Do przeczytania tej książki zachęcił mnie opis na okładce. Zapowiadała się zachęcająco. Fakt, że po przeczytaniu kilku stron chce się czytać dalej. Jest szybka akcja, dużo trupów i oczywiście tajemniczy morderca, który podaje się za syna Charlesa Mansona. Jego ataki są niespodziewane i w sumie nic ich ze sobą nie łączy.
Nadia Stafford była kiedyś policjantką. Teraz jest na emeryturze i zajmuję się pensjonatem. Dziś, żeby dorobić stoi po drugiej stronie - jest płatną zabójczynią. Ów morderca o pseudonimie Helter Skelter zaczyna zagrażać jej interesom i innych płatnych zabójców. Są zmuszeni ruszyć jego śladem. Zaczyna się polowanie na seryjnego zabójcę. Okazuje się, że to jeden z nich.
Czytało się dosyć ciężko. Niby książka ma coś w sobie, ale czasami była nudna. Przyjemnie, ale bez rewelacji.

This is the fourth book in Kelley Armstrong's Rockton series, so to completely appreciate, the characters, plot and the town of Rockton, you need to read the previous three books: City of the Lost, A Darkness Absolute and This Fallen Prey. 

Kelley Armstrong is back with another Rockton book and this time is seems like Rockton's secret may be out:

The town of Rockton is supposed to be a secret, but there are things that need to be done to protect the residence. This means Casey approaching her own estranged sister to help one of their residences that was injured badly in a gun fight, but bringing her there has to be a secret, as that is how Rockton survives. However, word seems to have gotten out about Rockton, when a US Marshal shows up demanding one of the residences. Casey and Dalton have to figure out no only who he is after, stop him from taking them but how the Hell did he find out where Rockton was located. Nothing is ever boring in a town full of not only victims but criminals too, many of whom will stop at nothing to make sure the US Marshal isn't after them.

I always have high hopes for this series and have enjoyed every book so far, but I will say that this is my least favourite book in the series. I found that the beginning was very exciting with the Marshal sniffing around town, and trying to figure out who he is there to take back south, but then the middle really slowed things down and then bang the ending was faced paced again. I guess for me I think that the middle just felt like a lot of filler and no substance. I wish a certain event had not taken place so quickly and there was more of a cat and mouse game to be played. When I have read other books in this series, I never wanted to put the book down. It was always I'll just read one more chapter one more page to see what happened next, where this book I was okay with putting it down.

I really liked the Marshal aspect within this book, I think it was really clever and why wouldn't some of the residence within Rockton have people coming to look for them. Some of them have committed horrible crimes. It was really interesting to see how the residence of Rockton reacted to the knowledge that there was a Marshal hunting one of them down. I know there are the main players within Rockton that we have readers have gotten to know from the previous book but you really don't know everyone, so it was nice to see some new residences show their faces. 

I will say that the addition of April, Casey's estranged sister, to the town and story was just brilliant by Armstrong. I'm so happy that she found a way to bring her to Rockton and to have her and Casey interact with each other, and man is there some comic relief in there. It also shines more of light on how Casey was brought up which does round her out more as a character.

So we're four books in and this is my least favourite of the bunch, however, does that mean this is a bad book? No, I just don't think it lived up to the previous three. I still love this series and characters and totally recommend this series to people, all the time. So I'm totally looking forward to book number 5.

Enjoy!!!!

   

Most of the stories in this I've already read. I got this for the 2 I haven't.
Life After Theft
It was nice to see a peak into what Hope (1/2 Chaos demon) and Karl (werewolf) were up to. They are happily married with a daughter and another child on the way. Karl is a retired thief who works for Hope's brother in security systems. (He was an excellent thief). Karl is framed and has to go back and steal one last thing to clear his name. I liked this couple from previous books and it was wonderful to see what was going on with them a few years after the series ended.

Zen and the Art of Vampirism
A short story featuring Zoe (I don't remember her from the series) and how she gets rid of 2 vampires who want to take over her territory.

For more reviews, check out my blog: Craft-Cycle

Growing up, I made it a point not to read books that featured a dog on the cover. That cover usually tells you two things: 1) there is going to be a dog that you invariably fall in love with and 2) that dog will die.

Recently, I found a few of those dreaded books-with-dogs-on-the-cover in the Lending Library and figured it was about time I read some of them.

