Reading Update and My Continuing Author's A - Z

I've started watching the World Cup games the past couple of rounds. I'm trying not to get too excited about England being in the final 4. Not that I have a favorite or anything.

Call me quizzical

Every time that I log into my Books BLog I take a look at the stats for the previous week, basically, checking to see how many people might feel like checking out my BLog. I've noticed, over the past year or so that periodically there are 100+ views from Russian 'sites' if that the correct word. Then it goes back to the more regular few Canadian, US and UK viewers with a few other countries thrown in. Today, besides the Russian (29), I've also had 96 from France and 105 from Vietnam. I don't know what it means,  most likely something to do with how people's id's are routed or something, just that it strikes me as somewhat interesting.

Saturday and Sunday night turned into a pretty good evening of TV viewing for Jo and I. On Saturday we had a new Vera, a new Silent Witness and a new Happy Valley. Last night we enjoyed Poldark, the new Endeavour and the latest episode of The Tunnel (Season 3). Of course, I do mean new to us. Most enjoyable. The Tunnel is very strange once again.

So, it's almost time for Jeopardy but I'm going to continue with this. I've finished one more book since my last and, of course, started one new one.

Just Finished

A City Called July by Howard Engel (Benny Cooperman #5). I've enjoyed 4 or 5 of this series, not in any particular order. It's always entertaining.











"A City Called July is the fifth Benny Cooperman Canadian detective series by Howard Engel. Cooperman follows the tradition of those great private eyes like Travis McGee, Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade.... well, sort of anyway. Put one of those detectives in Grantham Ontario (down the road from Niagara Falls) and you've got Jewish / Canadian detective Benny Cooperman.

Benny is a small town detective who does divorce cases and any other work he can find but also finds himself in over his head quite often. In A City Called July Benny is asked by his Rabbi to help find Larry Geller, a lawyer who ripped off his clients (mainly from the Grantham Jewish community) and has disappeared. Benny doesn't want to take the case as he feels the police are better equipped to look into it. But he agrees to spend a week checking things out.

In a convoluted at times story, Benny finds himself checking out the Geller family, the local mob, trying to avoid the cops (his friend Staff Sgt Pete Staziak) and also help out a homeless man find his friend. All are linked as you wind through this fun, entertaining mystery. Cooperman is a most likable character, down-to-earth, smart, at times lucky and at times risking his life as he works to solve the case.

It's an interesting story with likable characters and the series is worth giving it a chance. (3.5 stars)"

Currently Reading

The Fifth Woman by Henning Mankell (Wallander #6). It's been awhile since I've read a Wallander mystery but since that first book, I've enjoyed both the English remake TV series and the original sub-titled Swedish versions. In fact, both Jo and I preferred the latter very much.








"A series of seemingly unconnected murders

In Africa, four nuns and an unidentified fifth woman are brutally murdered--the death of the nameless woman covered up by the local police. A year later in Sweden, Inspector Kurt Wallander is baffled when a retired car dealer is found impaled and the body of a missing florist is discovered strangled. With only a skull, a diary, and a photo of three men as clues, Wallander will need all of his strength to uncover the reason behind these deaths and their elusive connection to the unsolved murder of the fifth woman."

Bill's Author's A - Z

John Connolly

1. John Connolly. Connolly is an Irish writer who has written a number of stories but might be best known for his Charlie Parker mystery series. I have 3 of the first 4 books in the series and look forward to starting them. There are currently 18 books in his Charlie Parker series.

a. Every Dead Thing (#1).










"Hailed internationally as a page-turner in a league with the fiction of Thomas Harris, this lyrical and terrifying bestseller is the stunning achievement of an "extravagantly gifted" (Kirkus Reviews) new novelist. John Connolly superbly taps into the tortured mind and gritty world of former NYPD detective Charlie "Bird" Parker, tormented by the brutal, unsolved murders of his wife and young daughter. Driven by visions of the dead, Parker tracks a serial killer from New York City to the American South, and finds his buried instincts -- for love, survival, and, ultimately, for killing -- awakening as he confronts a monster beyond imagining..."

b. The Killing Kind (#3).










"When the discovery of a mass grave in northern Maine reveals the grim truth behind the disappearance of a religious community, private detective Charlie Parker is drawn into a violent conflict with a group of zealots intent on tracking down a relic that could link them to the slaughter. Haunted by the ghost of a small boy and tormented by the demonic killer known as Mr. Pudd, Parker is forced to fight for his lover, his friends...and his very soul."

c. The White Road (#4). 










"John Connolly thrilled readers with his bestselling novels, "Every Dead Thing, Dark Hollow," and "The Killing Kind." Now he delivers spellbinding suspense as Charlie Parker races to unravel a brutal crime committed in the Deep South. After years of suffering unfathomable pain and guilt over the murders of his wife and daughter, private detective Charlie Parker has finally found some measure of peace. As he and his lover, Rachel, are awaiting the birth of their first child and settling into an old farmhouse in rural Maine, Parker has found the kind of solace often lost to those who have been touched by true evil.

But darkness soon descends when Parker gets a call from Elliot Norton, an old friend from his days as a detective with the NYPD. Now practicing law in Charleston, South Carolina, Elliot is defending a young black man accused of raping and killing his white girlfriend, the daughter of a powerful Southern millionaire. Reluctantly, Parker agrees to help Elliot and by doing so ventures into a living nightmare, a bloody dreamscape haunted by the specter of a hooded woman and a black car waiting for a passenger who never arrives. Beginning as an investigation into a young woman's death, it is a fast-moving descent into an abyss where forces conspire to destroy all that Parker holds dear."

Joseph Conrad

2. Joseph Conrad. Polish - British author, Conrad, lived from 1857 - 1924. Way back in my university days, I took his Heart of Darkness but I'm sure that I never completed it. There more interesting books to me, especially in the Science Fiction genre that I preferred to read then. More recently I enjoyed his The Secret Agent, which was published in 1907. I'll highlight that book.

a. The Secret Agent.













"Mr Verloc, the secret agent, keeps a shop in London's Soho where he lives with his wife Winnie, her infirm mother, and her idiot brother, Stevie. When Verloc is reluctantly involved in an anarchist plot to blow up the Greenwich Observatory things go disastrously wrong, and what appears to be "a simple tale" proves to involve politicians, policemen, foreign diplomats and London's fashionable society in the darkest and most surprising interrelations."

Edmund Cooper

3. Edmund Cooper. Cooper was an English writer of speculative fiction (amongst other genres) who lived from 1926 - 1982. News from Elsewhere (968) was an interesting collection of short stories.

a. News from Elsewhere. 

"A collection of short stories dealing with space exploration, either outward by humans or inward by aliens to Earth. A nice mix, some ending not so well, others quite humorous. I enjoyed them all, some more than others. The first two ended somewhat obliquely, but for the most part they were all excellent.  The Lizard of Woz, an alien lizard coming to Earth to make contact and his experiences there was my favourite, made me chuckle. If you are a fan of speculative fiction from the '60s, give this one a try. You'll be pleasantly entertained. (3 stars)"

There you go. Not much on tonight so I'll probably get some reading in. Have a great week!