Isabel Allende: The Japanese Lover

Tender, touching and sometimes tearful
Isabel Allende is a superb author whose prose is gentle and sometimes almost poetic which keeps the reader's attention at all times. The Japanese Lover is a good example of her work and will keep you absorbed to the last words.

This is a multigenerational tale of love and torment set over the years from before WWII through to the present. With the advent of extreme anti-Semitism in Poland in 1939, young Alma Belasco is sent away from Poland by her parents to live with her rich uncle and aunt in San Franciso. Her older brother Samuel had already been sent away to England where he joins the RAF as a fighter pilot. Her parents finish up in the Warsaw Ghetto and in a concentration camp and are never found.

Many years later Alma unexpectedly leaves her family to live in an aged-care home. There she meets Irina Bazili, a dedicated young care worker who has her own troubled past after she moved from Moldova to live with her estranged mother and pedophile stepfather in the US. Irina joins with Alma's beloved grandson Seth in a search for some of the secrets of Alma's chequered past. The biggest secret is her tender and continuing secret love for Ichimei Fukuda, the son of the family's Japanese gardener.

Slowly Irina and Seth discover the secrets of Alma's past and her relationships with her husband, lover, and family. The story takes us through tough life of internment camps for Japanese in Utah during the war to Alma's family life, her rise as a successful artist and businesswoman and her cosmopolitan and globe-trotting life after the war.

This is a story of the secret passion of a remarkable woman across a cultural divide. It is also the story of the friends and family who supported her in her efforts to make a memorable and rewarding life.

I commend this book to discerning readers who enjoy good literary fiction and fascinating characters. There are many books about intergenerational secrets - this is one of the better and more satisfying ones.

David Baldacci: The Guilty

Will Robie, the hit man, still has a conscience
This is #4 in David Baldacci's bestselling series about Will Robie, the hit man with a conscience. I had wondered how Baldacci could keep this kind of series going. His answer is to make it personal and go back to Robie's early days.

While a major hit by Robie is successful, the collateral damage of the death of a young boy by the same bullet is too emotional for Robie to take. He is not able to complete his next assignment.

His controller tells him to take a break and get himself together again. At the same time, he tells him that his estranged father has been arrested for murder. Reluctantly Robie goes back to the small Missippi town that he left over 20 years ago to find out what has happened. Robie has to face up to his past and the estranged father who physically and mentally abused him for so many years.

I enjoyed the first half of the book (3.5 stars) as Robie adjusts again to life in the small deep-south town he abandoned a long time ago. Many things have changed. His father is now a Judge, has remarried a beautiful woman around Robie's age and has a 3-year-old son (so he has a stepmother and stepbrother).   He starts to come to grips with the past and tries to work out if he can help his father - the only way to get his father released is to find the actual murderer. But his father is not very enthusiastic about his help.

The second part of the book is basically a third-rate whodunit (2 stars). When his colleague Jessica Reel comes to help him the body count escalates. Robie and Reel discover more murders, blackmail, pedophilia, incest, and consanguinity. Of course along the way they get ambushed and chased by the baddies. The eventual exposure of the murderer was so ridiculous that I actually laughed out loud.

The main saving grace is that at the end Robie stands out as an honorable and caring individual - once again an hit man with a conscience.

Michael Connelly: The Crossing

Bloodhound Bosch at his best
A Harry Bosch book is always worth waiting for and again Michael Connelly has not disappointed. Although Bosch is getting a bit long in the tooth, this one featured Bloodhound Bosch at the top of his form.

Harry Bosch left the LAPD again before they could fire him over a minor infraction and has hired his lawyer half-brother, Mickey Haller to sue the department for his departure. His recent personal relationship with a female journalist has ended, his daughter Maddie has become increasingly remote as she goes through her adolescent years and prepares for college, and his days are just filled with plans to restore an old Harley-Davidson motorbike.

Then Mickey turns Bosch's world upside down by asking him to work on one of his cases where he is convinced that a person he is defending in a murder case is innocent and has been set up. This would mean "crossing" the line and working for the defence and not the prosecution - a fundamental change to the way that Bosch has lived during his long career. However, soon Bosch finds that working the change is really no different because in both cases he is still trying to uncover the real truth.

Bosch starts working the Murder Book supplied to the defense during Discovery - "All the answers are in the Murder Book...we just don't see them." Soon Bosch starts to see some things that the investigators missed which lead him to inadequate testing and possible evidence that was overlooked and uncovers a complex plot of blackmail, murder, more murders and corruption. His task is made harder because he no longer a cop.

While Mickey Haller features in this book it really is only a cameo role with Bosch calling the shots. They have very different aims; Haller wants to get the accused man off, and Bosch wants to find the truth.

