nigellicus's reviews
1562 reviews

The Reapers by John Connolly

adventurous dark mysterious tense

5.0

It's the Angel and Louis show, a slam bang thriller with none of that weird guff, perhaps just to show Connolly can do it when he wants to, talented swine. Again, the focus on character and setting is increasingly what makes this series work without flagging or getting jaded. Connolly really puts the work in for even the relatively minor characters as he unwinds the plot and the bodies start to fall.

Proof by Dick Francis

adventurous mysterious tense

5.0

 If this book gave off any more Dad vibes it'd turn up at your house and mow the lawn you hadn't gotten round to mowing yourself. The entire story is based around a particular, slightly niche profession which has been carefully researched (reputedly by Francis' wife) so that the protagonist spends much of his time deeply immersed in the prosaic activities of his job in an oddly satisfying and slightly fascinating way. This leads to his being a witness to a dreadful accident, which leads to the discovery of wine and whiskey fraud, and, for the honest-to-God-relatable reason that he's lonely after the death of his wife, he allows himself to become a consultant to both the police and a corporate security agency, coming at the problem from two different ends. 
The writing, characterisation, social observation and plotting are definitely a cut above, but it is noticeable that when the story strays into a horse-racing meet, the prose briefly srouts wings and takes off for the stratosphere before being, ahem, reined in again, betraying, I suppose, his years writing about the sport for a newspaper. 
Yeah, it's easy to see why this well-crafted piece of entertainment was one of a string of bestsellers, but I do wonder, given his stature, why the audiobook, which has a superb reader, has not been cleaned up in any way - it sounds as if it's been transferred between two tape recorders before being digitised. 

The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon

adventurous emotional mysterious sad tense

5.0

A dedicated midwife, a body pulled form the frozen river, a horrific rape case, assorted pregnancies and pairings, more than a few courtroom scenes, a throughly lovable family, yup, a compelling novel about births and deaths and truth and justice. 

Bad Men: A Thriller by John Connolly

adventurous dark mysterious tense

5.0

A nightmarish bunch of people make their way to a remote island with a bloody history. Lots of violence and murder and ghostly haunting and horrific apparitions ensue. Marvelously dark supernatural thriller.

On reread: practically a homage to Stephen King.

Buzz Cut by James Hall

adventurous tense

5.0

The great James W Hall! Haven't read one of his in AGES and this is one I've read before, but I always liked the the story, a clever but unstable young man targets a cruise ship for sabotage and sheningans. Thorn gets dragged in when his friend Sugerman gets injurred, there's also a (beautiful of course, ah, the 80s trope of even less chauvanistic writers to dwell lovingly on the beauty of their female characters even when, as in this case the beauty is a curse, getting close to the idea that it's not her or anyone's looks it's bloody men) runaway heiress, tricked on board by the unstable guy who has an unhealthy fixation on her. Remember Speed 2, the one set on a boat? Pity they didn't give Hall a truck full of cash for the rights to this and used the plot, easily ooomphed up for cinema with some explosions and shootouts. Ah well. 

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense

5.0

Multiple timelines, multiple POVs make this a complicated tangle of secrets and mysteries when teenage girl goes missing from a summer camp in the 1970s. She's the daughter of the wealthy family that owns the camp, and years before her brother went missing and was never found. There's a killer on the loose after her escapes from prison, there's lies and betrayals and hidden histories. Takes a bit to get really going and has bits that feel flabby, but it all comes together very well by the end. 

The House on Vesper Sands by Paraic O'Donnell

adventurous dark funny mysterious tense

5.0

All the characters seem ever-so-slightly larger than life, especialy the inspector, as does the plot, kicked off when a seamstress sews a message nto her own body then jumps through a window. It all turns low-key, and seamlessly, into something with supernatural elements, but honestly a lot of the dialogue is the main attraction. 

The Frozen People by Elly Griffiths

adventurous mysterious tense

5.0

Time travelling crime solvers! It does work, although if you've read the likes of Kage Baker or Connie Willis you wince a bit about how they're really not thinking through the potentials and possibilities, but who knows as the series goes on, they might work a few of them out - even so, the mystery/time-twistery aspect is more than entertaining enough, with great characters. 

Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera

adventurous dark funny mysterious tense

5.0

Fast, slick, cool little mystery, the central tension being between whether the amnesiac protagonist actually wants to remember whether she murdered her best friend or not. Prompted by her grandmother to come back to her home town, where everybody thinks she did it, while a true crime podcast is doing an investigation into the case, we get some nice production on the audiobook as they replicate podcast episodes and you actually forget it's two narrators doing all the voices. It's a page-turner, helped along by short chapters, the dramatics generated by the podcast, twists and revelations, but with dark digressions into domestic abuse and very dodgy choices. Lucy is spiky, sarcastic and doesn't seem to like anyone, not even her boyfriend, with very few exceptions, but then we meet the townspeople and her family and her ex-husband and learn more about her trauma and the gaslighting that followed, and we're very much on her side even as we wince at some of the stuff she does. 

The Will of the Many by James Islington

adventurous tense

5.0

Grand epic fantasy type thing - a Roman-Emprie-esque empire that taps into peoples' wills and channels them to individuals at the top of pyramids, making them strong, imbuing objects with power. Our narrator is the survivor of a small island kingdom that's been the most revent acquisition of the empire, surviving in an orphanage, working in a nasty prison, fighing in arranged bouts. He attracts the attention of a member of a powerful family and ends up getting adopted, all the time keeping his real identity secret. But he's been adopted for a reason, and gets sent to an academy to, among other things, solve a murder and discover whether someone's found an ancient weapon. A rather terrifying resistance movement who know exactly who he is further complicates his life. There's lots of twists and reveals and reversals and politics, good fun.