BOOK REVIEW:The Island by Adrian McKinty

The Island is the latest blockbuster suspense thriller from Adrian McKinty, the author of the best-selling The Chain  and six well-regarded police procedurals with titles based off of Tom Waits lyrics set in Northern Ireland during “The Troubles” era featuring a Protestant cop named Sean Duffy. The Chain is well-known for its killer premise, addictive pacing and plot twists; The Island shares several of these attributes.
The premise of The Island is apparently sourced from an actual incident experienced by McKinty that didn’t go as wildly wrong as what happens in the book: a car accident on a private island a short ferry trip from a major city (Melbourne in this case) where a single family has controlled life (and death) for multiple generations. In McKinty’s real-life version the accident was avoided and no one was harmed, but in the version in The Island a young deaf woman rides her bike suddenly into an oncoming car carrying a vacationing American family of four (a 40-something doctor named Tom, his 20-something second wife Heather and two kids, Olivia, 14 and Owen, 12). The parents, make the fateful decision to leave the scene of the accident in the hope they can resolve whatever consequences occur from the comfort and safety of the mainland. This turns out to be a spectacular bad choice that results in multiple violent deaths.

The Island turns into a suspenseful story of survival as the wife and kids are separated from their husband and father and are literally hunted by the few dozen inhabitants of the island. In such an extreme situation, everyone involved is forced to identify their limits and go beyond them in different ways. Olivia and Owen are recovering from the death of their mom, Tom's first wife and are resentful of Heather, who is much closer to their age then she is to their parents. Heather is still getting used to the idea of being responsible for two teenaged kids at the age of 24 and getting to know her new husband who views the world substantially differently from his perch of privilege and experience. That these emotional undercurrents have to be navigated and resolved while they are trying to escape a life-and-death situation on Dutch Island are the primary narrative fuel of The Island.

McKinty does many things quite well in The IslandFirst, he successfully gets the reader to invest in the fate of the characters. He provides the reader with the internal thoughts of multiple characters and uses this mechanism to help the reader connect emotionally with them, especially Heather. Second, he writes action scenes incredibly compellingly, and there is a LOT of action (and violence) in The Island. Third, he is not afraid to have real consequences for the characters for the decisions they make. Because, there are serious (and life-changing) injuries inflicted on multiple characters, this raises the stakes for the reader in speculating about the possible fates for the character or characters we are invested in knowing what happens to in the end.
That’s not to say The Island is not without flaws. It is so obvious about its intent to be breathlessly suspenseful that at times the plot becomes wildly unrealistic and shamelessly manipulative. But once the reader gives into the breakneck pace of the plot and accepts that The Island is going to be a roller-coaster, the book is an enjoyable bit of fluff (and its quite a quick read at 384 pages).

Apparently The Island is being made into a streaming “television” series for Hulu, which I think will work well. I could see it turned into an addictive suspense drama like Fox’s 24 where every hour/episode ends with a cliffhanger.

Overall, I would recommend The Island to anyone who read and enjoyed The Chain (which according to sales figures, critical acclaim and social media buzz, is a LOT of people!).

Title: The Island
Author: Adrian Mckinty.
Format: Hardcover.
Length: 384 pages.
Publisher: Little, Brown.
Date Published: May 17, 2022.
Date Read: November 18, 2022.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★½☆  (3.5/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.67/4.0).

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: B+.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: A.

BOOK REVIEW: Black Dog (Ben Cooper & Diane Fry, #1) by Stephen Booth

Black Dog is the first book in a series of British police procedural, crime thrillers written by Stephen Booth starring Ben Cooper and Diane Fry, set in the Peak District of Northern England near Manchester. Generally referred to as the Cooper & Fry series, I discovered the book as it was recommended to me by the website FantasticFiction, for readers who also like Stuart MacBride and Val McDermid (which I definitely do).

The British police procedural, crime thriller is a (very) well-populated genre I am discovering. So my tastes have become more discerning as I read more of them. I have read all of Ian Rankin's work, as well as the mysteries written by Peter Robinson, Tana French, and Agatha Christie. I've come to realize that, generally, I prefer books that feature at least one female protagonist (or are written by a female author). I think it’s probably as a gay Black male I don’t really connect with seeing toxic masculinity in my fiction and I prefer to read stories featuring characters that share experiences similar to mine, i.e. trying to succeed professionally in settings where you’re under-represented.

I was pleasantly surprised by how engaging Black Dog, the first book in the Cooper & Fry series, is. The main mystery is built around the disappearance and (inevitable) demise of a 15-year-old girl who is the daughter of the nouveau riche couple who own the biggest house in the Edendale area. However, as with all good books in the mystery genre, it’s not the central case that’s important but it's the people working on the case who are. Ben Cooper is a young, handsome, local “golden boy” who is a Detective Constable with a bright future and apparent rapid promotion ahead of him, despite his police father having been killed in the line of duty a mere 2 years before, leading to the psychological breakdown of his mother. Diane Fry is also a young Detective Constable who has recently transferred to the E-division police force after a traumatic event which she’s determined not to let slow her progress on the fast track to professional success in the police. They are polar opposites; Cooper is instinctive, well-liked by his colleagues and generally attuned to the sensibilities and sensitivities of the locals. Fry, on the other hand, is an outsider, perceived as a nervy, ambitious woman seeking to rise in the ranks by taking advantage of any situation to get noticed and advance her career. Somehow the two are paired together and sparks fly. There is definitely NOT sexual tension between the two, but there is professional rivalry (and perhaps personal antipathy), especially when Cooper realizes that Fry is much more likely to get the next Detective Sergeant promotion after his family problems start to negatively impact his job performance.

