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The Woman in the Window
The Woman in the Window
A.J. Finn | 2018 | Thriller
10
8.0 (41 Ratings)
Book Rating
The way the author portrayed mental health; the plot-twists; the noir feel of the story; the relatability of the narrator; the emotion; (0 more)
It could be slow at parts; it had to come to an end. (0 more)
OMG...this book left me reeling!
OMG. O.M.G. This book. I have not had a book make me cry in quite a while. Since Tris died in Allegient, actually. You just can’t kill off the main character.... I digress. This book made me cry....which means that this author was absolutely phenomenal. He was so great at making the narrator a relatable character, that you could feel exactly what she felt, which placed you right in the story with her. Each thrill, mystery, clue, question, anxious moment, tense feeling of suffocation...you were there with her. Then, when the plot-twists happened...you didn’t even see them coming! Yes...I said them. There was MORE than one climax and intense moment in this story. Normally I can tell when to expect them.... but I was blown away a few times.... with one especially coming to mind. This is one story that will remain on my book shelves for years to come...making it’s way into my “To-be read pile” again-and-again.... for sure. I definitely cannot wait to see what this author brings next! I just hope the movie doesn’t ruin this.
  
A Nearly Normal Family
A Nearly Normal Family
M.T. Edvardsson | 2019 | Mystery, Thriller
7
8.8 (5 Ratings)
Book Rating
A pretty good read
I don't read a lot of legal/courtroom stories and even less so-called Scandi-Noir type books but, for some reason, the blurb caught me and drew me in and, overall, I was pretty satisfied with "A Nearly Normal Family".

The book centres around a seemingly perfect family (they are anything but!) and is separated into three sections each told from the perspective of a family member following the arrest of the daughter for the murder of a man; each of these sections provided insight into each of the characters and a different take on the situation they find themselves in. What it also did was make this a slow burner with the tension mounting gradually towards the great ending which I found very satisfying.

I did have a couple of problems with this book though; one being that I couldn't connect with any of the main characters and struggled to empathise with any of them, the other being that I think there were times when things seem to have got lost in translation which made the story not flow quite as well as I was expecting.

Overall though a pretty good read and definitely worth the time I invested in reading it.

Thanks go to the good people of Pan Macmillan via NetGalley for my copy in return for an unbiased review.
  
    lux radio theatre

    lux radio theatre

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    Lux Radio Theatre 1934-1955 This was one of few sixty-minute broadcasts and was the most...

The Dirty Streets Of Heaven (Bobby Dollar #1)
The Dirty Streets Of Heaven (Bobby Dollar #1)
Tad Williams | 2012 | Mystery, Paranormal, Science Fiction/Fantasy
9
9.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Characters (0 more)
Bobby Dollar AKA Doloriel is a snarky, stubborn, cynical, jazz loving, wiseass of an angel. As an angel of the Third Circle his job is that of an Advocate Angel. He's on your side to argue for your soul to get into heaven. When souls start disappearing Bobby is on the hook and finds himself in the middle of a conspiracy that has Heaven and Hell in a tizzy.
This book is a supernatural noir type, Set in Heaven and San Judas, California-named after the patron saint of the hopeless, the unloved, and other lost causes. Told in a first person narrator pov. (Think similar to Brust. The narrator is talking to 'you personally'). The characters are phenomenal and the descriptions are great. As this is not his normal writing style it shows and can be a bit rough at some places.
This fast paced mystery is a delight with its unique show of how heaven and hell could work it makes you think. Even though it is about angels it isn't overly religious it also isn't anti-God. There is drinking, cussing, and violence. Yep the angels drink, some even to the point of drinking their Earthly bodies to death.
Heaven's most problematic angel is figuring out how he can survive being stuck in the middle of this ancient battle.
  
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Olivier Assayas recommended Rififi (1955) in Movies (curated)

 
Rififi (1955)
Rififi (1955)
1955 | Crime, Drama, Thriller
(0 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"Rififi is a strange animal, based on a novel by a typically French crime writer, Auguste Le Breton, and shot in Paris as the first foreign-language film by a great American filmmaker at the height of his powers, whose career had been broken by McCarthyism. Jules Dassin’s previous film, made in London five years earlier, Night and the City, is his masterpiece. This inspired hybrid of French and American noir—which I discovered as a child on French TV—has constantly impressed me with its violence, its despair, its darkness, and its beauty. It has also been hugely influential, not only on Melville—so much of his work derives from Rififi—but also on a lot of minor figures of French genre. Dassin reinvented the whole syntax, and the after-effects have been felt for a long time. I am a fan of Michael Mann; he is one of the most inspired stylists in American cinema today, but it was all there from the start. In Thief, his first feature, you have echoes of Melville (it goes full circle), a sharp eye for realism, but also profound human characters with precisely drawn relationships, and great acting. Mann’s fascination with a geometrical modernity, even if it is always mediated by genre filmmaking, is genuinely reminiscent of Antonioni—explicitly so in the last scenes of Heat."

Source
  
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Olivier Assayas recommended Thief (1981) in Movies (curated)

 
Thief (1981)
Thief (1981)
1981 | Action, Drama, Mystery
(0 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"Rififi is a strange animal, based on a novel by a typically French crime writer, Auguste Le Breton, and shot in Paris as the first foreign-language film by a great American filmmaker at the height of his powers, whose career had been broken by McCarthyism. Jules Dassin’s previous film, made in London five years earlier, Night and the City, is his masterpiece. This inspired hybrid of French and American noir—which I discovered as a child on French TV—has constantly impressed me with its violence, its despair, its darkness, and its beauty. It has also been hugely influential, not only on Melville—so much of his work derives from Rififi—but also on a lot of minor figures of French genre. Dassin reinvented the whole syntax, and the after-effects have been felt for a long time. I am a fan of Michael Mann; he is one of the most inspired stylists in American cinema today, but it was all there from the start. In Thief, his first feature, you have echoes of Melville (it goes full circle), a sharp eye for realism, but also profound human characters with precisely drawn relationships, and great acting. Mann’s fascination with a geometrical modernity, even if it is always mediated by genre filmmaking, is genuinely reminiscent of Antonioni—explicitly so in the last scenes of Heat."

Source