Review: Broken Ground

Broken Ground by Val McDermid
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I love the UK background and culture, and that makes this book quite good. The character development and environment is very good.

The book really isn't about the mystery so much as the characters and motivations. And that makes this book quite unique. I haven't read anything by Val McDermid before, but I definitely will check out more of her books.

The plot is intriguing, though, and the inheritance is surprising.

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Review: The Last Tourist

The Last Tourist by Olen Steinhauer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This will be a short review because it was extremely hard to get into the book. I love spy thrillers, especially ones like Robert Ludlum and Alister MacLean wrote. Steinhauer doesn't write like them. Of course, this is 4th in a series so it's difficult to get into something that been going on and developing for 3 books.

I liked the fast pace, the foreign places, some transitions (needed a lot more to keep the pace from being so disjointed), and the brief descriptions to try to bring new readers up to date. However, in order to completely understand this book and not get lost in all the characters and the switching from first person to third person, one should read the first 3 books or at least a couple of them.

I didn't like the number of characters I had to keep up with, the switching from first person to third person, the lack of really good transitions to keep the pace a flow instead of jump, jerk, start, flow, stop, etc.

The writing was good, so I will check out another of Olen Steinhauer's books

3 of 5 stars

Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book.

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Review: The Blue Cloak

The Blue Cloak by Shannon McNear
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I think Shannon McNear did an excellent job with this gruesome tale of two serial killers in 1784. I admire how she remained a bit vague with the gory details of each murder. My imagination is strong enough to have filled in the details and the murders were quite shocking and terrible.

I highly recommend this book for it's faith value and how McNear's characters focus on prayer to defeat the satanic forces at work in these two serial killers. I am appalled at their complete sociopathic and psychopathic lack of regard for human life.

I also agree with the author that the women these men owned were so co-dependent they could not leave. Two hundred years ago, people didn't understand co-dependency, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen regularly. It is a huge problem in some marriages even today.

Timing seemed a little off, though. She made it seem like letters and communications were really fast rather than taking weeks and months to travel from one part of the country to another. That is the ONLY thing I could fault.

This is 5-star writing on a subject that is quite dark. It may be too dark for some readers, and certainly the subject is not good for younger readers because it is so dark. However, McNear does an excellent job of differentiating man's free will of choice and God's control over justice.

Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book.

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