I was a bit disappointed by this one. Sounder is the only named character. All of the other characters are vague and referred to only by there relationships or age rather than actual names. I can see how this can make it easy for the reader to put themselves into the story or to generalize the conditions to countless other black families throughout American history, however for me it prevented me from getting attached to the characters. I felt for their situations, but they didn't read as real. They were very much just words on the page. Also, by naming the dog and not the people, it felt like a prioritization of the dog so it surprised me when Sounder wasn't as big of a character in the story as I expected.

I can see the value of this in teaching history and various lessons about the criminal justice system, living conditions, and working conditions, however in terms of story, this book was very boring. The plot was slow and uninteresting. I mostly just wanted to know what was happening with Sounder, because again, all the other characters were too vague and two-dimensional.

The Author's Note in the beginning was helpful for context in describing the book as a story told to Armstrong by a black man who taught him to read. This section suggests admiration of the man and served as a nice introduction, but that admiration was not carried on into the actual story. The characters were flat and there was no life in the story.

As Armstrong writes, "It is the black man's story, not mine." I'm interested in how the owner of the story originally told it. I'm sure he breathed life into every word. In this version of the tale, however, that life is missing.

Maigret sits in judgement on the bourgeoisie of a small Breton town

I'm new to Maigret. "The Yellow Dog", the sixth Maigret, is my first Maigret novel, so apart from what I read in "A Maigret Christmas And Other Stories" I came to this novel with no particular knowledge or expectations of Maigret as a person. Now that I've read the book, I still know very little about him but I know that I want to read more.

"The Yellow Dog" was recommended to me by Tigus as one of Georges Simenon's best novels, so I skipped the first five books and started with Maigret, not in Paris but in a small Breton seaside town where he is investigating a shooting.

Yet the novel isn't really about Maigret's investigation. He's not the kind of man who follows a rigorous process of generating hypotheses and checking them against the available evidence. He doesn't share brilliant insights with the detective who is working under him. From time to time he will, if pressed, summarise the available facts in a way that makes it clear that, while there may be a basis for saying that it is very unlikely that certain individuals committed specific acts, there is no basis for saying who did commit them.

Of course, the fact that he states this does not mean that he believes it. Maigret is a man who judges people. He looks at them clearly and takes a view on who they are. He is not dispassionate in this. He is not objective. He judges based on his values and his impressions of people and then he waits to see if he can substantiate his judgements and hold those he sees as guilty to account.

What this novel is really about is Maigret's profound distaste for the bourgeoise men who dominate this small, relatively poor, Breton town.

Yes, someone gets shot, then there is an attempt at poisoning, and a disappearance and the appearance of a giant of a man with tendency to violence and then another shooting but, in all of this, Maigret's focus remains on three things: the group of wealthier-than-every-one-around-them men who see themselves as distinguished citizens and prove this to each other by eating and drinking each night at the only decent hotel in town, the face of the waitress who serves them and the recurring presence of an unknown yellow dog.

For me, Maigret's focus became more of a puzzle than figuring out who committed the various acts of violence. I couldn't understand what he was doing or what he was thinking. I slowly came to understand that Maigret is the camera lens through which Simenon presents the society in which the crimes are being committed. Like any good cameraman, Simenon shapes what we see before we are even aware of the conclusions we are being led to.

From the first chapter of the book, when Maigret enters the hotel and the distinguished gentlemen introduce themselves. I felt my lip curl at their smug entitlement and was taken aback by the casual misogyny at the heart of the story. The awful way the waitress is treated, including by Maigret, ought to have been a big deal but is was presented as if it was perfectly normal. At the time, I thought I was being distracted from the mystery by my annoyance at how obnoxious the men in the story were, Now I know that I was actually having my attention drawn to exactly what Georges Simenon wanted me to see.

I'm not going to go into the ins and outs of the story other than to say that it kept my attention, kept me guessing and gave me a clear picture of how working people could come to despise the idle but wealthy men who squat on the life of the town.

I did learn some things about Maigret. He resists authority other than his own. He is not a misogynist. He sees people clearly. He bides his time. He also acts on his own view of what is just. In this novel, Maigret sees himself as an instrument of justice rather than as an enforcer of the law. I rather liked him for that.

"The Yellow Dog" was published in 1931 but the writing feels very contemporary. This means that it provides a very accessible view of a France that is long gone. I know Brittany a little and it had never occurred to me that, in the 1930s, a relatively prosperous port might have unpaved streets that turned to mud in winter or that the women still wore the traditional Breton headdress. Its also gives a view of France that is still there, where Paris dominates, cronyism rules and the distribution of wealth ensures privilege for a few.

So, having had my first taste of George Simenon, I'll be coming back for more both of his Maigret mysteries and his other novels.