By age twenty-four, Letty Davenport has seen more action and uncovered more secrets than many law enforcement professionals. Now a recent Stanford grad with a master’s in economics, she’s restless and bored in a desk job for U.S. Senator Colles. Letty’s ready to quit, but her skills have impressed Colles, and he offers her a carrot: feet-on-the-ground investigative work, in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security.
Several oil companies in Texas have reported thefts of crude, Colles tells her. He isn’t so much concerned with the oil as he is with the money: who is selling the oil, and what are they doing with the profits? Rumor has it that a fairly ugly militia group might be involved. Colles wants to know if the money is going to them, and if so, what they’re planning.
Letty is partnered with a DHS investigator, John Kaiser, and they head to Texas. When the case quicky turns deadly, they know they’re on the track of something bigger. The militia group has set in motion an explosive plan . . . and the clock is ticking down.
My Review:
My second novel for this author, although the first was a Virgil Flowers series, a macho male protagonist apparently a spin-off of the Prey series. I don’t think this is another spin-off, but it almost feels as if it’s the same protagonist, just that now she’s a twenty-four-year-old recent Stanford Master’s graduate on her first job (Sheesh!) and she’s bored. Poor baby. Not sure how she got the job for a US senator, but it’s not law enforcement.
Coming from a horrific childhood, one of which had her tracking and killing animals for food and money, she definitely hit the lottery at age twelve. Yes, her particular adoption was more than luck, and they must have really spent some bucks cause now she’s too smart for twenty-four, too sophisticated for name brand jeans, and pushing rude and obnoxious.
Also, the book published in 2022 smacks in the middle of quite the immigrant conundrum. Letty is assigned a Homeland Security investigator, and she and Kaiser head to Texas.
A large militia group headed by a woman is focusing her troops and efforts on stopping a contingent of immigrants heading for the border. Their tactics are deadly. Letty subtly leads the more experienced Kaiser in infiltratation, as they fall into step as a team. Meanwhile, it becomes clear Letty has her equal in the antagonist, who is almost equally developed.
The pace gains speed as it nears the conclusion of the book which culminates with a cliffhanger into Book 2.
Yes, Letty is badass, but her field experience is not that of ex-military or an agent experienced under fire. She was educated in economics—not combat. She was…just too much. Interesting narrative, kept my attention, but also a story we have been living with for years. I can almost predict Book 2—so—I don’t think so.
I downloaded a copy of this audiobook from my local well-stocked library. These are my honest thoughts.
Rosepoint Publishing:Three point Four Stars
Book Details:
Genre: Crime Fiction, Mysteries, Suspense Publisher:Penguin Audio ASIN: B09B4FT7L2 Listening Length: 13 hrs 2 mins. Narrator: Richard Ferrone Publication Date: April 12, 2022 Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections) Title Link:The Investigator [Amazon-US] Amazon-UK
The Author:John Sandford is the pseudonym for the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Camp. He is the author of the Prey novels, the Kidd novels, the Virgil Flowers novels, and six other books, including three YA novels co-authored with his wife Michele Cook.
As any parent with a teenager knows, they can sometimes become people you realize you don’t even know. When did that happen?
Book Blurb:
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!
Dark · Addictive · Twisty · Chilling · Domestic Suspense
Nothing ever happens in sleepy little Fairhill, Vermont. But this morning that will change. And one innocent question could be deadly. What have you done?
The teenagers get their kicks telling ghost stories in the old graveyard. The parents trust their kids will arrive home safe from school. Everyone knows everyone. Curtains rarely twitch. Front doors are left unlocked.
But Diana Brewer isn’t lying safely in her bed where she belongs. Instead she lies in a hayfield, circled by vultures, discovered by a local farmer.
How quickly a girl becomes a ghost. How quickly a town of friendly, familiar faces becomes a town of suspects, a place of fear and paranoia.
Someone in Fairhill did this. Everyone wants answers.
