Thorns, Lust, and Glory by Estelle Paranque

 

With a sub-title of “The Betrayal of Anne Boleyn, this book goes over the well-known conflict between the English King Henry VIII and the Pope. I knew the basics from my previous knowledge of English history and my familiarity with some of the fictional treatments of the struggle in The Royal Gambit and The Lion in Winter.  Paranque’s book concentrates on Anne’s French connections and the secondary struggle of Henry with his French counterpart Francis 1^st.

Lots of names of minor courtiers are mixed in with the well-known personages like Sir Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell. I guess it told me more than I needed or wanted to know about the circumstances leading to Anne’s beheading in a courtyard at the Tower of London on May 19,1536.  

I give it 2 out of 5

A review of Wolf Pack by C J Box

 

C.J. Box is a Wyoming native and he has been hunting and fishing his entire life. He has written eighteen mystery thrillers that feature Joe Pickett, -a Wyoming game warden.  

In this book, Pickett is faced with an assassination group called the Wolf Pack that carries out hits for a drug cartel and a mysterious local with no discoverable past, who is flying a drone that has stampeded local animals. The case becomes personal when he discovers that his teenage daughter is dating the man’s teenage son. The FBI enters the picture and tries to keep Pickett from investigating the man further while the connections between the so-called Wolf Pack assassinations and the mystery man start to become apparent. The action tends to go back and forth between the pastoral countryside and the brutal killings by the Wolf Pack.

The book is nicely paced, but once you get used to his method of alteration of violence with calm, it does become pretty predictable. I figured out that the man with no background was in the Witness Protection program before our detective got to it. From there on it was clear that the four killers would have to meet Pickett and friends in a bloody conclusion. 

I enjoyed the background nature descriptions a lot because on a trip to the west years ago, we drove through the Big Horn mountains and were inspired by their rugged beauty.  If all of Box’s books are like this one they will be competently written and appealing perhaps primarily to male readers who are drawn to old style cowboy westerns in the more modern west.

On the other hand, If you don’t have a hankering for senseless killing and graphic violence, you might want to stay in the “Cozy Mystery” section of your local Barnes and Noble. The book is organized chronologically and each section begins with a literary quote about wolves. I liked the final one the best since it was from Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida.

Then everything includes itself in power,

Power into will, will into appetite;

And appetite, a universal wolf,.

So doubly seconded with will and power,

Must make perforce a universal prey,

And last eat up himself.   

The Late Show by Michael Connelly

 

Connelly, Michael The Late Show Review

THE LATE SHOW is Connelly’s 30^th book and it introduces a new lead character--a woman named Renee Ballard. One thing you can count on is that Mr. Connelly will give you a solid ride. He knows the back streets of Hollywood and his police procedures backwards and forwards. You can also count on the fact that his lead character pushes the edges of the rules, but not so far as to become unbelievable.

Ballard has been relegated to the so called “Late Show” as a penalty for resisting the advances of a senior officer. Overnight cases are often small-time and routine and she does these happily, but when large cases do appear she goes after them like a bloodhound in heat. Her juices start to flow when faced with a trans man is assaulted and left for dead in a parking lot. Before she has time to take a breath comes a vicious shooting of several people in a night club. 

Since Ballard is a new character for Connelly, we do get a fair amount of personal background as she digs into the cases. It points to a difficult early life and a still troubled current one. She had an absent mother and a father who died in some kind of surfing incident and now spends a lot of time with her elderly grandmother and paddleboarding at the beach.

Needless to say, she gets the bad guys a bunch of twists and push-back from the higher-ups. I am intrigued enough to look for the second novel in the series. It is called DARK SACRED NIGHT and in it she gets together with Connelly’s iconic major character—Detective Harry Bosch.

I give it a 4 out of 5. 

 

Review of Where Madness Lies by Lyndsy Spence

 

Spence, Lyndsy.  Where Madness Lies

The sub-title of this waste of time book is The Double Life of Vivien Leigh. It chronicles her life and her bi-polar condition in an age when there was limited understanding of the disease and treatment was still bordering on the medieval. None of the characters around her come off as admirable. The entire book seems exploitative and tries to fill a niche that needs no further filling. Take a pass on it.

I give it a 1 out of 5.