Lance Charnes' reviews > Likes and Comments
Good review. This sounds like a fun read.
Shadow Divers
is a quest story, and, as those often are, a story of obsession. It chronicles the discovery of a sunken U-boat off New Jersey by a group of die-hard wreck divers and their six-year campaign to identify that relic.If you enjoy or appreciate ships, history, or discovery stories, or can’t get enough Krakauer or Junger, you should consider this book. Four stars.
If you're interested, my review is at http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/....
The Boy in the Suitcase is yet another entry in the growing catalog of Scandinoir coming to these shores, and in many ways fits the general pattern: a socially maladapted protagonist, evil doings involving underage victims, societal rot, Eastern European villains, heat waves. That its central figure isn’t a police detective doesn’t move it very far out of the middle of this particular stream.My review is at http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/....
Lance wrote: "Shadow Divers
is a quest story, and, as those often are, a story of obsession. It chronicles the discovery of a sunken U-boat off New Jersey by a group of die-hard..."
This looks good...almost like a good reference for action-adventure writers. That's cool. I love History. The "Barefoot Navy" vs. U-Boat, things like that.
Seeley James hits all the marks in
The Meeting
, the first six chapters of the sequel to
The Geneva Decision
, returning soccer-star-turned-security-CEO Pia Sabel to a new adventure. Part 1 of this serialized novel shows James' growth as an author while delivering on many of the qualities that made the previous book a good read. A solid four stars.Read the full review at http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/....
The Ragnarok Conspiracy
is a thriller that takes the global-terrorist-conspiracy story and turns it on its head: what would happen if a Western extremist group started launching terrorist attacks on Moslems?It's a great concept and a good story undermined by some execution issues. The things that bugged me may work for you, however. Three-plus stars, but unfortunately we can't do half stars.
Read the full review at http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/....
The Ipcress File
is often considered a classic of the spy-thriller genre and made Len Deighton what he is today. But experiencing its wandering plot and uneven pacing today is much like taking a disappointing trip in a time capsule.Read the full review at http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/....
Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World's Richest Museum
is one of the best true-crime books I've read, a thorough but engaging account of the many criminal and ethical train wrecks hidden behind the imposing façade of the world's richest museum. This could be the basis for a fine soap opera, or Law & Order franchise. Five stars.Read the full review at http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/....
Lance wrote: "Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World's Richest Museum
..."
This is so the kind of book I just love to read! Will definitely get hold of a copy. Great review!
One of the fun parts for me is that I go to the Getty a couple times a year. Next time I go to the Malibu branch, I know I'll be looking at the donor information and thinking, "This one was a tax dodge, that one has no provenance, this one came from Giacomo Medici..."
Lance wrote: "One of the fun parts for me is that I go to the Getty a couple times a year. Next time I go to the Malibu branch, I know I'll be looking at the donor information and thinking, "This one was a tax d..."hahaha, and you finally realized that the king was naked :-)) Oh how I love the idea!
Mission to Paris
is Alan Furst's latest excursion into interwar European intrigue. All the familiar Furstian tropes, atmosphere and attitudes are here, which may lead to some deja vu if you're a regular. Four stars if you've never read Furst before; three stars if you have.Read my review here.
Lance wrote: "
Mission to Paris
is Alan Furst's latest excursion into interwar European intrigue. All the familiar Furstian tropes, atmosphere and attitudes are here, which may lead to some deja vu if you're ..."
I absolutely enjoyed reading this review. What a fresh way of dealing with all the parts. So so good!
Mission to Paris
is Alan Furst's latest excursion into interwar European intrigue. All the familiar Furstian tropes, atmosphere and attitudes are here, which may lead to some deja vu if you're ..."
I absolutely enjoyed reading this review. What a fresh way of dealing with all the parts. So so good!
Powder Burn
is an old-fashioned (wo)man-against-Nature adventure story, unfortunately sold as an action thriller. An engaging heroine and a not-bad plot don't quite make up for various execution missteps. Three stars.Read my review here.
Just finished
Doors Open
. It's an Ian Rankin novel, but not a Rebus novel. Competent and a fast read, but lacking in the texture Rankin is famous for. Three stars.Read my review here.
