The Redeemer is a whopping good police procedural, with the inimitable Harry Hole up against all the usual demons—first and foremost, his own depressive alcoholism, but also the deaths of those close to him, a supervisor who just doesn’t get him, the love of his life who can’t be around him, and the darkest, coldest, most oppressive setting author Jo Nesbo can bring to life. I got the chills reading this and had to wrap a blanket around me, even in the middle of the […]
Eggers does it again — a face-to-face sit down with society’s failings
Stylistically, Eggers’ newest novel is a total departure from all of his earlier ventures, as it is entirely a set of dialogues between a disturbed young man named Thomas and his various abductees, all of them being held at an abandoned military base not far from the town he grew up in along the California coast. But Fathers is fundamentally a morality play transplanted into the 21st century and, as such, is not unlike his earlier novels such as Hologram for the King and The […]
A Satanic Conspiracy of Skinny
This novel would be downright silly, if it weren’t so darned sweet. The premise of The Program is that Satan has launched a miraculous weight-loss program designed to ensnare the souls of millions of sad women who have been brainwashed into believing that curves mean fat, and fat means unsexy and unloveable. And so Lovett takes on the obsession with weight that dominates the world’s media, entertainment industry, fashion industry, and bedrooms around the globe, and presents us with a different reality, one in which […]
Pros and Cons of Using Killer Drones
A relatively even-handed and close-up look—in fictional form–at the U.S. drone program currently used in the so-called “war on terrorism,” Sting of the Drone provides the reader with an insider’s view of one of the latest and most controversial weapons currently being employed by the Obama administration. Clarke, a 30-year veteran national security advisor to multiple U.S. governments, gives us a fictionalized account of an impending Christmas attack on several U.S. cities by a combined force of al-Qaeda and drug cartel elements from “that side […]