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Mark @ Carstairs Considers (2204 KP) rated Three Strikes – You're Dead! in Books

Jun 28, 2024  
Three Strikes – You're Dead!
Three Strikes – You're Dead!
Various Authors | 2024 | Mystery
9
9.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Give This Collection a Sporting Chance
This is a collection of 14 crime fiction short stories with a sports theme. And there are plenty of unique sports here. The collection starts out with one of three baseball stories as the hero of a playoff game winds up dead moments after scoring the winning run. We’ve got a bounty hunter who is trying to bring in an ultimate Frisbee player. A college swimming coach is found dead at practice one morning. A woman plans to avenge her brother’s death in the bull riding ring. A biathlete is kidnapped. And a tennis coach finds himself in grave danger.

With all the stories, this is definitely long enough to be a full-length book, so you are getting your money's worth. The twists on a couple of the stories didn't quite work for me, but most of the stories held together very well. Likewise, the characters are all real. Considering the shorter space that the writers had to work with, I am always impressed when they can pull both of those things off. I'm not the biggest sports fan in the world, but I still found myself being pulled into these stories. Whether you are a diehard sports fanatic or have a casual interest at best, you'll enjoy this collection.
  
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LeftSideCut (3778 KP) rated From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) in Movies

Jan 23, 2021  
From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)
From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)
1996 | Drama, Horror, Mystery
8
7.8 (35 Ratings)
Movie Rating Watch
From Dusk Till Dawn is a good enough Tarantino/Rodriguez style crime caper for the first hour, carried by its cast and polar opposite characters. On one side of the coin, there's the wholesome Fuller family, played by Harvey Keitel, Juliette Lewis, and Ernest Liu. These characters are the good guys if you will, with just enough development given to be on their team. The other side of the coin serves us the Gecko brothers, played by George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino, two criminals who take the Fullers hostage on their way to Mexico. These two are fucking deplorable, Richie (Tarantino) being a dangerous psychopath with no regard for human life, and Seth (Clooney) just being an arrogant asshat who flits between condemning his brothers behaviour and encouraging it. They're so damn unlikable, but when the five characters are together, it provides us with an electric dynamic, one where they end up depending on eachother to survive.
Other than that, it's good enough. Sure it's stylish, but it's not a scratch on Pulp Fiction or Desperado in what's it's trying to be.

But then the twist kicks in, and Christ does this movie ascend to near greatness. When the Fullers and Geckos arrive in Mexico and head to The Titty Twister bar, shit hits the fan pretty quick, and it goes from good enough crime movie, to all out sticky gross gore filled vampire horror show in seconds. The mix of practical effects and CG is wonderfully balanced, and the aesthetic is hugely reminiscent of Evil Dead II. It's no surprise to see Greg Nicotero among the credits.
This second half is just a whole boat of fun, and is the reason why FDTD is rightly considered a cult classic. Tarantinos screenplay is great (casually ignoring the fact he wrote himself into a scene where he could have Salma Hayeks toes in his mouth) and the addition of actors such as Hayek, Danny Trejo, Cheech Marin, Tom Savini, and Fred Williamson for this tongue-in-cheek, splatter fest of a third act is the cherry on top.

From Dusk Till Dawn is a blast for sure. Its stumbles here and there, but is another fine entry in the Robert Rodriguez catalogue.
  
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Erika Kehlet (21 KP) rated The Hidden Child (Patrik Hedström, #5) in Books

Feb 21, 2018  
TH
The Hidden Child (Patrik Hedström, #5)
Camilla Lackberg | 2014
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Had I realized when I picked it up that this was the 4th book in a series, I would have looked for the first book to start at the beginning. I didn’t feel like I was missing anything starting at this point in the story, however. The relationships between characters were either evident or explained well enough that you can easily read or listen to this book without having read the previous books, and not feel lost.

A lot of Swedish crime fiction has a particular melancholy feel to it, and The Hidden Child is no exception. The author did injected occasional brief moments of humor into the story that helped lighten the mood, however, and they kept it from feeling too dark.

The story is told in both in the present, and through flashbacks, in the time around WW2. It follows the police investigation into the murder of a local historian, as well as the family drama unfolding as Erica Faulk digs into her mother’s past. The two series of events turn out to be more intertwined than anyone could have imagined, and even though I could see where it was going, the story didn’t give everything away at once and I didn’t really know what had happened until the end.

If you are a fan of police procedural and / or historical mysteries, give this one a try!