A surgeon wakes up in the hospital, an apparent victim of a home invasion that left him shot in the head, his wife dead, and his infant daughter missing.
What I Liked
There were a fair number of possible red herrings running around in the story, and everybody gets suspected of something. His lawyer friend, his dead wife, his sister, an ex-girlfriend, a scummy adoption lawyer, even the police investigating the crime…all of them are a little bit off.
What I Didn’t Like
There are a couple of scenes that are completely over the top, and the ending is ridiculous. All of the work to find his daughter, with lives at risk all the way along and him accused of murder, and someone he knows knew the truth all along. But he’s semi-forgiving. Ridiculous.
The Bottom Line
Over-the-top plotting in places, ridiculous relationships, and absurd ending.
A professor is killed, and a young student in love with him confesses to the murder. But there are lots of other more likely suspects.
What I Liked
Eustis won the 1947 Edgar Award for Best First Novel, and it is easy to see why it won. The sense of place is strong, and a strong foreboding all the way through the novel adds some suspense. There is more than a hint of psychological darkness lurking in the shadows.
What I Didn’t Like
There are some parts that just don’t hold up. The understanding of mental health disorders was not very rich, and the interactions of the two protagonists are misogynistic to read (he continually calls her fatty and comments when she drinks a beer that there too many calories). There’s also an underlying current that women are nothing without a man. Hard to read in 2019, even as historical. The red herrings are clear by midway through the novel, and the solution / foreshadowing is obvious, leaving the last 40% of the novel just “get to it, already”.
Jack Reacher is still in the military and gets transferred out of Panama just before New Year’s Eve, 1989. The Berlin Wall is falling, Panama is heating up with Noriega, and Reacher is watching grass grow at his new post, until a General drops dead at a seedy motel.
What I Liked
The story gives more of Reacher’s back story, and it is interesting to see the “man alone” working within a command structure with others. And it is an interesting premise — what do you do in the military when the future looks like you’re about to become obsolete? The supporting characters were good, and it was nice to see Reacher with his brother and mother. At the end, there is a twist about an error Reacher makes early on that comes back to bite him, and it is a great element to keep. The aftermath is kind of abrupt, with who went where and what happened next, but hard to avoid in a “flashback” style story.
What I Didn’t Like
The premise for the story is a little far-fetched, but when they get to the final reveal, the real specific motive is ridiculous as the people involved would never have done what they did, at least not on paper, and not openly. Reacher stumbles around in the dark long past where certain lines of enquiry should have been obvious, particularly for the identity of a specific witness. And the killer.
Elle is an old-fashioned cat burglar with updated methods to tell her when houses with valuables are likely to be sitting empty. And she happily liberates them, feeling no remorse because the people are rich and she mainly takes things that are insured. Cash, jewels, guns. Which is all fun and games until she walks into the master bedroom at an empty house and finds three dead people sharing a bed after sharing each other.
What I Liked
The initial premise is strong, and watching her case, enter and rob houses is exciting. The initial twist is that the murders were accidentally recorded on a nearby camera, and Elle has to steal it to wipe the memory of her entrance. Her sense of ethics requires her to edit the footage to remove herself and then return the camera before the police find the bodies. But somehow the killers are looking for her, they know she was there and maybe saw too much.
What I Didn’t Like
Elle is supposed to be young, hip, and in the criminal underworld…and then spends more than half the book thinking the rough crowd in suits following her are probably cops, even after it is clear there is only one group looking for her, not two, and somebody killed her friend and the friend’s boyfriend. Everything about them screams mercenaries / ex-military even down to their office location, but nope, she keeps thinking they might be cops. Right up until she sees them shoot two people. A little slow on the uptake. In the middle of the “case”, a hit man comes after her, but rather than kill her as he is supposed to do, he plays with her for days trying to get her alone. Which he could have done by force ANY day and moved on. Whatever. She then turns into super sleuth to ferret out who they are, document all the evidence she’ll need to turn over to the police (i.e., days of surveillance and note-taking). At the end, the entire motive for everything is revealed in page after page of exposition, just dumped on the page by the bad guy which she conveniently records. And then it ends with only the barest of explanations of what happens to people, and her looking for work after getting out of the burglary game. Like maybe being a private investigator in a sequel, perhaps? While dating a new boyfriend she didn’t even really like.
A man receives a photograph in the mail and starts having weird dreams and compulsions to go to the spot in the photo, even though he has never been there.
What I Liked
The story has some interesting elements — a mysterious past dealing with hypnosis, suggestion, regression, etc. Equally, he’s a man trying to “recover” his life a bit, as his daughter starts to push back wanting to know more about her absent mother. Finally, there are rumours of “gold in them there hills”, stories of old wars, native tribes, miners, and tunnels. He is searching for a treasure that he feels compelled to find, but he doesn’t know why.
What I Didn’t Like
There are hints in a few places that are partly about memory, or perhaps even past lives, and as such, it seems like they’re about to reveal that he’s the reincarnated version of someone. I probably would have thrown the book across the room for the cheesiness if it had, but there are other parts that are almost as bad — a finale with a series of weird action scenes that don’t fit the characters, interactions with individuals that should be more compelling and urgent yet instead come off as “wait and see”, and false and inaccurate tensions with snow storms.
The Bottom Line
Love John Dunning’s prose, but not as good as his book mysteries.
