Read Books This will provide a list of the books I've read with a brief review. Users are blocked, contact me for access. I welcome discussions, but I'm tired of spam.

This book contains a collection of short stories by Lawrence Block. I wanted to like it. There are several short stories, each standing independently from the others. Each story starts an interesting mystery, they are well told. But the story stops just as the mystery is getting interesting. Nothing is resolved, no one gets caught, NOTHING. I had wondered if it was abridged and had a bad editor, nope, it wasn’t abridged.

This is a good one to skip.

Although I enjoyed this book, I’m still trying to sort it all out. There was a lot going on and I felt there should be a little more, yet all the ends seem to be tied up.

This book is one of a series involving a PI by the name of Spencer. He is a hard-boiled detective set in the present, along the east coast, but could be set anywhere. In this book, he is investigating the murder of an actor in a very bad play. The killer was present for a half hour, yet is not identified at the shooting. It made for an interesting twist. His investigation takes him into China town, where he runs into Tongs and deals with being an outsider.

The story is solid, he doesn’t make unsubstantiated intuitive leaps, nor lucky guesses. The characters are pretty well developed and are interesting, and the story is well told. The style reminded me of Ramond Chandler, a bit.

Issa arrived in Germany with no past and access to large money. He didn’t want the money as it was gained immorally according the the laws of Islam. The story unravels his past, and who he is, without providing a lot of definite answers. Issa is studied by several teams, oftenwith different interpretations of the past.

This book is set in Germany, near the current time. It involves current issues, and feels typical for Le Carre’s work.

The story moves slowly at first, in Le Carre’s style, there is little action, as subtlety and knowledge are key. The suspense builds well, but slowly. Not all of the questions are answered, but the events are clear.

The twists in this story kept me going to the end. A man assigns an agent to a position in Berlin, and the agent disappears immediately. Smiley and co. investigate the disappearance. The story is from the point of view of Ned, the manager making the fatal assignment. He is new to the field and finds himself in the thick of it and under suspicion.

This is a short story taken from the collection The Secret Pilgrim. It is an audiobook read by John Le Carre.  

Disappointing, some of the conclusions seem jumped to. The information acquired isn’t well supported by events. The book isn’t one of his better works.

This is the sixth book in the series, Badge of Honor. I had not read the previous books, and believe a background in the characters would have helped. The story is an investigation of murder. It is well told, but did not seem a good read.

I was disappointed in this one, I coulnd’t quite get into it. The characters didn’t seem very real and needed more development. As a result, I was reading as an observer without feeling for the characters or caring how things would come out.

The suspense/mystery portion of the story didn’t completely make sense. mabye I missed an element, but it made it difficult to follow. The action got exciting toward the end, but the book didn’t impress me well overall.