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Book Review: London Bridges (James Patterson)

image Title: London Bridges

Author: James Patterson

Genre: Thriller / Drama

Storyline: The 10th Alex Cross novel (although I’ve never read any of them until now) – A town in Nevada gets evacuated by the US Army… and then destroyed. A terrorist called “The Wolf” claims responsibility and the chase begins. New York, London and Paris all feel the brunt of the Wolfs schemes whilst Alex Cross tries to find out who he is and stop him before he kills more people and blows up more cities.

Review: WOW. What a page-turner. This book kept you guessing and right on the edge of your seat as Alex Cross travels across Europe and America to try and track down the Wolf and the Weasel. With plenty of action, and plenty of questions, throughout the book you are never left bored. In fact the main problem with this book is that you don’t want to sleep as you just want to read it!

Score: 4.7/5

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Book Review: The Blue Zone (Andrew Gross)

image Title: The Blue Zone

Author: Andrew Gross

Genre: Crime / Thriller

Storyline: A loving father and family man is suddenly arrested by the FBI with accusations of money laundering. He and his family are placed in the witness protection program after he agrees to turn on the group he had helped. All except his eldest daughter who has a life of her own and won’t give it up. Life then takes a turn as he disappears and their case agent is found tortured and killed…. suddenly the daughter is caught between multiple factions and not knowing where to go, who to trust and what will happen next.

Review: Andrew Gross has written 5 novels as co-author with James Patterson but the style of this one is unique to him – a nice thing to note as he’s not just a Patterson clone. The book has plenty of twists and turns in the plot and you are never sure who can be trusted – meaning you are along for the ride with Kate Raab (the daughter.) The story is well written and has plenty of excitement to keep going, but also enough character building to make you feel for the people involved. There’s also a nice dose of red herrings included to keep you wondering. All in all a very well written book and one that will no doubt be read again, with new things discovered with every read.

Score: 4.2/5

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Book Review: The Brethren (John Grisham)

As promised in my earlier post – I thought I’d start posting reviews of books I read, films I see, albums I hear etc… so here’s the first one of several that I’ll post in the next few days.

Title: The Brethren

Author: John Grisham

Genre: Crime / Thriller

Storyline: Three judges locked away in prison run a blackmail scam targeting closet rich gay men through the private ads. Meanwhile, the head of the CIA is trying to get an unknown bloke elected as US President… except he then gets caught in the blackmail scam.

Review: Partly reminiscent of Richard North Patterson, but not as in-depth or focused, and partly your normal lawyer-type thriller. A good book and highly entertaining but the 440 pages should really have been 550 to allow the storyline to get a bit more depth. Despite that though, it was still a page-turner and a good solid read.

Score: 3.5/5

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My dog ate my blog-posts

Honestly… it really did – you believe me, don’t you? Big Grin

Ok Ok so I don’t have a dog and it’d be hard for the dog to eat them anyway so it doesn’t really wash as an excuse. Was worth a try anyway. Whistling

In all fairness, I *do* have a blog post drafted on my work laptop but I’ve been having a few issues since my websites were moved to a new server (typical that the fault only seemed to affect me but such is sods law eh?)

6 months… that’s how long I’ve now been up to my ears in spuds (well, not quite but you know what I mean) – yup, half a year has now passed already at my new job. Maybe somewhat surprisingly, I’m still enjoying myself.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s not all roses and sunshine, but the job itself is highly enjoyable and I am still loving it.

I’m currently stuck in loads of meetings (3 last Thursday alone and more scheduled in this week!) and buried in 4 major, business-critical, projects and I’m having to learn a lot at high speeds. But it’s making life fun, and means there is never a dull moment.

So, what else has been happening…

We managed to get away on holiday last month – visited the lake district (first time for me) and had a really nice time. Loads of great places to visit for the kids (Beatrix Potter exhibition) and for us (Motor Museum) and plenty of really good roads for driving on. Devil

The holiday also gave me a chance to crack on with reading – life had been so chaotic that books were taking sooooo long to read – and since then I must have read about 8 novels and I am hoping to get some reviews posted as I’ve now started reading some different authors.

Other exciting happenings include my sons first school sports day – his team came first so he was well chuffed. We’ve also started to witness the end of many TV series for the summer, entering that dull period when not much is on except fluff programs to fill the time. Dr Who has ended, CSI Vegas and NY have ended (although Miami is returning!), Boston Legal and Jericho end this week… and no doubt more will finish soon (house, cold case, criminal minds to name but three)

I’m about the get my hands on a BT Vision box – moved away from PlusNet a short while ago as I wanted to play with a few new bits that PN weren’t offering. Looking forward to playing with Video On Demand and enjoying the fact that we get a 100% perfect freeview signal (thanks to our aerial upgrade last year) Party

Anyway – that’ll do for now… have fun!

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The tumbleweed rolls by….

WOWZERS! 3 Months since my last post Doh

Sorry folks, things have been totally chaotic of late and, to be quite honest, I kept forgetting about the blog.

So…. February to May (well, June I suppose really) – where to begin. Confused

F1 kicked off again, so did most other motorsports. We went to watch the BTCC at Rockingham. My daughter hit the big 10. I survived my probation period at my new job with no worries. We got a new Kitchen. I got a shiny new 19″ TFT and have setup a nice smart dual monitor rig for watching media and working on. I have started exercising and dieting. Forest crashed and burned in the play-offs. Stargate SG-1 finished for good. Dr Who is back.

Phew… and….. breathe! Surprise