Category Archives: Thriller

I Am Legend - Richard Matheson

I Am LegendThis short novel will often show up on the list of top books, and for good reason. I Am Legend is a true classic of both Science Fiction and Horror. This was filmed in 1971 as The Omega Man (starring the late Charlton Heston) and has been recently remade as I Am Legend starring Will Smith (in 2007). It is a very simple tale, but in no way superficial.

The story focuses on Robert Neville, apparently the last human being left on Earth, following a plague that turned everyone into a vampire. Neville is immune. He dedicates his days to hunting down the vampires in their lairs and killing them with wooden stakes while they sleep. In between he scours the radio waves for other survivors and fortifies his house. As well, he looks for the reason why he was spared and looks for a cure. Unfortunately for him and his mental well being, these vampires were his friends, family and neighbours. Ultimately he, and we as the reader, come to a startling realisation about reality and perception.

In these days where a novel is 500-600 pages long, it is easy to forget that it’s possible to create a story - a world - in a shorter book. Short stories and novelettes appear to be dying out somewhat and I find that a real shame. I believe that shorter novels can pack a greater punch simply because we don’t have enough time to become comfortable within the story. We are pulled along at the same pace as the protagonist and come to the same conclusions. Could this have been a better book if it were longer? No, I don’t think so. A longer book would have filled out the state of the planet, Neville’s mental state and sundry other things far better; but a longer book would have taken the immediacy away from the story and pulled in other characters necessitating a bunch of unnecessary subplots.

This is a book you can read in one sitting at just 160 pages long (depending on your edition, of course) it needn’t take you away from your real life for too long. The realisation of the situation will hit you just as hard.

Nothing To Lose - Lee Child

The twelfth and latest of the Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child. As usual, this tale finds Jack dragged into another situation where life and death are on the line and the bad guys are trying to keep him away from the truth.

Jack finds himself between two remote towns in Colorado: Hope and Despair. Despair being on his route he heads in to town to grab a bite to eat and to find a place to stay for the night. Instead, he is arrested, charged with vagrancy and deposited on the town border with instructions to go back to Hope. Intrigued and angry he decides to investigate and finds a lot that doesn’t add up - a town that is entirely owned by one man, a populace who seem happy to be owned and will fight to keep it that way and young women arriving secretly and leaving secretly looking for their men. In the end he will be forced to make hard decisions and risk it all.

Pretty much par for the course in any of these novels, Reacher is always one man against the machine. He is a likeable character, pretty near invulnerable, just smart enough to be one of us and just dumb enough to not be an out and out genius. The story has plenty of action and plenty of mystery to make it engaging and fun to read. I suppose.

So what went wrong? Reading the novel felt like a bit of a struggle to me. In places it almost seemed like it wasn’t part of the loose series. There isn’t any one thing I could put my finger on: there are lots of points in the story where Reacher is asked to take a look at himself and see what others see - on older man, scruffy, weather beaten with no home or belongings. While Child put the same energy into the fight scenes, Reacher seemed tired. Possibly, and I may be reading too much into it, Child is wearying of the character - maybe the author needs to take a break and/or write about a new character.

This isn’t enough to turn me off the series, overall they are just far too much fun to read. Reacher is the approachable loner, the maverick who cares about everybody if he meets them for more than a few minutes. If you are new to the series, don’t read this first - it deals with bigger events than those in the towns and these don’t always translate well to thsi character - pick up one of the earlier novels and start from there.

Ask The Parrot - Richard Stark

Richard Stark is one of the pen names used by the master story teller Donald E Westlake. It should be noted that Westlake is often named as the favourite crime author of the top crime authors - high praise indeed.

This novel begins at the end of the 2004 Parker novel “Nobody Runs Forever”. Parker is on the run after a botched bank robbery and the police are closing in. He is met by one of the locals who needs Parker’s help with a robbery. Since Parker’s need for a hideout and the local’s need for help with his robbery coincide, Parker agrees.

Parker is a bad man. He is a professional thief, sometimes violent and prepared to kill as a last resort. We are not given a picture of an angel with a dirty face, we are told over and over that this is a bad man. And yet, he is a likable character. Parker is always on the run from a botched robbery or is being forced into a bungled robbery or is taking revenge on someone for something to do with a robbery.

As we have come to expect from this author, this a very fast moving, well plotted story. There are no sub-plots to divert us from the main story and, as such, this means that we can stay with Parker until the job is done.

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High Profile - Robert B Parker

This is another very strong book from Robert B Parker - the sixth in the Jesse Stone series. Here we see a high profile murder (hence the title) occur in Paradise and the continuation of the romance of Stone and Sunny Randall - herself the main title of her own series. As one would expect from this series and from Parker in general, we have a lot of wisecracks, some great action sequences and the whole thing wrapped up in the end.

This book is, like all of Parker’s other novels, very fast moving and not too superficial. Parker has three main characters in his books - Spenser, Sunny Randall and Jesse Stone - and they are all either in therapy or dating a therapist. In fact, aside from all these characters being wisecracking, fast shooting, hard punching sensitive souls, therapy is the underlying theme between them all. Admittedly, it is a good way to move the plot along, but I am sure there are others that could be used. Older novels would have utilised the street snitch a la Johnny in Police Squad! This appears to be the Twenty First century version of that.