The details of the mystery in Black Dog are quite interesting, with a surplus of suspects and a large number of red herrings thrown at the reader. Even when the perpetrator was basically reduced to a cast of 3, I didn’t pick the correct person responsible for the crimes. The book is quite suspenseful and does a good job of slowly revealing different aspects of the personality traits of both Cooper and Fry which make me very interested to see how their interactions develop in future books. The series is quite substantial (almost 18 books at this writing) and I’m a bit surprised it doesn’t appear to have the same level of popularity and renown as similar books in this genre such as the Tony Hill & Carol Jordan series by Val McDermid or the Duncan Kincaid & Gemma James series by Deborah Crombie. I think the reason may be because it doesn’t appear as if there’s a romantic relationship between the two lead characters (at least so far). The setting of the books is also somewhat unusual, a rural, sparsely populated, mountainous area (called the Peak Pike District) that is an actual tourist attraction. The supporting characters are not particularly diverse, but when there are two main characters who are both nuanced and well-drawn, that can sustain and fuel my interest in reading more books in the series, which I definitely intend to do.

Title: Black Dog.
Author: Stephen Booth.
Pages: 480 pages (paperback).
Publisher: Orbit.
Date Published: October 30, 2001.
Date Read: November 6, 2020.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★½☆  (4.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.67/4.0).

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: A-.

BOOK REVIEW: Every Dead Thing Charlie Parker, #1) by John Connolly

Every Dead Thing is the first book by John Connolly that I have read, and the first book in his apparently very popular Charlie Parker series. I am always looking for new series and so I was interested in reading this book and checking out Connolly's work, which has relatively high ratings on Goodreads and is well-established. However, I am not completely sure how many more in the series I will read (for reasons I detail below).

One thing I am learning as I read more books in the mystery/thriller/suspense/crime genre is how many different kinds of books there are, and thus I can be more discerning (read: picky!) in the books and series I decide to invest my time in consuming. My sweet spot is generally well-paced police procedurals (often set in Britain) where the plot (often suspenseful) revolves around intriguing mysteries or crimes (not always murders) being investigated by complex, well-developed characters (with diverse and interesting supporting characters). Authors whose work I have generally liked include Peter Robinson's DCI Alan Banks, Ian Rankin's DI John Rebus, Karin Slaughter's Will Trent, Val McDermid's Tony Hill/Carol Jordan series, Stuart MacBride's Logan McRae and (of course) Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad and Louise Penny's Henri Gamache series.

 I was a little upset to discover that the Charlie Parker series is in a sub-genre known as a supernatural crime thriller. The first book doesn't go too far in that direction. Generally I am not a fan of supernatural elements, which is why I haven't usually been a fan of Stephen King, but the books I have read of his (The Institute, The Outsider, the Mr. Mercedes trilogy) have all been excellent. However I have heard things get spookier as the series goes on (Book 17 has been published). Book 1, Every Dead Thing, has an extremely high body count and is suffused with violence throughout. It begins with the ritualistic murder of Parker's wife and kids and ends with... (just kidding I don't want to spoil it!).

Parker is an interestingly flawed character (a former police officer whose family was murdered who is willing and able to use his network of contacts to take the law into his own hands) and the setting is New York City, which is also a plus. However one of the main reasons I did not summarily DNF the book about 40% in (after Parker basically solves the initial mystery of a missing girl he was hired to find) was the surprising inclusion of an openly gay, interracial criminal couple named Angel (burglar/thief) and Louis (assassin/hit man). If they play a significant role in the later books I wil probably give the Charlie Parker series a closer look. It's a huge plus to me that the supporting characters are diverse and interesting. And Connolly's prose is definitely well above average for your regular mystery writer. However, most of the mystery/thrillers that I really enjoy either have major characters who are female (Maeve Kerrigan, Sara Linton, Carol Jordan, Siobhan Clarke, Roberta Steel) are written by female authors (Tana French, Karin Slaughter, Val Mcdermid, Jane Casey, etc) but I'm definitely not a fan of romance (Karin Slaughter's Will Trent series gets the balance perfectly). My ultimate series would be a series with a female lead detective with a gay male sidekick (which is exactly what the DI Marnie Rome series by Sarah Hillary is but so far I haven't been impressed by the first two book in the series, Someone Else's Skin and No Other Darkness.

 I realize most of this review of Every Dead Thing has been my musing about the mystery/crime/thriller genre in general. That tends to happen when I get introduced to a new author and I try to compare the new work into my past experiences with the genre. My overall view of Every Dead Thing is that I would say it is a well-written, extremely violent and action-packed story led by a troubled main character and peopled with interesting supporting characters whom I suspect I will seek out in the (far) future.

Title: Every Dead Thing.
Author: John Connolly.
Paperback: 467 pages.
Publisher: Pocket Books.
Date Published: July 1, 2000.
Date Read: March 28, 2020.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★☆  (4.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: B+/A- (3.5/4.0).

PLOT: B+.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: B+.
WRITING: A-.

BOOK REVIEW: Shatter The Bones (DS Logan McRae, #7) by Stuart MacBride

I love how MacBride is constantly raising the stakes for his main character DS Logan McRae. Shatter the Bones is the seventh book in the best-selling police procedural, murder-mystery series set in Aberdeen, Scotland. The case this time is truly insane: a mother-daughter duo who are leading a televised American Idol-style reality show are kidnapped and the public is being extorted for the ransom. To goose the pot the kidnappers are releasing videos and bits and pieces (i.e toes) of their hostages every few days. leading to wall-to-wall media coverage and general public hysteria. The pressure on the police to solve the crime and capture the perpetrators is intense. Meanwhile Logan is making very bad decisions as he works on other cases, and that eventually ends up producing life-changing consequences for him and his current girl friend Samantha (who works in the Coroner's office) who he has only recently committed to fully. One of the entertaining aspects of the books is that Logan is not one to follow the rules and the ways that he forges his own path while solving every case he faces is lots of fun. MacBride does a very effective job of injecting humor and near-farce into Logan's professional interactions with his nominal boss, the morally questionable DI Roberta Steel and his amusing sidekick, DC Simon Rennie. If it takes a village to solve a crime, Rennie is the village idiot. As usual with the high-profile cases Logan finds himself ensnared in,  there is someone from a rival police force who is brought in to assist Aberdeen's Finest; the professional jousting and office intrigue are a wonder to behold. Overall, the Logan McRae mysteries are some of the most enjoyable British police procedurals in the mystery crime-thriller genre: amusing, action-packed and always very clever. Title: Shatter The Bones. Author: Stuart MacBride. Paperback: 438 pages. Publisher: HarperCollins. Date Published: January 6, 2011. Date Read: October 22, 2017. GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★★ (5.0/5.0). OVERALL GRADE: A (3.67/4.0). PLOT: A. IMAGERY: A-. IMPACT: A+. WRITING: A.

