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May and June reads (thru today)
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Here's my list for May and June through today.

1. LONG LOST, Harlan Coben. Coben's latest is very very good. It brings back Myron Bolitar for another go-round, and while Myron is trying to be a more mature, responsible guy, it doesn't last long when his significant other decides to move out of state to be closer to her parents and he realizes it isn't going anywhere. So when a "girlfriend" from his past contacts him asking him to come to Paris to help her, no questions asked, he does. And finds himself in the middle of an international terrorist plot involving Interpol, the French gendarmes, and Homeland Security. It's a little over the top but very well presented, and the familiar 'echoes of the past' theming is present throughout the novel. A really good revisit with Myron, Win, Esparanza and a bunch of other familiar characters. 9

2. DEAL BREAKER, Harlan Coben

3. TELL NO ONE, Coben. Two rereads, one in the Bolitar series and the first (I think) of Coben's standalones. They were both as good as they were the first time around. I'm not going to rate them again because I don't remember what I rated them the first time around. (Probably 9's, though)

4. CALLAGHAN'S LADY, Spider Robinson. This is a really interesting "SF" book. I've never read any of this series, and don't know where I came across this one. But I do know I've had it on my shelf for a long time, and finally grabbed it and tucked into it. It's more like a series of long-ish short stories featuring the same main character and the same setting, which is tied into the Callaghan's Saloon series (which inspired a very busy forum here on Delphi back in the dial-up, text service days). A fast read, and fun. 8

5. FATALLY FLAKY, Diane Mott Davidson. It's back to paperback for this series. As far as entries into the Goldy Bear catering series go, it wasn't the worst, just not good enough to make me want to get the next one in hardcover. In this one, Goldy is catering a wedding, which is turning out to be a nightmare. Meanwhile, there are a couple of murders that occur, and Goldy's godfather, an old fellow named Jack Carmichael, ends up dead, too. (He's apparently a very important person in Goldy's life, but I don't recall ever hearing his name mentioned in any other entries in the series.) It had it's moments, but in general, there's too much that doesn't work well enough for me. 7

6. CEMETARY DANCE, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. Agent Pendergast is back, along with Lieutenant D'Agosta and other familiar characters, to battle what appear to be a zombie murderer. The twist is that the victim is journalist Bill Smithback, who has been a main character in many of these books. I liked this one quite a bit, though I thought it jumped around a bit too much in the early parts to get a good flow going. (I kept being able to put it down for extended periods, which is unusual for me and books in this series.) I have read that others had trouble with the fact that Pendergast isn't his usual "superman" self, but I had no issues at all with his slightly more human facade. 8

7. THE WHEEL OF DARKNESS, Preston and Child. Pendergast takes his ward to China to see if the Buddhist monks who presumably trained him would take her on as a student of their disciplines. He is asked to find an artifact that was stolen from the monastery, and it leads him to a maiden voyage on the Brittania, an ocean liner with shades of the Titanic in its hype and excesses. I read this one out of order, not realizing that I had missed it when I read Cemetary Dance, but that didn't affect my enjoyment of it. I liked it quite a bit, even more than CD. There are great characters, the pacing seemed better than CD and it did have that "can't put it down" quality for me. 8.5

8. THE GIRL WITH THE LONG GREEN HEART, Lawrence Block. A really fun con game story reprinted on the Hard Case imprint, Johnny Hayden is done with being on the wrong side of the law, having just served a stint in the big house and having really not enjoyed it. But he has a dream of owning his own roadhouse, and he'll never get the money to do it on his own. So when an old acquaintance shows up and wants him to help run a long con, he decided to take the chance in order to get enough to buy that place he's got his eye on. But there's a woman involved in the con, and Johnny's got a weakness for dames. It's a very good story, old style crime fiction with a nice edge, and with Block's customary excellence in storytelling and dialogue. It might be a bit of a letdown at the end, but only a bit...and it fits the tale. A fast read. 8.5

9. THE RESORT, Bentley Little. A horror novel that's been sitting on my stack for a long time. I've never read anything by this author, but this was pretty good. A family books five nights in a desert resort near Tuscon in the offseason, the dad wanting to avoid his class reunion and have an excuse for doing so. But something WAY off on this resort (called the Reata), and odd things start occurring almost from the start. This was a quick read, and I had a hard time putting it down. I wanted to know what was going on with this place. Truly scary at times. 8

That's it, through June 8th. I picked up a paperback by Jim Butcher, another author I've heard a lot about but never read. It's an urban fantasy set in Chicago featuring a wizard named Harry Dresden. So far so good.



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