Peachy Reads

Whatever suspense the David Lagercrantz book I read lacked, this one more than made up for.   But that’s what Dan Brown has always exceled at – the breathless day and night chase where no one seems to need to sleep very much, eat, or use the restroom, a sort of mash-up of the Amazing Race, the television show 24, with a dash of Rick Steves.   This time the action begins in the art city of Florence.   It’s a wonderful tour of the historic and cultural sites, and lets the reader explore secret passageways and pass through hidden doors that seem to honeycomb every building that Robert Langdon enters.   (Particularly fascinating is the Vasari corridor in Florence that snakes its way from the Pitti Palace across the Ponte Vecchio, around the Uffizi, to the Palazzo Vecchio, a relatively unknown passageway that secrets Robert across the river, one which I remember from our visits).   Anyway, Inferno takes its title from Dante’s poem and   Brown s...

In this latest installment in the UK series of police procedural meets the X-files, Peter Grant leaves the urban core of London and investigates unusual occurrences in a bucolic English countryside setting that could be straight out of a Merchant & Ivory film. Two girls are missing and while the nation’s attention is focused on the manhunt to recover them, Peter attempts to find out if their disappearance has any hallmarks of the supernatural or spirit realm.  And yes it does--there is a fairy queen and her retinue, beefy unicorns, a geriatric wizard, and an extended appearance by Beverley Brook.  This is not a series you can jump around in.  Start with the first at least before picking this one up.  It’s a bit different, but I find it surprisingly enjoyable.

The most famous names from Swedish literature since Pippi Longstocking may well be Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander.   The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was the first title in the Millennium series, and while the series wasn't perfect, the characters were strong, and the books quickly became a worldwide publishing phenomenon.  Due to his untimely death several years ago, the estate of the author Stieg Larsson contracted a new writer to pen a further installment, and along with Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman , this may have been one of the most anticipated titles of 2015. Though some fans will be pleased, others will inevitably be disappointed.  I suppose I count myself among the second group. Lisbeth and Mikael seem to be on mood stabilizers and so very different from their previous incarnations as to be almost unidentifiable.  The action doesn’t really pick up until the last one hundred or so pages, and though it provides interesting insight into Lisbeth’s tw...