Fabulous writing and a very disturbing tale. Our protagonist leaves an unfulfilling stint in his life to try another in France, narrating along the way his foibles, fears, and hopes. But we don’t know his backstory or who he is, only what he decides to tell us.
At points the reader watches helplessly as the protagonist does things of a highly questionable nature. His morality is fluid, creative, and twisted. By the end I was aghast. I had heard that this book started a number of trends in mystery fiction, and now I see why.
I was immersed and fascinated by both story and style. Not a book that leaves you quickly or lightly.
It's here, in the first volume of Patricia Highsmith's five-book Ripley series, that we are introduced to the suave Tom Ripley, a young striver seeking to leave behind his past as an orphan bullied for being a "sissy." Newly arrived in the heady world of Manhattan, Ripley meets a wealthy industrialist who hires him to bring his playboy son, Dickie Greenleaf, back from gallivanting in Italy. Soon Ripley's fascination with Dickie's debonair lifestyle turns obsessive as he finds himself enraged by Dickie's ambivalent affections for Marge, a charming American dilettante, and Ripley begins a deadly game. "Sinister and strangely alluring"…
I ended up really enjoying this book! I didn't think I'd care for it, and I started it twice. Why? I don't cook, I don't care about cookbooks, and I'm never sure about youthful amateur sleuths.
And although I love New Orleans as a visitor, I don't live there, and surely this was a love letter to The Big Easy. What ultimately impressed me was the complexity of the story, the way it turned into a real tangle of murder and vintage books and sneaky villains.
Add to this a sexy neighbor, cool work friendships, and people with a history and I had a great time reading.
A fantastic new cozy mystery series with a vintage flair from USA Today bestselling and Agatha Award–winning author Ellen Byron.
Twenty-eight-year-old widow Ricki James leaves Los Angeles to start a new life in New Orleans after her showboating actor husband perishes doing a stupid internet stunt. The Big Easy is where she was born and adopted by the NICU nurse who cared for her after Ricki’s teen mother disappeared from the hospital.
Ricki’s dream comes true when she joins the quirky staff of Bon Vee Culinary House Museum, the spectacular former Garden District home of late bon vivant Genevieve “Vee”…
I loved it! The Rose Code takes us inside Bletchley Park during the war to follow three women from very different walks of life.
The secrecy, the laws, the damnably hard work take their toll, but even when one of them is institutionalized they remain not only smart but resilient. Quinn immerses us in the setting of Bletchley, where the codes were broken to help win the war. One of those "stay up all night to read it" books!
The New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Huntress and The Alice Network returns with another heart-stopping World War II story of three female code breakers at Bletchley Park and the spy they must root out after the war is over.
1940. As England prepares to fight the Nazis, three very different women answer the call to mysterious country estate Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes. Vivacious debutante Osla is the girl who has everything-beauty, wealth, and the dashing Prince Philip of Greece sending her roses-but she burns to…
In 1862 London, the body of a famous surgeon is found, sitting upright, in an old operating theatre. His dead eyes stare at the table at the center of the room, where patients had screamed and cried as medical students looked on. The bookish Inspector Slaughter must discover the killer with the help of his American sergeant Mark Honeycutt and clues from Nightingale nurses, surgeon's dressers, devious apothecaries, and even stage actors. Victorian Southwark becomes the theatre for revealing secrets of the past in a world where anesthesia is new, working-class audiences enjoy Shakespeare, and women reformers solve society's problems.
