Review: James Bong - Agent of Anarchy by Todd Borho

Synopsis: My name is James, James Bong!

Follow the daring exploits of James Bong, a former MI6 spy turned renegade, as he defies authority and takes on daring missions alongside his trusty team. With the brilliant hacker K, the fiery blogger Miss Moneybit, and the mysterious AI Symphy at his side, Bong navigates a world of danger and intrigue, leaving a trail of laughter in his wake.

But as Bong and his team push the limits of what's possible, they soon find themselves pursued by their former employers, determined to put an end to their rebellious antics. Will Bong outsmart his adversaries and emerge victorious, or will he be caught in a web of deceit and betrayal?

Packed with cutting-edge technology, pulse-pounding suspense, and laugh-out-loud humor, “James Bong" is a must-read for fans of sci-fi adventure and spy thrillers alike.

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A spoof of the James Bond spy genre,written as a play - minimal stage direction, characters of very little substance, plenty of humorous dialogue that doesn't overtax the little grey cells. A pastiche to while away an hour or so. Cue Leslie Nielsen.

Review: The Tailor of Riga by Jonathan Harries

Synopsis: I had absolutely no intention of getting into the family business. As I told my father the night he enlightened me on what my ancestors had been up to for over a thousand years, "Sticking a curved dagger into someone's liver ain't quite my cup of tea."

As it turned out, I had no choice. When your family's been assassinating reprobates and other loathsome individuals for seventy generations, you have a certain obligation.

So, while it was a little disconcerting to hear how dear old granny would have become a prostitute if Grandpa Joe hadn't whacked one of Germany's top agents just before the start of World War I, it certainly piqued my interest. Of course, as I discovered, prostitution and murder were pretty de rigueur for my family.

After all, it was my great-grandfather who was hired by the British secret service to kill Jack the Ripper and my mother's cousins who took part in the attempted assassination of Lenin.

My only regret when I finally took up the family sica was not eliminating Jean-Bedel Bokassa just before he crowned himself Emperor of the Central African Empire and ate my two friends.

But we all make mistakes.

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A rather curious (and dubious) tale of the author's discovery of his "real" family history.

"When your family's been assassinating reprobates and other loathsome individuals for seventy generations, you have a certain obligation."

Harries takes us on a journey of discovery - that he is descended from a long line of assassins dating back to Biblical times - and showcases a couple of incidents out of what is no doubt many acts of subterfuge and murderous expediency, de rigueur.

For those who definitely like their humour accompanied by satire, witticisms, anecdotal snippets of questionable historical accuracies and fallacies, then this is for you.

Looking forward to reading more of the exploits in the next books in the series: The Carpet Salesman from Baghdad, The Bodyguard of Sarawak, and The Correspondent of Petrograd.

Review: The Physicist Detective by Raymond Marylowe

Synopsis: Meet Professor Raymond Marylowe — flamboyant theoretical physicist and self-proclaimed “world’s greatest private detective.” Armed with absurd logic and bizarre applications of physics, he can theorize anyone into guilt—no matter how innocent they are. Wrong and humiliated often, uncertain never.

Follow him on a globe-trotting adventure through seven cases, as he attempts to tackle impossible crimes, outwit phantom thieves, duel secret spies, uncover mythic treasures—and face his most baffling mystery romance, with a woman as much of a chaotic wildcard as he is.

But in every shadow lurks his sworn nemesis, the worst nightmare of every an elite criminal defense attorney, who vows to defend all criminals Professor Marylowe accuses, no matter how guilty…

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Suspend all belief all ye who enter here. This is a farcical, comical, nonsensical, self-indulgent piece of buffoonery. Picture the Tassie Devil from the WB cartoons - that is Professor Marylowe - as he pontificates, accuses, surmises, rushing in like a bull in a china shop, and literally makes it up as he goes along, solving (??) crimes with the use of physics. Usual one dimensional crooks, villains, suspects and numerous other characters, who don't seem to be allocated any real depth but a pretty much page fillers to keep the highly unusual narrative flowing (or rocketing along at break neck speed into oblivion). Continue the journey at your own peril .....

Review: A Sociopath's Guide to a Successful Marriage by MK Oliver

Synopsis: A whip-smart and darkly funny crime novel—perfect for fans of My Sister, the Serial Killer and The Maid—that follows a wife and mother with a deadly secret that she must suppress if she wants to maintain her picture-perfect façade.

Meet Lalla Rook. Lalla has a lot on her plate: She needs to guarantee her husband makes partner, secure her dream house in Hampstead, and get her daughter into a prestigious prep school. And on the afternoon she stabs a stranger seven times after he breaks into her living room, she has a four-year-old’s birthday party to host.

With an unambitious partner, two demanding children, and a barely adequate large house in a nice (if not quite fashionable) part of town, Lalla’s life isn’t quite perfect yet. And she can’t pretend she hasn’t missed the adrenaline rush that comes with transgressing. Besides, as a wife and mother, she’s already an expert multi-tasker. So, disposing of a body, framing a friend, and being the world’s best mother can easily be managed alongside the usual domestic minutiae.

