Ten Big Ones by Janet Evanovich

This is, quite obviously, the tenth book in Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series. It is a 319 page mystery-comedy novel that my Grandma lent me a while back. I started it last year, and just decided to finish it since she gave me the 18th one, and I realized I was falling behind a bit on the books she has lent me.

Right at the beginning of the novel, Stephanie witnesses a robbery and identifies the robber as the Red Devil, a member of a vicious gang. The entire novel pans out with her trying to find out his real identity, which causes his gang, the Comstock Street Slayers, to pursue her with a vengeance. Stephanie has to battle them with her sister’s impending wedding. She also has to juggle the two men that are interested in her and her safety. They attempt to keep her locked up behind their safe doors, but stubborn Stephanie won’t stand for it.

Originally, I stopped reading after the first 50 pages. The whole Red Devil thing didn’t really interest me, and I was a little bored with reading the Stephanie Plum books –I had just read nine of them in a row! I eventually picked up the book again, if only to finish it quick in 2012 to reach my reading goal. Unfortunately, I failed that goal because I lost interest again at about 150 pages. After another month, I picked it up again and finished the book.

I don’t think it speaks well for a novel when you have to force yourself to finish it. Near the end (pages 200-316), it finally got interesting. That was, until, Evanovich decided to wrap up the whole gang mystery in about the last ten pages. I was extremely disappointed with the ending of the novel. Of course everything was going to work out okay, because Stephanie goes on to more adventures in following books, but I feel Evanovich just gave up in the end of the novel and just decided to basically write, “Stephanie gets kidnapped again, and in even bigger trouble, but the men in her life rescue her and everything turns out fine. The end.” I swear the ending felt almost that short.

One of the redeeming qualities of this book is that Stephanie manages to find her way into Ranger’s apartment while he’s away for a few weeks. To me, Ranger is the most interesting character in the series, and getting even a little perspective into his life was really fun. But then again, the whole indecisive, “I can’t choose between two men so I’ll just keep them both hanging” plan she’s got going is getting just a bit annoying. Since the overall story of Stephanie Plum doesn’t involve needing to read every book, I would recommend skipping this one in the series. I’m going to take another break from it, and just hope that when I give #11 a chance, it will have a more satisfactory ending.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

I’ve had this on my reading list for  a while, but decided to move it up both because I enjoyed my last murder mystery so much and so I could finally watch and compare the Swedish and English versions of the film. I haven’t watched them yet, but I may do a comparison review once I do. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is a 590 page mystery novel.

I really enjoyed the way this book started out — with the mystery of receiving a pressed and framed flower every year on the receiver’s birthday. Was it a taunt? Was it a hint or secret? I couldn’t tell, and so it was a great way to get me interested in the mystery.

I felt like there were two simultaneous plots going on in this book. The first and most (?) important was that of the mystery of Harriet Vanger and Henrik Vanger’s searching for her. The Vangers live on an island and were having a reunion of sorts one day when suddenly people start noticing that Harriet has been missing all day, and no one knows where she has gone. Due to a convenient accident on the only bridge leading off the island, many are led to believe she has been murdered and the body hidden.

The second main plot is that of Mikael Blomkvist and his vendetta through the Millenium (his paper) against Erik Wennerström. In the beginning of the novel, he publishes a piece accusing Wennerström of financial misdealings, and is slapped with a libel suit and loses. So his acceptance of taking on the Harriet Vanger case rides heavily on his need to get away from the paper for a while.

After everything to do with the mystery is solved or tidied up or has at least of semblance of being so, they finally take care of Blomkvist’s Wennerström problems. The last 90 pages of the book were probably my favorite. Although the murder mystery was interesting, I did not feel like I could have solved it (though my vague guesses in the beginning weren’t too far off the mark). So the parts dealing with Wennerström, who was a frustrating character, were really satisfying.

One thing I don’t really understand is why most of the ‘strong’ female characters want to have sex with Blomkvist. I really just don’t get it. They are all really frank and open about their sexuality, which is great, but I didn’t see it as very plausible. Or maybe I just wanted one strong female character who was satisfied by someone else or by other interests. This isn’t a major issue, but I feel it’s worth mentioning.

Although I did enjoy most of the characters and felt the narrative really fit their personalities, the story moved a little slowly for my tastes. It was by no means a hassle to try to finish the book, but I was also not riveted into staying up all night to finish it.  Overall, this was a solid book, and I can definitely see why it was adapted into multiple films. It was interesting, and I will probably end up reading the rest of the trilogy at some point, but I’m not so invested in the characters that I feel I have to read them any time soon. If you’re a big fan of mysteries, I would feel comfortable recommending this to you… but then you’ve probably already read it, eh?

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

I read this book on a suggestion from a good review from Adam over at Reviews and Ramblings and borrowed it from Liz over at mylivereads. I don’t read mysteries often, and it has been years since I’ve read an Agatha Christie book, though I can’t remember one that I didn’t enjoy.

The basic premise of this novel is that ten strangers (well, eight strangers and one married couple) are invited for various reasons to come to the infamous Indian Island. The island’s owner, U.N. Owen has sent personal letters to these people asking them to arrive on the same date. Once the ten guests get to the island, they find that their host is absent and they have to entertain themselves. Early on in the story, a gramophone is played, and the voice on it announces that each person on the island is guilty of murder.

Even though each character got a little unique description in the beginning, and their murders are described through interesting internal monologue, I had a hard time keeping them straight. Lucky for me, they started dying off pretty quickly. After it got down to seven people alive, everyone had pretty well-developed personalities, and I started trying to figure out who the killer was. Agatha Christie is a master of suspense in this novel. She heaps suspicion on everyone, so even though I picked one person who I thought was the culprit, I was always suspicious of at least three other people at the same time.

