Not having read any of Indridason's detective mystery books, this action/thriller/mystery novel with a WWII theme made me wonder about his acclaimed success. To his credit, he manages to keep readers' attention so that, in spite of its faults, the book is a page-turner. But suspensefulness--although very important--isn't the only criteria on which to evaluate the effectiveness of a novel of this genre.

The plot lacks credibility and seems half-cooked. It assumes way too much. The reasoning behind "Operation Napoleon"'s legitimacy is dubious. There are numerous gaps in logic. The book can be characterized as lacking in follow-through from one chapter to the next. Most of all it creates an operational scenario which to most people with some knowledge of the American military and Icelandic politics could not have been carried out as given--definitely not to the magnitude described. "The Ugly American" stereotypes are excessively relied on to create sham loathing for the reader...way overdone. Kristin's decision to trek to the scene of the mayhem is an incredulous device to tie up the lose ends and lengthen the book. When all is said and done, the Americans' success in covering up their operations by lies, confusion and general befuddlement is also too much to swallow. The very ending of the book, 2005, left me asking "why go there"? Its revelation left more questions than answers.

I did keep turning the pages of this book, but in large measure (as it turned out) I was doing so hoping the writer's effort would make sense and give repose at the end. Alas, I did not get the satisfaction I anticipated.

This book has all the elements of thrills, suspense and intrigue necessary to captivate young and old. The setting is in an environmentally post-apocalyptic earth (specifically, the Gulf of Mexico and New Orleans) in which the sea level is hundreds of feet higher than in today's world. It is populated by humans and genetic half-men, engineered from human ova and the cells of vicious dogs and tigers. Nailer, the teenage hero, lives in a brutal society of scavengers who dismantle old pre-apocalyptic ships for all metals and valuables which have become scarce. His main adversary is his father who is high on amphetamines and liquor most of the time. Nailer and his female cohort Pima discover a modern ship which has foundered by being snagged on submerged skyscrapers. On board they find a beautiful injured girl, Nita, who is trapped under debris. It turns out that she is the rich daughter of the ship's owner, the head of a large financial conglomerate. When Nailer's ruthless father finds out her heritage he seizes the opportunity to hold her in exchange of a ransom. The story, including a dramatic escape, goes on from there.

Although this book is directed at youth, it contains a lot of savage battle-to-death descriptive violence which may not be suitable for tweens. Its themes and actions resemble the script for a typical animation videogame.

This series has been acclaimed by most everyone to be top notch entertainment (as only the British seem to be able to provide). Viewers become intimately acquainted with three nannies having different backgrounds, personalities and expectations that are brought together by the proximity of their workaday lives in Berkeley Square, London. The actresses perform superbly to reflect the conflicts that confront them and the desperately tragic or fortuitously joyful outcomes. The three women writers succeeded well in making sequential episodes fit together. It must have been challenging for five directors to achieve the seamlessness required.

Aside from the excellent performances by the three nanny characters Lydia Weston (played by Tabitha Wady), Hannah Randall (Victoria Smurfit) and Matty Wickham (Claire Wilkie), I found the actors portraying the following characters to be outstanding: the desperate-to-nurture-a-child, sacrificial Mrs Bronowski (Etela Pardo); the sly, insidious and devious adulteress Victoria St John (Hermione Norris); the cruel, selfishly obnoxious Lord Hugh Lamson-Scribener (Nicholars Irons); the warm hearted and compassionate valet Fowler (Peter Forbes); and the honourable, sensitive child-loving fugitive footman/driver Ned Jones (Jason O'Mara).

Anyone who loves British period drama can't go wrong with this series. At the end there were lost of questions without answers and there would have been ample opportunity to continue the series but regrettably the opportunity was lost.

At the conclusion of the book, Margaret Powell says "So despite what it may sound like, I'm not embittered about having had to go into domestic service." Readers would like to believe that but most of the contents and tone of the book can easily be understood as being the memoirs of an embittered domestic.

