This is 14th in the series featuring detectives David Brock and Kathy Kolla and the first that I have read. It was easy to pick up the story and follow along without reading the previous books. Brock and Kolla have their own mysteries to solve – Brock, apparent suicides and art fraud and Kolla a corruption charge against her. An enjoyable read.
I think this is my first Native American book, and I found it a beautiful, moving, deeply compelling story of a fight for identity and rights, life’s hardships and wonder, love and hope. Based on Louise Erdrich’s own grandfather and his work defending the Chippewa people against an “Emancipation Bill”, it is also about Pixie, who wants to be called Patrice, as she tries to find her way as an adult, and those in their vibrant community. A glorious sense of place, culture, spirituality, strength and heart.
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This was a great read. Wyatt is a crook that you can’t help liking, though I don’t think I could live looking over my shoulder constantly and mapping out escape routes everywhere I go! It was refreshing to read a crime story that centres on the bad guys and not the people chasing them.
We are back in the lovely retirement village, Cooper’s Chase, with four inhabitants who are a very long way from leading quiet lives in their retirement. Elizabeth receives a message from a man she used to know, which sends the Thursday Murder Club on a journey involving spies, the mafia, drug dealers, diamonds and murder. There are plenty of dead bodies, little value attributed to the less likeable characters, and much criminal behaviour, and yet it is a life-affirming, humorous, action packed adventure that celebrates older people and gently laments dementia.
Paul Atreides is fifteen when he moves with his royal family to the desert planet Arrakis, full of danger and ‘spice’, a drug of great value. Many possible futures open up before him as he must navigate the physical, emotional, and spiritual terrain. Dune is a tense, action-packed and atmospheric adventure about politics, religion, climate, legend, and power. The characters are engaging, the world-building immersive and fascinating, and the conclusion satisfying enough to be stand-alone, though it is part of a series. The audiobook is well done, though it does have some quirks (sometimes characters are voiced by separate actors and at other times just by the narrator, with a different accent) and I did often wonder about the spelling of names, but that’s probably only going to bother me.
A good family saga, where the pain of the past reverberates through future generations. At the heart of the story is Irish cousins Sean and Brandon who have escaped their troubles in Ireland to try to make their mark in Australia. But the dreams and hopes they have are not fulfilled the way they expect.
In a small town in Queensland in the 1970s, a teenaged girl goes missing and the town struggles during the long investigation. Atmospheric, tense, character-driven drama about how a town responds to the loss and fear. All the racism and sexism you would expect from a small town in the 70s, and it’s a slow burn (pun intended – sugar cane!). For fans of Australian rural noir.
Set in a dystopian near future where the climate is ravaged, everyone is microchipped, and people can be removed from their families and locked away in BestLife facilities. Mim’s husband Ben works in Indonesia, and she is at home with their two children when she hears that he is missing. As she realises how very wrong the situation is, she and the kids set off to try and find Ben. It’s a tense thriller, with a believable setting, and high adventure over land and sea. Thought provoking in expected ways about the direction of our world in terms of climate, government, and business, but also a deep meditation on motherhood; the weight of it, expectations, the physical and emotional toll, and impact on one’s sense of identity.
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