My Favorite Books Read In 2017 (Mystery, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Thriller)

In 2017 I read 60 books; as usual almost all of these were novels, primarily in the genres of mystery/thriller and fantasy/science fiction. Interestingly, the books that I read in 2017 were  dominated by the mystery/thriller category (33) with the rest pretty evenly split between the genres of science fiction (15) and fantasy (9) with a few books falling into both categories or neither. 2017 was more like 2014 when mystery/thriller predominated my reading list while in 2015 more than half the books I read that year were science fiction. In 2016, surprisingly no particular genre dominated. This is surprising (to me) because generally if I were to list my favorite genres in decreasing order it would be 1) science fiction 2) thriller 3) fantasy 4) mystery. One issue is that thriller can really be any genre (even though most of the thrillers I read are also mysteries).

I was introduced to several new authors in 2017 (Stuart MacBride,  John Sandford, Blake Crouch, Dennis Taylor, Justin Cronin, Rachel Caine, Val McDermid and Susie Steiner; I definitely look forward to reading more of books from many of these authors in the future. In 2017 I followed up my 2016 read of my first Stephen King novel (11/22/63) with the Bill Hodges trilogy (Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, End of Watch).

Happily in 2017 I also read lots of book by authors whose work has previously been some of my favorite reads (Ian Rankin, Jo Nesbø, Louise Penny, Brian Staveley, Michael Connelly, Patrick Tomlinson, Peter Robinson, Brent Weeks, Adrian McKinty, N.K. Jemisin and Greg Iles). In 2017 I read not one but two books from what is currently my favorite series, i.e. The Expanse by James S.A. Corey. The sixth book, Babylon's Ashes, was released in December 2016 but I didn't read it until my Hawaii vacation in January 2017 and when the seventh book Persepolis Rising was released in December 2017 I gobbled it up soon afterwards. Another favorite author, Peter V. Brett, published the fifth and final book in the Demon Cycle, The Core, nearly 9 years after the first book, The Warded Man, came out in 2009.

I'm always looking for more good books and authors to add to my "To Be Read (TBR)" pile! Feel free to make suggestions of books or authors you think I would like in the comments after seeing what books have resonated with me previously.

Below are my favorite reads for 2017 in the genres of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery and Thriller.

Favorite Science Fiction Novel Read In 2017: Persepolis Rising by James S.A. Corey

As I have said before, The Expanse series is my favorite current series. This is not much of a surprise, since space opera is my favorite genre, and The Expanse is an action-packed space opera series about the human colonization of the solar system that is impacted by the discovery of alien technology. For example, in 2014 (Cibola Burn) and 2015 (Nemesis Games) a book from the Expanse series was my favorite for that year. In 2016, there were no Expanse books released and thus in 2017 Book 6 and Book 7 of the series was released: Babylon Ashes and Persepolis Rising. I was sort of disappointed with Babylon's Ashes but was very impressed with Persepolis Rising. It is quite incredible that the two authors who write together as James S.A. Corey have managed to basically stick to the schedule of an average of one book per year for seven books, even as they have been heavily involved in the adaption of their books for television as The Expanse series, the first three seasons of which have been broadcast on SyFy, but which has moved to Amazon Prime for season 4 after the cable channel declined to renew the show. In 2018 we are again not having an Expanse book, with the 8th book in the series Tiamat's Wrath having been delayed until 2019.

Runner-Up in Favorite Science Fiction Novel Read In 2017: Death's End by Liu Cixin.

Death's End is the third book in the space opera trilogy written by Cixin Liu who won the Hugo award for Best Novel for the first book in the series called The Three-Body Problem. The story is about an invasion of Earth by aliens known as Trisolarians (because their home world is surrounded by three stars). All three books are excellent and very different in their own way. The first two books (The Three-Body Problem and The Dark Forest) also appeared on my end-of-year favorite reads list for 2015 so it shouldn't be surprising that the third book appears on one as well. In Death's End the stakes for humanity grow even higher (and this is after the threat of alien invasion is resolved in quite an unexpected way!) and the time scale of the book grows longer and longer. There's not much more I can say about Death's End without revealing plot details but I can mention that it has a main character that is a female scientist and strongly encourage you to read the book. It is well-written, complicated science fiction at its very best. If it wasn't for N.K. Jemisin's The Obelisk Gate I am fairly confident that Death's End would have likely won the 2016 Hugo Award for Best Novel instead.

Honorable Mention (Science Fiction):  Children of the Divide (Children of a Dead Earth, #3) by Patrick S. Tomlinson.
One of my favorite books from a few years ago was The Ark by Patrick S. Tomlinson, the first book in the Children of a Dead Earth trilogy. As I have said earlier, I like specific genres of fiction (mystery/thriller and science fiction/fantasy) and one of the things that drew me to The Ark is that it is a rare example of a book which combines mystery and science fiction in a clever and engaging way. Children of the Divide is the third book in this series and it does an excellent job of  continuing (and possibly completing) the story that began in The Ark while still maintaining its commitment to blurring genre boundaries of science fiction and mystery. Children of the Divide is about a former detective who is now part of a small human colony on a planet trying to engage with the indigenous alien population and uncover corrupt and criminal conspiracy among the colonial leaders.

