Books - Review

Carrie is a misfit - teased and persecuted at school, and with a totally wacko religious-nut mother for good measure. However she does have telekentic powers. She gets invited to the prom by the school hunk (as a result of hunk's actual girlfriend feeling guilty about a particularly nasty bit of Carrie-baiting). But the school bully/bitch (who has been banned from the prom as a result of the same bullying) arranges a bloody surprise for Carrie and her partner. This annoys Carrie quite a lot and she unleashes all her telekenetic powers, resulting in death and destruction for pretty much the whole town.

Stephen King's first successful novel I think. A bit simplistic, but good story. Not the slightest bit scary, or even atmospheric though, which is surely the point of a Stephen King?

Jake, recently divorced, and an altruistic and dedicated teacher of english literature has a friend called Al who runs a diner, which sells unusually cheap burgers, which, nevertheless, taste pretty good. It turns out that Al's diner has what he refers to as a rabbit-hole in it, one of the time-warp ones; this one taking you back to the same date in the late 1950's every time. Al goes back in time regularly to buy minced beef at 1950's prices hence the cheap, but excellent quality burgers. However, Al has bigger dreams - he thinks it should be possible to go back in time and prevent Lee Harvey Oswald from killing JFK on 22-11-63. However Al has cancer and is dying so he hands the mission over to his teacher friend Jake and between them they hatch plans to carry out a test mission, and then move on to their primary goal. But are they affecting their own future in ways they cannot begin to understand? Will a future with JFK turn out better than one without him? What if Jake should meet an attractive and intelligent woman from the 1950's and fall in love with her? And what about the butterfly effect?

Excellent, a great easy entertaining read with loads of time-paradoxes, historical accuracy (probably), and at its heart, a love-story.

Billy is a paid assassin, but one who only kills bad guys. He takes on one last job but is drawn into a conspiracy of evilness and double-crossing and has to run, hide and fight for his life. And his payment. Fortunately he is smart and very accurate with a rifle.

Well it all gets a little bit Jack Reacher (although as we know, there is nothing wrong with that), but a terrific page-turner.

Bad guy steals bunch of unpublished literary notebooks, but is imprisoned for killing the author during the robbery. He manages to hide the notebooks before being captured, but they get discovered by a boy. Bad guy is released, chases after boy...

Quite good really. This is apparently one of the Bill Hodges trilogy, so I may look out for another one. Bill, incidentally, is the detective who helps the boy. It says so on the back jacket.

People lining up at a job fair in the early hours of the morning are startled (and killed and maimed) when a Mercedes ploughs into the line. Retired cop Bill decides to investigate and discovers he is on the trail of a psychopath who intends further murderous mayhem.

Good thriller. Gets a bit gruesome in places.

Bill Hodges, retired and ailing detective, is back on the trail of the Mercedes Killer, who is apparently managing to kill people from within the confines of his institution.

Meh. Bit silly really.