Fans of Downton Abbey and Berkeley Square may expect to discover tantalizing details of below and above stairs goings-on in this book but will be rather disappointed to learn that the dreary slavish monotony of domestic service in the 1920's and 30's was romantically uninspiring. Powell is bluntly honest and depressingly descriptive about her plight. Thankfully she occasionally does offer a humorous take on her experiences. And, trying hard not to be completely one-sided, towards the end she attempts to put into perspective the above stairs situations "they" had to contend with in a historically class-disruptive era. I do not know what her later books are like but in this her first memoir she provides the stark reality of below stairs drudgery and the often inhumane expectations of her superiors.

Movies and TV series (for entertainment enhancement) tend to overlook the worst occupational hardships and social deprivations which so many domestics had to endure. Powell's book can provide a necessary corrective for those misrepresentations.

The plot revolves around three misfits: Errki, in his early twenties, a schizophrenic escapee from a mental institution; Morgan, also in his early twenties, a friendless loner; and Kannick, twelve, mentally unstable and grossly obese, residing in a home for wayward youth. Their lives become interwoven one morning when a widow on a small isolated farm is murdered and a bank is robbed at gunpoint and the robber takes a hostage. What is a little odd about this detective mystery is that the detectives, Sejer and Skarre, are cast as minor players in the narrative. The interaction, dialogue and self-rumination of the three misfits occupy most of the pages in the book, but oddly that serves to make the drama more realistic and riveting to the very end. This was my second Fossum book and I am impressed by her inventive and penetrative writing. Her hero, Sejer, is appreciatingly noteworthy for his humanity, kindness to dogs and children and--in his widowerhood--search for true love.

Gaarder's book takes the reader to a mental amusement park complete with fanciful reveries, contemplative incredulities and introspective visions. Several times I would ask myself "why am I reading this?" Speculative curiosity and introspective wisdom would probably best answer that question. The book is comprised of two intermingling aspects: a young boy's biography (travelogue included) and a fairy tale like account by a shipwrecked sailor, recorded in a miniscule book that the boy acquires surreptitiously on his journey from Norway to Greece with his father. The tale is spun around the fifty-three cards in a standard deck of cards (the fifty-third being the most important, the Joker).

Philosophically contemplative and introspective readers with a liking (or at least a tolerance) for fantasy may appreciate Gaarder's book--especially those who liked his highly acclaimed Sophie's World. Although I was a rather reluctant reader, I was oddly charmed and, having completed it, I couldn't brush it off as trivial. Actually I think I might go back to it some time for a second reading to savour more of its multifarious flavours.

"This world, I thought to myself, is such a fantastic miracle that it's hard to know whether one should laugh or cry. Perhaps one should do both, but it isn't easy to do both at the same time.... I sat thinking how terribly sad it was that people are made in such a way that they get used to something as incredible as living. One day we suddenly take the fact that we exist for granted--and then, yes, then we don't think about it any more until we are about to leave the word again." p 289 (hardcover)

The plotline of this book is built totally on the premise that an educated medical doctor, Liam, meets and marries a newly divorced nurse, Mikaela (Mike)--a single mother--without having any knowledge of her or her previous husband's names, identities or circumstances. His new wife does not disclose any information about her previous life (as Kayla) and incredibly has concealed for ten years the identity of her first husband, Julian, not only to Liam but also to their daughter, Jacey (Juliana), as well as to the son, Bret (Bretser), she shares with Liam. Her mother, Rosa, is also complicit in having maintained the veil of secrecy. Divorce proceedings, surname changes (for herself and her daughter), wedding pictures, family photos and videos, past relationships with friends, places she lived, have all successfully been concealed. All this in spite of the fact that Liam has the means and ability to investigate and find answers, or demand the truth from Mikaela, but never does. How placidly spineless is that?