Favorite Fantasy Novel Read Novel In 2017: The Core (The Demon Cycle, #5) by Peter V. Brett

Peter Brett's Demon Cycle has been one of my favorite reads in the category of fantasy since the first entry The Warded Man appeared in 2009. Brett is definitely on the short list of my favorite fantasy authors: Brian Staveley, Brent Weeks, Michael J. Sullivan, and Daniel Abraham. The Demon Cycle is set in a world where there are different kinds of monsters (called "demons") who appear every night once the sun goes down. Demons apparently rise up from the "core" of the earth and have claws, teeth and talons and kill humans. Civilization does not have electricity  and so society is based around daytime activity because there is a strong belief that there is no way to fight against the demons. It is known that certain symbols (called "wards") can protect property from demon incursion but deep knowledge or understanding of wards and the ability to create new wards has been lost in the annals of time. When the series starts the main characters are Arlen Bales, Leesha Paper and Rojer Inn who live in an area we would recognize as similar to 18th century North America (without the slavery). One of the highlights of the series is that it proceeds (The Desert Spear) we are introduced to another pocket of humanity that lives in dry, arid area. This society we would recognize as based on 18th century Middle Eastern or Muslim living. Here the main characters are Ahmann Jardir, Inevera and Abban Haman. In The Core, Arlen, Jardir and Arlen's wife Renna take the battle against the demons to The Core in order to settle the question of which creature, corelings or humans will dominate the planet. This plot summary is a bit simplistic, because the war against the demons has many fronts and involves many other "lesser" characters. (One of the other strengths of the Demon Cycle books is the nuanced characterization of the primary and secondary characters in the series.) Brett wraps up the 5-book series expertly and satisfyingly in The Core. I am very interested in seeing what Brett will follow up the Demon Cycle with; he's a great writer.

Runner-Up Favorite Fantasy Novel Read in 2017: Skullsworn by Brian Staveley

The Chronicles of the Unhewn Throne is an epic fantasy trilogy (The Emperor's Blades, The Providence of Fire,,The Last Mortal Bond) featuring a trio of heirs (Adare, Kaden and Valyn) to the Unhewn Throne of the Annurian Empire by Brian Staveley; it was one of my favorite reads in 2015 and 2016. They are great books, built around amazing characters and featuring taut plotting, treacherous betrayals, huge battle scenes and god-like creatures. Although Adare, Kaden and Valyn are the main characters in the book, there are several side characters who make indelible impressions. One of these is Pyrre, a priestess of the God of Death. In Skullsworn, Staveley writes an entire (somewhat short) book entirely focused around Pyrre and gives us insight into how such the smart, accomplished woman we met in the trilogy became a fully-fledged and devoted member of what is essentially a death cult. Pyrre is so fabulous in the original trilogy that it is not surprising that her origin story makes for an exciting read. It is pretty difficult to write a prequel for a character we know survives this story, especially one who literally kills without compunction in service of her religious beliefs but Staveley is so talented he does it very successfully. There are many other characters in the Unhewn Throne trilogy who would also make excellent subjects of their own books (Gwenna, The Flea, to name just a few) so I hope Staveley returns to this setting soon.

Honorable Mention (Fantasy): Age of Swords (The Legends of the First Empire, #2) by Michael J. Sullivan
One of my happy discoveries in recent year has been the work of Michael J. Sullivan. His Riyria Revelation trilogy (Theft of Swords, Rise of Empire, Heir of Novron) was on my list of favorite reads for 2016. Sullivan approaches the book industry a bit differently than most authors, since he started by self-publishing his books (quite successfully) and even though his books are now published by major booksellers one is also able to buy them directly from him. He has a new epic fantasy series based thousands of years before the events of the Riyria Revelations called the Legends of the First Empire. Amazingly, he has completed first drafts of the entire 6-book series, so the books are guaranteed to be released on a pretty regular schedule. Age of Swords is the second book in the series and builds upon the setting and characters introduced in the first book, Age of Myth. Unlike the Riryia trilogies, which feature two male characters and are effectively laced with humor, this new series has a female protagonist and is primarily based on an existential conflict between the powerful Fhrey (near immortal, masters of magic and powerfully violent) and humans, who are portrayed in the Bronze age, but inventive and resource. The humans thought the Fhrey were gods until one of them was killed in Age of Myth, but there is still a sense that if the Fhrey decided to invade lands occupied by humans they could exterminate them without much trouble.

Favorite Mystery Novel Read In 2017: Flesh House (DS Logan McRae, #4) by Stuart MacBride

Comedy is so difficult to do that when I find someone who does it well I am always impressed. That Stuart MacBride is able to do this in the context of police procedural mystery thrillers is amazing. I only started reading MacBride's books about Detective Sergeant Logan McRae's adventures as part of the Aberdeen Constabulary in 2017 but already they are very near the top of my all-time list in the mystery category. It was somewhat difficult to decide which of the seven McRae books I read last year should be at the top of this list, but I think it makes sense to pick Flesh House since it is simultaneously the most thrilling and the most darkly comic of these books that I have read so far. As a DS, Logan is basically in middle management, with uniformed police and Detective Constables (DCs) beneath him, and Detective Inspectors (DIs) and Detective Chief Inspectors (DCIs) above him. Unfortunately, in both directions he is surrounded by incompetence and indolence, which MacBride exploits for its maximum comedic effect. The key character here is his immediate boss, DI Roberta Steel (who is such a great character that MacBride has written an entire stand-alone book featuring her in And Now We Are Dead). In Flesh House, Logan (as usual) is juggling multiple criminal investigations, although they are overshadowed by what appears to be the re-emergence after 3 decades  of a cannibalistic serial killer called the Flesher. Len Wiseman was the person who was arrested, tried and convicted as the Flesher but he has been free for years because his conviction was overturned on appeal. Recently a container car full of human meat that was en route to a local butcher has been found and the Granite City is gripped with panic about their local food supply and the police are in such a frenzy to put Wiseman behind bars again that they are willing to bend the rules to get the result that they want. Logan eventually solves the case but only after he puts himself in mortal danger (again) and undergoes excruciating situations which have lasting consequences on his political and personal future.