My Review:
The author uses the discovery of the horrific death of a young female teenager to set up a plot filled with multiple POVs, including the paranormal POV of the victim, to complete the picture of the small Vermont town shaken to its core. Diana Brewer was well known and loved by classmates and adults alike. She was sweet, generous, and kind. Who could do this to her?
The reader is introduced to her mother, her friends, and the teachers with whom she’s thought close. Additionally, Diana works at a Home Depot where she is creeped out by a customer paying unusual and unsolicited attention. As the narrative progresses, it becomes apparent there might be several persons of interest.
Riley and Evan were close and Riley appears most distraught, finally revealing a scene Evan was not aware of.
Gradually, the reader is additional info on a lecherous teacher and the itinerant worker who frequented her station at her job. Yes, it does ramp up the tension, creates further suspense, and awaits the next revelation. It is her boyfriend who appears most needy, clingy, controlling. But it’s also readily apparent he didn’t do it. The author manages to string out bits of his last night with her revealing just enough to keep you hanging in there with him. But if not him. Who?
I enjoyed the narrators doing a great job and the dialogue, even providing little gems of prose gleaned occasionally. I particularly liked the reference to some parents regarding their teenagers with “willful ignorance” and wondered if I was, occasionally, guilty of the same thing.
It is well-plotted, a bit slow paced, but overall entertaining and kept me listening, not just from morbid curiosity but also to confirm I was on the right track with guessing the culprit, and whoa! That shocker in the conclusion did, but once again got the same twist into psychotic as the last Lapena I listened to, Everyone Here is Lying.
I downloaded a copy of this audiobook from my local well-stocked library. These are my honest thoughts.
The Author:Shari Lapena is the internationally bestselling author of the thrillers The Couple Next Door, A Stranger in the House, An Unwanted Guest, Someone We Know, The End of Her, Not a Happy Family and Everyone Here is Lying which have all been Sunday Times and New York Times bestsellers. Her books have been sold in forty territories around the world. She lives in Toronto.
Detective Isaac Bell battles foreign spies, German U-boats, and an old nemesis to capture a secret technology that could alter the outcome of World War I in the latest adventure in the #1 New York Times bestselling series from Clive Cussler.
As New England swelters in the summer of 1914, Detective Isaac Bell is asked to investigate a cache of missing rifles—only to discover something much more sinister. Whoever broke into this Winchester Factory wasn’t looking to take weapons, they wanted to leave something in the shipping crates: a radio transmitter, set to summon a fleet of dreaded German U-boats. Someone is trying to keep American supplies from reaching British shores, and if Bell doesn’t crack the conspiracy in time, the Atlantic Ocean will run red with blood.
Bell must hunt down a new piece of technology that is allowing the Germans to rule the seas from New York to England. With the outcome of the war at stake and Franklin Roosevelt’s orders on the line, Bell will risk everything to stop the U-Boats before they strike again.
My Review:
Trying to stay neutral isn’t easy when Britain and Germany are about to go at it. Still, things are already going on behind the scenes in America quietly trying to send materiel to Britain. Britain severed Germany’s undersea telephone cable but either the Germans are getting awfully lucky or there is a rat at the east coast harbor.
The Van Dorn Detective Agency is hired to monitor Winchester rifle shipments to Britain as they are becoming aware there are German submarines set to block shipments across the Atlantic. With the Van Dorns is Isaac Bell who discovers a hidden radio transmitter in the consignment of rifles.
Because of that discovery, they are later asked to locate a German spy ring. It’s becoming apparent that the Germans are in possession of technology far more advanced than that of the Allies.
Isaac Bell is a larger-than-life protagonist and dominates the main character position. Between him and Van Dorn, they manage to discover the how and where and prepare to intercept the spies and their secret equipment. The pace picks up quickly after a somewhat leisurely start to the storyline with a prologue that discloses the history of the main antagonist.
I picked up this audiobook as I recognized the name of Clive Cussler and was interested in the WWI plot. It’s a little dismaying to see that it’s “co-authored”(?) in small print. After the plot goes into an explanation of the equipment and the struggle of getting it into the proper hands, it definitely amps up the action.