It’s just that her husband Stephen seems distracted, her daughter’s drowning of the class hamster is affecting her academic future, and then there is the unexpected intruder. Who is this man and what does he want from her? Because Lalla has a past she’d rather keep hidden—and the sudden appearance of the police means that avoiding them will be yet another task to cross off her to-do list.

Funny, calculating, hyper-competent, and ambitious, Lalla is your next favorite anti-heroine. Just don’t mention it to her mother-in-law.

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This is a great fun read with a protagonist who will stop at nothing to maintain the perfect facade of her life and the ensure the pathway to her future life poses no obstacles.

You cannot but help like Lalla - afterall, if we are honest, we all have a little of the sociopath in us. Author Oliver provides the reader with a quirky and irreverant look at life in suburbia - at bit like "Desperate Housewives" meets "Housewives Of ...." meets "Stepford Wives". The short snappy chapters keep the narrative flowing like a well-oiled machine. And love the "to do" lists at the end of each chapter. 

This tome does not take itself too seriously - and neither should the reader. Lalla aspires to what we all want in life - happy family, comfortable lifestyle, good friends, good job with promotion, good schools for the kids - she just has a slightly different way of achieving it - and being the sociopath that she is, will let nothing get in her way and stop her from getting it - not family, not friends, and certainly not a little murder or two or three!.

As Lalla muses ... "... the past will come back to haunt you if you don't smother it with a pillow ..." - and her most assuredly does! Will she let that get in the way of her ambitions - certainly not! Though at times we do worry that she may not have the full control over events that she thinks she has ..... but this is Lalla, our narrator, our BFF, our anti-heroine. Of course she will triumph!

Oh, and to those "reviewers" who didn't like the book because it "... was down to a male author putting on a female narrative voice... " - get over yourselves you nufties!  Are you implying men are not ever permitted to write female characters - and vice versa. If so, where would we be without some of the great literary pieces we have today. I would take their reviews with a pinch of salt or better yet, ignore completely.

Review: Reality Bites by Nick Lennon-Barrett

Synopsis: Doesn’t everybody want their five seconds of fame?

Daniel North, survivor of a gay pub bombing, wants to share his forgotten story with the world, but he’ll have to settle for millions of viewers in the 18-35 demographic.

Complex Neighbours is the latest ratings smash from billionaire media tycoon, Felix Moldoon. Think Big Brother meets the Hunger Games! To win the one-million-pound prize, contestants must compete in challenges that range from legal waterboarding to inducing projectile vomiting, or a showbiz quiz when it’s a low budget week.

Felix will do anything to ensure high viewing figures, even if that involves murder. As well as controlling the media, he also controls the edit. It is for him to determine who will be crowned the winner, and who will be “executed” from the show, with their lives destroyed forever.