I never thought I would claim a book to be a fast-paced murder mystery, but this novel definitely fits that description. It only took me a couple days to read because the mystery was set up extremely well, so I was always kept guessing. I feel comfortable saying that I did NOT guess the murderer’s identity correctly. Once the number of guests dwindled, I got to learn more about each guests personality, which was fun and added a strong human element to the story, and also made it that much more difficult to guess who the killer was. If you enjoy murder mysteries (and really, even if you don’t), I highly recommend reading this novel.

The Constant Gardener by John le Carré

For my film and literature class this week, we read The Constant Gardener by John le Carré. The majority of the book happens in places surrounding a British High Commission in Nairobi, with a little bit written in Canada and Germany, as well. There are two main characters (and some minor ones) that the narrative follows at separate times. Sandy Woodrow, an older ‘gentleman’ who works at the High Commission, is the opening main character and Justin, a career diplomat similar to Sandy, is the later main character.

This book is basically a murder-mystery story. Justin’s (attractive!) wife, Tessa, has been murdered and her travelling aid partner, Arnold Bluhm, has gone missing from the scene. Though we find out relatively early on what is going on and at least have an idea why Tessa was killed, Justin must go follow her steps to find out for himself.

I felt this book was hard to get into… I did not like Sandy Woodrow, and also did not especially enjoy his narrative. However, once the narrative started focusing on Justin’s continuance of Tessa’s cause, the book really picked up. Of course, I’ve always been a sucker for documents in books — emails, interviews, notes, etc. It is fun when an author includes things of that nature.

Both main male characters dealt with two side characters — Rob and Lesley, who were interviewers. I really loved these two characters, and am glad they had a part in finding out the ‘mystery.’ They were probably the most ‘pure’ characters besides Justin, who was a bit of a bore until the second half of the novel. I don’t want to spoil the ending… so I will just say that I did not approve of it. It wasn’t how I saw the book ending, or how I saw Justin dealing with the events as his character was progressing.

Although this was not in any way a bad book, I would not have picked it up on my own, nor would I have finished it if it wasn’t required for class. I welcomed Justin’s part of the story, and was quite happy to get away from Sandy, and so I did like the second half of the book. I appreciated the controversy surrounding pharmaceuticals in Africa, but the book felt overly long. Once I had picked up what was going on, I still had to wait for Justin to catch up. Overall, it was a decent read. We will be watching the movie on Monday, so look forward to reading about it!

Hard Eight, To the Nines by Janet Evanovich

In this adventure, Stephanie is once again looking for someone outside of the regular FTAs. Her neighbor/family friend, Mabel, has asked her to find her daughter and granddaughter, who have skipped town on a child custody bond. Evanovich describes this as money put forth by divorced parents, who either chose or were court-ordered, to ensure that they would not kidnap their own child… or something like that.

Unfortunately, Eddie Abruzzi has his own interests in finding Evelyn and Annie (the missing persons) and is determined to scare off Stephanie to do so. She fights …. A new character appears in this book in the form of a very young, nervous lawyer named Albert Kloughn (and that is K-l-o-u-g-h-n, not c-l-o-w-n, which he manages to point out an annoying number of times). He tags along with Stephanie and Lula and generally gets in the way whenever he can. I was not too fond of him.

I absolutely loved the romance between Ranger and Steph in this book. She and Morelli had a bit of a falling out in the previous book, and Ranger sort of takes his place (in a non-boyfriend, much more mysterious way). Of course, Evanovich had to create a Terry Gilman equivalent (I forgot to mention her… she used to date Morelli and is involved with him through the police dept. these days), with Jeanne Ellen Burrows, who the blurb coins, “Rangerette.” She’s better than Stephanie at bounty hunting, and has been linked to Ranger… I’ll just say now that I think she was professional and interesting, but Steph just gets jealous of her past with Ranger.

I really enjoyed Hard Eight. Of course, I love Ranger as a character, but because of his romance and Eddie Abruzzi scaring the crap out of Stephanie the whole book, the laughter was scarce. It felt more apart of a series, where the rest of the books almost had a standalone feel.

In this adventure, Vinnie posted bail on an immigrant, Samuel Singh, granting him three months of legal stay in the United States. With just a couple weeks left on his ticket, Singh goes missing. Vinnie puts both Stephanie and Ranger on the case. Unfortunately, the first lead Stephanie gets winds up dead WHILE talking to her.

She starts receiving red roses, white carnations, disturbing notes, and pictures that put the notes to shame. Ranger and his posse take turns watching her back, and though she manages to keep the car explosion numbers down, she has no problem having Ranger’s ‘Merry Men’ get injured (a lot) while protecting her.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit. Steph, Lula (who is a better character now), and Connie end up going to Las Vegas to search for Singh. Also, Albert stops being annoying and starts being a lovable guy. Steph’s sister Valerie also is living with their parents with her two kids, so everything is hectic and wild and fun.

I laughed a lot in this book… At one point, Stephanie beats the crap out of some guy who was trying to kill her. After Ranger finds out, of course, all he does is grin and congratulate her. The scene made me laugh for probably a straight minute. Finally, she’s starting to hold her own!

Another part that made me laugh for a while was when Ranger and Stephanie went to pick up an FTA, and he decided to shoot at them. While still standing in the doorway, Ranger ‘instinctively’ pushes Stephanie off the stoop into a bush, and later said he was just concerned for her safety, while really he was just getting back at her for a joke she played on him.

Overall, this book was good, the writing was excellent, and the plot was decent. I really like that Evanovich started working more on her character dynamics. It makes the books feel more a part of a series rather than just mystery novels that happen to have the same names in them.