Kevin’s reviews of other people’s books
Imagine going out with your best girl in 1955 to see the new movie at the local cinema. The curtain goes up, you take a bite of popcorn and wonder whether you’ll work up the courage to hold her hand. Then, the music starts and you get the “Don’t Dream It, Be It” swimming pool … More The Havoc Tree, by Layden Robinson
Sportswriter Jim Caple has written a sentimental and at times whimsical fiction story (certainly inspired by true events) about a WWII veteran at the end of his life, seeking closure. Roy, a 91-year-old former Navigator for B-24 bombers during the war, is wracked by an unknowing guilt about whether bombs his plane dropped near … More The Navigator, by Jim Caple
This police procedural is long on discussion about the hero’s dog, long on letting us see the villain’s first person perspective, and long on sentimental details about the hero cop’s mourning over his dead wife. It’s very short on suspense or mystery. The reader knows everything in the first few chapters – the hired killer … More Winter Song (Seasons Pass, book #1) by Susan C. Muller
Author David Myles Robinson can write a legal mystery in which the plot is intriguing, the writing is excellent, and the law is accurately depicted. This is quite a triumvirate, which few authors do well. Courtroom scenes are inherently dramatic. Making a deposition scene good reading without making it a mockery of how real law … More Tropical Doubt, by David Myles Robinson
I’m a big fan of Sara Paretsky and a big fan of her heroine, V.I. Warshawski. Dead Land, however, is not the best installment in the series. The author tells us that this is the first book she has written without the support of her now-deceased husband. Perhaps that partially explains why this book was … More Dead Land (A V.I.Warshowski novel), by Sara Paretsky
This book, and this series, has a lot to offer fans of police/FBI procedurals. I picked up this book during a free download offer and I was happy to discover a new author whose books I can now look forward to reading. There is some backstory from earlier books in the series that is sometimes … More Remnants (Brandon Fisher FBI Series #6), by Carolyn Arnold
Science Fiction author Robert J. Sawyer treads a different path in his new historical fiction (and SciFi) novel, The Oppenheimer Alternative. (Currently available for pre-order HERE.) The story is a fictionalized, but still very true to history, depiction of one of the main cogs in the Manhattan Project (or the Manhattan Engineering District, the code … More The Oppenheimer Alternative, by Robert J. Sawyer
If you have a child between the ages of 8 and 12, particularly, but not exclusively, boys, and you’re looking for an activity that will bring you closer together and fight off the video games, you should buy this book and read it to your child/children. Start 45 days before Christmas, and read one chapter … More The Naughty List, by Thomas Conway
Author Steve Lindahl says in the afterward of this lovingly written book that he wanted to tell a story true to the life of the key character, actress Lotta Crabtree, while creating fictional characters who orbited around her. His mission was to write a reasonably accurate historical narrative about the era of the story, which … More Living in a Star’s Light: A novel based on the life of Miss Lotta Crabtree, by Steve Lindahl
It’s not easy to spin out a captivating mystery yarn and at the same time to address the sensitive topic of spousal abuse. Valerie Davisson has managed it here, in book #4 in her Logan McKenna mystery series. This is a compelling story about a woman and her 3-year-old daughter trying to stay hidden from … More Vanishing Day, by Valerie Davisson
