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Showing posts from December, 2010

Unpretty (Sharon Carter Rogers)

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Picked up for less than a dollar at one of the local Goodwill thrift shops, I mainly bought this book because of it’s cover image. My attention was grabbed and I pulled the book from it’s shelf and dusted it off. The novel itself is the second written by Sharon Rogers. It covers a small suburb that is fraught with disappearances, and a seemingly increasing drug problem. An unassuming household in the burbs holds a cult faction who reveres the work of Michelangelo as perfection. The leader of this group is capturing individuals and torturing them to get models for a reproduction of one of Michelangelo’s lesser works. It is a non-standard book of good vs evil, with the cultists on one side pitted against secretive urban monks and police on the other. I actually rather enjoyed this book. It is a nice standalone thriller/suspense novel with well fleshed out characters and an interesting premise. Give it a shot. It surprised me and though not best-seller quality, it did not disappoint. ~~ T...

Let's all kill Constance (Ray Bradbury)

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I have never been one who fancied Ray Bradbury’s mystery novels. Reading “Let’s all kill Constance”, third in this particular series, I was kind of lost. Essentially, an unnamed protagonist is pulled to his front door on a dark and stormy night by Constance, a wayward movie star who lives just down the beach. She is distraught, pushed over the edge by two “books of the dead”. The dead and nearly dead in these books are all know by her and seem to be harbingers of her own impending doom. the protagonist, along with a detective pal of his begin an informal investigation to help save her life, leading them to a priest, a psychic, a tomb and the ghosts of Hollywood past. all in all it was a decent story. I would suggest it to others and found that it was very enjoyable. The problem was the delay I experienced putting myself in the story line. The clumsy (yet precise) speech and the conversations the characters had were the problem. The characters are all witty and seem to share constant in...

The Godmakers (Don Pendelton)

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I really hated enjoying this book. Do not confuse it with the collection of short stories by Frank Herbert. Likewise it is not the religious expose book about the Mormon religion. This is just a lowly 70′s sci-fi filled with bizarre ethereal dreams-capes and group sex… Don Pendleton’s novel (originally published under the pseudonym Dan Britain) revolves around a government investigator names Patrick Honor. Honor has been roped into driving out to a research lab in the sticks by his boss and a lovely lovely lady (who works in a research lab). The lab is researching the harnessing of PPS (Psychic Power Sources) the ultimate energy. Strangely, the head of the lab has gone a bit loopy and started babbling about the power of nine (9), he has scrawled a series of strange names and dates, each separated by eighty-one (81) days. Looking at the names, they can see that see that the first seven (7) are either dead or incapacitated on the dates associated. The eighth name is the president of the ...

All Those Moments (Rutger Hauer)

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“All Those Moments: Stories of Heroes, Villains, Replicants and Blade Runners”, Rutger Hauer’s autobiography, is a damned enjoyable book. It is no masterwork, but neither will fans be disappointed. Hauer himself has always been a favored actor of mine. I was a big fan of many of his films when I was growing up, LadyHawke and Blade Runner being two on the forefront. Rutger always plays fantastic characters, but off screen, I never heard mention of him. As such, he has always been kind of an elusive celebrity. He never really made “A-list” ranking, but he was never B either. He is that temper-mental in between that the celeb rags and new organizations rarely pay attention to. This book touches on his life, pre-Hollywood. The first few chapters detail his life as a child and teen, his wayward actor-parents, and his indecisive career. The depth of his history is kept minimal, covering most of his early years in a matter of a third of the book. I was left a bit wanting, feeling that i knew ...