Gideon Oliver, the “Skeleton Detective”, is on vacation again; this time he’s staying on a family cattle ranch in Hawaii. The bones of the Torkelsson pa­ter­fa­mil­ias who dis­ap­peared ten years ago have just been found. When Gideon formally identifies them, the Torkelsson survivors get more than they bargained for.

Elkins works in the cozy mystery vein and, despite the anatomical detail, the deaths and murders in his books always feel detached and un­threat­en­ing.

Princep’s Fury is the fifth book in Jim Butcher’s fantasy series, Codex Alera, and the sequel to Captain’s Fury.

Tavi, now recognized as the princeps (heir apparent to the Crown), has been sent on a diplomatic mission to the distant Canim homeland. There he finds that they have been overrun by the Vord hivemind. Back at home in Alera, the Vord have returned too, killing and enslaving huge numbers of humans. Desperate rearguard actions follow.

Butcher knows how to spin a yarn that moves quickly from one cliffhang­er to the next. Grim in places, …continue.

A married couple die in a bizarre murder in an archaic Venetian glass foundry. Three exiled Roman cops are asked to in­ves­ti­gate by the Venice au­thor­i­ties but are given to understand that their work should be pro forma. Of course, they don’t listen and find far more than was wanted.

The cops and their visiting girl­friends are in­ter­est­ing characters. Their stubborn insistence on digging for the truth has real con­se­quences for their own lives, and the case scars most of them. Venice itself is also a character, a …continue.

Paige is a modern young witch. Her boyfriend, Lucas, despite being the heir apparent to the Cortez Cabal of sorcerers, wants nothing to do with the family business. But they get sucked in when the teenaged children of the various cabals are being murdered.

An en­ter­tain­ing urban fantasy that’s ridicu­lous­ly fast-paced.

Sequel to Old Man’s War.

Jared Dirac is a superhuman clone in the elite Colonial Defense Forces. A backup of the brain patterns of the traitor Charles Boutin have been implanted in his head so that his superiors can learn what happened. He can’t access those memories so he’s sent out on missions. Then the memories start trickling in.

Scalzi has con­struct­ed a scary but credible universe, where the clones can be more human than the “Realborn”.

Digger Doherty is a smalltime Boston crook who went to Vegas for a few days and blew a lot of money that he didn’t have. Now he has to figure something out.

It seems like all of George V. Higgins’ books—[1], [2]—involve lowlifes who like to talk. A lot. He had a wonderful ear for dialogue. Sur­pris­ing­ly, none of his books seem to have been adapted for the stage and only The Friends of Eddie Coyle was filmed.

At the end of The Thirteen-Gun Salute, Aubrey, Maturin, and the crew of the Diane were marooned on an East Indian island. They are rescued eventually by a passing junk and taken to Batavia, where the governor gives them a new ship, the Nutmeg of Con­so­la­tion. They resume their original mission and travel to the penal colony in New South Wales. Sydney is a hellhole, ruled by capricious sadists.

This is another fine entry in the long-running Aubrey–­Ma­turin saga. Seafaring, a long chase, a couple of …continue.

Two boys grow up together in Kabul in the 1970s. Amir is the son of Baba, a wealthy merchant; Hassan is the son of Ali, Baba’s servant. Amir betrays Hassan, and his guilt pushes Hassan and Ali away. When the Russians come, Amir and Baba flee to America. Twenty years later, Amir returns to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan to atone.

The Kite Runner is well written and touching. Betrayal and redemption, fathers and sons, love and hatred, cowardice and sac­ri­fice—all against a backdrop of Afghanistan’s horrible modern history.

In the end, I found …continue.

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 mostly by …continue.