That aside, this is another tightly plotted murder story with a lot of human interest. The characters involved all develop further and they will continue on with this in the next books of their own series. Notably that fact that Jess and Sunny actually first got together in Blue Screen, the fifth Sunny Randall novel.

Stone is a pragmatic, quiet, recovering alcoholic who is the police chief in the supposedly quiet town of Paradise. Although, there have been several murders there now so I don’t think the town can still be called quiet!

read this if you like detective novels with a touch of humour and humanity in them.

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Bad Luck and Trouble - Lee Child

Number 11 and the latest in the Jack Reacher series, this book takes a small departure from the norm and puts Reacher at the head of his old Special Investigations Unit again, when they reform to investigate the deaths of part of their old team.

In some ways, this story is a natural progression in the series - Reacher is meeting up with his old friends and has seen that they have all settled down and joined the rest of the world with mortgages, pensions, families and the like. Of the team, he is the only one who has not settled down, the only one with no fixed address. He realises that he is older and not the man he used to be. But that, in my opinion, is where the book falls down. In the previous ten books we have a picture of Reacher as invincible and absolutely confident in his abilities. He fears no one and is sure that he will prevail. And in this book we have Reacher admitting that he’s slower and less than he was.

Additionally, Reacher is part of a team in this book - not just leading it, but an equal part. This is not the Reacher we have grown to know. Our Reacher is a loner, a maverick, a leader, an outsider. This Reacher is democratic and allows himself to be lead. He’s also unsure of himself, which is understandable since he’s catching up with friends who appear to have more than he does. But it’s just not right. We’re used to Reacher being Batman without the uniform, not this, this, mortal.

This one was a lot slower to get started than the previous novels and, as mentioned above, was a fair bit different than the rest of the series. Read it if you, like me, are a fan and want to know what else happens to Reacher, but don’t use it as a way into the series.

Additionally, my copy had a Reacher short story: James Penney’s New Identity at the back of it. Well told short story, but not canon. Lee Child has made it very clear that the one country Reacher has never really visited or worked in is the Unite States. And yet here we have a short story with Reacher working in and travelling around the US. It may seem like nit-picking, but this is the sort of thing you notice.

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The Watchman - Robert Crais

In this book, the author continues the exploration of his mysterious character Joe Pike which began in earnest in the book LA Requiem (though it could be said that the exploration has been there in all the books). For the uninitiated, this is the first Joe Pike novel - Pike normally playing second string to the author’s main character Elvis Cole.

Joe Pike is an enigmatic character, while being a classic tarnished knight. He had an abusive childhood, is an ex-Marine, is a martial arts expert, is an ex-policeman and is a sometime mercenary. He is also very intelligent and capable of extreme gentleness and compassion. He is, on the surface, a similar character to Win in the Myron Bolitar Stories (Harlan Coben) or Bubba in the Gennaro/Kenzie stories (Dennis Lehane). He is there to move the story along, to take the actions our detective cannot/will not take - he’s the big guns brought out for extreme circumstances.

The Elvis Cole novels are known for their characterisations and the humour the author can bring to the story. he continues this in this novel. Pike is asked to bodyguard a spoiled rich girl and, as one would expect, things take a rapid turn for the worst. In this novel the plot almost takes second place to the characterisations and to the gradual drawing out of Joe’s backstory and that of Larkin Barkley.

Reading any Robert Crais novel is a pleasure and reading this one especially so. Joe Pike, already solid in the minds of the fans, is further fleshed out in this novel. The Daily Mirror said “Read this, then read all his others” and I have to agree. Unless you already have all the others in which case I say read them in order and stop jumping to the end.

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Dead Simple - Peter James

I enjoy a good mystery/thriller story and Peter James does not disappoint. This is the first in a new series by Peter James (I would have to say that the link is the word “Dead” since his second one is called “Looking Good Dead“) and his characters are, in many ways, a breath of fresh air.

The lead detective, DI Roy Grace is all too human. This is an experienced detective who is competent at his work - with flashes of brilliance - and knows how to see when someone lies. And this is something I may use myself. When we lie, we tend to look in the direction of our creative mind. When we tell the truth, we look in the opposite direction. Early on in interviews Grace will ask “What did you have for lunch?” and see which way the suspect looks. From then on he is aware that when the suspect (or witness) is lying, they will look the other way. This is a genius quirk, in my opinion, it’s something we can all visualise and try out. Have fun, won’t you :)

Of course, no detective can be whole without some tragedy in their life - Grace’s is that his wife disappeared from the face of the earth some years previously and he can’t let her go even though it’s likely that she’s dead. The author gives us a real sense that the couple were indeed happy and that this blights Grace’s life horribly. We care. Well, I do.

The story is very simple but filled with the twists that we want - a man has a prank played on him at his stag do. He is buried in a coffin and told his friends will return in a couple of hours. Unfortunately, his friends are all killed in a road accident. Can the police find the missing man before it’s too late? Very simple tale, expertly told. I recommend this book to fans of the genre.

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