Hoofball Reading List 2012

Hoofball

62)

Author: Lee Child

Title: A Wanted Man

Comment: Number 17 in this series and if I have to be honest the wandering man scenario is starting to wear a little thin for me. I still enjoyed the book but again you do have to take a "popcorn movie" perspective when reading it. One of the little twists in the book I saw coming as soon as the scenario for it started so no huge surprises in the plot. Decent story overall though.

Score: 7/10

Hoofball

63)

Author: John Connolly

Title: The Wrath of Angels

Comment: Phew - this was an excellent read. Quite a dark novel even by Connolly standards. If you have never read any of his Charlie Parker series then don't start with this one, you really need to read this series in order as there is an overall arc to the story (not completed yet by the way). This novel re-introduces some old and familiar characters such as the Collector and also has the "regulars" such as Charlie and to a lesser extent than usual, Louis and Angel. A plane is found in the middle of dense woods with a list of names inside it - and more than one camp want to get their hands on it.

Score: 9/10

Hoofball

64)

Author: Tom Grieves

Title: Sleepwalkers

Comment: A good debut novel from this author. How can you tell if your life is actually your dreams and vice-versa? The line between dreams and reality becomes blurred for the main character with major consequences as he goes on the run. The story kept my interest but the ending was a bit too much out there if I'm honest. Worth a go though.

Score: 7/10

Hoofball

65)

Author: Harry Dolan

Title: Very Bad Men

Comment: David Loogan is the editor of a mystery magazine based in Ann Arbor and a short manuscript is left in his office one day. The twist is that the murders described have all happened and the manuscript ends with the name of the next victim. The tag line of the book 'Every small town needs a serial killer...', is completely incorrect as the killer is not a serial killer. This is a thriller about a crime from decades ago and how it impacts on the present.

Score: 7/10

Hoofball

66)

Author: Linwood Barclay

Title: Trust Your Eyes

Comment: This is Barclays sixth novel and is a great read. The premise is very unusual but sets up a thriller that is a good read. A man moves back home to bury his father and to work out what to do to help his schizophrenic brother - who memorizes maps and road layouts all day every day on a website similar to google maps. Then one day he sees someone being murdered in a window and this sets off a thriller that emcompasses many themes such as loss, politics, mental health, conspiracy etc. This is an excellent book and I'd recommend Barclay to anyone.

Score: 9/10

Hoofball

67)

Author: John Gordon Sinclair

Title: Seventy Times Seven

Comment: This is the first book of a two book deal that this actor has lined up. This is a decent debut but certainly not "one of the finest debuts of the decade" as the tag line claims. A contract killer has been hired to eliminate an informant against the IRA. The action switches between the US and Ireland and this does show promise - likeable and believable characters, good plot with unforeseen twists and very realistic.

Score: 7/10

Hoofball

68)

Author: James Patterson & Michael Ledwidge

Title: ZOO

Comment: Good premise but unfortunately poor execution of it. The characters are a bit flat and not believable, the science behind the plot is completely nonsensical and ridiculous. I know this is fiction but when you read how instantaneous some reactions are it's jarring. Normally these collaborative novels are good holiday reads but I'd put this one firmly in the "only if a fan" category.

Score: 6/10

Hoofball

69)

Author: Tess Gerritsen

Title: Last to Die

Comment: This is the 10th book in the Rizzoli/Isles series and it seems to be stretching a bit now. The previous books were nearly always spot on with the suspense and plot but this one read a bit strange and at times it seemed like someone else was writing it. The plot is decent but comes together at the end in a fairly strange way. I won't give anything away but I also think that she is lining up a young adults series starring "The Jackals", the way they are brought up several times seemed to be leading that way, although I could be completely wrong. Not Gerritsens best work but still a good read.

Score: 6/10

Hoofball

70)

Author: Mark Gimenez

Title: The Governors Wife

Comment: An OK read. Bode Bonner is the Republican governor of Texas and likely to re-elected every election. He needs a new challenge and wants to run for president. Events conspire to make him a leading candidate but those same events make him a target for a dangerous enemy. The plot is a bit of a stretch and the whole "republicans bad" and "democrats good" theme gets a bit worn.

Score: 7/10

Hoofball

71)

Author: Alex Scarrow

Title: October Skies

Comment: This book is a great read. Scarrow is a good author and storyteller. This book is set in two time periods and inter-twining the story as it progresses. In 1856 a group of travellers crossing the American plains encounters unspeakable evil which echoes into today when a journalist stumbles across what is left of the same group. This is a taut thriller with good suspense and plotting.

Score: 8/10

Hoofball

72)

Author: James Patterson & Marshall Karp

Title: NYPD RED

Comment: This is the first in a probable new series. A Hollywood film festival is being held in New York and all the major players are attending. A special task force called NYPD RED, which looks after the rich and famous of New York, is on high alert. Savage and public killings put the rich and famous under threat and the task force must find the killer quickly. This is a decent enough story but I'm not sure if there is enough here to justify a series. As usual in these collaborative books the plot is pacy and it is a quick read.

Score: 7/10

Hoofball

73)

Author: Jesse Kellerman

Title: The Brutal Art

Comment: I'm still not sure what I think on this book. It kept my interest all the way through but it did start waning in the last third. An art dealer comes across some paintings by a missing artist. They start commanding large prices and the dealer tries to find the artist. There are a lot of flashbacks in this novel to fill in some back story but I did feel as though the book could have done with some good editing. The ending was a bit "meh" as well. Not as good as his first couple of novels.

