Child 44, by Tom Rob Smith

How do you investigate a murder in a society where the very idea of murder is unthinkable? This is the existential challenge confronting Leo Stepanovich Demidov, a Soviet state security (MGB) officer in the latter years of Stalin’s dictatorship. When he finds evidence that a colleague’s young son has been murdered, he covers it up.  [...]

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24

24 is one of the most exciting television shows I’ve ever seen.  It is all about a federal agent named Jack Bauer and the federal agency he works for, CTU– the Counter-Terrorism Unit. They must thwart plots involving various nuclear or biological weapons that pose a serious threat to people in the United States.
The unique format draws [...]

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Crystal Rain, by Tobias Buckell

John deBrun has two problems with his past. The first is that 27 years before the action of Crystal Rain, he was washed up on the shore of the island nation of Nanagada. He can’t remember anything prior to those events. He spent a few years rising through the ranks of sailors and eventually led [...]

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Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins

I’m breaking a rule I set for myself with this blog. I didn’t think I would ever blog a sequel. After all, if you liked a book, and a sequel comes out, you are probably already planning to read it. If you didn’t like a book, why would you want to read [...]

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Tell No One, by Harlan Coben

Today, we hear from Circulation Services staffer Mandy Malone, who offers us thrills and chills for the summer.
I was familiar with the suspense thrillers of author Harlan Coben through my work at the library, but it wasn’t until I saw French director Guillaume Canet’s adaptation of Coben’s 2001 novel Tell No One that I decided [...]

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Transgressions, edited by Ed McBain

“Ah geeze,” I admitted to myself, “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
I was supposed to be acquiring mysteries for the public library where I’d just started working– but I didn’t know which authors were good or popular or trendy or anything. Guess I missed that day in library school.
Fortunately, Ed McBain came to the rescue. [...]

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Booked to Die, by John Dunning

From the onset, we suspect that Cliff Janeway is a tough guy. It makes sense. People named Cliff aren’t pushovers.
Janeway is a cop, a fact which supports our tough-guy hypothesis… except that he’s suddenly no longer a cop, because he’s been kicked off the force for beating up a suspect, a fact which pretty much [...]

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The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins

It is said that the best way to write an entertaining book about young people is to get rid of the adults. Perhaps that is why Harry Potter is an orphan, the children don’t take the grownups with them through the wardrobe into Narnia, and Percy Jackson’s mom is a mortal who stays in New [...]

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Last Call, by Tim Powers

I’ve been thinking about the recent wave of paranormal fantasy in contemporary settings, wondering if it’s the future of the genre or a fad. How well will this work hold up over time? I’m not sure.
I can, however, say that Tim Powers–an author I’ve meant to read for a long time and only recently made [...]

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Bad Traffic: An Inspector Jian novel, by Simon Lewis

A phone call from Inspector Jian’s daughter interrupts his relaxed dinner date in Beijing. “Dad, help me, help me. Help me. Help.” The phone goes dead. Jian takes the first plane to England, to Leeds University where Wei Wei should be taking classes. Jian doesn’t speak English and very few people in London can [...]

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