Can Daniel resist the temptation of a younger man to achieve his goal? Will Felix sacrifice his own son for the sake of TV ratings? And just how far is the ultimate Reality TV villain willing to go for the grand prize?

~~~

I read this in one sitting - it is that type of book - you literally cannot turn away in case you miss something.

What the reader is witnessing is life inside a Big Brother style TV program - all the alliances, back-biting, romance (or lust) - in which the contestants must compete against each other in a series of challenges. There are the inevitable twists - and along with immunity, one contestant can have more control of who stays and who goes. The losers are then"executed" and upon leaving the compound, their deepest, darkest, most personal secrets are revealed to all and sundry - oft times with devastating consequences.

The main characters are the contestants themselves - though Daniel North seems to be the main one - the callous TV producer and media tycoon, Felix Moldoon; Felix's fix-it and assistant Desiree; hostess Zelda; and the shadowy Mrs P. Just how far any of them will go to win - both the cash prize and the ratings - is anyone's guess. Sacrifices will be made all in the name of entertainment.

The reader's focus is centered on Daniel and Felix - and it is pleasing to reader that neither of them seen have it all their own way. Whilst the characters have no real depth to them - they are at times as shallow as their storylines - it was still an entertaining read.

I am looking forward to reading the second in the series to see where things lead.

Review: Penny Pinching Tips For The Morally Bankrupt by Libby Marshall

Synopsis: Penny Pinching Tips for the Morally Bankrupt is a fantastically funny, wonderfully weird, and surprisingly sincere collection of short stories, humor pieces, and miscellaneous bits.

Debra, an unhappy billionaire’s wife, decides to resurrect the 18th-century trend of hiring a man to live on their property as an ornamental garden hermit. An elderly serial killer, bored by her dull nursing home existence, finds a deadly new purpose when her high school nemesis ends up living down the hall. In 1953 a young couple drives to Makeout Point where instead of an evening of heavy petting, they find mountain lions, a man with no gaps in his teeth, and the opportunity to kill Henry Kissinger. Within these pages, a man tries to date after losing his wife to The Salem Witch Trials, a Wi-Fi router gains sentience, a series of cardboard boxes oozing with smoky-sweet baked beans mysteriously appear at a woman’s front door, and a Chuck E. Cheese is haunted by the spirit of Princess Diana.

Boldly strange, deliciously satirical, and laugh-out-loud hilarious, Penny Pinching Tips for the Morally Bankrupt swings from the grim and ghastly to the exquisite and lovely. This one-of-a-kind book takes the reader on a surreal journey through the compulsory despair of daily life and concludes that the only sensible reaction to that much pain is laughter.

Although I do at times have a rather warped sense of humour, I am disappointed to say that I am not a fan. I found nothing that brought a smile (or smirk), nothing that elicited a belly laugh or even a stifled chuckle, nothing that compelled me to move forward or hold my interest. Not for me.

Review: Because He's Jeff Goldblum by Travis Andrews

Synopsis: An irreverent yet deeply researched biography about the always offbeat, suddenly meme-able, and wildly popular actor.

When did you first encounter Jeff Goldblum? Maybe as a deranged killer in his 1974 screen debut in Death Wish? Maybe as a cynical journalist in 1983s The Big Chill? Or a brilliant if egotistical scientist-turned-fly in 1986s The Fly? Perhaps as the wise-cracking skeptical mathematician in 1993s Jurassic Park? Or maybe you're not a film buff but noticed his face as part of one of the Internet's earliest memes. Who knows?

Whenever it was, you've probably noticed that Goldblum has become one of Hollywood's most enduring actors, someone who only seems to grow more famous, more heralded, more beloved through the decades, even though he's always followed his own, strange muse. The guy primarily plays jazz music these days, but is more famous than ever. Actor, pianist, husband, father, style icon, meme. Goldblum contains multitudes, but why? What does he mean?

The Washington Post's Travis M. Andrews decided to find out. And so he set out on a journey through Goldblum's career, talking to directors like Lawrence Kasdan and Philip Kaufman, colleagues like Harry Shearer and Billy Crudup, and pop culture experts like Chuck Klosterman and Sean Fennessey, to get to the bottom of this whole Goldblum thing. And then he took what he learned and he wrote this book, which is titled Because He's Jeff Goldblum and is the best thing written since The Brothers Karamazov and slightly easier to follow. But you should already know that. In this new semi-biography, semi-rumination, and semi-ridiculous look at the career of Goldblum, Andrews takes you behind the scenes of his iconic movies, explores the shifting nature of fame in the twenty-first century, and spends far too much time converting Goldblum's name into various forms of speech.

Want to hear how Goldblum saved a script supervisor from an amorous baboon? Or what he would write on the mirror after taking showers when he was a teenager? How about his feelings on various brands of throat lozenges? (That one could be an entire book unto itself.) Then this is the book for you! 

Very quirky biographical /memoirish style of book with absolutely no contribution from the subject at hand - but I was fascinated none-the-less as Goldblum is such a tenacious, enigmatic, figure, seemingly beloved by all. What more can I say.....

Review: The Brewer of Preston by Andrea Camilleri

This was an added extra when I picked up a few of Camilleri's "Inspector Montalbano" books from the local library.

The setting Vigata in the 1870s, and the proposed production of a play - the Brewer of Preston - at the local theatre by the Prefect of Vigata - an event which the townsfolk intend will never happen. 

What was unexpected was how this writing style differs so much from the "Inspector Montalbano" novels. The chapters, which introduce us to an eclectic and eccentric cast of characters, are presented in no particular order - in fact we are told to read them in whatever order we like! As we slowly read, we pick up little hints as to how each scene and the characters will eventually relate, and the circumstances that bring them all together begins to unfold.

" ... how many things in Sicily happened by mistake ..."

The writing is at times sardonic, comedic, tragic, farcical, absurd. Loaded with clever, and often satirical, writing, Camilleri reveals tempestuous political scheming and double crossing, murder, infidelity, police corruption, anarchy, organised crime - and above, the Sicilian style of justice.

One is left wondering ... is the opera being acted out on the stage or in the real lives of the novel's characters...

The Hopkins Conundrum by Simon Edge

Book Review by Emily Beament - Press and Journal:

Tim Cleverley has inherited a struggling pub in North Wales, near the Jesuit seminary where Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote the poem The Wreck of the Deutschland.

Inspired by a terrible holiday with his ex on the trail of blockbuster Holy Grail novel The Poussin Conundrum, Tim hits on a plan to drum up more trade. He invents a mystery around Hopkin’s obscure religious poem and the local area, and entices the Conundrum’s author to come and write about it.

What follows is a witty satire in which Edge cleverly weaves together Hopkins’ struggles as he writes the poem, those of a group of nuns on the doomed Deutschland and Tim’s bid to turn his corner of the world into the next Grail hunting hotspot.

By turns gripping and laugh-out-loud funny, this is a great read for anyone who has ever reached the end of a Vatican thriller with an eyebrow raised.