Runner-Up Favorite Mystery Novel Read in 2016: Police at the Station and They Don't Look Friendly (Sean Duffy, #6) by Adrian McKinty

One of the key discoveries I made in 2016 was the Inspector Sean Duffy  books by Adrian McKinty. These are a series of police procedurals set in the suburbs of Belfast, Northern Ireland at the height of the "Troubles" in the mid-1980s. I'm already a sucker for police procedurals, having consumed several books of this type written by Duncan MacBride (DS Logan McRae), Ian Rankin (DI John Rebus in Edinburgh), Elizabeth George (Inspector Lynley series in England), Peter Robinson (DCI Alan Banks in Yorkshire), Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch in Los Angeles), Jo Nesbø (Harry Hole in Oslo, Norway), Jussi Adler-Olsen (Department Q series in Copenhagen, Denmark), Tana French (Dublin Murder Squad) and Henning Mankell (Kurt Wallander in Ystad, Sweden). McKinty's Sean Duffy is a nice Catholic boy who is a Royal Ulster Constabulary officer in Carrickfergus, a predominantly Protestant section of Northern Ireland (which also just happens to be the name of the real town that McKinty grew up in.). The Duffy books are bit more than your everyday police-procedural murder-mystery; they have significant elements of spy thriller components, all embedded in oft-amusing cultural commentary on the 1980s and 1990s. The latest (and possibly last) book in the series is the unforgettably titled Police at the Station and They Don't Look Friendly begins with a bang in Chapter 1 with Duffy abducted and basically left for dead as the result of a contract killing and gets even more suspenseful from there. The book then jumps to a time line BEFORE the abduction to tell the story about how Sean got into this predicament and the reader is left with the very real possibility that Detective Duffy may not survive this tale. (I don't want to give away anything but McKinty has revealed that there will be 3 more Duffy books coming out starting with The Detective Up Late in 2019).

Honorable Mention (Mystery):  Well-Schooled in Murder (Inspector Lynley, #3) by Elizabeth George.
I finally started reading the British police procedurals written by American Elizabeth George in 2017. George is widely known for her Inspector Lynley series (which at one point was a popular BBC television series that also aired on PBS). The Lynley series is now 20 episodes strong and features upper-class DI Tommy Lynley (the 8th Earl of Asherton) and working-class DS Barbara Havers solving crimes with the supporting characters being Lynley's girlfriend  Lady Helen Clyde and his best friend Simon St. James. I read the first four novels in the series in 2017 but I think that the strongest of these is the third book, Well-Schooled in Murder. The plot is about a murder that has occurred at a boarding school which is something of a locked room mystery. I definitely intend to read more of these books in the future, even though the romantic tension between Tommy and Helen is a bit off-putting, the class tension between Havers and Lynley is intriguing.

Favorite Thriller Novel Read In 2017: Mr. Mercedes (Bill Hodges, #1) by Stephen King.

Stephen King is a colossus in the publishing world, primarily known for his numerous best-sellers, his prodigious, decades-long written output and the number of film adaptations which have become classic movies (Carrie, It, Misery, Dolores Claiborne, et cetera). Since I am not a fan of horror I had mostly ignored his work  but I did read 11/22/63 (since as an alternative history about the President Kennedy assassination that involves time travel it is effectively science fiction) and very much enjoyed it. So, when I discovered that King had written a mystery thriller series (Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, End of Watch) I decided to check it out and was pleasantly surprised by how good it was. I read all three books in a row; they are very suspenseful, funny and interesting. I don't think King is a great writer, but I do think that he is a fantastic storyteller. I selected Mr. Mercedes as my favorite thriller read in 2017 because the last third of the book is almost impossible to put down. The book begins with the horrible hit-and-run which results in the death of 8 people and the wounding of several more. King tells the story from the perspective of the person who commits the crime, Brady Hartsfield, as well as  the police officer who unsuccessfully investigated the crime and who is now near retirement, Bill Hodges. Hodges teams up with two unlikely sidekicks, a gangly  teenaged African-American named Jerome Robinson and an obsessive-compulsive recluse named Holly Gibney. Together Holly, Jerome and Bill make an engaging team that are a highlight of the entire series. Although they have a limited role in the sequel Finders Keepers they return in the final entry in the trilogy, End of Watch. The series has been adapted for television but is airing on something called the Audience Network which I don't have access to.

Runner-Up Favorite Thriller Read in 2017: Criminal (Will Trent, #6)  by Karin Slaughter

I discovered Karin Slaughter in 2015 when I read the the first book Blindsighted in her Grant County series. The book made an immediate impression on me, grabbing an Honorable Mention for Favorite Thriller Read in 2015. I basically devoured the rest of the six books in the Grant County series in 2016 and have been rapidly making my way through her 9-book Will Trent series ever since. Slaughter is a crime thriller writer who also combines romantic tension between her main characters. The Grant County series was built around a trio of characters: Sara Linton, Jeffrey Tolliver and Lena Adams. (Tolliver and Linton were married and Adams is the only female detective in the same police station where Tolliver was chief of police.) The Will Trent series is based around another female-male-female triangle, Sara Linton, Will Trent and Angie Polaski. (Trent and Polaski were orphans who lived in group homes together, both became Atlanta police officers and eventually married while Sara moves to Atlanta from Grant County and becomes romantically involved with Will.)  In both series Slaughter provides point-of-view perspectives from each of the main characters and shows how the very same events and actions by the principals can be interpreted very differently, usually due to the past experiences and traumas each character carries with them. Slaughter does an excellent job of characterizing female characters and her books are full of extremely strong and independent woman while simultaneously depicting society's (and violent men's) horrific domination and  oppression of women. I chose Criminal as the runner-up thriller of the year from the six Will Trent books I read in 2017 because it revolves around unearthing secrets about Will's parentage and we learn more about why his boss, Amanda Wagner, is so closely tied to him.

Honorable Mention (Thriller): Mississippi Blood (Penn Cage, #6) by Greg Iles.
The Penn Cage books by Greg Iles have been some of my favorite thriller reads in the last few years. Overall, I think the first trilogy (The Quiet Game, Turning Angel, The Devil's Punchbowl) is even more gripping than the second (Natchez Burning, The Bone Tree, Mississippi Blood) although the stakes and acclaim for the second one are greater in every aspect. Reading the series in order raises the stakes for the reader in how invested we are in the ultimate disposition of the characters. Not all of our favorites survive the end of the series, and it is heartbreaking. There's a real sense of suspense and danger that tragedy could strike anyone, even the eponymous Penn Cage. For me, the imbrication of race, crime, Southern history and journalism in the series is a potent mix and convinced me to keep Mississippi Blood on my list of favorite reads in 2017.

