
The Girl With No Name: The Incredible True Story of a Child Raised by Monkeys
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‘It all happened so quickly. One minute I was squatting on the bare earth, preoccupied with...

Death Rang the Bell (Blackwell and Watson Time-Travel Mysteries #3)
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21st-century journalist Olivia Watson thinks travelling back in time to 1934 to attend a Halloween...
Traditional Mystery Time Travel Police Procedural

U Is for Undertow (Kinsey Millhone, #21)
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Sue Grafton takes the mystery genre to new heights with this twisting, complex #1 New York Times...

The Alcoholic Mercenary
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They said, “See Naples and then die!” Rachel had thought it was to do with the place’s...
Historical Crime

Mark @ Carstairs Considers (2379 KP) rated The Clairvoyant Countess in Books
Mar 30, 2023 (Updated Mar 30, 2023)
I don’t normally pick up supernatural themed stories, but since I love this author’s Mrs. Pollifax series, I decided to give it a try. Sadly, it disappointed. I tried, but I couldn’t let go of the supernatural element. I think part of that was because it made the stories a bit easy to solve. I was also expecting a novel instead of a series of short stories. There are a couple of arcs that tie them together, mainly for Lieutenant Pruden, who is as equally an important character as Madame Karitska. Yet I did enjoy some of the stories in this collection, and I really liked the characters, so this wasn’t a completely loss.

Kevin Phillipson (10072 KP) rated Scream (2022) in Movies
Jan 20, 2022

Mark @ Carstairs Considers (2379 KP) rated A Test of Wills (Inspector Ian Rutledge, #1) in Books
Jun 30, 2022
I’ve heard about this series for a long time. I suspected it would be too dark for me, but I decided to try it anyway. Sadly, this is definitely darker than my normal choices. Rutledge and several other characters are dealing with some serious consequences of war. It’s realistic, but dark. On the other hand, Rutledge is an interesting character, partially because of this darkness. Where the novel really fails is the plot. After a good start, it bogs down in the middle before giving us a whiplash climax. It is logical, but too abrupt. I’m glad I gave the series a try, but I doubt I will be back.

David McK (3576 KP) rated The Truth (Discworld, #25; Industrial Revolution, #2) in Books
Sep 11, 2022
Still as good as ever!
<original review below>
So, over the weekend I watched a BBC documentary about the late, great, Sir Terry Pratchett (Terry Pratchett: Back in Black) as part of which they brought up the fact that his earliest job had been as a reporter for his local paper (and saw his first corpse a few hours later, work experience meaning something in those days ...) .
Experience that shows in this novel.
The second of the so-called Industrial Revolutions (after Moving Pictures) sub-series of the Discworld novels, this is - IMO - the first to really get into the meat of said revolution, and concerns itself with Ankh-Morporks first newspaper, alongside a plot to depose the Patrician - a character, I feel, who (whilst mostly in the background in the earlier novels) comes more to the fore in this, as do the likes of Foul Ol' Ron, Coffin Henry, The Duck Man and Gaspode
Of course, it wouldn't be a Pratchett novel without a generous portion of puns running alongside the satire, parody and memorable characters (such as, say, Otto von Chriek: the vampire with a thing for flash photography ...)

David McK (3576 KP) rated Tenet (2020) in Movies
Sep 30, 2022
While I haven't seen all of his films, I have (mostly) quite enjoyed the ones I have seen - The Dark Knight trilogy, Inception, The Prestige, Insomnia, Dunkirk and Interstellar - so it's always an event when he releases a new movie.
This particular one had the mis(?)fortune to be released in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, when large gatherings put health at risk and when cinemas were struggling after being closed for months on end.
I never saw it on the big screen as a result.
Having now seen it (on Amazon Prime), I'm quite glad that I didn't pay (and put my health at risk) to see it in the cinema - honestly, I found it mostly dull, incomprehensible (in that I couldn't make out half the dialogue) and interminable in length, despite the occasional 'money-on-the-screen' sequence
If you want to see a good 'backwards' story, watch the Backwards episode of Red Dwarf (season 3, episode 1) instead.

The Child Left in the Dark
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PART TWO OF TAKE HER BACK TRILOGY - The Child Left in the Dark is the follow-up to the stunning, The...