Tag: Thriller

Book Critic, Book Review, Books, Literary Criticism, Reading

Review: Nerve by Dick Francis

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Steeplechase is an equestrian sport that takes a very special kind of athlete. Jockeys have to be a little crazy, fearless, and sort of adrenaline junkies to enter into the sport.

Rob Finn has that special combination of crazy and fearless….all he cares about is racing and winning. Literally nothing else matters to him. Finn is working his way up in the steeplechase world and basically has nerves of steel but he is always picked to ride second rate horses.

Then the day comes where he is in the right place at the right time, a fellow jockey takes a spill and Finn is hired to ride in his place. But then Finn too takes a spill, and after that he is always on slow horses so many start to wonder if he has lost his nerve.

Finn starts to wonder if he is the target of a plot to undermine his career. Finn sets out to clear not just his own reputation but the reputation of his fellow jockeys. This book immediately hooks the reader from the first paragraph, where a jockey shoots himself in front of Finn. From that moment on, the race is literally on to find out who is sabotaging Finn’s races and why.

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Book Critic, Book Review, Books, Literary Criticism, Reading

Review: The Gates of Evangeline by Hester Young

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If you like Southern Gothic novels and ghost stories then this is the perfect novel to curl up with on a chilly fall night!

Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Cates is a recently bereaved mother whose child died of a brain aneurysm. Not to mention her husband left her for another woman. Charlie begins experiencing very vivid dreams about children, which makes sense based on the tragedy she has gone through. But she soon realizes the dreams are something more, they are messages and warnings that will help Charlie and the children she sees, if only she can make sense of them.

After a little boy in a boat appears in Charlie’s dreams asking for her help, Charlie finds herself entangled in a thirty-year-old missing-child case that has never ceased to haunt Louisiana’s prestigious Deveau family. When her old boss asks her to write a book about a 30 year old case involving a missing boy from a prominent Louisiana family, and she has a dream that she believes is tied to it.

Armed with an invitation to Evangeline, the family’s sprawling estate, Charlie heads south, where new friendships and an unlikely romance bring healing. But as she uncovers long-buried secrets of love, money, betrayal, and murder, the facts begin to implicate those she most wants to trust—and her visions reveal an evil closer than she could’ve imagined.

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Book Critic, Book Review, Books, Literary Criticism, Reading

Review: Decompression by Juli Zeh

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German attorney Sven Fiedler and his girlfriend, Antje, move to the Cayman Islands, where he hopes to escape a culture of materialism. On the Cayman Islands, Sven hopes things will be simpler and more relaxing….less of a rat race, which is exactly what Sven finds. Basically, life couldn’t be better for Sven and Antje.

Sven and Antje open up a diving business and Sven’s approach was simple: take the mechanics of diving seriously, instruct his clients clearly, and stay out of their personal business as best he can. Life is going well for them….until two German tourists–Jola von der Pahlen, a daytime soap star on the verge of cinematic success, and Theo Hast, a stalled novelist–engage Sven for a high-priced, intensive two-week diving experience. The tourists will stay with Sven and Antje in their guest house….but things soon become a little….tense.

Sven is struck by Jola’s beauty, her evident wealth, and her apparently volatile relationship with the much older Theo. Theo quickly leaps to the conclusion that Sven and Jola are having an affair, but, oddly, he seems to facilitate it rather than trying to intervene. Antje, looking on, grows increasingly wary of these particular clients.

A game of delusion, temptation, and manipulation plays out, pointing toward a violent end. But a quiet one, down in the underwater world beneath the waves.

This book was a bit of a chance read for me. I like psychological thrillers but this one just didn’t up and grab me right away as a ‘must read’ for me. But I was between books and looking for something just different….and this sounded like a good option. German writer, modern psychological thriller, about diving, alternating POVs, set in the tropics……sounds about as far from my normal reading as I can get.

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Books, Reading

Special Feature: THE DISTANCE by Helen Giltrow

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A dark, ultra-contemporary, and relentlessly paced debut thriller about a London society woman trying to put her secret criminal past behind her, and the hit man who comes to her with an impossible job she can’t refuse.

Charlotte Alton is an elegant socialite. But behind the locked doors of her sleek, high-security apartment in London’s Docklands, she becomes Karla. Karla’s business is information. Specifically, making it disappear. She’s the unseen figure who, for a commanding price, will cover a criminal’s tracks. A perfectionist, she’s only made one slip in her career—several years ago she revealed her face to a man named Simon Johanssen, an ex-special forces sniper turned killer-for-hire.

After a mob hit went horrifically wrong, Johanssen needed to disappear, and Karla helped him. He became a regular client, and then, one day, she stepped out of the shadows for reasons unclear to even herself. Now, after a long absence, Johanssen has resurfaced with a job, and he needs Karla’s help again. The job is to take out an inmate—a woman—inside an experimental prison colony. But there’s no record the target ever existed. That’s not the only problem: the criminal boss from whom Johanssen has been hiding is incarcerated there. That doesn’t stop him. It’s Karla’s job to get him out alive, and to do that she must uncover the truth.

Who is this woman? Who wants her dead? Is the job a trap for Johanssen or for her? But every door she opens is a false one, and she’s getting desperate to protect a man—a killer—to whom she’s inexplicably drawn. Written in stylish, sophisticated prose, The Distance is a tense and satisfying debut in which every character, both criminal and law-abiding, wears two faces, and everyone is playing a double game.

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Interview/Special Feature: DEAR DAUGHTER by Elizabeth Little

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LA IT girl Janie Jenkins has it all. The looks, the brains, the connections. The criminal record.

Ten years ago, in a trial that transfixed America, Janie was convicted of murdering her mother. Now she’s been released on a technicality she’s determined to unravel the mystery of her mother’s last words, words that send her to a tiny town in the very back of beyond. But with the whole of America’s media on her tail, convinced she’s literally got away with murder, she has to do everything she can to throw her pursuers off the scent.

She knows she really didn’t like her mother. Could she have killed her?

To celebrate the upcoming release of this thrilling mystery, I am spotlighting an interview with Elizabeth Little! Without further ado please welcome Elizabeth Little to The Lit Bitch!

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