Tag: mystery

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Review

“Quantum”

Patricia Cornwell

This was a slow burn of a book; I nearly gave up on it multiple times at the beginning, but I wound up totally caught up in it, and very glad I’d stuck through. The writing style takes a lot of getting used to—it feels very stream-of-consciousness, but in a specifically neuroatypical way. Neuroatypical, and very stressed out, which fits very well with the actual events in the book. Especially given, as I realized something like 230 pages in, the entire contents of the book, a whole lot of events, took place in a single day. I, too, would be feeling fragmented and jittery if my day started with a morning presentation to an audience that included a surprise four-star general and ended after midnight with being part of Mission Control for a particularly dangerous spacewalk!

There’s also the core aspect of crime thriller to the book, and I also found that quite engaging once it actually started up. This book has my favorite bit of foreshadowing I’ve seen in quite a while, and I spent a large amount of my reading time repeating that one line to myself, waiting for the protagonist to figure it out. Because, like I said, she’s having a very long day; I am comfortably at home, doing some leisurely reading, but she is cramming two weeks’ worth of events into one 30-hour day. It makes sense that she’d miss it.1 It was so very satisfying to see that one line come back to help things click together.

My only complaint with this book is that it feels like it ended too early. There’s a sequel, of course, which I suspect I’m going to pick up at some point, but the amount of threads remaining doesn’t feel quite right for that. I don’t feel enough closure at the end of this book for it to be complete, but I also don’t feel enough open questions that I think there’s room for an entire second book. It’s the “cliffhanger at the end of the season” thing, really, it feels contrived to get you to come back next time. The story itself doesn’t want another book, it just wants another 100 pages.

Still, that’s not a terrible complaint to have, and I did very much enjoy the read. The setting is cool, the use of flashbacks—and, eventually, flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks—is a really interesting way to develop the backstory, and all the characters feel like real people with real problems. It was a good read, check it out.2

  1. Here’s the spoiler: the line is “playing musical cars today, ma’am?” It registers as a throwaway line from a background character who is particularly an asshole, and so with all that context it, again, makes perfect sense that the protagonist misses it. But oh, the payoff… ↩
  2. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
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Review

“The Dark Horse”

Craig Johnson

I’ve never been a big fan of westerns – nothing against them, really, just never got into the genre. Closest I’ve been is Westworld, which means it took a more-than-healthy dose of science fiction added on to catch my eye.

In this case, there was no such science fiction addition; knowing as little about the genre as I actually do, I suppose it’s possible that making it a mystery counts as some amount of genre crossover?

I did quite enjoy it, though. Looking at the cover now, I see that this is the fifth book in the series, but for most of the book I didn’t feel like I was missing out on anything by having skipped the first four. There’s a few references to past events here and there, and likely I would’ve known many of the characters a bit better, but Johnson did a good job of covering who everyone is as the book went that I didn’t feel left behind.

It was actually a pretty fun mystery to read, as well—having just come off a “my brain is full of COVID” Scooby Doo binge, it sure did a better job at keeping me guessing than Scooby manages. I didn’t figure out what was going on in this book until the book told me, but it’s because I wasn’t pulling at all the strings—I feel like if I’d been taking notes on the right things, I would’ve been able to solve the mystery a bit earlier.1

All in all, I had fun reading this! A nice little mystery, the protagonist is surprisingly fun given that he’s trying to be a grumpy old coot most of the time, and it does a good enough job conveying the setting that I feel like I’ve got dust on my skin. Check it out.2

  1. That doesn’t tend to be the case with Scooby-Doo, or at least not the “and Guess Who” iteration, where Velma finds a clue, shares with nobody, and builds the whole case around what we, the audience, never got to see. ↩
  2. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
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Review

“Two Suns at Sunset”

Gene Doucette

I really, truly, had no idea what I was in for with this book. And I absolutely loved it — devoured the whole thing in an evening, and promptly added the sequel to my wish list. I desperately want to know where the whole series is going, because it’s a wonderful mystery.

The setting feels near-feature, and has some things that are very clearly influenced by what’s going on in current events.1 Except for the whole “this isn’t Earth” thing, which combines with some of the linguistics and a few mentions of a distant-past Collapse, to have me think that it’s actually far-future, and we’re looking at a colony that’s building itself back up towards interstellar travel after a galactic-scale human civilization… well, collapsed. Which means that the founding mythology, and some of the hand-wavey end of the world prophecy stuff going on could, in fact, be leading up to some large-scale science fiction things. Hey, look at that, we’ve looped back around to “I desperately want to know where the whole series is going,” how about that.

Sitting on top of this wonderfully rich setting, though, is a very fun police procedural/murder mystery thing, and that is also a delight. A murdered monk, a cynical cop, his new upbeat rookie partner, it’s a hodgepodge of well-worn tropes and new twists, and it works so very, very well.

If any of this sounds interesting, please read the book — I greatly enjoyed it, and hope you will as well.2

  1. There’s a two-page interjection explaining a cryptocurrency that’s Definitely Not Bitcoin. To my knowledge, it’s fairly accurate, and highlights one of the key potential failings of the technology, while leaving out the primary failing of it. That said, this world apparently has nuclear power pretty figured out, which mitigates the energy concerns, so, I’ll allow it. ↩
  2. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
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Review

Colt Coltrane and the Lotus Killer

I’d forgotten how much fun detective novels can be. Who doesn’t like trying to figure out a mystery? It’s a good bit of intellectual fun. And there’s something unique about being the reader – not only do you know what the detective knows, you also know what scenes are important and which ones weren’t. You know the difference between Checkov’s gun and… a regular gun.
Colt Coltrane takes place in an alternate-history setting, with the divergence having taken place sometime during WWII. There’s a brief mention of the fact that the U.S. never actually dropped an atom bomb, despite having the capability, and the Takahashi corporation, formed by someone who managed to escape from Japan to get back to the States, manufactures semi-sentient robots for police and military use. The aesthetic of the book falls somewhere between film noir and Lost in Space. It’s very interesting.
I’m definitely interested in the sequel that apparently exists, because I want to know what’s going on with Petey, and I think there’s plenty of room for expansion on some of the different things that appeared in this. Plus, with some of the stuff that happened with the background characters, it feels almost like the pilot to a TV show – kinda like Odd Thomas, actually.1
So yeah, that’s about all I’ve got to say. A gorgeous alternate-history setting, some fun robotics, and an interesting mystery at the heart of it. I recommend it. Go have a read.

  1. That’s not the best comparison, as Odd Thomas was a solo movie, but it was based on the first book in a series and it really felt like it could’ve made a nice spin-off TV show. ↩