The Garden of Discordia

Lordy lord, I am ill. Spent almost a week knocked out with a cold and tried to go to work today, which paid off with epic coughing and me having to leave after about half the day -_-

I'm trying to finish off my to-read shelf before Germany (luuulz, good luck with that) and began by finishing Started Early, Took my Dog by Kate Atkinson. It was basically the only thing in the entire Zurich Airport bookstore that looked remotely interesting that I had not already read (well, xcept the magazines then. We took Die Zeit and The Economist too).

It was odd for a crime mystery, but plenty more interesting than Connoly (or Koontz, whom I made a mistake to buy on a vacation a while ago. Bleh).

Here's a review from NY Times - I'm always so bad at spelling names of characters, so I have to check them up online.

I didn't realize that this book was a part of a series until oh, halfway through? Because Tracy Waterhouse, ex-cop who has become a mall security chief, appears much more as the main character than the PI Jackson Brody who makes his fourth appearance in this book.

Anyway, it's about Tracy buying something to change her life and Jackson looking for the biological parents for his client (an adopted woman in New Zeeland) and the people who get caught up in this and what happens to them.

But it's much less a novel about stuff happening, than it is about people remembering and forgetting. Tilly, the old actress who is suffering from dementia was one of the most vibrant characters in the book, despite the fact that she's slowly fading away in the narrativ and the mystery identities becomes less important as the book goes on.

The end is a bit vague, but it's a quite good ride there. If I'm ever standing around in an airport again, wondering what the heck to read since I've already ploughed all of King and Grisham's works, I'll keep an eye out for this author.

Michael Connely - The Threat : - (or worse)
Deon Meyer - Devils Peak : ++
Joseph Wambaugh - Hollywood Station : meh, but made me laugh some times

We're leaving for the airport soon, just gotta fix some stuffs online, but I thought I'd jot down what books I've read during the week. Although Devils Peak was less beach-reading and more "late night reading while the neighbours have a party with live guitar music and far too loud flamenco song, dammit". It's an South African criminal novel, quite depressing, but asks many interesting questions and contains thoughts. The kind of thoughts that hang around in your head and talk to other thoughts and give birth to new thoughts - that's good books, that do that.

Hollywood Station was about some cops in LAPD and contained not much thinkyness at all, except maybe some justified or not, idk, info about the increased control over the police force by bureocracy. But it had two cops nicknamed Flotsam and Jetsam (because they surfed, dont'cha know) and an ex-chief of police who had been lovingly named "Lord Voldemort" and I was amused

Connely was b-o-r-i-n-g and way too simplistic.