fun. Page turners filled with menace and heart-racing thrills.

A Cold Dark Place tells the story of Detective Emily Kenyon who is hot on the trail of a killer. A tornado has just swept through the town of Cherrystone, Washington. Kenyon has gone out to the home of a family no one has heard from since the storm. Their house is leveled, but a closer inspection of the premises turns up three dead bodies: dad, mom and a young boy. They’d all been murdered. The older son, Nick, is missing. Soon after Kenyon begins her investigation, her teenage daughter, Jenna, disappears. Jenna and Nick were friends, but Kenyon can only believe the worst.

This is only the beginning of a convoluted plot that involves convicted serial killer Dylan Walker, old cases that Kenyon was involved in, an adoption agency, a hateful relationship with her ex-husband, a creepy lawyer and an ex-partner who turns up at the end to help Kenyon.

The ending is wholly unbelievable (and, okay, sometimes that’s the case in this sort of book), but worse- the characters are shrill and annoying. Olsen was a true crime writer before he turned to fiction and maybe that’s why none of the book’s details seemed authentic. (I know, it seems ridiculous- but a true crime writer doesn’t have to fabricate anything.) In A Cold Dark Place what characters had for dinner seems like a tacked on detail rather than an investment in their character- and let’s face it, if you’re not rooting for someone in this kind of book, the denouement hardly matters.

Sleep No More by Greg Iles

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Stephen King said “should come with a red wrapper marked DANGER: HIGH EXPLOSIVES” about Greg Iles book Sleep No More. People magazine said: “Irresistible Pass-the-popcorn fun.” And somewhere in the middle is the truth.

There are three different types of books – fun books without a lot of literary merit and intelligent books that are, often, dry as toast and books that fall in the middle- well written prose with characters that jump off the page. Iles isn’t a bad writer and Sleep No More isn’t a bad book- but it’s not literature. I read the book in a day and a half, but I had to suspend all disbelief to do it because the premise of this book is ridiculously silly.

John Waters lives in the south with his wife and young daughter. The blurb on the back of the book would have you believe that he’s got all his ducks in a row- happy marriage, successful business, but that isn’t true. His business (oil dilling) and his marriage (his wife has been depressed for four years after the loss of their second child) are both floundering making John the perfect candidate for an infidelity. So, he cheats. Only he cheats with someone from his past and things get slightly more complicated than he might have expected.

It’s impossible to say much more about the plot without giving away the book’s central conceit- the one you’ll have to suspend disbelief for. The book is filled with illicit couplings- though none of them are very titillating, so you won’t be getting your thrills that way. The characters aren’t particularly sympathetic and the whole thing tidies up just the teensiest bit unbelievably. Still, if you want to haul a book to the beach this summer, this will be reliably entertaining so long as you don’t expect too much.