Interesting the way this author ties his story into the sinking of the Lusitania, making it sound believable, and me wondering why this novel wasn’t considered historical fiction rather than action thriller or crime thriller, although it does become a thriller—with espionage and the brutality of war criminals.
I had a little problem with the narrator for the first quarter of the book or so, but once the narrative took on a lot more action, he smoothed out his delivery.
I downloaded a copy of this audiobook from my local well-stocked library. These are my honest thoughts.
Book Details:
Genre: Action Thriller & Suspense Fiction, Mystery Action & Adventure, Crime Thrillers Publisher: Penguin Audio ASIN: B09SNJN4RC Listening Length: 12 hrs 2 mins Narrator: Scott Brick Publication Date: November 8, 2022 Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections) Title Link: The Sea Wolves [Amazon] Barnes & Noble Kobo
Rosepoint Publishing: Four stars
The Author:Jack du Brul is the author of the Philip Mercer series [Vulcan’s Forge, Charon’s Landing, The Medusa Stone, Pandora’s Curse, River of Ruin, Deep Fire Rising,and Havoc] and the coauthor with Clive Cussler of six Oregon Files novels [Dark Watch, Skeleton Coast, Plague Ship, Corsair,The Silent Sea, and The Jungle]. He lives in Vermont.
The Paris Library meets The Flight Girls in this captivating historical novel about the sacrifice and courage necessary to live a life of honor, inspired by the first female volunteer librarians during World War I and the first women accepted into the U.S. Naval Academy.
Two women. One secret. A truth worth fighting for. 1918. Timid and shy Emmaline Balakin lives more in books than her own life. That is, until an envelope crosses her desk at the Dead Letter Office bearing a name from her past, and Emmaline decides to finally embark on an adventure of her own—as a volunteer librarian on the frontlines in France. But when a romance blooms as she secretly participates in a book club for censored books, Emmaline will need to find more courage within herself than she ever thought possible in order to survive.
1976 Kathleen Carre is eager to prove to herself and to her nana that she deserves her acceptance into the first coed class at the United States Naval Academy. But not everyone wants female midshipmen at the Academy, and after tragedy strikes close to home, Kathleen becomes a target. To protect herself, Kathleen must learn to trust others even as she discovers a secret that could be her undoing.
My Review:
A dual timeline story, which I always enjoy, this one combines 1918 during WWI and another in 1976, with one of the first women to be accepted into the US Naval Academy.
Emmaline Balakin has always been a shy and quiet woman. She had a sweetheart once, but it didn’t work out. Now working in the Dead Letter Office, she dares to check out a familiar name on a letter refused and returned. She knows the intended recipient is married. She never lost feelings for the sender (now a soldier) and the letter discloses where he is located.
Emmaline discovers she could qualify as a volunteer librarian on the frontlines in France. Indeed, the men spend long lonely, boring hours with nothing and books have proven to be a lifeline—in more ways than one.
Kathleen Carre has always dreamed of being in the Navy—of following in her Nana’s brave footsteps who participated in the first world war as a driver. But Nana doesn’t reciprocate the enthusiasm.
Indeed, both women discover unexpected hurdles, frightening aspects, and each faces a desperate situation of their own. Emmaline finds her past love but denies him a truth that will badly damage their newly found relationship. Kathleen discovers it’s not as difficult to pass the physical aspect of those first months than to defy the opposition to female inductees into a long-established all-male bastion.
Both women make errors of judgment, denying courses of action, or boldly forcing courses of action that create further conflict. As the chapters switch back and forth between the tales of each, something is becoming apparent.
Emmaline becomes the more sympathetic of the two. Kathleen is too strongly obsessed and I never want to hear one more “Nana.” Yes, the Nana thing was repeated (over and over)—but the reader (or listener) got it the first time. For some reason, I never warmed to Kathleen; the thing with Nana and her mother.
So I’ll mention that the shocking twist in the conclusion was not unexpected, but I did like the way it was drawn. Emmaline’s story divulged some stats of which I was unaware—the book drives for the men—something a later generation would not have considered.