Just finished
The Art Forger
. It's a mystery, art procedural, historical quasi-romance, inside-the-art-world dish, and the well-rendered portrait of a young artist involved in shady doings. Four stars.Read my review here.
Some thrillers take a ripped-from-today’s-headlines scenario, tart it up, and turn it loose on a recognizable slice of the real world. If there’s disbelief to be suspended, it comes in small doses. Other thrillers, on the other hand, require you throw away that disbelief all in one chunk right up front, then let the plot unspool more-or-less naturally in the alternate world they set up – a world that looks like but doesn’t necessarily act like the world we live in.Mark T. Sullivan's Outlaw belongs to the second type. Once you make that leap of faith, you get an efficient, Ludlumesque international chase story. That first step’s a doozy, though. Three stars plus a little.
Because I wrote this review for Criminal Element, I can't copy it here. However, you can read the entire review -- and find a lot of other good stuff -- here.
Lance wrote: "Some thrillers take a ripped-from-today’s-headlines scenario, tart it up, and turn it loose on a recognizable slice of the real world. If there’s disbelief to be suspended, it comes in small doses...."
Very good review.
Very good review.
Poison Pill
has the bones of a good corporate-takeover potboiler, an underexplored genre. However, repellent characters, amateurish writing and a loss of focus on the main action make for a missed opportunity. Two stars.Since I reviewed this book for Criminal Element, I can't copy it all here. However, you can read the entire review -- and a bunch of other good stuff -- here.
Jacob's back in
The Desperate
, Part IV of the Trench Coats serial starring soccer-star-turned-security-executive Pia Sabel.This is good news, as Jacob's an engaging character with a clear voice, and he's a good counterpoint to Pia's earnestness. This time around, Our Hero has to land on a remote Caribbean island in order to rescue Pia from the bad guys -- at night, in the middle of a hurricane. No problem.
This could easily have turned into superheroics, but author James wisely reined in Jacob's exploits to minimize the amount of required disbelief suspension. A new, interestingly ambiguous villain arrives, and the background conspiracy loses some of its mystery while gaining a certain level of credibility not always achieved by thriller-based conspiracies. All in all, a worthy installment in this ongoing saga.
Serials still don't really work for me -- when I read a story, I want to do it on my schedule -- but Seeley James seems to be doing well by the form. If you've made it this far through Trench Coats, you need to pick up Part IV. If you haven't started yet, there's enough of it out there to keep you occupied until Part V. Four stars.
Just finished
Hot Art: Chasing Thieves and Detectives Through the Secret World of Stolen Art
by Joshua Knelman. Snappy writing and a cast of interviewees from both sides of the law make art theft come alive. 4.5 stars.Read the full review here.
Finished
The Cold Dish
, the novel that introduced Sheriff Walt Longmire to the world. A sure hand with the alpine Wyoming setting, an engaging leading man and a grade-A sidekick are undone by an out-of-character first-person narrative voice and a lack of dramatic seed corn to move me on to the next installment. A&E does it better on Longmire, showing us what could've been. Three stars and some change, rounded down.Read the full review here..
Just finished
Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art
, the real-life story of how pathological liar John Drewe tinkered with the history of European Modern art in order to sell hundreds of forged paintings to collectors, galleries and museums. If you like con men, you'll love this book. Four stars.Read the full review here.
Another friend of mine really liked this book, too.
Just finished
Ghostman
, an entry in the growing genre of "fixer thrillers". A tidy, efficient crime thriller with stripped-down prose that goes by fast. The protagonist is largely charisma-free, however, and the twisty plot doesn't seem to challenge him the way it should. 3.5 stars rounded down.Read the full review here.
The Death and Life of Bobby Z
is the book that started Don Winslow on his “drugs in Laguna” series, which isn’t actually a series as much as an attitude and state of mind. The attitude and stock company are there; the plotting isn’t quite yet. Still, it’s well entertaining. Three and a half stars rounded down to three.Read the full review here.