BOOK REVIEW: Police At The Station And They Don't Look Friendly by Adrian McKinty

Police at the Station and They Don't Look Friendly is the  sixth (and perhaps last?) book in the Inspector Sean Duffy series by Adrian McKinty. It is quite a corker, and probably the best in this quirky mystery thriller series set in Northern Ireland in the 1980s when "the Troubles" were at their peak. It is a good sign about the quality of these books that I had previously  said that the fifth book in the series, Rain Dogs, was clearly the best. (It was on my list of favorite books read in 2016.) The Duffy books just keep getting better and better!

The book begins with a scene where our protagonist is in such mortal peril that the reader is confronted with reality that this might be the end of the road for our favorite Catholic detective with the snobbish music tastes who has been trying to solve murders in a setting where religious factions (Catholics and Protestants) are frequently torturing and killing each other (and the forces trying to maintain order) with abandon.

However, after beginning with a literal bang, the next chapter is set in some unspecified amount of time in the past where we discover that Sean is living (in sin) with the mother of his months-old baby girl, Emma, and generally bored out of his mind with no murders to solve when a very strange one falls into his lap. (A drug dealer is shot to death with a crossbow, and it's the second time in as many days someone has been shot with such a medieval weapon.)

One feature of the Sean Duffy thrillers is that the plots get unbelievably complicated and they entangle people at highest levels of British and Irish society that one would not think that a local copper in a small suburb of Belfast (Carrickfergus) would have any chance of interacting with, let alone collaring. Another feature is the deployment of mystifying (to American ears and eyes) of Irish slang which gives the series a sense of verisimilitude and exoticism which is both appealing and off-putting (simultaneously!) The amusing titles of the books apparently come from lines from Tom Waits songs.

In Police at the Station and They Don't Look Friendly the fine line Duffy has been walking as a Catholic member of the occupying British police force (the Royal Ulster Constabulary) becomes untenable as many mutual enemies (such as the Catholic IRA, the Protestant paramilitaries and the British military establishment) decide the time has come to eliminate their common irritant, our "fenian" [an anti-Catholic slur] hero.

Mckinty pulled off an interesting bit of fore-shadowing by giving the reader a chance to grapple with Duffy's demise in the beginning of the novel before resolving the question of his main character's mortality in a way which is ultimately satisfying. (Yes, I am being deliberately vague to avoid spoilers.)

All of the above being said, if this is the final Duffy book I will not be sad or mad as I think McKinty has managed to bring Duffy through very many improbably survivable situations before and I have enjoyed the journey as long as it lasted. It is hard to see how McKinty could (or can) continue to sustain the increasingly high quality of the Duffy series if it were to continue. However, we will just have to wait and see!

Title: Police at the Station and They Don't Look Friendly
Author: Adrian McKinty.
Paperback: 322 pages.
Publisher: Seventh Street Books.
Date Published: March 7, 2017.
Date Read: April 15, 2017.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★★  (5.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A (4.0/4.0).
PLOT: A.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A+.

My Favorite Books Read In 2016 (Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery and Thriller)

In 2016 I read 60 books; as usual almost all of these were novels, primarily in the genres of mystery/thriller and fantasy/science fiction. Interestingly, the books that I read the in 2016 were  pretty evenly split between the genres of science fiction (19), fantasy (17), and mystery (19) with a few books falling into both categories or neither. (In 2014 mystery/thriller predominated my reading list while in 2015 more than half the books I read that year were science fiction. In 2016, surprisingly no particular genre dominated.

I was introduced to some new authors in 2016 (Adrian McKinty, Michael J. Sullivan, Deborah Crombie, Ramez Naam, Elizabeth George and Adrian Tchaikovsky) whom I look forward to reading more of their books in the future. In 2016 I read my first book by Stephen King  as an adult and was pleasantly surprised by how good the alternative-history/time-travel book 11/22/63 is. I will definitely try to read more of his non-horror work which falls into my favorite genres in the future.

Happily in 2016 lots of authors whose work has previously been some of my favorite reads released books that I read (Ben Winters, Tana French, Peter Hamilton, Daniel Abraham, Ian Rankin, Brian Staveley, Michael Connelly, Patrick Tomlinson, Peter Robinson and Alastair Reynolds). There's a notable absence from this list: for the first time in 6 years I did not read a book from The Expanse by James S.A. Corey. The sixth book, Babylon's Ashes, was released in December 2016 but I didn't read it until my Hawaii vacation in January 2017. Another favorite author, Brent Weeks published The Black Mirror (Lightbringer, #4) in 2016 but I am sav(or)ing this to be read later in 2017.

I'm always looking for more good books and authors to add to my "To Be Read (TBR)" pile! Feel free to make suggestions of books or authors you think I would like in the comments after seeing what books have resonated with me previously.

Below are my favorite reads for 2016 in the genres of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery and Thriller.

Favorite Science Fiction Novel Read In 2016: Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Reading Children of Time was one of the most exciting reading  experiences I had in 2016. Part of the emotional impact that the book had on me is that it was so unexpected. Although I had heard of the author's work before, I thought that Tchaikovsky was known for his epic fantasy works. I list space opera as my favorite genre, and usually it ends up being my favorite sub-genre in science fiction (and quite often it is a book by either Peter Hamilton or James S.A. Corey  in 2015 and 2014) but this year Children of Time just stole my heart and blew my mind.  It is an unusual story that combines two classic elements of science fiction: the depiction of the social dynamics of an arkship which presumably contains all that remains of humanity and the development of an alien civilization with quite unique cultural characteristics and social structure. What both of these plots have in common is that the book goes over multiple generations of each, so the passage of time is an important ingredient of the salience of the story's impact. Although I would love to spend more time with the characters and the setting of Children of Time it was also nice to read a completely self-contained story that does not depend on any sequels to advance or complete the story.

Runner-Up in Favorite Science Fiction Novel Read In 2016: Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters.

