Category: Book Review

Monday Book Review: Green River, Running Red

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bleh. I am some what disappointed with my second venture into the world of Ann Rule. I read her book on Ted Bundy with a lot of enjoyment and despite it’s long length was sad to see it end, it was so beautifully written. I put Green River, Running Red onto my list at the library because I am fascinated by so many crimes committed in my back yard.

I found this book not nearly as well written. It was repetitive and convoluted. It talked too often in my taste of the writer and her own notoriety, as though she got into the habit of inserting herself into the story with the Bundy book and couldn’t get out of it with this one even though she did not know this killer.

I don’t know. I guess I feel like the victims got so little airtime in this book. 650 plus pages and each victim got 2 paragraphs to 2 pages each.

Maybe I’m just cranky. And then I caught her in a mistake. Did you know Scott Peterson is on death row at Alcatraz? He is according to Ann Rule. Oops.

℘℘℘ – Three pages. I read it. It was not fabulous. I was happy when it was done. I will not be checking out additional books by this author. ‘nough said.

Monday Book Review: Overturning Wrongful Convictions

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I grabbed this book on a quick slide through the true crime section on a day where my library trip needed to be lightning quick. It was slick and glossy and not too fat, ideal for my weekend trip. Overturning Wrongful Convictions by Elizabeth A. Murray, PhD was indeed slick and glossy all the way through. Much of the content was written for the completely ignorant segment of the population who has never before read anything on the criminal justice system, gone to a class on US Government or seen the constitution. In fact, I think you would know a good measure of the information in this book if you had even watched an episode of Law and Order.

However, I cannot poke too much fun at someone who attempts to educate. It’s a noble calling. And one that is desperately needed.

The other portion of the book contained stories of wrongful convictions and how the innocent ended up in prison and how they eventually got out. It was interesting to me. I’ve always struggled to balance what I want to believe is a true justice system with the knowledge that there are bad apples in every bunch. I need reminders about my tendency to slip on rose colored glasses. I’m reminded.

A lot of the statistics in this book are full statistics, by which I mean they tell you each percentage and what that group covers, rather than laying out one number and allowing you to infer whatever you like about the rest. The one that stuck with me the most, and there are a lot of haunting stats, is this one: Of the 87 exonerations recorded by the National Registry of Exonerations in 2013, nearly one third involved alleged crimes that never even took place. WTF? Bad enough to serve time for a crime someone else committed due to incorrect witness identification, judge or prosecution or police misbehavior, but to do the average of 13 years (how long an innocent serves prior to release) for a crime that didn’t even happen…

The cases presented run the gambit from convicted on circumstantial evidence to prosecution or police had evidence that proved the guy/gal on trial didn’t do it and they hid that evidence.

℘℘℘℘℘ – I’m torn between five and four pages on this one. It is a well written book. I did read it in one sitting, although at 107 pages that’s not saying much. The cases presented are sobering, frightening, and make me wonder why people always want to take the easy way out. As in “let’s just convict the ones we have in custody rather than doing the leg work.”

I will quote another statistic as I close, it is estimated that around 2% of the population in prison is innocent of their charges. Which means by in large, most of the people in prison were guilty of the crimes they committed. So does the system work? I’m going to say not very well, because if Bob is arrested and does time for Neil, what is Neil up to in those intervening years? Well according to research by the NRE; more murders, rapes, car-jackings, etc.  What do you think?

Monday Book Review: Thirteen Hours

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I can’t be glib about this review. I happened upon this book by sheer chance and took it with me to the carib. I have to be honest, it is not vacation reading for most people. It’s heavy work. But once I had a few days of relaxation under my belt, I was ready to tackle 13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi by Mitchell Zuckoff and the Annex Security Team. I pretty much plowed through it in one day, taking it with me everywhere on this ship.

Whatever you may think politically about Benghazi, you are free to keep thinking it. This book is the work of one nonfiction writer who researched everything he could get his hands on and then spent serious time interviewing the people who were there, in the thick of it. Then he smoothed it out into a narrative that made me cry for the loss of good men who didn’t need to die.

The book covers the run up to the events of 9/11/12 in Benghazi, discussing the CIA Annex GSR team’s backgrounds and a bit about the historical political situation in Libya. Then it slows dramatically to an almost minute by minute coverage from the moment the attack began until the last man got out on a plane to Tripoli. 13 hours.