Kathleen is fully involved in crashing a glass ceiling—she is driven—and triumphed with a satisfying revelation you’ll want to read for yourself. It’s an engaging and entertaining audiobook, well narrated, suffering only one slow segment in the pace.
I received a complimentary review copy of this audiobook from my locally well-stocked library. These are my honest thoughts.
Book Details:
Genre: World War II Historical Fiction, Family Life Fiction Publisher: Penguin Audio ASIN: B09M6FQN81 Listening Length: 10 hrs 8 mins Narrators: Saskia Maarleveld, Lauren Ezzo Publication Date: August 9, 2022 Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections) Title Link: The War Librarian [Amazon]
Rosepoint Publishing: 4.5 stars
The Author: [Addison Armstrong] I’ve wanted to be an author since I was a five-year-old writing stories about talking school supplies and ants getting their revenge on exterminators. While a junior at Vanderbilt University studying elementary education, I wrote my first historical fiction novel, The Light of Luna Park, and sold it to G.P. Putnam’s Sons in January of my senior year. Now that I’ve graduated with my Bachelor’s in Elementary Education and Language & Literacy Studies, as well as a Master’s in Reading Education with an ESL endorsement, I’m teaching third grade English language learners in Nashville and continuing to write.
Back in May of 2020 when I downloaded and listened to Where the Crawdads Sing audiobook, I had no idea it would be a movie. The audiobook blew me away. I loved it, although it has not been received with the same genuine appreciation by all who read the book.
When the movie opened in July, I was able to see the result on the big screen, and I should mention, the big screen is the only way to view this atmospheric movie—the cinematography is breathtaking.
I promised a critique of the movie comparing it to the book that took the author ten years to write. Did the movie do justice to the book that has now been read by millions around the globe?
The Movie (Blurb)
“A woman who raised herself in the marshes of the deep South becomes a suspect in the murder of a man she was once involved with.”
My Thoughts
Photo Attribution: Daisy Edgar-Jones
The movie does a credible job following the major plot points of the book. The actors are wonderful, including London star Daisy Edgar-Jones who has to dig into her non-existent Southern roots to get the drawl right. No one likes the guy who ends up the murder victim, everyone loves Kya (both the girl and the woman do convincing, emotional jobs) and the support characters are great. So far, so good.
Photo Attribution: Taylor John Smith
But the photography and cinematography are exceptional. Atmospheric and beautiful, the location draws you in and almost overpowers the storyline, although the storyline as you must know by now is gripping.
It’s a passion-packed plot with themes of abandonment, loneliness, ingenuity, independence, love, loss, and triumph. It’s enough to wring tears from Scrooge.
Reece Witherspoon promoted the film from the get-go, loving the marsh story which was enough in itself, and then the added mystery of the murder—was it murder or an accident? Must be a murderer as Kya goes to trial—she was seen with him. And though I’m not a fan of Taylor Swift, she contributes a lovely, haunting melody.
Movie Details
Director: Olivia Newman
Stars: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Taylor John Smith, Harris Dickinson, Jojo Regina
Released July 15, 2022 (Filmed in New Orleans, Louisiana)
Among the eight producers, Reese Witherspoon is listed as executive producer and promoted heavily.
Although Mychael Danna is listed under Music, Taylor Swift also contributed a song she named Carolina.
4.5 stars
Audiobook (Blurb)
#1 this week
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING PHENOMENON—NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE!
More than 15 million copies sold worldwide
A Reese’s Book Club Pick
For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life – until the unthinkable happens.
Where the Crawdads Sing is at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder. Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.
My Thoughts
Well, if you read my original review of the audiobook, you know I loved it. Unique, beautiful in the telling, and so well drawn and gripping, it’s one of those you truly can’t put down.
The story of six-year-old Kya Clark, abandoned by her mother and shortly thereafter by her (much) older siblings is now living in a marsh shack with her despotic father. Kya has to pretty quickly learn to survive on her own near Barkley Cove, North Carolina.
The novel is divided by her story that begins with her mother leaving in the early morning hours of 1952 and the discovery of a body in 1969 near the old tower.