Obviously Kristin Hannah, the author, assumed that her readers will accept this unlikely scenario as a credible basis for her novel. This is a prime example of how a writer relies on an improbable premise to construct a fictional but true-to-life scenario, hoping that her devoted readers will overlook the flimsiness of her rationale. The second failing of this novel has to do with how Mikaela wakes up from a month long coma to at first only selectively remember events from fifteen years ago. But within a couple of days--miraculously--she overcomes most of her amnesia and can recall recent events and recognize and love Liam and Bret. In real life the victims of such severe amnesia do not experience recoveries within such a short time frame. The third failing is the novel's ho hum maudlin emotionalism and dialogue. After pages and pages it seems so contrived, like fictional paint-by-numbers. The interview with the author in the back of the book only seems to confirm that assessment.

Already being familiar with the history of the Nazis' rise to power through Richard J Evans' exhaustively detailed trilogy, I found this book less than captivating. What it does do well is illuminate Americans: President Roosevelt and his administration, up front and behind the scenes. Ambassador William E Dodd's personality and idiosyncrasies--being the reason for the book--are featured prominently. The efforts of members of the Pretty Good Club and the State Department to undermine Dodd's credibility are revealed. The refusal of so many influential Americans to face up to Hitler's threat of subjugating Western civilization to his diabolical scheme is startlingly documented. Dodd is portrayed as a well-meaning academic, sadly ineffective in his role as President Roosevelt's lackey. A substantial amount of the book's contents deals with Dodd's daughter, Sarah, and her indiscrete sexual exploits. Obviously her father was ineffective in controlling her shambolic escapades and flirtations with communistic ideology which would have discredited his ambassadorial position. The roles of Mrs Dodd and son William Jr are only given sketchy recountals.

This is an informative book for readers who have little prior knowledge of Hitler's rise to power or those who wish to get some insight into the indecisively bland, accommodating, attitude of the US towards Nazi Germany in the 1930's.

Thinking of how to describe this outstanding work of fiction, I had these impressions come up: unpretentious in style, economical with words, emotionally succinct, completely credible, wonderfully phased, culturally accurate, and thoughtfully lucid.

This is story of how five people mature in twenty-five years to discover and acknowledge in their deeper selves the importance of spouses, parents and relatives in the process of developing a joyful life's journey. The stories are heart-warmingly generous and perceptively forgiving. Gowda's book is wonderfully crafted from beginning to end. By its conclusion readers will feel companionate with her characters, without reason to scold, reprimand or begrudge any. Some, like me, will shed a tear for Universal Love demonstrating Its own reciprocal reward for those--of any culture--who have the humility to receive Its welcoming grace. If I made a list of the twenty five best novels, out of more than a thousand I have read, this book would be one of them. It is always encouraging (after sixty decades of reading) to find a book by a new author that can equal or surpass the excellence of others discovered in the long ago past.

Fans of the first two seasons of Land Girls will find this third season worth taking in. Watching it without having seen the first two will not be nearly as pleasurable as earlier story lines are picked up without much or any enlightenment to benefit new viewers.

The Land Girls crew has shrunk with Annie and Bea having left, replaced by only one newcomer, a slim naive redhead Iris. Joyce and Connie return in major roles. Major continuations from season two are Esther's pregnancy from her coerced despicable liaison with Vernon; Connie's continuing up-and-down relationship with Minister Henry; and Joyce's ignorance and expectations about her husband's survival from combat in France. Farmer Finch, along with his son Martin, is up to his usual opportunistic trickeries but he also shows heart for Esther's predicament. As well as advancing these plot lines, new highly dramatic ones are introduced. The end of the last episode leaves the door open for a fourth season, involving Lady Hoxley and Dr Channing's relationship and her continuing suspicion about him possible spying for the Germans.

This season's episodes have less to do with farm work and war threats than the previous seasons. So Land Girls has become less a period war drama than a modern soap production with loose WWII relevance. But, ironically, it does leave more room for excellent character development, including heightened conflict and animosity (leading to murder), criminality, subversion and deceptions. It has more sustained interpersonal suspense from episode to episode than previous seasons. Seline Hizli, who plays coquettish Connie, and David Schofield, playing the heartless and brutal Vernon, are arguably the most memorable actors. Well done.