Skip to main content

Stillhouse Lake 4/5 Rachel Caine

Very good book--interesting main character.  Woman learning that she is strong, not reliant on a man . . . sounds cliched, but Rachel Caine makes it work. 
Setting: Tennessee, by Stillhouse Lake
Characters: Mom, Gwen/Gina, trying to protect her kids from the effects of her serial murderer husband who is in prison, but who still has tentacles out.

Suspects: Javier, gun range manager and part-time cop
Sam:  Brother of one of her husband's victims who has tracked Gwen down.
Lancel: Cop with boys who bully Gwen's son.

Gwen gets help from Absalom, a computer whiz who helps her keep track of trolls on the Internet.
Local police are suspicious of Gwen, believing she must have known her husband was a murderer (or at least should have known). Gwen was tried as an accomplice but acquitted.

Kids, Lanny (girl) and Connor (boy) are good characters as well. Very believable.

I'd definitely read another by Rachel Caine

Spoilers follow:



Murderer is Lancel. He's obsessed with Gwen's husbands and his methods of murder.  Absalom, her helper, is actually a traitor.  Nice twists, but she boxes herself into a corner by having Lancel's sons be the guards of her children.  Is there ever a chance that she's going to shoot some kids to save her kids?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Puppy, Story by George Saunders

PUPPY  Dysfunctional family has puppy that they need to get rid of.  Mom places ad; family is coming over. Description of family.   Mom:  husband changed from long-haired attractive to stooped old man. Husband: talks constantly of living on a farm and doing what needs to be done, though he never lived on a farm.   Conversations together:   Sell and move to Arizona, get hooked on phonics for kids, buying a car wash. . . wonderful randomness. Straight-laced suburbanite comes to look at puppy.  Seems like she will buy it, even though she is repelled by house.  (Dog turds on carpet, filthy.) She is proud of how accepting she is until she looks out window and sees white trash's son tied by harness to a tree.  Reader knows he is a menace to himself, darting across I-90, for example.  Suburban mother beats hasty retreat, leaving dog to be (probably) drowned by dad who does what has to be done.   Suburbanite remembers her own pathetic ch...
Post a Comment
Read more

Full Dark House by Christopher Fowler

Bryant & May--Peculiar Crimes Unit Mystery, Book 1 Lots that I liked.  Crime novel that is also historical fiction.  Fowler gives insight into London during the blitz.  Danger from street cars, some looting during blackout, stiff upper lip British still going to theaters, etc.  Fowler also takes reader backstage into the workings of a theater.  I learned a lot about the physical complexity of a major theater--production is a tremendous production.  I liked both the main characters.  Bryant, the eccentric loner who thinks out of the box. May, the more traditional "bright" guy, who is able to appreciate Bryant and help by keeping him in the real world, a little. Plot revolves around murders committed while cast rehearses and then performs Offenbach's scandalous version of Orpheus and Eurydice.  The murders are on the gruesome-detail side given the general British coolness of the rest of the text.  Spoiler coming.  The denouement wa...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sorcerer, Movie 2.5 stars

Roy Scheider, based on Wages of Fear. Scheider is involved in a robbery in USA.  He robs a church connected to the mob--the mob puts out a contract to kill him.  He flees to Nicaragua.  Poor, miserable . . . and a contract killer shows up.  He takes his chance--driving a cargo of plastic explosives over a mountain to put out an oil well fire. His would-be killer, though a series of events, becomes his co-driver.  The other truck has a Frenchman involved in a financial scheme who has had to flee France. He, too, needs money to get out of the miserable little town. Driving the trucks is the focus of last half of movie.  Explosion at every turn is possible.  Frenchman and his co-driver blow up when wheel comes off.  Scheider's co-driver killed by bandits (Scheider and he have become respectful of one another.) Scheider carries the explosives in. He will get 40,000 pesos.  He's about to fly out of the little town, with some hope, when a car...
Post a Comment
Read more