Three Women Disappear
James Patterson and Shan Serafin
Book
Mob accountant Anthony Costello has a talent for manipulating both numbers and people. When he's...
The Lady Ghost (The Decoders #2)
8.0
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Book
Steve, Matt, and Jenny thought their detective skills would be given a rest when they agreed to be...
Violent Cop (1989)
7.6
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Movie
Kitano plays detective Azuma, a Dirty Harry-type who uses violent methods when confronting...
Carnival Row
7.2
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TV Show Watch
Orlando Bloom and Cara Delevingne star in Carnival Row, a Victorian fantasy world filled with...
Carnival Row - Season 1
8.2
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TV Season Watch
Orlando Bloom and Cara Delevingne star in Carnival Row, a Victorian fantasy world filled with...
Phil Leader (619 KP) rated The Big Over Easy (Nursery Crime, #1) in Books
Nov 8, 2019
Investigated by detective Jack Spratt (usefully the name Jack is quite common in nursery rhymes) and his new partner Mary Mary we meet a number of characters from nursery rhymes, songs and myth and legend. As the body count rises Jack and Mary must do what all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't, and assemble the pieces of Humpty's demise to find the culprit.
The world Fforde creates - a fictional version of the town of Reading (and strongly implied to be the same world that Thursday Next lives in, in the book-within-a-book Caversham Heights) works suprisingly well, perhaps because other than the traits inherited from their nursery rhymes the characters are otherwise conventional. So Jack can't eat any fat and is destined to sell something for beans, but at the core is a straightforward detective.
This contrasts with, say, The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse by Robert Rankin which again is a detective story populated with nursery rhyme characters (and poor Humpty is again a victim, but in a very different murder) where the setting is in Toyland so doesn't have the grounding of reality that The Big Over Easy does.
The plot itself is very complex - there are red herrings, theories and suspects galore - and Fforde enjoys playing with the reader as much as with Jack. And there is of course humour aplenty, both simple gags from the story and characters and also some good knowing winks to the reader when events mirror the characters' nursery rhymes. Above all Fforde never forgets that this is after all a detective novel.
Probably not quite as good as the Thursday Next books but definitely a good read and will entertain from the first to the last page.
Suswatibasu (1703 KP) rated Precious and Grace in Books
Oct 15, 2017
In this latest installment of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, Precious Ramotswe and Grace Makutsi help a young woman on a quest to find someone from her past.
A young Canadian woman who spent her early childhood in Botswana requests the agency's help in recovering important pieces of her life there. With only a faded photograph - and, of course, some good old-fashioned detective skills - to guide them, Precious and Grace set out to locate the house that the woman used to live in and the caretaker who looked after her many years ago.
The problem is that as a stand-alone book it seems rather bland and a bit of an anti-climax. However, I'm sure it's much more interesting having read the rest of the series.
Whatchareadin (174 KP) rated NYPD Red (NYPD Red, #1) in Books
May 10, 2018
The Good News: NYPD Red will be busy.
The Bad News: They have a serial killer on their hands.
The first murder is at the Regency Hotel. A movie producer takes a nose dive into his breakfast plate. Not long after arriving on the scene, do they get a call for a murder at Silvercup Studios....and the day begins.
Will they find the killer before half of Hollywood is dead in NYC?
I'm a big James Patterson fan, and this book didn't have as much Umph to it that the Cross or Women's Murder Club books do.