I usually find Liane Moriarty novels superlative, but this one fell short for me. Here’s my main problem with The Last Anniversary: it’s fairly clear from the outset that Grace has post-natal depression, yet at no time in the proceedings does she acknowledge this as true. It’s absolutely maddening. I also haaaaated Laura. I suppose …
Tag: Mystery
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/12/23/the-last-anniversary-by-liane-moriarty/
Dec 09 2015
The Likeness (Dublin Murder Squad #2) by Tana French
Tana French writes some really terrific, atmospheric fiction. She’s good at untangling complicated emotions and relationships and presenting them to the reader in a sympathetic fashion. But oh my God, this was the most ludicrous mystery setup I’ve ever read. It was so bad that I’m confident not even post-Meloni Law & Order: SVU would …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/12/09/the-likeness-dublin-murder-squad-2-by-tana-french/
Oct 18 2015
Aunty Lee’s Delights (Singaporean Mystery #1) by Ovidia Yu
I’ve babbled on about my issues with Malaysian writers before (nutshelled: I want them to be super good, but when they are, I immediately hate myself for not writing, too,) and with this book, I realized that those issues extend to Singaporean writers, as well. I think it might be due to the two countries …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/10/18/aunty-lees-delights-singaporean-mystery-1-by-ovidia-yu/
Sep 01 2015
The Girl On The Train by Paula Hawkins
I think I would have liked this book more were it not marketed as the next Gone Girl. On its own, it’s a decent mystery novel with an excellent framing device, but I was expecting something far more diabolical and cautionary than the “don’t marry a psychopath” takeaway which, while good advice, is also fairly …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/09/01/the-girl-on-the-train-by-paula-hawkins/
Aug 21 2015
In The Woods by Tana French
There was a lot I enjoyed about this book, but I had two very large problems with it, both to do with Rob Ryan. The first is fairly spoilertastic, and less to do with his character than with what I felt was a strange choice on the part of the author. Essentially, you never find …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/08/21/in-the-woods-by-tana-french/
Jul 29 2015
Paper Towns by John Green
I think that if I hadn’t read and loved The Fault In Our Stars first, I’d likely be more charitable to this book, which was pretty good overall, just not as good. And I guess that’s unfair to Paper Towns, which is a pretty good mystery on its own (and I really liked how convincingly …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/07/29/paper-towns-by-john-green/
Jun 28 2015
Lock In by John Scalzi
A long time ago, John Grisham came to the bookstore where I was working to sign copies of his second book from a major publisher, The Pelican Brief. His first, The Firm, had been an enormous hit, and there was every indication that the second would sell in mass quantities as well. No movies had …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/06/28/lock-in-by-john-scalzi-2/
Feb 06 2015
Truth and Fear by Peter Higgins
People who were annoyed by the cliffhanger ending of Wolfhound Century should definitely wait the six weeks or so until Radiant State is published before reading Truth and Fear. Peter Higgins hasn’t solved the middle-book problem, but it’s clear that he conceived and wrote the three books of the Wolfhound Century tale as a single, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/02/06/truth-and-fear-by-peter-higgins/
Jan 28 2015
Vlast and Cool and Dangerously Sympathetic
I’m about a quarter of the way through Truth and Fear (concurrent with more Discworld, The Iliad – to see whether it captures me the way The Odyssey did, and in a modern translation since I bounced right off of Chapman’s, and probably some other things that rise to the surface of the to-be-read piles), …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/01/28/vlast-and-cool-and-dangerously-sympathetic/
Jan 19 2015
Wolfhound Century by Peter Higgins
Sometimes it’s nice to be squarely in the middle of the target audience. Although I am not sure whether anyone would have said ex ante that the audience for a police procedural set in an alternate history Russia with fantasy and science fiction elements was much more than just me. But Peter Higgins went and …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/01/19/wolfhound-century-by-peter-higgins/
Al Singh
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