Death of A Guru – Doug Greenall

Tags

Doug Greenall, thriller

Death of A Guru is a hard book to quantify. One cover blurb refers to it as a literary thriller, which makes as much sense as any I suppose.

It’s a tale of two men, Magnus “Magic” Larsen and Doctor Devon Clarke, their lives becoming intertwined as the story unfolds. Clarke wants something from Larsen, an ex-pat living in Asia. Clarke is a rich doctor with a cult following that he does little to discourage though he’s never claimed to be the faith healer his followers believe.

He does harbor a terrible secret that eats at him though. What he wants from Larsen, the young man doesn’t want to deliver.

The pushing, prodding, takes a couple of years. And there’s a nice twist at the end I didn’t see coming.

A tale of love, redemption, revenge, all wrapped in highly engaging prose. Doesn’t read like a first novel. Can be ordered HERE.

June 2015 Book Round-Up

182: CH: Rabbits(ebook) – Emma Child

183: AD: Legacy:Mother Mine(ebook) – Warren Murphy and Gerald Welch

184: TR: Kentucky Bloodbath: Ten Bizarre Tales of Murder From The Bluegrass State(ebook) – Kevin Sullivan

185: CH: Dinosaurs(ebook) – Rose Leo

186: MY: Antiques Swap – Barbara Allan

187: TH: Stay: A Novel – Victor Gischler

188: WE: The Peregrine: Devil You Know(ebook) – Richard Prosch

189: WE: Amos Flagg Lawman – Clay Randall

190: CR: Scorched Noir(ebook) – Garnett Elliott

191: CR: Concrete Angel – Patricia Abbott

192: CR: 2 Guns For Hire – Neil Macneil

193: HR: The Swiss Family RobinZOM (Book 1) The Classic Family Adventure… Now With Zombies!(ebook) – Perrin Briar

194: CH: The True Spirit of Christmas – Dorothy Thurgood Manning

195: WW: A Bloody Bloody Mess In The Wild Wild West (ebook) – Justin Bienvenue

196: SF: Lightless – C. A. Higgins

197: CH: Andee The Aquanaut: Guardian of The Great Seas(ebook) – Simon James House

198: CH: Bears(ebook) – Emma Child

199: SF: Tin Men – Christopher Golden

200: CH: Olive and Beatrix: The Not-So Itty-Bitty Spiders – Amy Marie Stadelman

201: CR: The Burnt Orange Heresy – Charles Willeford

202: HR: The Dark Man (Graveyard Classified) – Desmond Doane

203: TH: The Fourth Domain (Boyd Chailland) (Volume 4) – Ed Baldwin

New In The House

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1: The Sinister Shadow – Kenneth Robeson: using a few chapters and an outline for a second Shadow novel started by Lester Dent, author Will Murray fashioned a tale involving the tw greatest characters of the pulp area.

2: Flashpoint – Ed Gorman: an Ed Gorman novel. What else needs to be said.

3: Murdering Lawyer(review copy) [ Larry Fine: a legal thriller with murder, international intrigue, and diabolical evil involving many of the most powerful lawyers and judges in New York City. A young lawyer is caught up with an ancient cabal committed to bringing the most unspeakable evil into the world, and he must defeat these forces or face his own demise and that of his friends and loved ones.

4: Star Wars: Dark Disciple(review copy) – Christie Golden: a novelization of unused scripts for the Clone Wars animated series.

and the ebooks:

5: The Templar Succession(review copy) – K. R. Eckert: first full length book by the author. Enjoyed his shorter works and so far his one is good.

6: Th Swiss Family Robin ZOM, Book 2(review copy) – Perrin Briar: as the story intimates, a modern retelling with zombies.

7: The Dark Man(review copy) – Desmond Doane: author Ernie Lindsey enters the horror field with this first entry of a new serie. Review goes up later this week.

8: The Feral(review copy) -David Elias Jenkins: When a terrorist attack hits London and the survivors say that the attackers were not human, Major Thom Usher must lead the Special Forces team Empire One against the Feral, a force of berserker rage that has awoken from our distant past to destroy us all. Their fight will take them from the burning sands of the Middle East to the frozen arctic tundra of Svalbard. The Feral is a military fantasy novel set in the contemporary world of terrorism, espionage and modern warfare, where myth, magic and monsters are horrifyingly real.

Reading Forgotten Books: The Burnt Orange Heresy

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Charles Willeford, Forgotten Books

In preparing the post for this book, I discovered that Pretty Sinister Books had beat me to it by a considerable margin. Read the revie. Much better than I could do.

This was my first exposure to Charles Willeford’s work and what I read is not exactly a crime novel. Oh, there’s a murder victim here, arson, theft. What it is is a take on the art world: critics, artists, collectors, and their sphere of existence.

Jacques Figueras is the art critic pushed into stealing from a reclusive painter. A self made man who’s a bit vain about his work.

First Willeford, but not likely my last.

Tin Men – Christopher Golden

Tags

Christopher golden, Military Science Fiction

Author Christopher Golden gives us a near future sf/thriller. America has set itself up as the policemen of the world. In effect, the defacto rulers of the world.

This is accomplished with technology only they control: the tin men. Robotic soldiers controlled by humans that run them with their minds in command while their bodies survive in tubes that keep them alive. No fighting is allowed. Other than that people are free to be what they want.

The main characters are Kate and Danny, tin men soldiers. As a human Kate is missing her legs and enjoys the freedom of being able to run. Among other things. Danny has a thing for Kate.