The storytelling is so emotionally poignant, the prose flows through beautiful descriptions of the natural setting in the marsh that it’s easy to smell the decaying vegetation, algae inhabited waterways, spy the marsh inhabitants, amphibians, birds, and insects…
The characters are brought vividly to life with the narration, alternately spoken by child or adult, literate or illiterate, as well as the Carolina drawl… Once having learned to motor into town on their old marsh fishing boat, she begins to draw the attention of the cashier at the Piggly Wiggly, the African American family, Jumpin’ and Mabel, where she bought the gas, and soon the lady from school, where she was promised a meal–real food–once a day…
Self-educated, no one knows more about the natural world of the marshlands than Kya. She’s come to be known as the “Marsh Girl.” She’s smart, has gone on to publish books on the wildlife of the marsh. But could it possibly have been she to cause the death of Chase?
The conclusion resolves carefully allowing you long enough for your heart to settle back down when you are knocked off your feet by a shocking revelation you didn’t see coming. It’s a brilliant twist, the well-plotted and written narrative so engrossing, so achingly atmospheric, every sense poised that you are hanging on every word. It’s a serious exploration of not a male coming of age this time, but a female left on her own reconciling abandonment, loneliness, hunger, disappointment, and triumph. Completely immersive, so engaging it remains solidly planted long after the end resulting in a tremendous book hangover.
5 stars
Book Details
Genre: Romance, Literary Fiction, Women’s Fiction Publisher: Penguin Audio ASIN: B07FSXPMHY Listening Length: 12 hrs 12 mins Narrator: Cassandra Campbell Audible Release: August 14, 2018 Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections) Title Links: Where the Crawdads Sing [Amazon US]
The Author:Delia Owens is the co-author of three internationally bestselling nonfiction books about her life as a wildlife scientist in AfricaCry of the Kalahari, The Eye of the Elephant, and Secrets of the Savanna. She has won the John Burroughs Award for Nature Writing and has been published in Nature, The African Journal of Ecology, and International Wildlife, among many others. She currently lives in Idaho, where she continues her support for the people and wildlife of Zambia. Where the Crawdads Sing is her first novel.
The Narrator: Cassandra Campbell is a prolific audiobook narrator with more than 700 titles to date. Winner of four Audie Awards and nominated for a dozen more, she was a 2018 inductee in Audible’s inaugural Narrator Hall of Fame.
Overall Impression
The Movie
While the actors do an amazing job of bringing to life the experience of the marsh, it was (for me) the atmospherics so well drawn in the book that commands attention. It was an engrossing recreation of the novel by Delia Owens, faithful to that jaw-dropping twist at the end. A fine representation of the book and well worth the time spent on the big screen.
The Book
You already know my assessment of the book—while it might approach cheesy a few times—it introduces innocent romance (on one side anyway) and manages to successfully weld a sub-plot realistically with a satisfying conclusion.
Conclusion
Loved the book, loved the movie, the latter being an excellent choice for a cinema visit. For me, however, I’ll still give the nod to the well-crafted narrative by Ms Owens. There’s a reason it’s gone around the world a few times and continues to garner major attention. You can’t go wrong with either the audiobook or the digital/paperback, however, I would recommend the audiobook as being expertly read by Cassandra Campbell.
Best Mystery, Thriller, & Suspense
Coming from a horrific childhood, one of which had her tracking and killing animals for food and money, she definitely hit the lottery at age twelve. Yes, her particular adoption was more than luck, and they must have really spent some bucks cause now she’s too smart for twenty-four, too sophisticated for name brand jeans, and pushing rude and obnoxious.
The Author: John Sandford is the pseudonym for the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Camp. He is the author of the Prey novels, the Kidd novels, the Virgil Flowers novels, and six other books, including three YA novels co-authored with his wife Michele Cook.
in Suspense Action Fiction (in Kindle format)
#1 this week
The novel is divided by her story that begins with her mother leaving in the early morning hours of 1952 and the discovery of a body in 1969 near the old tower.
Rosepoint Publishing 