the_halberdier

This book ROCKS, Sep 29 2002

Connelly is one of my favourite story-tellers and I always look forward to reading his latest. This was no exception. City of Bones is a superb book, one of the few that I get so absorbed in that I lose track of everything else that's going on.

In Harry Bosch, Connelly has created a detective who will become a modern classic, a tortured, all-too-human man who is also a gun gumshoe. Connelly's two biggest strengths are his dialogue--he is the Joss Wheedon of novelists--and his prose: concise, hard-boiled, gritty, observant, detail-oriented and Raymond Chandleresque. When you add in that he is a pretty mean plotter, too, it's easy to see why his books are so great.

City… Read more

Very, very good, Sep 29 2002

I am a big fan of Deaver and am glad to report that he is back up near his best in this book. As always, his characters are always working against time, his pace is fast and his plot wrenches back and forth--his story turns are almost impossible to pick. Deaver loves closing a chapter vaguely, letting you *think* you know what happened, then suddenly changes direction when you pick the thread back up a few scenes on. You realise that what he wrote *was* entirely accurate, but that it was some assumption of yours that caused you to jump to a conclusion. He also loves leaving the reader off-balance, dying to know what comes next.

The Stone Monkey is a very good cat and mouse tale,… Read more

Amazing - BUT NOT ALL TRUE, May 19 2002

I bought this book when it first came out, and I loved it. I read "The One That Got Away" by Chris Ryan, who escaped this mission, and then "Storm Command" by Sir Peter de la Billiere, who commanded the UK forces in Desert Storm and who formerly commanded the SAS.

At the time, "Bravo Two Zero" seemed to confirm my view of the SAS as the world's premier elite unit, up there with the US's Delta Force and Israel's Sayeret Matkal. The tale that Andy McNab tells shows how training, guts and determination could overcome botches like being dropped too close to a hive of Iraqi soldiers with faulty intelligence and poor radio gear. The story of how the unit… Read more