Monday, March 24, 2014

Eyes of Prey - John Sandford

Eyes of Prey is the third book in the Prey series and so far this is the best I've read --> I read them in order.

Stephanie Bekker, the wife of Dr. Michael Bekker, is murdered. Her face is brutally beaten and her eyes are gone. Her lover sees the murderer, but decides not to come forward and only give the police little clues. Dr Bekker is the main suspect but has a tight alibi. Then comes the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth victim. Lieutenant Lucas Davenport -together with the Homicide from Minneapolis PD- must catch the murderer, while he himself dealing with the Internal Affair for beaten a (bad) boy in a bar.

The story reminded me of 'Strangers on a Train' but John Sandford made it more interesting. Two strangers, A & B,  met in a theater bar. A wanted to kill his wife and asked B to do it while A established a tight alibi for himself. A later would kill the person who wanted to fire B from his job. To make the police more confused, A & B killed C, a complete stranger. Not everything went smoothly, though, for when B killed A's wife, D witnessed it. A & B planned to kill D, but they got the wrong person. Finally A killed B to get rid of any witnesses.

The best part was when the wife's lover found out that Lucas Davenport knew who he was. I like reading crime novels because of the reasoning, why a murderer murders people, how the police/detective can find the culprit, how the murderer sometimes escapes... The logic/reasoning how Lucas Davenport could guess who the lover was made sense (-->this is rare in fictional crime novels). It was so clever. This book ended with our hero left the police department so that the IA would leave him alone.

If there is one thing I find annoying in this book, it's the numbers of curse words. English is not my first language so I usually don't pay much attention about them and I just read and read. John Sandford's books are so full of them, that I begin to wonder, how can someone (his fictional character) live with so many curse words from his mouth and into his ear?

Monday, March 17, 2014

Shadow Prey - John Sandford

Lieutenant Lucas Davenport is the only member of Minneapolis Police Department's Office of Special Intelligence. He usually works alone, but now he works with Lieutenant Lily Rotheburg from New York, parallel with Homicide Department, to stop an Indian group from serial murders. By each murder, the group target more important person and Lucas Davenport believes that the last target is the FBI Director.

In my opinion, Shadow Prey was not as exciting as Rules of Prey. In Rules of Prey, the bad guy was a serial rapist and murderer; while in Shadow Prey, the Indians targeted those who had harmed their community. A member of the group, anyway, also murder Indians whom he thought had betrayed their cause.

Lucas Davenport now had a baby daughter from his partner Jennifer, but that didn't stop him from having an affair with Lily. Near the end, Shadow Love, the bad guy in this book, stormed into Lucas's house and endangered the lives of Jennifer and their baby; and their relationship.

Monday, March 10, 2014

The Fifth Witness - Michael Connelly

This is my first book by Michael Connelly. The main character was a L.A. lawyer specialized in foreclosure defense, named Mickey Haller. His co-workers consisted of a driver, a secretary, an assistant, and an investigator. One of his clients, Lisa Trammel, was accused of killing a mortgage banker - the one who was responsible for the loss of her house. As we could guess, our hero Mickey Haller tried to free her from the murder charge and found the real killer.

OK, as I have mentioned, this is my first book and it was not bad but it also didn't impress me. There were lots of trial scenes. I love watching Law & Order but this book happened to bore me and I couldn't wait to finish it. The title itself, 'The Fifth Witness', promised a mysterious witness; but it was not. It was only witness number 5 from the defense team. There was a twist in the end but not that surprising.

I also don't like books by John Grisham, who is a ex-lawyer so his books are full of things from the court. I only have read 3 of Grisham's books from his early years.