It is well written. It’s slow paced. Zuckoff makes you really feel the grind of waiting, not the way the men did, but as close as you are gonna get from your arm chair. I can only describe what happened there as a study in bad decision making where the focus was not on what I feel should have been a priority. Choice after choice were detailed and made me slap my own head. I don’t know what decision makers were thinking, my husband has his own theories, I can’t even.

But setting all that aside, the book is really the story of a small group of men who do what most of us pray we will never have to. And those of us who know we might have to someday, just hope we can do it with as much honor as these men do.

℘℘℘℘℘℘ – 6 pages, almost. I hesitate to give this rating because I am not on my way to the library to get everything else this author has written, in fact, I haven’t even checked into his other works yet. But I carried this book all over a ship in the Caribbean so I could read every second I could find. I had to know.

I know I said I wouldn’t be glib in this review and since technically the review is now over, I will be just a bit glib. This book is my writing wet dream. Interviewing the prime operators, combining that with research, and providing a smooth narrative….I have fantasies about doing just that.

Monday Book Review: Laying Down the Paw

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This is another series I grabbed from the library on a desperate day with my son. Laying Down the Paw is the third in a series by Diane Kelly, which features the adventures of a K9 police office, Megan Luz. The books are all easy reads, what I would call a bathtub or beach read. It’s a brain candy which is a nice break from the health food non fiction I consume most of the time.

In the latest book, Megan catches her first dead body. The detective assigned to the case lets Megan get involved because she works hard, wants to learn, and comes with a monster german shepherd named Brigit, who can sniff out drugs, among her many other uses.

It’s a good detective book (series) that tends to focus on how hard it is to actually solve most crimes. You need a lot of hours of shoe leather, pounding the pavement, and a bit of luck to figure out who done it.

Diane Kelly writes in what has become a popular style for detective books, one chapter from the cop, one from the criminals point of view, alternating back and forth. The best part though….she adds a chapter from Brigit’s point of view each cycle as well. I love it. Brigit is awesome. Makes me want a german shepherd who will head butt rude men in the balls without me even telling her to. Oh, on second thought, maybe not.

℘℘℘℘℘ – five pages. Read it in one sitting. Will continue to pick up this author’s works whenever I see them in the library. Might even get around to sussing out her first series as well.

Monday Book Review: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

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So before I left on vacation my friend G recommended two books to me. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley was one of them. And I have to say in the first five pages, I seriously wondered what G was smoking.

Sweetness starts off with the protagonist poisoning her oldest sister. And as much as I love serial killer novels, an 11 year old murderer was not something I wanted to read about. Turns out the poison she employs is actually poison ivy. LOL. Added to the sister’s lip stick. As punishment for telling her she was adopted. LOL.

The book is really quite good. Well written. Compelling. Amusing protagonist unlike an other I have read. Flavia de Luce doesn’t quite come across as an 11 year old girl but she is believable as a precocious chemistry obsessed child. In this book, the first in a series, she solves a murder in her cucumber patch learning a considerable amount about herself, her family, and the past that haunts them. I really can’t wait to see where this will go. Will Bradley let her grow up? Will he expand her world? Will things keep happening in her small little hamlet?

℘℘℘℘℘ – Five Pages. Loved this book. I don’t think I quite read it in one sitting but it didn’t take much and I am already on the waiting list for an ebook version of Bradley’s next book in the Flavia de Luce series.

Monday Book Review: The Entire Heather Wells Series

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So more than once I’ve suggested to people who have asked me what to read that is fun, the Heather Wells series by Meg Cabot. She’s up to five of them now. They make me smile. Every time I read them. In addition to starting the series from scratch every time a new book comes out, I also read them randomly when not feeling well, because as I said, they make me smile. But when I suggest them to people, invariably what happens is they find one of Meg Cabot’s other series, principally the Princess Diaries one and tell me how much they hated it. sigh.

Let me tell you a bit about Heather Wells. She used to be a pop star, when she was a teenager. She opened for the hottest boy band, in venues around the world. She eventually fell in love with the lead singer of said boy band and for a while all was well. Then she hit her twenties, grew a brain, asked to sing her own songs and was dropped by her record label. Then by said boyfriend. Her manager wisely saw which way the wind was blowing and promptly left the country with all Heather’s money. So now she is working as an assistant dorm manager at New York University, because the job comes with tuition remission. It’s a pretty small goal, she just wants to get a degree so she support herself.