Although this is around #16 in the Harry Bosch series the story is still fresh and challenging, showing that Michael Connelly is still the very best writer of US police procedurals. This was very much a story about Bosch himself and his principles. I would have liked to have a bit more of a back-story about Bosch's personal life (more about Maddy and possible future personal relationships) but that may have to wait for the next book.

Melissa F Miller: Informed Consent

Twins and a twin storyline
This is the first Sasha MacIndless story since the birth of her twins, Finn and Fiona. She has just started work again two months after the birth leaving Leo as househusband caring for the twins. Fortunately, his job isn't demanding at the moment. He is great around the house and delivers the twins to Sasha's office at feeding time.

Sasha finds herself involved in a pretty unbelievable story where a medical researcher trying to find a cure for dementia is harvesting brain tissue from people in her testing program when they die without their "informed consent". The researcher is involved with a shady and dangerous equity capital group that are funding her research.

For years, Leo has been looking for his Vietnamese father who he has never met. One day, out of the blue, a messenger calls telling him that there is a man in Maine who has information about his father. When Leo meets him he is faced with one of the most difficult personal decisions he has ever had to make. The conclusion was emotional and unexpected.

I felt that this book was lacking some of the easy going sparkles of Sasha's previous adventures. Maybe the sparkles will come back when the twins are toddlers - but then Leo may be looking after more babies....

Catherine Coulter: Nemesis

Disappointing mixed up thriller
This book starts with a bang but goes astray from then on.  This is an "FBI Thriller" featuring agents Dillon Savich and Lacey Sherlock.They are married and Savich is Sherlock's boss.

This time, they are not working together as Sherlock gets personally involved in a preventing a terrorist attack at JFK Airport when she is on her way back to DC after a conference. Sherlock remains on the case which gets nasty and builds to a crescendo when the person behind the terrorist attack tries to kill her.

At the same time, Savich back in DC gets involved in a couple of connected murder cases where victims are stabbed with ceremonial knives associated with witchcraft. The murderers claim that the don't recall the stabbings and the finger is pointed at the local clan of witches.

The first story wasn't too bad but was a bit unbelievable - 3 stars. The second story was totally unbelievable - 2 stars. IMHO all of the characters, including the main ones, were pretty cardboard and uninspiring.

I haven't read this series before and I doubt that I will go out of my way to read any others in the series.

Adrian McKinty: Falling Glass

Adrian McKinty - Master Storyteller
I have read several thrillers in the Detective Sean Duffy series by Adrian McKinty's set in and around Belfast during "The Troubles". This book was a little different as most of the main characters come from the other side of the track.

Killian has been trying to make a better life for himself after years as a minor criminal and thug, especially during the times of The Troubles. When his property investments leave him in debt he is drawn back into doing one last job to improve his fortunes. A contact from his past offers him a very well paying job - to find the divorced wife of a multi-millionaire who has taken off with his two daughters.

Killian has a different background to the average Irish thug. He was brought up as a Parvee, the Irish equivalent of a gypsy. Killian left them a long time ago, but their rules and ethics are still part of his nature. The job brings out the best and worst in Killian when he finds that he sympathises with the ex-wife and struggles to find the best solution for the young woman and her children.

Things get worse when the issue gets wider than a search for the children and a brutal Russian enforcer is hired to take over from Killian. Everyone is now in danger and Killian must do his best to protect the people that he was hired to find.

This is a complex book, both in terms of plot and characters. Some parts are extremely violent and not for the fainthearted (and are probably unnecessary). McKinty's love for Northern Ireland and its people shines through.

This is a book with lots of emphasis on honour, duty, love, courage and revenge. It is the work of a master storyteller writing about people and places that he understands and loves. I recommend it to the discerning readers who appreciate good literary fiction as part of their enjoyment of well-plotted and atmospheric thrillers.

I listened to this as an audiobook narrated by Gerard Doyle. This was a first-class listening experience and made the book even more enjoyable because of his authentic Irish accents.

Jason Matthews: Palace of Treason

Red Sparrow flies again
Red Sparrow was one of my best reads in 2013. It was an "outstanding, exciting, chilling espionage thriller" and the sequel Palace of Treason meets the same bill, if not more so.

The Red Sparrow, Dominika Egorova of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR, is now back in Moscow after a spy exchange went badly wrong and the CIA spy she was swapped for was assassinated. She has survived lengthy and sometimes violent interrogations about her capture by the CIA and has been promoted to Captain after her ordeal.

Dominika loathes the people she serves in the SVR, who are mostly thugs and supporters of Putin's Russia, especially her boss Alexai Zyuganov, a murderously psychotic former KGB operative who still loves his "work" in the cellars of Lubyanka prison. Nobody in Russia knows that she is now also working for the CIA as Washington's top Russian mole. What makes it more interesting and dangerous is that she had an intimate relationship with her CIA handler Nate Nash.

