Last Book That You Read- Fiction

ladies and gentlemen, it looks like we have our newest Preston & Child novel scheduled for release this year:

Name: White Fire
Release Date: November 12, 2013
Synopsis: Corrie Swanson sets out to solve a long-forgotten mystery. In 1876, in a remote mining camp called Roaring Fork in the Colorado Rockies, several miners were killed in devastating grizzly bear attacks. Now the town has become an exclusive ski resort and its historic cemetery has been dug up to make way for development. Corrie has arranged to examine the remains of the dead miners. But in doing so she makes a shocking discovery that threatens the resort's very existence. The town's leaders, trying to stop her from exposing their community's dark and bloody past, arrest and jail her.

Special Agent Pendergast of the FBI arrives to help--just as a series of brutal arson attacks on multimillion dollar homes terrify the town and drive away tourists. Drawn irresistibly into the investigation, Pendergast discovers an unlikely secret in Roaring Fork's past, connecting the resort to a chance meeting between Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde. With the town under siege, and Corrie's life in desperate danger, Pendergast must solve the riddle of the past... before the town of the present goes up in flames.

I like Corrie Swanson. She figured originally in Still Life with Crows.
Love the ending of the last book, Two Graves. As the butler departed Pendergast and his two young proteges, sitting contentedly together in the mansion reading room, he remarked that they looked like a family - even if they reminded more of the Adams family.

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

I wonder if Preston and Child even knew that Fever Dream would start a trilogy, because practically every loose end was tied up and there was no reason to believe that Helen was alive until halfway through Cold Vengeance, so the end result felt a bit contrived, like they were trying to loosen ends that had already been tied off.

I think you are right here. I didn't smell a trilogy coming. Fever Dream did seem nicely tied up when it was done.
Best Pendergast book IMO, as Grav seems to have discovered is Cabinet of Curiosities. It's the creepiest and the book that really launched Pendergast as their main go-to character.

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Update March 29, 2013: I realized I accidentally posted something about the book Predators in the Fiction section. The book is Non-Fiction, so I'm deleting this and reposting in the appropriate forum. My apologies for my sloppiness.

Also, as for the comment that my post was merely an ad for my blog pretending to be a book review...

1. I figured some people might not want to read a lengthy post about predators and child molesters on a James Bond forum, so I included a link to the relevant post on my blog.

2. Personally, I like it when people post links to topics they address in depth on their blogs. It keeps the forums from getting clogged with excess verbiage while giving readers the option of pursuing the link or not.

x

Someone had iron filings in his cornflakes this morning.

Erica Ambler wrote:

That's an ad for your blog masquerading as a book review. Lot of that going on here these days. (90% of Silhouetteman's posts.)

That's what happens when you have an absentee landlord and moderators who have no idea of their function. They just like the uniform.

not nearly enough buttons on mine.

Time to circle the wagons.

I just started re-reading A.J. Quinnell's Man on Fire.

This book is probably best known as the inspiration for two films: The first made in 1987 starring Scott Glenn, the second in 2004 with Denzel Washington. Alas, I haven’t seen the Glenn version, but I did enjoy the latter film, even if I thought the last third or so had some serious story flaws.

Unlike the 2004 movie, the 1981 novel takes place in Italy and around the Mediterranean. One thing in particular I liked about the book is how it describes the hero, Marcus Creasy, getting back into shape after being seriously wounded in a gunfight. He doesn’t do anything fancy. Creasy instead retreats to a small island of Gozo in Malta, where he spends his time going on long ocean swims and helping villagers with projects such as building stone walls out of heavy rocks.

Incidentally, Man on Fire is the first of a series featuring the character of Marcus Creasy. I can’t comment on the rest of the books as I haven’t read them, though at some point I will. Also, the book is darker and more intense than the Denzel Washington film.

Haven't seen the 80s version, but I found the 2004 Man On Fire overlong and dull for something basically marketed as an action-thriller.

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Santa wrote:

Someone had iron filings in his cornflakes this morning.

Such a pity it wasn't lead. We could have had a re-enactment of The Last Supper.

Why is promoting a blog a big issue? There are many other forums where members add a signature that links to a blog, or othe rpersonal webspace, is it really a big deal?

This place has far too few posting members and we don't need to step on toes needlessly.

Anyone who steps on mine will get my whole foot up your ass.

Thank you for your kind support, Mrs Aural Sects. You are quite a lady, as John Gardner wrote of Lavendar Peacock.

SM (great initials by the way) your blog is 007 releated and very well written and deserves to be read by the folks who like to know more about Ian Fleming & other writers.

When we are talking about the other referal to a blog I was kind of annoyed as well as it was NO review of a book that stirred my interest but a personal story on some blog by the writer and that smelled of something else I agree. Had he only given us the review of the book.

