Pop Goes the Weasel - Review

Pop Goes the Weasel by M.J. Arlidge
Publication date: October 6, 2015 
Publisher: NAL
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
Source: Publisher via NetGalley for an honest review




Description:


From the international bestselling author of Eeny Meeny comes the second thriller in the “truly excellent series”* featuring Detective Helen Grace.

A man's body is found in an empty house. 
A gruesome memento of his murder is sent to his wife and children.
He is the first victim, and Detective Helen Grace knows he will not be the last. But why would a happily married man be this far from home in the dead of night?

The media call it Jack the Ripper in reverse: a serial killer preying on family men who lead hidden double lives.

Helen can sense the fury behind the murders. But what she cannot possibly predict is how volatile this killer is—or what is waiting for her at the end of the chase....


My Take:

Pop Goes the Weasel is the second book with Detective Helen Grace and while I haven't read the first book, all necessary information was provided within the second book so that I didn't feel lost while reading. I am however, sufficiently impressed with the character and the story telling to want to go back and read the first book.

Helen Grace is a brilliant, dedicated detective and a very troubled woman. There are things in her past that still haunt her and she has a hard time dealing with her emotional issues. She is also the most perceptive and intelligent detective and some people just don't like that kind of competition. While she is trying to solve a gruesome series of murders, she faces conflicts within the police force and resistance to her methods.Helen Grace is a compelling character and I was pulled in to her personal struggle and the hunt for the killer.

The murder mystery itself is gruesome and very interesting --- in a reverse of a classic murder theme, the men frequenting prostitutes are the ones being killed in very horrible ways. I enjoyed the way the story unfolded with  gradual glimpses given of the murderer, the victims, and the others involved in the investigation.  It was very well done and kept teasing answers but didn't give too much away.

Since I read a digital galley, I wasn't too critical of the formatting issues in the galley. However, if it were a final digital edition, I would be disappointed with the formatting which tended to lack breaks in the text for location/character changes.

Having addressed the formatting, I have to stress that I was thoroughly caught up in the mystery and read the book in a day. I would definitely recommend Pop Goes the Weasel to anyone who enjoys mysteries and/or thrillers. I will be obtaining a copy of the first Helen Grace book as well.

Rich Kids of Instagram

Rich Kids of Instagram by The Creator of Rich Kids of Instagram with Maya Sloan
Publication date: July 8, 2014 by Gallery Books
Source: NetGalley
Description from Goodreads:
Based on the wildly popular blog "Rich Kids of Instagram," a dishy and hilarious novel about the intersecting lives of the world's most extravagant, unapologetically uber-rich teenagers.

The "Rich Kids of Instagram" are not your typical well-to-do brats. These "kids" drive Ferraris, fly to their weekend getaways in private jets, and post self-indulgent photos of themselves online as frequently—and as wantonly—as they blow wads of cash. Not to mention that they're more involved in sex, drugs, and power plays than most people twice their age.

Drawing from the ten most frequent contributors to the popular blog of the same name—which receives an average of 850,000 unique visitors a month and has been featured on 20/20, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, The Atlantic, Buzzfeed, Gawker, and others—Rich Kids of Instagram revolves around a core group of spoiled young people, from a Southern Belle poultry-empire heiress to a media mogul's driven daughter and an old-money rifle heir with a Mayflower legacy; to a nouveau riche outsider who is thrust into the members-only universe of the .1%, with scandalous results.

In a world that is smaller, more connected, and more competitive than ever, where nothing is off limits, some kids are just trying to make a buck—or ten thousand. Prepare to be wowed by this saucy, compulsively readable book about the hilarious display of extravagant wealth and the teenagers who have fallen into it.

My Take:
This was a completely self-indulgent read - one chosen to offset some much darker and heavier reading I had been doing before. 

