A must read, especially if you watch Fox News……..   ****

With humor and first hand knowledge Franken pulls back the curtain on the misdirection used by pundits, commentators, so called news analysts, and in particular Bill O’ Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Ann Coulter. In today’s political climate this book is even more of a must read.

While addressing the way the ‘right’ uses partial facts, selected quotes, and false information, this book is a reminder to all of us to check the facts as best we can before making decisions about who is telling the truth, regardless of the source.

Although written in 2003, the lies and the liars that tell them are, for the most part, still around and have actually increased in number. If there was ever a book that prompted deeper reading into what is truth, it is this one.

This one gets four stars.

Lesson learned…..   *

After reading and reviewing  Make Me by Lee Child, I had promised myself it would be the last Reacher novel I would read.  When I heard about Night School and the story being about Reacher when he was still in the Army, I decided to give it a try.  Surely it would be different. Unfortunately, I should have kept my promise.

This book definitely qualifies as Child’s worse to date. There may be one as bad coming in the future, but this reviewer will not be reading it.

Child wrote this at a second-grade level. Short sentences, minimum description, and repetition. If you eliminate the repetitive prose, this would be a novella. It reads almost as bad as, “See Dick run, see Jane run too”. Maybe he was just honoring his pen name, Child.

Child also moves the reader from one scene to the next by ending with a date or time, then starting the next section with the date or time in the next location.  This is fine once or twice, but is overdone to the point of absurdity.

Night School has all the elements of the formula used in previous Reacher novels. Reacher fights four guys, then later eight guys. He makes love to one of the central characters. He is able to figure things out more quickly than those around him. And of course he bucks authority.

There are too many plot holes to mention here but the worst was the idea that the government could lose track of ten items that become the central part of the book. I won’t spoil it by saying what they are but just know by the time you get to that part the bad writing has already spoiled it.

If I were reviewing this for lazy, bad writing it would get five stars, but since that is not the criteria, it gets one star, and that is being kind.

The Ferry to Nowhere…….    **

This is the third book by Michael Robotham and it falls short of the first two. Alisha Barba is resurrected and the novel is written in first person from her viewpoint.

First person narration can be fun to read and is difficult to write. Robotham shows he has yet to master the technique.  His attempt at first person made this a tedious read. This was surprising since his first two books had first person viewpoints also, and were fine. The repetition of “I” in this one was overdone.

In addition, there were too many loose threads left hanging. One example, when Alisha is picked up by the British equivalent of homeland security, she is suddenly released without a clear reason. Certain scenes were unbelievable and Alisha kept doing what I would call stupid things. She put herself in dangerous situations that contradicted her cop instinct. After a long description of her karate expertise, she is later overpowered by someone she should have been able to defend against.

There is a detailed description of human trafficking, as well as the prostitution in Amsterdam. While some of this is needed for the story, too much space was devoted to both.

There is no real mystery, no real twist, and no suspense. The ending is cliche.

This one gets two stars, should have been one but I added one for effort.

Not bad for first novel….  ***

After seeing a tweet from Stephen King praising Robotham’s Close Your Eyes, I decided to check out this author. Since Robotham writes a series about the character Joseph O’Loughlin I wanted to start with the first book.

The Suspect is a good read, fast paced, and although predictable, it is a good suspense novel. The protagonist, O’Loughlin, is a psychologist who suffers from Parkinson’s disease. This makes for an interesting and unusual story line.

Robotham’s style is humorous, complex, informative, but at times suffers from over writing. A better editor would have cleaned out some of the unnecessary passages, making this a tighter read. The ending stretches the boundaries of believability but with a twist that satisfies the reader.

I will be reading the rest in this series and hopefully will find one that, like Stephen King, “I can’t put down.”

This first one gets three stars.