Book Notices | Lost Things by John Rector / The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling / Already Gone by John Rector / The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam by Chris Ewan

John Rector, Lost Things

Amazon   John Rector's Kindle Single Lost Things is a story about what happens after a pair of friends are attacked one night on a deserted street. It's an exciting and fast read, though the ending seemed to me too abrupt. But the Single did its job. It introduced me to an author I'd never heard of before, and I've now downloaded a sample of Rector's novel Already Gone to my Kindle.

J.K. Rowling, The Casual Vacancy

Amazon   Pretty much every man, woman, and child in beautiful Pagford and its ugly, socioeconomically depressed appendage known as "The Fields" lives a miserable existence. Children hate parents, spouses hate spouses, everyone is mean or depressed or abusive or abused. J.K. Rowling's first post-Potter book The Casual Vacancy shows us that muggles can be every bit as unpleasant as Death Eaters. I did eventually become somewhat interested in Rowling's characters, and ultimately the story was moving, but it took much longer than I wish it had for me to become invested, and all the while there really wasn't anyone I wanted to root for. (Okay, there were a couple of teens who were more abused than abusive, but I still wouldn't want my daughters hanging around with either of them.)

John Rector, Already Gone

Amazon   John Rector's Already Gone is similar in tone to his Kindle Single, mentioned above. Jake Reese is attacked one night by a pair of thugs, seemingly at random, but given his troubled past he suspects he's being targeted. He spends the rest of the book figuring out what's going on, a quest which leads him to incur further debts from an old gangster friend of his father's. A decent book, good for some light reading, if ultimately forgettable.

Chris Ewan, The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam

Amazon   The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam is the first book in Chris Ewan's series about Charles Howard, the author of a bestselling series of books about a thief who just happens to be a thief himself: I can't tell you how much I love this idea. Needless to say, the book is set in Amsterdam, where Charles runs into problems with both of his careers, though the focus is naturally on the illegal side of his life. The only other character who's likely to show up in subsequent books is his editor, a woman he's never met but whom he tells all to on the phone. Charles also runs into a con man who makes a good character and who I can see possibly showing up again if he doesn't mind traveling: the next book in the series is set in Paris. I was prepared to love the book because of its setup and instead just liked it a lot: enough that I'll be reading more in the series. I'm also eager to read the author's stand-alone thriller Safe House.