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SHIBUMI by Trevanian.

A re-read. I'm enjoying it immensely more the second time around.

Been meaning to give SHIBUMI a re-read myself.

x

Lord of the Flies, Golding

Like most books I seemed to have visited after watching the movie and to be honest the book still was all that and more. Poor Piggy, we knew you well.

Das Boot/The Boat Lothar Gunther Buccheim

remains a fantastic book, at times harrowing or at least if you let yourself get drawn in. The claustrophobic world, the boredom, the action when it happens and the human face to an enemy beneath the waves.
Wasn't until this latest reading that I noticed how in some quarters the film captured the book. The Second Lieutenant is on film as he is in the book (the red hair, the very distinctive nasal laugh), the various expressions and tones that the men use (Prochnow's rant against Goring that culminates with his mocking of the Nazi First Lieutenant by asking him to play "Tipperary").
Though seems I have a shorter version., Abridged if you will.

Not a book but a four-act play: Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw.

Shaw's description of John Tanner bares a strange resemblance to me.

"A sensitive, susceptible, exaggerative, earnest man: a megalomaniac, who would be lost without a sense of humor."

On the subject of Preston & Child next book, the following:

To our fantastic readers:

As those of you who follow our Facebook page may have noticed, we now have an amazing cover for our next novel, WHITE FIRE, which will be published 11/12/13. Some at our publishing house are saying it is the best Pendergast book ever. You, the reader, will be the judge of that, but for now we thought that we’d let Linc give you a brief look at how the book came into being.

“One evening, about eighteen months ago, I was in my library, leafing idly through a series of books on nineteenth-century England. In one of them, I was astounded to learn that Oscar Wilde had dined with Arthur Conan Doyle in a London hotel in 1889. It seemed remarkable—almost too good to be true—that the flower of English decadence had supped with the author of the immortal Sherlock Holmes. I couldn’t imagine two more disparate people. And yet not long after that meeting, Wilde published The Picture of Dorian Gray. And Doyle’s nascent Holmes stories saw the detective morphing into a keener, cooler, more ineffable fellow—with a certain addiction. Could these two have possibly influenced each other’s writing?

“I immediately grabbed the phone to call Doug. He researched the fateful meeting and discovered that the answer to my question was yes. He told me that some scholars believe Wilde, a fan of Sherlock Holmes, may have made suggestions to Doyle about how to sharpen the detective's character--and Doyle for his part may have given Wilde crucial information which he used to spectacular effect in Dorian Gray.

"This was pure gold. We knew there had to be a Pendergast story in here somewhere. We began brainstorming—and an extraordinary idea for a novel came to us. We never looked back.”

On the basis of that, Linc immediately wrote the first chapter of what would prove to be our next novel. The chapter takes place in 1889. It is Linc’s reconstruction of what Wilde and Doyle talked about during that momentous London dinner. Now, we are delighted to share with you—our special newsletter subscribers—the conclusion to that chapter of WHITE FIRE. The chapter following will bring the reader to the present day—and to Pendergast’s greatest mystery yet.



…Wilde looked at Doyle with something like amusement. “Did you think that I do not recognize the face of horror when I stare into it? I was once told a story so dreadful, so distressing in its particulars and the extent of its evil, that now I truly believe nothing I hear could ever frighten me again.”

“How interesting,” Doyle replied a little absently.

Wilde regarded him, a small smile forming on his large, pale features. “Would you care to hear it? It is not for the faint of heart.”

The way Wilde phrased this, it sounded like a challenge. “By all means.”

“It was told to me during my lecture tour of America a few years back.” Wilde paused, wetting his thick, red lips with a delicate sip of wine. “Here, lean in a little closer, that’s a good fellow, and I’ll tell it you exactly as it was told to me…”

Ten minutes later, a diner at the restaurant in the Langham Hotel would have been surprised to note—amid the susurrus of genteel conversation and the tinkle of cutlery—a man in the dress of a country doctor by the name of Doyle abruptly rise from his table, very pale. Knocking over his chair in his agitation, one hand to his forehead, the young man staggered from the room, nearly upsetting a waiter’s tray of delicacies. And as he vanished in the direction of the gentlemen’s toilet area, his face displayed a perfect expression of revulsion and horror.


More to come! Until next time, be well, take care, and as always thank you so much for your continued interest and support.

All best,

Doug & Linc

HANNIBAL by Thomas Harris. Excellent (especially during the fact-packed and atmospheric Florence chapters). I wonder whether Harris will pen another Lecter novel. I suspect not - as HANNIBAL would seem to wrap things up pretty definitively - but I hope so.