Book Review: Make Me by Lee Child finds Jack Reacher back in the good old USA, beating up the bad guys in the midwest. Oklahoma, if I remember correctly, in a place called Mother’s Rest. Jack gets off the train and steps into a world of underground internet sites and nefarious dealings going on in the town. Why is the town called Mother’s Rest? Jack asks the question frequently but gets no answers until the end. Working with a new female sidekick, he works his way around the country, collecting clues as to what’s going on in Mother’s Rest, and smacking a few heads along the way. Another great entry into the Reacher series. But did you expect any less? Four Stars.

Book Review: Sanctum by Madeleine Roux is the second book in the Asylum series, and I knew about a hundred pages into this book that it wouldn’t quite live up to the first book. (That’s a pattern that continues–see my review of Catacomb.) Sure, this one has a creepy carnival, flashbacks to a previous life lived by a distant relative, and mysterious people on motorcycles that chase the main characters around, spying and taking pictures all the while. But while the first book seemed fresh, this one seems too formulaic, as if it was simply modeled on the first and only a few things were changed to make a new book. Still vastly entertaining, though, but worth only Four Stars this time.

Book Review: Catacomb by Madeleine Roux is the third book in the Asylum series and proves that some series can operate on a law of diminishing returns. I gave the first book five stars, the second one four, and this one gets Three Stars, simply because it’s starting to get a little tedious. Even the accompanying pictures, so creepy in the first book, seem like the author just grabbed them out of her wallet for this one. They don’t really lend anything to the atmosphere of the book, and that whole American Horror Story feeling is lost. It doesn’t even matter that this book takes place in the creepy parts of New Orleans, the most haunted city in America. The book still falls a little flat.

Book Review: I hate to sound like every other review of this book that’s been written, but Thirteen Ways of Looking by Colum McCann is worth getting just for the title novella. It follows an old judge on his last day of life, flashing forward to the detectives that are investigating his murder after he’s killed in front of a restaurant. You’ll never figure out who did it, so don’t even try. You don’t read McCann for the mystery; you read him for the gorgeous writing. Five stars for the novella, minus one star for the weaker three stories which follow, which gives this book Four Stars.