Nose in a Book

Spider Bones by Kathy Reichs

Spider Bones is the thirteenth Temperance Brennan novel.  You don’t need to read the first twelve to enjoy the book but it helps with some of the characters and back history (although Reichs is pretty good at filling in the gaps).  Anyway, the novel starts out in Canada where a body is pulled from a pond.  When they run the prints they get a hit – to a guy who supposedly died in 1968 in Vietnam and is buried in North Carolina.  This leads Dr. Brennan to North Carolina to exhume the body and then to Hawaii to JPAC (the US military’s Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, whose mission is to find and identify missing soldiers).  In Hawaii, Brennan becomes involved in a local case and as usual manages to annoy some criminal types who come after her and her family.  Pretty formulaic but not in a bad way.  Of course, Brennan finds a way to invite her on again-off again boyfriend and partner, Andrew Ryan and his daughter to the island as well.

As I said before, these books are pretty formulaic and when I read the first twelve all at once, it got old, fast.  But reading this one a whole year later I actually really enjoyed it.  I couldn’t put it down.  Reichs, at times gets a little technical and her “easy” explanations aren’t that great either.  For example, in this book she explains a DNA sequencing technique that I actually know about and she managed to confuse me.  But most of the time the technical stuff isn’t important to the story and you can just skim over those parts if you’re not interested (or confused).

Overall, I liked this instalment a lot better than some of the previous ones but as I mentioned earlier that could have something to do with reading them all at once.  If you’ve read any crime fiction, it’s just what’s expected and it’s entertaining and educational to boot.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson

I can’t really do a summary without any spoilers for the previous two books so I’ll just say that this picks up just where The Girl Who Played with Fire left off.  And it’s more of the same intense story.

I still think the first one of the three was the best but this one (and the second one) weren’t any slouch either.  After finishing this one, I wanted to go right back to the beginning and read all three again.  I just loved that this trilogy was just go, go, go.  From the first page of the first book to the last page of the last book.

The only complaint I had with this (and the second book) was that if you haven’t just read the previous book (and I hadn’t) you’re going to be a little bit confused.  Larsson just has so many characters that it’s almost impossible to keep track of them.  It’s not that big of a deal because he does a pretty good job of bringing you up to speed about what happened in the previous books (without if being boring and redundant if you have just finished the previous books.)  Also, I found that even though I couldn’t totally remember who was who, it didn’t really matter.  As long as I remembered, good cop or bad cop (and even if I didn’t – it became pretty obvious very quickly) I was okay.

I think what sets this book apart from others like it is the fantastic story-telling.  Larsson sure knew how to weave a tale.  And weave he did.  There were so many different things going on that all had to come together in the end and make sense and they did!  Just like this others, I couldn’t put this one down but when I had to, I wasn’t completely lost when I was able to get back to it.  Sometimes I find books like this with so much going on are hard to follow but that wasn’t the case with this one.  I’m just sad that I won’t be able to read more from Larsson.

The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson

Read for: Global Reading Challenge 2010 – Europe

The second book in Larsson’s trilogy, The Girl Who Played with Fire, was just as intense as the first one (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo).    The book took a little bit longer getting started but once it did it just never stopped!  This time Blomkvist is planning a huge story on the sex trade.  Just before it’s published, the reporter who wrote the story is murdered.  Lisbeth Salander’s fingerprints are on the murder weapon and she immediately becomes the number one suspect.  Blomkvist believes that she is innocent of these murders and sets out to prove it.

I can’t say I liked this one as much as the first one but I still couldn’t put it down.  I love the way Larsson writes.  He just tells it like it is, there is no flowerly descriptions or any extra words.  It seems almost methodical and it’s perfect for this genre.  A couple of things that bothered me this time – there were so many characters, I sometimes had a hard time keeping track of everybody, which didn’t end up being a problem because Larsson makes sure you know enough about the important characters to follow the plot.  Also, there was something about the wrap up of the plot at the end that was just a little too unreal for me.  I had a hard time believing all of it.

But it was still a really enjoyable read and I can’t wait for the next one to come out!

Deja Dead by Kathy Reichs

Read for: RIP Challenge

My mom and my brother has recently convinced me that I was totally missing out by not watching the TV series Bones.  So I borrowed Season 1 and flew through it and I’m not just starting Season 2.  And I agree, I was missing out!  But then I noticed in the credits that it was based on a series of books by Kathy Reichs.  Of course, I had to read them!  The book is really nothing like the TV except for the name of the main character and the fact that they are both forensic anthropologists, but it was equally as good!

For those of you, that have never seen the TV show or read the book, Temperance Brennan is a forensic anthropologist.  Basically, that means that she’s really good at reading bones.  In the book, she works in Montreal with the crime lab.  In Deja Dead, she is brought a set of bones that when analyzed remind her of a set she worked on about a year previously.  Then another body is found and the circumstances around the murder creep Brennan out even more.  She does some digging and finds other possible cases.  She’s convinced that they are dealing with a serial killer.  Unfortunately for her, the detectives on the case disagree and she can’t really take it that much further on her own.

I really liked this book and I will definitely be picking up the rest of the books about Tempe Brennan.  There were a couple of times where I found the book got overly technical and I was totally lost.  It didn’t hamper my understanding of the case or the plot though, but I wondered why it was necessary?  Also, it bothered me that Brennan constantly put herself in dangerous situations without telling anyone where she was going, even after the detectives on the case told her not to do that any more and knowing that the killer was following her.  She never even had a weapon!  Otherwise it was an enjoyable read and I can’t wait to read some more!

By the way, how would you categorize this book?  I’m going with mystery for now but let me know if there’s a better label for it.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Read for: R.I.P. IV

Wow! I’ve heard a lot of good about this book, but I still wasn’t expecting it to be quite as good as I found it to be!  Also, I obviously didn’t read the summaries of the book because it was not at all what I was expecting.  For some reason I thought it was a young adult novel and I had no idea it was going to be a mystery.  But I’m so glad it was because I was getting behind with my RIP reading and now I can include this in the challenge!

First a warning – this book is intense and it’s definitely not a young adult novel.  I’m not even sure I can summarize with justice without giving too much of the story away, but I’ll try.  Harriet Vanger disappeared without a trace 40 years ago.  Her uncle has obsessively searched for any clue to her disappearance (what he’s convinced is a murder) ever since that day.  He hires Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist who has just been sued (successfully) for libel.  Then there’s Lisbeth Salander, who works for a security agency as a PI, who is initially not connected to the main story but ends up being a major player.

From the moment I started reading this book, I could not put it down.  Larsson just jumps right into the story and then never stops.  At time the story got a little technical but never to the point of losing the reader.  I also really liked the writing.  It was straight forward, without a lot of extra stuff thrown in.  The only problem I had was that there seemed to be either an editing or a translating issue (or perhaps both.)  I know that doesn’t reflect on Larsson, but it always bothers me when there are a lot of typos in a book.  I think it was definitely partly a translating problem because there were a few sentences that didn’t even make sense or used words in the wrong context.  But that is a minor detail and shouldn’t stop any one from running out and grabbing this book!  I’m anxiously awaiting the next one but I’m 68th on the list at the library and there are only 26 copies available so it could be a long wait!