I have previously discussed how since I love science fiction/fantasy and mystery/thriller that I am always looking for books that combine these two genres. In fact last year, my two favorite mysteries were also science fiction books. The first of these was the Last Policeman trilogy written by Ben Winters. This year Winters is on my list of favorites in the science fiction category even though Underground Airlines is also a police procedural and mystery-thriller. What makes it science fiction is that it is written in an alternate time line where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated soon after his election in 1861 and the enactment of five "compromise" constitutional amendments result in slavery being maintained until the 21st century in a few stubborn states in the Union (Carolinas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama). The setting is so compelling that it was easily the book that I thought about the most long after I finished it. What the premise does is allow the reader to clearly see the horrifying possibility that slavery could have been maintained for another century and a half in our world and how similar to our actual world that warped universe is. This is mordant social commentary with an exciting  plot wrapped around it.

Honorable Mention (Science Fiction):  A Night Without Stars (The Chronicle of the Fallers, #2) by Peter Hamilton.
My favorite science fiction author is Peter Hamilton so it should not be a surprise that his sequel to The Abyss Beyond Dreams, the concluding novel in another exciting duology written in the Commonwealth Universe would be on my list of favorite books read in 2016. A Night Without Stars was not as good as the first book in the series but even midrange Hamilton is a lot better than the vast majority of science fiction out there. Again, although Hamilton is known for his space opera and military science fiction a key aspect of the story in The Chronicle of the Fallers is a detailed depiction of a social revolution against a totalitarian regime where some people have telepathic and telekinetic powers and there are deadly shape-shifting aliens attempting to subsume human civilization. Lots of fun!

Favorite Fantasy Novel Read Novel In 2016: The Last Mortal Bond (The Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne, #3) by Brian Staveley

In 2015 my favorite read in the category of fantasy was the first book in Brian Staveley's The Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne, The Emperor's New Blades so I am quite pleased that the concluding work in the same series, The Last Mortal Bond, ended up being my favorite read in the same category in 2016. And this was a tough category to repeat in because I read quite a few fantasy books this year. However Staveley is the real deal and I totally expect him to join the (rather short) list of my favorite fantasy authors: Brent Weeks, Peter Brett, Daniel Abraham and Michael Sullivan. The reason why Staveley is on this list at the top spit is that The Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne is simply the best. The story generally revolves around three main characters: Kaden, Adare and Valyn, who are the surviving children of an assassinated emperor. However, as the story develops we see that it is really an existential battle between humanity and god-like, immortal beings. There are giant flying birds, armies of thousands fighting against each other and devotees of various gods and goddesses all fighting for power and control over the Empire. Oh and of course there is some love and betrayal as well, for good measure. And all of it is told at a thrilling pace with humor and wit which is incredibly engaging.

Runner-Up Favorite Fantasy Read in 2016:  Heir of Novron (The Riyria Chronicles, #3) by Michael J. Sullivan 

Speaking of wit and humor immediately brings us to the work of Michael J. Sullivan, who I first read in 2016. He started as a self-published author and although there's nothing wrong with that, I believe that was one of the reasons why I never picked up any of his books. But eventually, the tens of thousands of ratings on Goodreads (with an average well above 4.0 on a 5-point scale) were convincing enough to me that I decided to try the first book, Theft of Swords, in one of his series, The Riyria Chronicles. I was amazed at how funny and thrilling the books are, even if they do have wizards and princesses and swords. They simply are great books, built around two amazing characters Hadrian Blackwater and  Royce Melborn. What is so impressive about what Sullivan does is that even as he is repeating all the classical fantasy tropes he is simultaneously reinventing and disrupting them. (For example, in Heir of Novron there's a quest by a motley collection of travelers who have multiple reasons to betray each other, there's an orphaned waif who becomes the leader of the Empire, and of course there are several sets of star-crossed lovers.)  But the core of the books is the relationship between two (straight) guys who are very different but manage to forge a bond that has them surviving some quite harrowing (and sometimes hilarious) situations. Honestly, it was hard to know which of the books in the Riyria Chronicles to put on this list, but because Heir of Novron also has the added benefit of providing a pay off to thousands of pages of text I selected it to represent the runner-up best fantasy book I read in 2016. Don't make the mistake I made, read the Riyria books by Michael J. Sullivan as soon as you can--you won't regret it!

Honorable Mention (Fantasy): The Spider's War (The Dagger and the Coin, #5) by Daniel Abrahams
Earlier entries in Daniel Abraham's fantastic series about fanaticism, banking and war, The Dagger and the Coin, have made it into my list of Favorite Fantasy books of the year. (Book 4, The Widow's House, was the runner-up in this category in 2014.)  Of course Abrahams is one-half of the duo who writes The Expanse series as James S.A. Corey so it is incredible that while they were churning out a book a year in that series, Abraham has been churning out a book a year in this series as well. Both of those schedules slipped this year, but The Spider's War was released early enough that I was able to complete it in 2016. Although it is not as consistently a high-quality read as some of the earlier entries in the series, it still manages to stick the landing quite well and resolve all the myriad plot points and various story threads that have developed over the course of five books, and for doing a good job at a hard task, The Spider's War deserves an Honorable Mention.

Favorite Mystery Novel Read In 2016: The Trespasser (Dublin Murder Squad, #6) by Tana French

After a somewhat disappointing fifth entry into her Dublin Murder Squad Series with The Secret Place, Tana French restored her place as my favorite mystery author with The Trespasser. There are books that you look forward to and are willing to wait for at the library, and there are books that you immediately order on Amazon once you know they are available (and there are even books that you pre-order on Amazon once you hear a rumor that they may be coming out soon.) Needless to say, The Trespasser showed up on my doorstep on its day of release and although I denied myself the pleasure of starting to read it right away, it was totally worth the wait. For the first time, French deviates from using her unique method of selecting the detectives who will be protagonists in her latest book from secondary characters from previous entries in the series. The detectives that appeared in The Secret Place, Stephen Moran and Antoinette Conway, also appear in The Trespasser. What makes French's mysteries so good is that the questions raised are not only about who did the crime and why did they do it, but they often involve questions about the people trying to solve the crime as well. Conway is the only female member of the Dublin Murder Squad and Moran is the most junior member, and the fact that they are paired together as partners reflect the marginality of both on the squad.  One of the key mysteries in The Trespasser is not only will Conway and Moran find out who killed Aislinn Murray, but also will Conway and Moran continue to be working together as police detectives and will both of them actually be on the police force by the end? The result is that The Trespasser rivals her Broken Harbour as the best of Ms. French's superlative mysteries.