So, given the reason for the choice of books, I have to say that is served it's purpose quite well. Rich Kids of Instagram is light, fast, and fun. I won't claim that it has a difficult plot to follow or that it is terribly deep or thoughtful. But it is fun and entertaining if you enjoy light fare and the guilty pleasure of reading about the escapades of the young, rich and spoiled.

There are several points of view and their stories do intertwine and the characters interact. Some of the characters are more appealing than others, but there are some that I did enjoy reading about. 

I liked their spunk, their confidence and their firm belief that things would eventually work out. Because with their kind of money, how could things not work out, right?

The Word Exchange

The Word Exchange by Alena Graedon
Publication date: April 8, 2014 by Doubleday
Source: Publisher via NetGalley
Description from Goodreads:

A fiendishly clever dystopian novel for the digital age, The Word Exchange is a fresh, stylized and decidedly original debut about the dangers of technology and the power of the printed word.     In the not so distant future, the forecasted "death of print" has become a reality. Bookstores, libraries, newspapers and magazines are a thing of the past, as we spend our time glued to handheld devices called Memes that not only keep us in constant communication, but have become so intuitive as to hail us cabs before we leave our offices, order take out at the first growl of a hungry stomach, and even create and sell language itself in a marketplace called The Word Exchange.
     Anana Johnson works with her father Doug at the North American Dictionary of the English Language (NADEL), where Doug is hard at work on the final edition that will ever be printed. Doug is a staunchly anti-Meme, anti-tech intellectual who fondly remembers the days when people used email (everything now is text or video-conference) to communicate--or even actually spoke to one antoher for that matter. One evening, Doug disappears from the NADEL offices leaving a single writen clue: ALICE. It's a code word he and Anana devised to signal if one of them ever fell into harm's way. And thus begins Anana's journey down the proverbial rabbit hole. . .
     Joined by Bart, her bookish NADEL colleague (who is secretly in love with her), Anana's search for Doug will take her into dark basement incinerator rooms, underground passages of the Mercantile Library, secret meetings of the anonymous "Diachronic Society," the boardrooms of the evil online retailing site Synchronic, and ultimately to the hallowed halls of the Oxford English Dictionary--the spiritual home of the written word. As Ana pieces togehter what is going on, and Bart gets sicker and sicker with the strange "Word flu" that has spread worldwide causing people to speak in gibberish, Alena Graedon crafts a fresh, cautionary tale that is at once a technological thriller, and a throughtful meditation on the price of technology and the unforeseen, though very real, dangers of the digital age.

My Take:

The premise of The Word Exchange intrigued very much, so I had to give it a go. As a reluctant, but eventual ebook reader, I still love physical books and am continually drawn to them. The ideas about the dangers of digital books, magazines, etc. are always exciting and enticing for me. 

I was drawn into the story from the first page of the book. I love words and the author's love of words is obvious from the beginning. I loved the table of contents - the three sections to the book are: Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis; each chapter within those sections are labeled as a letter to the alphabet and the chapter begins like a dictionary entry. What self-respecting book geek wouldn't love that?

I love the quirky characters, Anana (also Alice), Bart (for Bartleby, of course), Doug, Phineas -- the one character I didn't like was Max, the ex-boyfriend and all-around jerk. 

I thought the book was a great romp from the start. I loved the way the 'word flu' crept into the characters' conversations and writing. It was fun to see a "word" and know it wasn't really a word, but the speaker was sure that it was. There are many references to Alice in Wonder and Through the Looking-glass - which I loved, of course.

While the book is great fun from start to finish, there are also cautionary notes throughout. I found that many of them fed into my own concerns while still remaining hopeful about our future and respectful and loving towards the written word in whatever format. 

This is a book that I would recommend to anyone who enjoys word, books, reading, dictionaries in particular and a good story. 

Crime of Privilege

Crime of Privilege by Walter Walker
Digital galley provided by Random House via NetGalley
Description from Goodreads:
In the tradition of Scott Turow, William Landay, and Nelson DeMille, Crime of Privilege is a stunning thriller about power, corruption, and the law in America—and the dangerous ways they come together.

