Last week, despite being off work, I didn’t get around to putting up my thoughts on Grave Secrets. Now I’ve also finished Deadeye Dick – so I’ve got two things to discuss.
As the title suggests I was back at work on Sunday. Its always a slightly strange thing going back to work after a week off. I’m put in mind of Riker’s line to Worf in First Contact ‘You do remember how to fire phasers?’ Well I remembered what I was supposed to be doing and only made one little mistake.
Grave Secrets
I finished Grave Secrets on the 26 of February. Like the previous Temperance Brennan novels this one too is confusing. It has technical jargon, both from police and forensic anthropology, as well as sentences in Spanish and French.
The Temperance Brennan of the novels is not the same as the tv series. This Brennan works for the Laboratoire des Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légale. This being in Canada is where the French comes from. Grave Secrets is set partially in Guatemala and so we have Spanish.
Murder mystery fiction, by its nature, tends to have a lot of characters. When these names are in Spanish it can be a little difficult for them to stick in the mind. This can mean that the characters can get a little confused. When I am confused with a piece of writing I never know if its me or the book. I’d like to think that I have a fairly good – squirrel – attention span.
Nevertheless Grave Secrets had an engaging mystery plot and is worth a read. It is just what you’d expect bodies are found, and our protagonist has to help separate the innocent from the guilty.
Deadeye Dick
I finish Deadeye Dick on the 8th of March. This is a difficult novel to judge. Dead Eye Dick is the story of Rudy Waltz. Waltz, while a young man, accidentally kills a pregnant woman. The story is interesting in parts but I feel there isn’t really much of a story. It is basically an autobiography for a fictional character. I can’t really recommend this book, as there is so little story, but I can’t tell you to avoid it either – for the same reasons.
Unstable Orbit 