Reviews – Books: T
RATINGS KEY
0/5 – Terrible. Avoid this book at all costs.
1/5 – Bad. Only read it if you’re a truly hardcore fan of the author/topic.
2/5 – Okay. It’s not bad, but it’s not good either.
3/5 – Average. A decent one-time read.
4/5 – Good. Worth reading and worth buying.
5/5 – Excellent. One of my favorites; a worthy classic.
The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
5/5 | Reviewed 4.21.07
I read this in one day, which is either a testament to its engrossing storyline or a testament to my own procrastination when it comes to housework. Why I didn’t read it earlier in life, I’ll never know, since I loved the movie and the book is written in a style I really like. I now understand why Highsmith’s Ripley books are so famous. Young Tom Ripley is both the main character and the villain, an amoral murderer and meticulous criminal who will stop at nothing to get what he wants—and you find yourself cheering him on as he dodges the cops and spins his perfect stories, because he’s just so brilliant that you want him to get away with it. The book is quite different from the movie, but—and this is unusual for me, because I usually dislike movies that deviate from the books they’re based on—both are excellent, engrossing stories, and the differences make for unforeseeable twists.
The Terror by Dan Simmons
4/5 | Reviewed 6.21.07
If Jeffrey Blair Latta had written a novel instead of a nonfiction book, it might have read something like this: a story told from the point of view of the members of the last, ill-fated Franklin expedition, trapped in the ice and fighting off scurvy, starvation, and madness . . . and a mysterious sentient beast that is picking the men off, one by one. Sound scary? It is—particularly if you go into the book with a bit of background info on the fate of the Franklin team, and know that there’s no happy ending in store. Simmons is a deft storyteller, and knows how to pace a plot so that it will keep you reading nonstop (all night, in my case). This is one of the scariest tales I’ve read recently, and might be one of the spookiest I’ve ever read. Given that it started off with a bang and kept up a well-paced tension throughout most of its spinning, I wasn’t entirely surprised when this yarn sagged a bit at the end; that, though, might just be me, and your views may certainly vary. I finished the book yesterday and have been haunted ever since, both by the eerie story and by a nagging question: Is it better to read this book on a warm summer night, or on a cold winter night? It does add a lovely chill to the hot summer, but I have to think that the effect of the story would be even better when read curled up in bed on a cold winter night, while the wind howls round the windows and the snow piles up outside.
The Titanic Murders by Max Allan Collins · Reviewed 5.24.06
4/5
In a mystery set on the doomed liner’s maiden voyage, real-life Edwardian mystery writer Jacques Futrelle turns detective to solve two mysterious shipboard murders. Writing a fictional mystery using nothing but real-life characters and fitting it into the framework of a genuine historical disaster must be a challenging exercise for a writer; Collins, fortunately, rises to the challenge quite well. The prose is above average, the characters well-drawn, the details accurate, the mystery itself... not terribly memorable, but again, it fits in well with the actual events of the voyage, so props to the author for that. Collins obviously did his homework, and it shows—perhaps a little too much; I could have done with fewer details on the ship and its circumstances and more on the characters. Overall, it’s a good, solid read, remarkably accurate and pleasantly readable; though the mystery falls a bit flat, the excellent characterization and poignancy of knowing that the death toll won’t stop with the murder victims makes it well worth the effort. I’d buy it—but then, I’m a Titanic buff. ;-)