A murder on Cape Cod. A rape in Palm Beach.

All they have in common is the presence of one of America’s most beloved and influential families. But nobody is asking questions. Not the police. Not the prosecutors. And certainly not George Becket, a young lawyer toiling away in the basement of the Cape & Islands district attorney’s office. George has always lived at the edge of power. He wasn't born to privilege, but he understands how it works and has benefited from it in ways he doesn't like to admit. Now, an investigation brings him deep inside the world of the truly wealthy—and shows him what a perilous place it is.

Years have passed since a young woman was found brutally slain at an exclusive Cape Cod golf club, and no one has ever been charged. Cornered by the victim’s father, George can’t explain why certain leads were never explored—leads that point in the direction of a single family—and he agrees to look into it.

What begins as a search through the highly stratified layers of Cape Cod society, soon has George racing from Idaho to Hawaii, Costa Rica to France to New York City. But everywhere he goes he discovers people like himself: people with more secrets than answers, people haunted by a decision years past to trade silence for protection from life’s sharp edges. George finds his friends are not necessarily still friends and a spouse can be unfaithful in more ways than one. And despite threats at every turn, he is driven to reconstruct the victim’s last hours while searching not only for a killer but for his own redemption


My Take: 

This fast-paced book is told from George Beckett's point of view. The book begins on the evening of the crime that George witnessed and tells his side of the story. It is clear from the start that George is "a friend of a friend" and hadn't really met the illustrious Gregory family before this night. George is just a pretty typical college kid - he's not too wealthy, he is on the fringes of the wealth and power, he knows friends of these people, but he doesn't really feel that he belongs among them. Unfortunately, for George, he makes a cowardly decision and has to deal with the consequences of this choice. The interesting thing is that he actually benefits from this decision in many ways, but the choice has it's down side as well. He is plagued by guilt and is also threatened by the family of the victim of the crime. Years later, George is working in the basement of the District Attorney's office on Cape Cod; keeping his head down and trying not to cause trouble when he is approached by the father of the girl who was murdered years ago and whose murder has never been solved. In an attempt to redeem himself and bring the guilty person to justice, George begins the long and dangerous investigation into the murder.

I really enjoyed this book. I loved the setting and the author seems to be very familiar with the area and describes it beautifully. This book had me hooked from the very beginning. George isn't the best person in the world, but I felt empathy for him. He made some bad decisions, but he was young and scared and intimidated. I did like that he felt actual guilt and remorse and finally decided to attempt to redeem himself and bring the guilty party to justice. 

The power and influence that the Gregory family wields is explained and described very well through the book. I thought that the way the locals felt about the family was well done as well. There always seems to be certain factions trying to undermine each other. The way power can influence and change people is another  prominent issue in the book. While reading, I couldn't help but think that the Kennedy family must have been a model for the handsome, wealthy, popular, political Gregory family since they also are from the same area. They are so famous and prominent in the American mind that they are who we think of when given these kinds of descriptions.

I kept trying to figure out how the book was going to end and what would happen to George - would he cave and drop his investigation or would he get framed for it or any number of other possibilities occurred to me while reading. This was a super fast read because I just could not put my kindle down. The last line of the book had such an impact on me. I wasn't expecting it and it made me have to go back and really think about everything in the book again.

I would highly recommend Crime of Privilege to anyone who enjoys fast-paced, political, crime stories. 

The Romanov Cross

The Romanov Cross by Robert Masello
digital arc provided by Random House via NetGalley
Description from NetGalley:

Nearly one hundred years ago, a desperate young woman crawled ashore on a desolate arctic island, carrying a terrible secret and a mysterious, emerald-encrusted cross. A century later, acts of man, nature, and history converge on that same forbidding shore with a power sufficient to shatter civilization as we know it.