As our story opens, the POTUS is in Athens, part of a G20 summit, where he plans to present his demands to European leaders to prevent an economic collapse.

But even a benevolent dictatorship is untenable to most people.

The Anarchists strike…

An EM pulse fries every circuit board in the world and the satellite system circling the planet. Can’t be repaired, only replaced, and that could take years under the best circumstances. Only heavily shielded bases, a few around the world survive.

And the tin men.

The world is quickly going to Hell and Kate and Danny suddenly realize something about the tin men. An uncomfortable truth they’d not been told.

The race is on to get to Athens to rescue the President who’s teamed up with an enemy for survival: the Russian president.

Liked this one. The writing is crisp and kept me involved.

New In The House

A lot of stuff this week, a mix of a lot of review copies coming in and stuff I bought.

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1 Tarzan: Return To Pal=ul-on – Will Murray: a sequel to Tarzan The Terrible I believe.

2: The Martian – Andy Weir: Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.

3: Clearwater – Bobby R. Woodall: In 1879, a small town in the Indian Territory is robbed by a murderer who has just escaped execution. The town springs in to action and quickly forms a posse — an aged sheriff, a retired Pinkerton Operative, an Indian scout, and the bank?s president, who has secretly embezzled all of the town?s money.

4: Mercer’s Manor – Bobby R. Woodall: t is a unique blend of an ex-Union officer’s struggle to overcome atrocities of being a prisoner of war at Andersonville Prison, made more difficult from the harsh realities of post-war survival. Atrocities inflicted on him that will forever be engraved into the main characters mind, (Dan Mercer) as he searches out a new way of life on the untamed plains.

5 & 6: Faraday: The Iron Horse & The Trackwalker: two more in the series, the first by James Reasoner. There was a third, but I don’t have a cover image and been having trouble with my scanner.

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These are all review copies that have come in during the week. Will get to them as soon as possible.n

FFB: 2 Guns For Hire

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Forgotten Books, Todhunter Ballard(Neil Macneil)

Like many working writers, Todhunter Ballard used different pseudonyms on his prose. Neil Macneil was one of many that he used on his Costa in and McCall novels.

Tony Costaine and Bert McCall were partners, PIs that billed themselves as business detectives. They didn’t get paid by the hour, but received a fee of 20,000 dollars. Plus expenses of course.

Which is to say criminal activities might not slip into their lives.

Like their current case. The Climax Car Company, high end models, was on the verge of bankruptcy, no longer able to compete with the big three, and the founder, Magnus Paddock, had recently committed suicide. The family called them in because they’d done work for the old man before. And they didn’t believe it was suicide.

In the course of the case they deal with a corporate raider that’s offering more than the it’s worth, shots fired at them, hot women, another murder, a half brother to the family with criminal tendencies, and cops that keep arresting them even though they are usually on the receiving end of the violence.

A lot of fun.

Concrete Angel – Patricia Abbott

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Patricia Abbott

Patti Abbott has given us a wonderfully written novel of a mother and daughter relationship not exactly normal. She knows how to develop her characters, over one hundred short stories, a number award winners, that are just a hair off, but seem almost normal.

Eve Moran is a charming woman, has been since she was young, but what she is is a thief. Nothing expensive, mostly junk, but she hoards it all like some glorious treasure.

Christine grows up abetting mom in her endeavors until that moment at twelve when Eve murders a man that catches her rifling his wallet. No spoiler, it happens on page one of our story.

The men, the swag, Christine finally rebels when her little brother is born and as he grows she realizes mom is beginning to use him as well. She can’t let that happen.

Well done Patricia Abbott. Order it here.

New In The House

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1: The Fourth Domain (review copy) – Ed Baldwin: the fourth Major Boyd Chailland novel. The Major goes undercover to find a mole and finds much more going on.

2: Amos Flagg: High Gun – Clay Randall: four gunmen drift into Sangaree county hoping for refuge. But Flagg doesn’t make deals with killers.

3: Hell’s Half Acre – William W. Johnstone with J. A. Johnstone: first in a new series.

4, 5, & 6: James Reasoner posted recently on the first book in this series, one he wrote. I got the notion to pick up the series.

And the ebooks:

7: Waiting For The Machines To Fall Asleep(review copy)- a collection of Swedish science fiction tales.

8: Scorched Noir(review copy) – Garnett Elliott: a collection of crime short stories.

9: Devil You Know (review copy) – Richard Prosch: a new Peregrine novella and a short story.

FFB: Amos Flagg Lawman – Clay Randall

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Clifton Adams

Clay Randall was a pseudonym used by mystery writer Clifton Adams.

Amos Flagg was sheriff of a small county in the Texas panhandle, based in a small town called Academy. With a permanent population of 400 that swelled when the trail herds stopped off for rest, recreation, and restocking, it was busy at those times es

Headed his way was a man he hadn’t seen in twenty years, a man just released from prison. Gunner Flagg was his father, now sixty, long having abandoned Amos and his mother a third of his life spent in prison.

Amos hated him and didn’t want him around, but as a lawman who to his job seriously, he couldn’t force him to leave.

Gunner had a plan, all that money sithing in the bank and had convinced a couple of killers to throw in with him. One coward was already dead, goaded into a gun fight he didn’t have a prayer of winning.

But Amos wasn’t going to allow it to happen. Father or no.

Pretty good western.