Unfortunately, people keep dying. Yep. And Heather can’t seem to keep herself out of the investigation.

I love a good murder mystery. I think I was the only eight year old on the planet with Agatha Christie novels (and a horse) on her Christmas list. I got the novels, not so much the horse. I find the crimes intriguing, often blown out of proportion as suits the adolescent idiots who commit them (college). And as a main character with a slight problem staying away from Dove bars, Heather is way relate-able.

In order, Size 12 is not Fat, freshmen girls are “accidentally” falling to their deaths while elevator surfing, but Heather doesn’t think it’s an accident, because girls don’t elevator surf, right?

In, Size 14 is not fat either, a severed head is found in a cooking pot on the stove of the cafeteria. Heather swears she’ll stay out of this one. But of course that isn’t possible.

In, Big Boned, arguably the weakest of the five novels(also the shortest), Heather’s boss is murdered, in his office, with his coffee still steaming in front of him. 

In, Size 12 and Ready to Rock, Heather is forced to host Tania Trace’s Rock Camp, while trying to find out who killed one of the producers, who’s black mailing Tania, and not go insane from all the stage mothers and preteen girls. Did I mention Tania Trace is now married to Heather’s ex-boyfriend. Yep.

In, The Bride wore Size 12, there’s a murder before the semester even starts. Heather is determined to stay out of this one, after all she has a wedding to plan, but as usual fate has other ideas.

I reread them before I wrote this review. I still love them, even though I’ve read the first one like 30 times now and each of the others in varying number from 12-20.

For the series ℘℘℘℘℘ +, 5 1/2 pages. I have everything Meg Cabot has written for adults. I read them all over and over. I smile every time I read them. And when something new comes out, I’ll read that too.

Monday Book Review: Mystery of the Moss-Covered Mansion

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I know, I know. But I was standing in the kids series section with my son helping him pick out some Star Wars and Scooby Doo books and there at eye level was a whole ton of the original Nancy Drew books. I couldn’t help myself.

If you’ve read one Nancy Drew, you’ve read them all. Really, you have.

This one is no different. Nancy is solving a case of epic proportions with her besties George and Bess. They always wear white. They always fall into mud. They always get caught and have to be rescued. They always have too much money and time on their hands. Nancy decides her dad is going to buy a house on an island in Florida at the drop of a hat, and he does.

I love the little throw backs though. Like “the base was filled with European and Asiatic visitors, Kennedy Space Center was important to the whole world.” LOL. Oh mi god. The things wrong with that sentence.  Or when they gloss over the science and call the bad guy’s weapon a “beamer.” Somehow it’s powerful enough to destroy the space shuttle from miles away, run on power from a residential neighborhood. LOL. Beamer. LOL. Oh, oh, oh, and the bad guy built a room almost completely covered in a pool of boiling water to throw trespassers in. Seriously? Luckily there was a 6 inch rim around the pool for Nancy and Ned to stand on until help arrived. ROFL.

℘℘℘℘℘ – Technically this book is a five pager as I read it in one sitting, less than 200 pages. And I do love Nancy Drew because I find them funny. But I can’t really recommend them to other people. Either you love Nancy from childhood or you will throw the book at my head if I recommend it to you. And since I just flew home with my hubby and kiddo, please, my head can’t handle any projectiles today.

Monday Book Review: Shark Trouble

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While reading Everyday Editing, I came across some quotes from Shark Trouble by Peter Benchley. The book sounded super intriguing and totally something I could read to my son. Well I was right on one count anyway. LOL

For a little background, Peter Benchley wrote the book Jaws. He was a struggling author desperate to hit upon an idea that would get him a book deal. His agent kept sending him on these publisher lunches (oh the days gone by when…) where you eat with a bunch of editors and chat and try to work in the ideas you have for books in the hopes that someone says yeah, I’d be interested in that. No one was ever interested in his idea about a big fish book. But he kept throwing the bait out there and eventually…well you know how that went. Book. Film. Several more books. And a few guests spots on a TV show called American Sportsman.

That’s where Benchley starts this non fiction book. He’s in a shark cage being filmed interacting with a great white, all going swimmingly, until the shark gets the rope between the cage and the boat stuck in it’s teeth and this pisses the big fish off. He leaves you at the end of the first chapter with himself realizing he needs to cut the rope or he is a dead man. Benchley has been told in advance this happens sometimes and eventually the shark will bite through the rope but if the rope doesn’t come free and the cage is still attached to the shark, the shark will swim the cage down to the bottom of the ocean and bust it to smithereens.