Army epidemiologist Frank Slater is facing a court-martial, but after his punishment is mysteriously lifted, Slater is offered a job no one else wants—to travel to a small island off the coast of Alaska and investigate a potentially lethal phenomenon: The permafrost has begun to melt, exposing bodies from a colony that was wiped out by the dreaded Spanish flu of 1918. Frank must determine if the thawed remains still carry the deadly virus in their frozen flesh and, if so, ensure that it doesn’t come back to life.

Frank and his handpicked team arrive by helicopter, loaded down with high-tech tools, prepared to exhume history. The colony, it transpires, was once settled by a sect devoted to the mad Russian monk Rasputin, but there is even more hiding in the past than Frank’s team is aware of. Any hope of success hinges on their willingness to accept the fact that even their cutting-edge science has its limits—and that the ancient wisdom of the Inuit people who once inhabited this eerie land is as essential as any serum. By the time Frank discovers that his mission has been compromised—crashed by a gang of reckless treasure hunters—he will be in a brutal race against time. With a young, strong-willed Inuit woman by his side, Frank must put a deadly genie back in the bottle before all of humanity pays the price.

The Romanov Cross is at once an alternate take on one of history’s most profound mysteries, a love story as unlikely as it is inevitable, and a thriller of heart-stopping, supernatural suspense. With his signature blend of fascinating history and fantastic imagination, critically acclaimed author Robert Masello has once again crafted a terrifying story of past events coming back to haunt the present day . . . and of dark deeds aching to be unearthed.

Robert Masello is an award-winning journalist, a television writer, and the author of many other books, most recently the supernatural thrillers Vigil (which appeared on the USA Today bestseller list) and Bestiary. His articles and essays have appeared often in such publications as the Los Angeles Times, New York Magazine, People, and Parade,and his nonfiction book, Robert’s Rules of Writing, has become a staple in many college classrooms. His produced television credits include such popular shows as Charmed, Sliders, and Early Edition. A longstanding member of the Writers Guild of America, he lives in Santa Monica, California.

My Take:

Epidemiologist Frank Slater gets himself in trouble with his military superiors because he makes an ethical decision that goes against orders. Amazingly, the court-martial awaiting him disappears and he has a chance to redeem himself when a different kind of crisis arises that needs his expertise.  There is an isolated island in Alaska where the permafrost is melting and exposing the graveyard of a small colony of Russians that had died there in the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918. Slater must secure the site and test to see if the virus is still viable before anyone is exposed. 

Unfortunately for Slater, Port Orlov is a very small town and news travels fast. Before he has even had a chance to set up his camp on the island and start work, there is already a rogue element there ready to cause trouble. The three locals who are intent on finding treasure in the graveyard have no idea what they are getting into. Their actions would almost be a comedy of errors if it weren't so dangerous and in the end so tragic and ridiculously bungled. Everything goes wrong from the start, but that doesn't stop Harley Vane, the would-be leader of the gang, from trying to attain his goal.

The two separate groups, the scientists and the treasure hunters, are mostly unaware of each other for a good deal of the time, which makes for entertaining reading as they maneuver around each other pursuing their individual goals.

The saying "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong" pretty much applies to Slater's mission in Alaska. The one positive thing about his adventure, is that he meets Nika, the mayor of Port Orlov. Nika is a great character. She is smart, independent, and brings out the story of the Alaskan natives. I really enjoyed reading her story and would be interested in reading more about this character.

There is a parallel storyline that details the last days of the Romanovs and the fate of young Anastasia. This alternate history is quite entertaining though tragic and it is a very inventive way to explain how the Spanish flu could have reached such an isolated place as Alaska. I loved that the author found a way to combine two very fascinating historical topics into one novel. Both are fun to read about on their own, but combine them, and you have twice the adventure, tragedy and trouble.

I think anyone who enjoys history or historical fiction, or in interested in the House of Romanov, epidemics and Alaska would enjoy this fast-paced, exciting novel.