I’m often on the lookout for good business-themed mysteries and thrillers. Not ones where the hero or villain happens to be a businesscritter, but ones where business is vital to the functioning of the plot, where the mystery or thrills grow out of the supercharged environment of high finance or corporate skullduggery.Nothing Personal: A Novel of Wall Street , career securities trader Mike Offit’s debut “novel of Wall Street,” promises this on the book’s product page: “Warren [the hero] soon finds himself at the center of two murder investigations as a crime spree seemingly focused on powerful finance wizards plagues Wall Street. The blood-soaked trail leads to vast wealth and limitless risk…” Financial and personal mayhem! Good stuff, right?
Not so much. Nothing Personal is a crime novel, but not a murder novel. The crime isn’t in the couple of killings, which in many ways are beside the point; it’s in the way day-to-day business is done in the corporate finance world in which Our Hero works. A solid three stars.
Since I reviewed this book for Criminal Element, I can't copy it all here. However, you can read the entire review -- and a bunch of other good stuff -- here.
Ted Scofield's
Eat What You Kill: A Novel
is a rare bird: a business psychological thriller that’s both tightly bound to the business world and genuinely entertaining.Think the people on Wall Street are psychopaths? Scofield's protagonist, Evan Stoess, is the real deal: a completely amoral man with a huge chip on his shoulder, scrambling his way up the financial world's ladder via lies, blackmail, extortion, and ultimately, murder. It’s pretty easy to get caught up in Evan's machinations and to enjoy tagging along with his ride to master-of-the-universe status. Four and a half stars.
Since I reviewed this book for Criminal Element, I can't copy it all here. However, you can read the entire review -- and a bunch of other good stuff -- here.
The Expats
should be the literary version of a platypus -- an espionage yarn mixed with domestic soap opera -- but in the main it works pretty well if you approach it with the proper expectations. It ain't a spy thriller, nor is it pure kitchen-sink drama, but if you can deal with a blend of the two, you might enjoy seeing how arts & crafts and tradecraft go together. Four stars.Read the full review here.
The Lie: A Novel
features an intriguing scenario -- an outspoken human-rights lawyer is co-opted by the Israeli police to decide who gets tortured -- well-crafted settings and descriptions, brisk pacing...and an unfortunate lack of character development or tension. Decent, not great. Three stars.Read the full review here.
Mark Pryor's
The Crypt Thief
, featuring his series character Hugo Marston, is a psycho-killer story set in modern-day Paris that manages to feel like a 1940s detective movie co-written by Thomas Harris. If that's your thing, you might give it four stars; it ain't mine, so I gave it a strong three for style.Read the full review here.
Desmond Bagley's
The Vivero Letter
is an adventure thriller very much of its time (1968), and suffers from a notable lack of thrills or adventure until the last third of the story. Readers seeking their daily top-up of 1960s British male heroics may be better served by going straight to Alistair MacLean. Two stars.Read the full review here.
Sarah Thornton's
Seven Days in the Art World
is a surprisingly engaging account of how the frothiest end of the contemporary art market works (or doesn't), written in a way that a non-insider can understand. Its you-are-there approach is both vivid and clear, and it's chockablock with odd characters. However, it's all about the top 1% of the market, leaving out the parts you're likely to ever see yourself. Four stars.Read the full review here.
Bring It, Omnibus Edition
is a fast, twisty globetrotting adventure with its most cynical and paranoid parts ripped from recent headlines. It features an unusual female lead and an engaging male hero-knight in somewhat-tarnished armor, lots of action and enough shifty goings-on to keep dedicated puzzle-hounds busy. Four stars.Read the full review.
I finished
Swag
, by Elmore Leonard. This 1976 chronicle of the exploits of a couple of low-life stickup men is the third of Leonard's Detroit-based crime novels, and while some parts of the trademark Leonard style appear here, memorable characters and plotting unfortunately aren't among them. Two stars.Read the full review here.
Indigo Slam
is Elvis Cole's seventh literary outing, and for both good and ill, it's very much like the first. If you're sweet on Cole and somehow missed this episode in his continuing saga, you'll probably be well entertained. If you're like me -- on the bubble about this series, hoping the next one will do something different -- you're not going to find "new" here. Three stars.Read the full review here.
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
may be The Best Years of Our Lives for a new generation. It's a tour de force stream-of-consciousness look at mid-2000s America through the confused and overwhelmed eyes of a 19-year-old reluctant-hero soldier on the last day of his squad's "Victory Tour" of the U.S. heartland. Five stars.Read the full review here.