He leaves you hanging and goes off to discuss a lot of other things about sharks. There are chapters on the ecological significance of sharks, which sharks he thinks are dangerous and how to handle it if you meet one while swimming/diving, when you should swim and when you shouldn’t, the media frenzy around shark attacks in 2001, a tiny mistake that almost got him killed on a dive, and yes he does finally explain how he survives the cage incident.

I did have to stop reading it to the kiddo when it got bloody. And the verbiage is a bit much for a young one even in the clean sections but I am good at reading in complicated prose and spitting out simple prose for the kiddo.

℘℘℘℘ – Four pages. I read a chapter a day to the kid for the first third of the book, decided it wasn’t appropriate to him and finished off the rest in one or two goes. I thought at times Benchley is a bit preachy and repetitive but over all it makes for a great read and I know a bit about to survive a shark attack if I ever go diving and encounter one. Which won’t happen because I don’t dive and have no intention of learning to do so (having once visited a semi-loved one in a decom chamber, well no thanks).

Then again, right now I’m snorkeling in the Caribbean, so maybe this book will come in handier than I thought.

Monday Book Review: Seducing Strangers

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Just stop. Before you even get going on what have I been reading lately…read the rest of the title: Seducing Strangers, How to Get People to Buy What You’re Selling, by Josh Weltman. Yeah, not sexy. Information. Hey, my book come out last Friday and I needed to figure how to market it right?

I should have known by the front cover tag about how John Weltman is co-producer of Mad Men that the book would talk about Mad Men. And it did. At first it talked about it soooo much that I wanted to pull my hair out. Weltman tells you right out he has eons of experience in advertising, but every example in the first few chapters he uses is from the show. Which bugged me. I want real life. Not what you made happen in Hollywood, even if the show was crazy hot.

As I read on however, it was like he forgot he was supposed to be talking about Mad Men, he forgot that was his hook and he started talking about the real world experience he garnered from years in advertising. That I liked. I like the truth, look at all the non fiction I read.

The meat of the book is his theory of the 4 step arc an advertising campaign should use. In short: introduce it, give a limited time offer to bring them in, differentiate the product to grow the market share, and then mutual love and respect ads. That’s it. That’s how you run a total campaign lasting years and years.

Weltman also talked a lot about figuring out what you want from your marketing. So in the old advertising world, you were trying to get someone to do something. With so much of advertising being on-line driven these days what you are doing is getting someone to stop doing one thing and do something else. Indeed. Stop reading this blog and buy my book. What the direct approach doesn’t work for you? Alright I’ll refine my style.

℘℘℘℘ – Solid four pages. I liked this book. I didn’t love it. I didn’t feel it was mind opening or so full of information I could barely handle it. It was good. Some nuggets of information, some bs. LOL. If you are looking for an easy advertising read, this could be it.

Monday Book Review: The Ultimate Book of Impostors

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I grabbed this book on a quick perusal of the true crime section in a library that was not my normal branch. I wanted to see what I could get else where. Yes, I know, I was cheating on my library branch. But the truth is, we’ve kind of out grown each other. I had to break the news slowly, but now my branch accepts I am seeing three or four other branches regularly.

The Ultimate Book of Impostors by Ian Graham was entertaining to me. Would everyone find it that way, probably not. I like facts, all kinds of weird facts, little bits, big stories, tales of lying and deception. All in my bailiwick. Impostors was a little dry. And there was less arm chair psychology than I was hoping to find. But for a straight forward reciting of well done research with a little spin in favor of a lovely lady or two, it’s right on the money.

I did take a few notes, mainly of other books I want to read now. LOL.

According to Graham most impostors motivations can be boiled down into four categories: ego, envy, escape or espionage. I suppose if I am prepared to be lenient with the definitions I can agree with him. As the subtitle explains, over 100 true stories of the great phonies and frauds. Most of the stories are two pages or less, so just the facts ma’m.

℘℘℘℘ Four Pages: I liked, I read it rather quickly in just three or four sittings. I enjoyed it. I’m not rushing out to find other works by this author. It was akin to butterscotch pudding. I like it OK. I won’t say no thanks like I might with strawberry but …. I’m not bothering to make it at home, even on a liquid diet. LOL

Don’t forget to pop over to The Phantom Child today and check out my interview and excerpt.