Score: 6/10

Hoofball

74)

Author: Dustin Thomason

Title: 12.21

Comment: This is a standard doomsday/end-of-the-world novel. There is nothing here that hasn't been done before. A virus threatens the world and is linked in with the myth that the world will end at the end of the Mayan calendar cycle on 21/12/12. Can the main character find what is causing the virus and come up with a cure? Even though it's a standard plot, the characters are likeable and believable and I did enjoy the read.

Score: 7/10

Hoofball

75)

Author: Jesse Kellerman

Title: I'll Catch You

Comment: This book now takes the title of the worst book of the year that I've read. It starts off well if not a bit standard, a bit of a hack writer who has published one novel years before has a famous friend who is a massively well published author. The famous author dissappears one day while out sailing and his body is never found. While at the authors house after the funeral the hack steals an unpublished novel he finds, rewrites it slightly and gets it published under his own name. A fair enough story has been built up to here, but then all of a sudden the novel takes a completely weird turn and tries to turn into something that belies the whole first half of the book. It seems as if Kellerman was trying to to be satirical and humurous but it just comes off as wrong and wierd. Avoid like the plague unless you like being frustrated and confused. The very ending is one of the worst I've read as well.

Score: 1/10

Hoofball

76)

Author: Vince Flynn

Title: The Last Man

Comment: This book goes back to the current time for Mitch Rapp. Another solid thriller from Flynn. Rapp is a CIA operative and is heading up in a mission to find a missing CIA asset in Afghanistan, but the CIA are not the only group looking for the asset. Good story but the plot is slightly far fetched, can't say any more than that without giving away the twists. Well worth a read.

Score: 7/10

Hoofball

77)

Author: Stephen Ambrose

Title: Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors

Comment: Phew - this was a long read. Non-fiction always takes me quite a bit longer to get through. This is an autobiography of two iconic figures from the American Indian Wars, General Custer and Crazy Horse. I found this book quite interesting although there isn't a lot of detail on battles as this isn't just focused on the Indian wars but on their lives overall. Both men had their faults which are shown up during the book and it was quite interesting to read the background to the two figures. I'd always known that the two of them fought at the Battle of Little Bighorn but not the facts surrounding the battle. I didn't know that Crazy Horse was more or less murdered by the army the following year while supposedly trying to escape. Overall this is a sometimes dry book but a fascinating insight into the mid to late 1800's. I'd recommend this to anyone interested in the history of the American Wild Frontier.

Score: 7/10

Hoofball

78)

Author: James Patterson

Title: Merry Christmas Alex Cross

Comment: I thought it was interesting that Pattersons own website doesn't list this book as part of the main Alex Cross series of novels. It really looks like a standard thriller novel that just had Cross injected as the character to sell the book. As usual, the short chapters make this a quick and OK read. Nothing is really added to the whole Cross storyline by this book. Cross has to salvage a hostage situation on Christmas Eve and is then dragged into a potential terrorist attack on Christmas Day. One or two plot devices did not sit well with me and I felt that the Cross character did not react the way that you would think he would. I won't give away any of the plot but one plot device involved the torture of children (albeit not by Cross) and I really thought that this was over the top and does not fit in these novels given the character and his background.

Score: 6/10

Hoofball

79)

Author: William Shakespeare

Title: Hamlet

Comment: I picked this up out of interest in Easons one day as I had studied this play many moons ago for my leaving. It was hard enough to read but I found I still remembered some of the key lines. Hamlet is the well known story about prince Hamlets revenge for his murdered father the King who was poisoned by Hamlets now step-father. I found it really good but I'll stick to maybe reading only one or two classics a year!

Score: 8/10

Hoofball

80)

Author: David Baldacci

Title: The Forgotten

Comment: This is the second novel in Baldacci's "John Puller" series. He is a military criminal investigator who is drawn into a conspiracy when his aunt is found dead in Florida. This series has a very strong similarity to the Lee Child series about Jack Reacher but in these "Puller" novels the investigator is still in the army and it just seems a bit more believable. The Reacher novels overall are still a notch above these, but I would have to rate the Puller novels as slightly better than the last couple of Reacher books. A good read and well plotted.

Score: 8/10

Hoofball

81)

Author: Michael Connelly

Title: The Black Box

Comment: It feels like a lot longer than 13 months since the last Bosch novel and this was worth the wait. Connelly is one of the best crime writers around at the moment and this novel does not disappoint. Bosch is on a contract with the LAPD on a deferred retirement program and is part of a cold case squad. He starts to investigate a case which he was first involved with 20 years ago during the LA riots, the murder of a Danish journalist. This novel is really well plotted but I did feel as if there was not much character driven story in the novel. It's hard to describe but in this book Bosch felt like a slightly hollow version of himself as compared to other novels. His home life seemed to be more a distraction rather than part of the story as it has been before. Still, that is a minor complaint and I would recommend this novel to any fan of thrillers or crime fiction.

Score: 8/10

Hoofball

82)

Author: John Grisham

Title: The Racketeer

Comment: An OK book - the plotting and characterisation is fairly poor here and the twist can be seen a million miles before it happens. A white-collar criminal makes a deal to get out of prison by informing on the murderer of a judge. Grisham seems to be running out of decent stories.

Score: 6/10

Hoofball

83)

Author: Stephen King

Title: The Long Walk

Comment: I decided to re-read one of my favourite books to round off the year. I must have read this about a dozen times over the years and I still enjoy it every time. The long walk's main character is Ray Garraty who enters a competition called the Long Walk, in which 100 people walk until they drop, with anyone who gets three warnings (for dropping below four miles per hour) being shot by soldiers until only one is left - who wins anything they desire.

Score: 9/10