Book Review - I am Pilgrim - Terry Hayes

"Can you commit the perfect crime?

Pilgrim is the codename for a man who doesn't exist. The adopted son of a wealthy American family, he once headed up a secret espionage unit for US intelligence. Before he disappeared into anonymous retirement, he wrote the definitive book on forensic criminal investigation.

But that book will come back to haunt him. It will help NYPD detective Ben Bradley track him down. And it will take him to a rundown New York hotel room where the body of a woman is found facedown in a bath of acid, her features erased, her teeth missing, her fingerprints gone. It is a textbook murder - and Pilgrim wrote the book.

What begins as an unusual and challenging investigation will become a terrifying race-against-time to save America from oblivion. Pilgrim will have to make a journey from a public beheading in Mecca to a deserted ruins on the Turkish coast via a Nazi death camp in Alsace and the barren wilderness of the Hindu Kush in search of the faceless man who would commit an appalling act of mass murder in the name of his God."

This is the book that broke my reading hiatus and I had tried lots of different books. 12 Years a Slave, Labyrinth, The Kill Room, In the Blood were all discarded as unreadable at the moment but this book I really enjoyed. It was one of easy action thrillers, never a literary classic but a good read all the same.

What makes it most interesting, which I guess is the case for with most books, are the characters. Ben Bradley is your typical New York cop who turns out to not be so typical and your terrorist is everything you think he should be and also everything you think he shouldn't. In a world of secret espionage it is difficult to tell the good men from the bad. This books made me consider the ideas behind terrorism and whether all terrorists are inherently "bad people" or does something cause people to become a terrorist? This book would definitely suggest the latter.

While the story begins as a simple murder mystery this book travels the globe through terrorism, secrecy and politics and brings you to the edge of your seat.

Book Review - Birthdays for the Dead - Stuart MacBride

"Detective Constable Ash Henderson has a dark secret…

Five years ago his daughter, Rebecca, went missing on the eve of her thirteenth birthday. A year later the first card arrived: homemade, with a Polaroid picture stuck to the front – Rebecca, strapped to a chair, gagged and terrified. Every year another card: each one worse than the last.

The tabloids call him ‘The Birthday Boy’. He’s been snatching girls for twelve years, always in the run-up to their thirteenth birthday, sending the families his homemade cards showing their daughters being slowly tortured to death.

But Ash hasn’t told anyone about Rebecca’s birthday cards – they all think she’s just run away from home – because if anyone finds out, he’ll be taken off the investigation. And he’s sacrificed too much to give up before his daughter’s killer gets what he deserves…"

If you don't like murder/crime books then this book probably sounds absolutely awful! But it's my type of book, it's my chic flick or rom com or whatever that type of book is called rather than the film format. I can just read a murder book, you don't have to think too much, it doesn't take too long to read and most of them are pretty good.

This book idea is pretty gruesome, books involving children generally are the more difficult ones to read, but it doesn't really go into the deaths that much and is more based on the investigation and the affect this has on Ash. I didn't really like Ash all the time but I think that's the point. He is a bit of a bent cop and has a really strong Scottish accent which at the beginning as a Southerner I found very hard to understand and nearly made me give up on the book. Even though I didn't like Ash all the time, he was a real person with flaws but also a strong need to protect those around him.

MacBride builds suspense really well throughout the book and til the very end I had no idea who the killer was going to be. However I do think that the conclusion was all a bit too quick and didn't really explain as to why everything had happened. It felt a little like he had run out of time at the end and just finished it compared to the long time he had spent building up characters and their relationships. Considering Ash spent five years trying to find the killer and goes to pretty extreme lengths in the pursuit of the truth when he finds out the identity of the killer he's a bit meh.

All in all a good book but not necessarily my favourite

Book Review - The House of Rumour - Jake Arnott

"In 1941, Larry Zargorski was a naive young writer of science fiction. Seven decades on, he looks back on that crucial year and traces his place in a mysterious web - one that connects the Second World War with the Space Age, stretches from London to Cuba and Southern California, and links Ian Fleming and Rudolf Hess in a conspiracy that reverberates in the present

Could this be the secret history of the 20th Century? In this thrilling tale of spies and propagandists, the conned and the heartbroken, dreamers and fanatics, the question is:

who will you believe?"

I really wanted to like this book but I really just couldn't get into it! It was a book that I really wanted to give up on at every moment I could but I persevered, hoping that it would grow on me and even as I finished the last page I was hoping that it was going to speak to me in some profound way. But, no, I finished the book and I still didn't get it. Don't get me wrong, the book is well written but I just didn't get the story that Arnott was trying to tell me. There were too many characters and their stories were so segmented that I couldn't really empathize with any of them. I didn't like any of the characters and to me that is an important part of any book. The plot also goes throughout time and space which I get is to do with the underlying motives and ideals of the whole book but it made it so hard to follow. I have read Slaughter House 5 which I really enjoyed and is a similar premise but I think in this case there are too many characters to make this idea work

Are there any books that you have read recently that you just don't get?

Book Review - The Good Father - Noah Hawley

"Dr Paul Allen is a happy, respected family man. All that's about to change.

When he opens the door to the news that his son has killed the next President of the USA

Did he do it? Why would he? And what now?

On Saturday I had a me day and decided to go the library and pick up some new books to read. I have always loved reading and will pretty much read anything (planning on doing a post of a few of my fave books soon, look out for it). I picked up 5 books and thought I would start with this one.

This tells the journey of Dr Paul Allen as he comes to terms with possibility that his son could be a cold blooded murderer and the role that he as a father might have played in this. It explores themes of love in a paternal/maternal sense, whether you really know those who you love and how far you would go to prove that love to your child, those around you and yourself. Of course I cried, I cry at most books, I get really involved, but this book made it very easy to get involved. Told from the point of view of the father for the most part with interjections from the past of his son's memories you follow the path to the truth from the father desperately trying to find his way backwards and the past of his son meandering forward. The two different paces of this story within the book is very well written and was one of my favourite aspects. I wouldn't describe this book as an action thriller or even a murder mystery although there are elements of violence and crime in the book. I would highly recommend this book to anyone and I am thinking of actually buying the book to add to my collection 

Have you read this book? What did you think?