criminolly's reviews
2382 reviews

The first book in the notorious Sweet Valley High vampire trilogy, this was a fun read but didn't quite match the delirious highs of the SVH werewolf books I read recently. Published 9 years before 'Twilight', it reads a lot like 'Twilight', with a brooding, dark haired young man who is romantic one minute and standoffish the next moving into a small town and making the local girls swoon. One of the swooners is SVH twin Jessica, and naturally her sister Elizabeth is suspicious of newcomer Jonathan Cain, not least because a dead body with holes in its neck turns up in town just after he arrives. 
All a lot of fun and builds to a pretty great cliffhanger climax.

A fun early entry in the Goosebumps series with some enjoyably creepy moments. There are the usual Goosebumps elements - sibling rivalry, well-meaning but useless adults, tried and tested horror tropes. In this case there’s a haunted ventriloquist’s dummy and a pair of competitive twins. I was expecting a better twist at the end, but it was still an entertaining quick read. 

This is one of those books that feels like it deserves a better review than I can give it. A deeply personal memoir about domestic abuse in a lesbian relationship, it’s far outside my own experience. As well as being intimate, it feels very well considered and researched. The author draws on other texts, but also quite brilliantly on universally recognised (or at least familiar) cultural references to give more impact to her points. 
I found it moving, insightful, important and very very readable. 
The book’s dedication states “If you need this book, it is for you”. I didn’t need it, but I’m very glad I read it. I’m struck by the fact that it’s a book that has been banned/challenged in US schools/libraries (I read it for a banned books challenge). This kind of censorship is almost always about closing down the very idea of ways of existing that are different to those of the people doing the banning. This feels like a book that some people really would need, which makes trying to hide it away even crueller. 

This is basically ‘Murder, She Wrote’ does ‘And Then There Were None’, with a high body count to match, and is as much fun as that sounds. It sees writer turned sleuth Jessica Fletcher stuck in a local hotel during a blizzard, the other guests being a wedding party who are gradually getting bumped off. 
It’s silly but pacy and entertaining, even if the peril is never ramped up quite as much as it could have been and the mystery is less than perfect. 

A fun, fast-paced novel that teams up the Hillbilly Shakespeare Hank Williams with Blues genius Muddy Waters for an unlikely but enjoyable crime thriller. Author Stephen Mertz has spent decades writing men's adventure books and he brings that same pulpy energy to this novel, whilst also inserting a little of each man's biography and bringing them to life as characters. 
They're pitched against a formidable band of opponents - corrupt sheriffs, g-men and the KKK - and the plot moves with the velocity you'd expect. The 50s US south setting is well done and there's a real colour and vibrancy to the backdrop. Throw in a whole bunch of twists and turns and a little emotion and you have a very entertaining read.  

It’s Christmas Eve in New York in the early 70s and a group of black militants is planting bombs to further their cause. When one of the bombs is lost an officer from the bomb squad and leader of the militant group go on a race against time to find it. This could have been amazing, but it fumbles the ball a couple of times and ends up simply being a very enjoyable curio. The Christmas setting is well done, the politics is reasonably even-handed (be prepared to encounter every racial slur you can think to though) and there’s even a redemption sub-plot for a minor character. I never say this, but it admit felt like it should have been longer. The final act is very rushed and could have had even more tension wring out of it. 
I love trash books like this that capture the mood of a moment, and ‘Victims’ certainly does that, for better or worse. 

How to describe ’The Thorn Birds’? It’s hugely long (around 700 pages) has an uncomfortable premise (the relationship between a Catholic priest and a woman - they first meet when she is 10 and he is 26) and it was massively successful. The book is the most successful Australian book ever and the TV mini series was the second most successful of all time when it first aired. Oh, and it’s fine. The premise is less horrific than it might have been, the length is just about justified by the multi-decade, generational family saga style of the story and it’s readable enough. The book came out at the time that the rest of the world was remembering Australia existed, and the setting helps - there’s an authenticity to it all that makes even the minutiae quite interesting. There are some decent set pieces too, including a storm sequence which is wonderfully dramatic. 
The characters are okay, not exactly fascinating, but interesting enough that I did enjoy following their lives. The lack of a real plot is probably the book’s biggest weakness. It’s one of those blockbusters that’s more a series of things happening than an actual story. Sometimes that works but I’m not sure it did here. 
In summary, it was 700 pages and I finished it, so I guess it was okay? 

Reading this book was as a fascinating, moving experience. I don’t read many memoirs, and when I do they’re the considered, filtered kind. Reading something as raw as this was breathtaking - Highsmith’s most private thoughts laid bare. It feels intrusive at times, but it’s also utterly compelling, even when she’s describing the most mundane things. 
She’s an author I’ve come to greatly admire over the last 2 years, so having access to her diaries and notebooks felt like a rare treat, an opportunity to better understand a truly great writer. 

This collection of eight short stories from Eric LaRocca perfectly captures the weird vibe that makes their work so compelling. It's hard to say exactly what it is about LaRocca's work that keeps drawing me back to it, maybe it's the singleminded vision it possesses. There is something about all the stories here, and everything else by them I've read, that feels unlike anything else out there. A weirdness, a darkness, an unsettling insight into the human psyche. 
I think my favourite story was the most conventional one, 'You're Not Supposed To Be Here' which has a pulpy crime feel to it, alongside LaRocca's trademark darkness. There's also a great introduction from Chuck Wendig.  

'Gravedigger' is a solid PI novel from the 80s with the twist that the detective is openly (and happily) gay. It's the 6th book in the Dave Brandstetter series (there are 12 in total, the first published in 1970, the last in 1991) and I suspect when they first came out that twist was a much bigger deal than it is today. Despite that advances we've made since then, it's still refreshing to see a LGBTQIA+ lead character in a crime novel whose sexuality is almost incidental to the rest of the book.
The mystery itself is engaging and entertaining, with Dave investigating an insurance claim from a father who believes his daughter was murdered by a cult leader. It has a great early 80s California vibe, just the right number of twists and turns, and comes in at a perfect mystery novel length of just under 200 pages.