Runner-Up Favorite Mystery Novel Read in 2016: Rain Dogs (Sean Duffy, #5) by Adrian McKinty

One of the key discoveries I made in 2016 were the Inspector Sean Duffy  books by Adrian McKinty. These are a series of police procedurals set in the suburbs of Belfast, Northern Ireland at the height of the "Troubles" in the mid-1980s. I'm already a sucker for police procedurals, having consumed several books of this type written by Ian Rankin (DI John Rebus in Edinburgh), Peter Robinson (DCI Alan Banks in Yorkshire), Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch in Los Angeles), Jo Nesbø (Harry Hole in Oslo, Norway), Jussi Adler-Olsen (Department Q series in Copenhagen), Tana French (Dublin Murder Squad) and Henning Mankell (Kurt Wallander in Ystad, Sweden). McKinty's Sean Duffy series is familiar because it is a police procedural but the setting of an all-consuming, civil war between two religious factions. Of course, Duffy is a nice Catholic boy who is a Royal Ulster Constabulary officer in Carrickfergus, a predominantly Protestant section of Northern Ireland (which also just happens to be the name of the real town that McKinty grew up in.) The Duffy books are complicated by the fact that not only is Duffy trying to solve murders in a time and place when people are getting blown up and killed horribly by faithful adherents from both sides, is that he also somehow gets involved in cases that attract the attention of M.I.5 (the British domestic counter-intelligence agency equivalent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation). The Duffy books are bit more than your everyday police-procedural murder-mystery; they have significant elements of spy thriller components, all embedded in oft-amusing commentary on the 1980s and 1990s. In particular, Rain Dogs is particularly good. I devoured all five of the available entries in the Duffy series in about a month, with each one even more enjoyable (and compelling) than the one before.

Honorable Mention (Mystery):  Even Dogs in the Wild (Inspector John Rebus, #20) by Ian Rankin and In The Dark Places (Chief Inspector Alan Banks, #22) by Peter Robinson.
I realized when I wrote this post that I have never acknowledged the mysteries of Ian Rankin or Peter Robinson as one my year-end favorites, but between the two of them I have read nearly four dozen of their books. They are somewhat similar, in that they are both police procedurals built around male detectives in Great Britain. Rankin's John Rebus is located in Edinburgh and its environs while Robinson's Alan Banks is located in Northern England (Yorkshire). The two have complicated relationships with both their underlings and superior officers. After reading so many of these stories, they are familiar, comforting and highly recommended. (Please note, each of the series gets better as they go along. If you start from Book 1, hang in there because they get really good later on. For Rebus, I would say it is the award-winning Resurresction Men and for Banks is In A Dry Season.)

Favorite Thriller Novel Read In 2016: Apex (Nexus, #3) by Ramez Naam.

I had heard of Ramez Naam's Nexus trilogy for years (at least as long as I had heard of Marcus Sakey's Brilliamce saga). The two are somewhat similar, since they are both techno-thrillers in a sense. Both depict the development of technology which tends to upend the natural balance of our world and then depicts the aftermath by following its effect on the main characters. In the Nexus trilogy, Naam's killer idea is the development of a drug called Nexus which allows one to code the human brain like an operating system, and also eventually connect to (and possibly control) these Nexus-enhanced brains remotely through a network. Naam's work is even more political than Sakey's because he raises a lot of nuanced issues about the nature of technology and the questions that the creator of a paradigm-shifting technology faces. For me, Naam's work resonates even more than Sakey's because his main character is a graduate student who has this amazing idea and dreams of academic success. Naam depicts the protocols, beliefs and cultural touchstones of the academic scientific world in a way that I immediately identified. However, additionally, the Nexus books are also action-packed, as another question that they raise is the time-honored dilemma of when (or if) the ends justify the means of achieving one's aims. The books are set about 25 years in the future, so technically they are science fiction as well as techno-thrillers which could be another reason I liked them so much. I read all three books in the trilogy, Nexus, Crux and Apex in about a week and they were an extremely fun ride, they most exhilarating reads I had in 2016.

Runner-Up Favorite Thriller Read in 2016: Beyond Reach (Grant County, #6)  by Karin Slaughter

I discovered Karin Slaughter last year, and Blindsighted the first book in her Grant County series made an immediate impression on me, grabbing an Honorable Mention for Favorite Thriller Read in 2015. I basically devoured the rest of the six books in the Grant County series in 2016 and am currently working my way through her 9-book Will Trent series in 2017. Slaughter is a crime thriller writer who also combines romantic tension between her main characters. The Grant County series is built around a trio of characters: Sara Linton, Jeffrey Tolliver and Lena Adams. Adams and Tolliver are police officers and Linton is Tolliver's ex-wife and the coroner in a very small South Georgia town. Through intricate plotting and clever deployment of point-of-view chapters, Slaughter weaves a compelling tale where the lives and loves of these main characters are intertwined with each other in increasingly complex ways. This is done while they solve always-heinous crimes (which almost always involve extremely sexualized and brutal violence against women) that often result in one or more of our main characters being placed into extreme peril (thus the thriller aspect). Beyond Reach is the most devastating of the books in this regard, with an ending which is absolutely devastating to the reader.

Honorable Mention (Thriller): World in Fire (Brilliance, #3) by Marcus Sakey.
The Brilliance series by Marcus Sakey is a very fun trilogy of science-fiction thrillers set in the near-future where 1% of the children being born are "special"--they have extraordinary mental and physical powers which could lead them to take over the world if allowed to develop unchecked. Sakey imagines how our world would react to this change and follows the story to a logical conclusion (which he provides in the third book) as time moves forward and the Brilliants and the Normals struggle for power and control. The main attractive feature of the books (besides its exciting, premise, which is admittedly derivative or reminiscent of Marvel's X-men) is Sakey's propulsive writing. The books simply zip along at a breakneck pace. Additionally, he does quite a good job of giving a realistic depiction of how the U.S. government and society would react to the presence of "Brilliants" among us. This sense of verisimilitude and the quality of the writing make the Brilliance saga one of my highlighted reads of the year.