This top-notch espionage thriller has everything - double-agents, betrayal, violence, great street-craft (avoiding surveillance), revenge, blackmail, and murder. The locations range from Moscow to St Petersberg, Athens, Paris and of course Washington. Again it is an outstanding, exciting, chilling, and page-turning espionage thriller. Add some romantic interludes between Dominika and Nate and the pages sizzle.

The author is very brave to bring current affairs to life, especially the inclusion of Vladimir Putin in the plot (the imaginary bedroom scene between Putin and Dominika is especially memorable and totally unguessable).  The book is "authentic" because Jason Matthews had real life experiences of the world of spying as he worked for 30 years with the CIA.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys espionage thrillers. It is already in my short list for my top reads of 2015. While Matthews has written a great back-story about what happened in Red Sparrow, I do strongly recommend that you read that book first.

Unfortunately, readers outside the US region may have to wait until January 2016 for this book to be published in their region.

Kyle Mills, Vince Flynn: The Survivor

Mitch Rapp is still a winner
The big questions in my mind when I started to read this book were whether, with the untimely death of Vince Flynn, Kyle Mills could take the Mich Rapp story further and write a book that seamlessly followed Flynn's inimitable writing style. The answer to both questions is a definite "Yes". Mills has taken the threads left at the end of the last book and built them into one of the better books in the series.

While rogue CIA agent Joe Rickman is now dead he has left a dangerous legacy - a posthumous gradual leaking of highly classified information that could damage the CIA and relations between the US and many key countries. Irene Kennedy, head of the CIA, needs to find where these leaks are coming from and stop them before they do untold damage. The search takes Rapp to Switzerland and a rogue banker who could be the only lead to the leaks. In hunting down the source of the leaks Rapp has to face up to having to make an agonising alliance with Louis Gold, the assassin who had killed Rapp's wife and child - a tragedy that he has never come to terms with.

Mills continues to explore the Pakistan connection with a corrupt security service leader with strong terrorist links aiming to take over this nuclear-armed third-world country. He also introduces a hostile US Senator with strong ties to Pakistan. In the course of the action, Rapp travels extensively chasing down the baddies in Switzerland, Italy, Russia and eventually Pakistan. Of course, a lot of the time Rapp is on his own and out of control - situation normal.

The main change in style is that Mills allows Rapp to reflect on his life, realise that he is not as young or quick as he was and allows him to start to come to terms with the loss of his wife and child.

The action is fast and furious and contains all of the normal features of a Mitch Rapp novel. I congratulate Kyle Mills in being able to take this series forward and I look forward to any future books he may write in the series.

John Grisham: The Testament

The very best and worst of John Grisham
This is a fairly early work by John Grisham (1999) which shows off his undoubted writing skills in the early chapters but becomes pretty boring and unexciting later on.

Troy Whelan is a very rich, very old and very angry man. All of his life, which he has lived to excess both personally and in business, he has been in control. But as the end of his life approaches he is surrounded by his large family from several unfortunate marriages who are expecting to live in the lap of luxury when his estate is distributed. Troy doesn't want that to happen and he develops a plan to send a message to his family from the grave.

Rumours abound that Troy is about to change his will to favour his family but there are doubts about his competence. Troy arranges a session with several top psychiatrists to decide if he is competent to sign the new will. The family are at the session when he is declared competent and signs the will. Then the surprise happens... and they are all disinherited in favour of a mysterious woman who nobody knows who is living in the jungles of Brazil. This starts a fierce legal battle and a race to find the heir.

The first 100 pages of this book would make one of the best novellas I have read, but the rest is boring and page-flipping stuff.

J D Robb: Concealed in Death (In Death, Book 38)

This series is so boring
A while ago I read a few of the early books in this futuristic police/crime series written in the mid-1990's. While the future setting was too based on fantasy for my liking I enjoyed the character development and relationship of Lt Eve Dallas and Roark, and the support characters of Peabody and Mavis.

Since then this popular series has rolled out a couple of new books a year (how can J D Robb aka Nora Roberts keep up this output as well as releasing new Nora Roberts books) so I wondered what the newer books are like. This is #38 in the series released in 2104. My verdict is that the series must have run out of steam a long time ago as this one was so boring and silly.

Roark has just bought a run-down disused building and plans to convert it into low-cost housing. In the course of ripping out the old walls the builders discover skeletal remains of 12 young girls wrapped in plastic and hidden behind false dry-walls. Eve has the task of finding out who they are, how they were killed and who did it.

There follows an uninspiring police investigation with very little sparkle. The relationship between Eve and Roark is still close but has also lost its sparkle. I doubt that I will be tempted to read any more in this series.