Thanksgiving, 2016

This is a great thriller. You’ll be introduced to a secret world where you just might start wondering if that stranger sitting next to you on your next plane ride is who he seems to be. Ghostman is a moniker used by Jack, the main character in the book, for his ability to transform into another identity within minutes. In effect, to disappear from view,…

I didn’t think anyone could top Stephen King when it came to end of the world novels, but Robert McCammon does it. It’s a little dated, since the catastrophe is caused by a US-USSR nuclear war, but you’ll soon get past that. The rest of the plot and depth of the characters will captivate you. It has some of the general elements of King’s The…

It’s been a while since I ready a book as scary as The Shining, but this is it. It’s a story about a semi retired rock singer, Judas Coyne, who likes to collect stuff that could only be classified as macabre. When his manager shows him an ad for someone selling a ghost, he can’t resist. We soon discover that he has bought exactly that….

This is a great WW II thriller, with a truly innovative twist. The Germans know they are losing the war, and even this stunt may not change things, but it’s a fantastic PR opportunity. They’re going to kidnap Winston Churchill. They draft some interesting characters, including an Irish expatriate, Liam Devlin. Liam is a leader in the IRA, and a cold blooded killer. However, he…

Extremely good beginning and end, with a somewhat flat middle. John Puller is a military investigator, and is told to investigate a multiple murder in a small town in West Virginia. Immediately after he arrives on the scene, even though it’s extremely early in the morning, he appears to hear a cop being murdered in the basement, sees a flash of someone running into the…

Raylan Givens drives this story, and drive it, he does. Raylan is FBI, and he has kind of a Dirty Harry modus operandi–he speaks softly, but can back up his words with deadly force. He stumbles onto a kidnapping, and the characters who have done the deed are truly pathetic in their efforts. In fact, they’re so bad, they’re funny–that’s part of what makes this…

I didn’t like this book nearly as much as the second one I read, Riding the Rap. But, it does set up the main character, Raylan Givens, for the series. Leonard’s style is to tell the story through conversations that the characters have with each other. You kind of have to figure out the rest of the story yourself. And the conversations in this book…