The Golden Orange
is nowhere near Joe Wambaugh's best. With a flabby and repetitive plot and two unrelatable and unsympathetic main characters, it hardly lives up to the hard-hitting crime novels on which he built his reputation. Two wobbly stars, and only because for all its faults, it's still a skilled exercise in building milieu.Read the full review here.
The Dogs of Riga
is the second installment in Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander series. An unexpected foray into political intrigue saves the normally dithery and diffident Wallander from himself and provides a welcome relief from the nonstop bleak hopelessness of the Scandinoir I've read so far...but not enough to turn me into a fan. Three and a half stars, rounded down.Read the full review here.
Lance wrote: "Ted Scofield's Eat What You Kill: A Novel is a rare bird: a business psychological thriller that’s both tightly bound to the business world and genuinely entertaining.
Think the pe..."
Very good review. This sounds like a book I'd like to read. I'll be adding it to my TBR list.
EDITED
I would love to read this, but I have a hard time paying 13.99 for an e-book (just on principal). I'll keep an eye out and see if it ever goes on sale. Too bad they feel the need to charge more for an e-book than a paperback.
Think the pe..."
Very good review. This sounds like a book I'd like to read. I'll be adding it to my TBR list.
EDITED
I would love to read this, but I have a hard time paying 13.99 for an e-book (just on principal). I'll keep an eye out and see if it ever goes on sale. Too bad they feel the need to charge more for an e-book than a paperback.
Money Laundering Through Art: A Criminal Justice Perspective
is a textbook about, well, what it says. While promising an in-depth look into the worldwide use of art in money laundering, what it delivers instead is a survey of the underpinnings of money-laundering law and jurisprudence, with a broad-brush treatment of how it relates to the art markets in the U.S. and Brazil. Three stars ($20 for each).Read the full review here.
The Wild Beasts of Wuhan
is a mild-mannered mystery in which the deadliest weapons are cell phones and laptops and the greatest existential threats to Our Heroine, a forensic accountant, are jet lag and airline food. Series star Ava Lee shops, showers, racks up frequent-flyer points and periodically tracks down $70 million bilked from a wealthy Chinese art collector. Three stars.Read the full review here.
Crime School: Money Laundering: True Crime Meets the World of Business and Finance
has the feel of what you'd get if you plied a former Mountie with a steady stream of Molson and just let him talk -- an engaging walk around the playground of crooks and their money, spiced up with a series of war stories. If you're on the prowl for a detailed look at how to launder that Mob money under your mattress, though, prowl some more. Four stars if it gives you what you're looking for.Read the full review here.
Bad Paper: Chasing Debt from Wall Street to the Underworld
follows the strange-but-true exploits of a cast of scalawags in the only slice of the financial industry that can make derivatives trading look honest: debt collection. Journalist Jake Halpern brings you bankers, ex-cons, hustlers, debtors, and a thoroughly broken system in an easy-reading, engaging true-crime tale that should leave you either sad or mad. Four strong stars.Because I wrote this review for Criminal Element, I can't copy it here. However, you can read the entire review -- and find a lot of other good stuff -- here.
Where the Bodies Are Buried
is Tartan Noir with a clear voice, a pair of well-drawn female protagonists, and enough drizzle and gloom to give you a yen for haggis. This is Glasgow red in fang and claw, without a single Rennie Mackintosh sighting. Four strong stars.Read the full review here.
Most authors make their stories work through plot, or characters, or sometimes both. Some make them work through sheer attitude. Sometimes this latter approach works fabulously (see Don Winslow, Chuck Palahniuk, and Josh Bazell). It's easy to fall off this particular tightrope, though, as demonstrated by
Don't Point That Thing At Me
. Two stars.Read the full review here.
I'm glad to see that you are still posting with us Lance! Thank you!
Whispers from the Pirate's Ghost wrote: "I'm glad to see that you are still posting with us Lance! Thank you!"Thanks. I've been enmeshed in my own writing (and other issues) and haven't had a lot of time to read for pleasure.
Read the review at http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/....