Been a while, eh?

 A lot of life has been lived the past few months; fortunately, a few books were read too. Let me hit ya with the highlights.

-- Stephen Hunter's Front Sight -- You should know Hunter from the Bob Lee Swagger series and movie, Shooter, starring Mark Wahlberg. His books are excellent.

Front Sight is a series of semi-connected novellas that feature three generations of Swaggers solving murders: Grandfather, Charles; father, Earl; and son, Bob Lee. They are bloody, not for the feint of heart and titled: City of Meat, Johnny Tuesday; and Five Dolls for the Gut Hook. 

I really like novellas, 150-200 pages each, because they fit my attention span and not just because most of what I've published are novellas. They get to the point, not a lot of fluff, and tell an interesting story relatively quickly.

Amazonians give it a 4.6 of 5 rating. The Haugenometer lands at an 8+ of 10.

-- I also ran across a new author (to me), Scottish writer Ian Rankin. I can't recall how I stumbled across him and his series of 25 novels that feature Inspector Rebus, but it coincidentally happened after I visited Edinburgh, Scotland, in March. That's where Rankin lives. 

I started the series from the beginning, have read the first three and have the fourth on my TBR pile. I really enjoy them but we'll see how it goes if I make it through all 25.

The books I read were: Knots and Crosses, Hide and Seek, and Tooth and Nail. I ranked them all in the 7-8 range, otherwise I wouldn't be continuing.

-- Oddly, and unfortunately, one clunker I read came from my fave author, Dean Koontz. Going Home in the Dark. I struggled to finish it but did. Probably would've quit but just couldn't do it to ol' Dean. After reading 80 or so of his novels, I felt I owed it to him.

The themes were similar for him - the supernatural, good vs. evil - but the new thing that threw me off was throughout the book he'd talk to the reader. Trying to be funny but seldom was. Koontz has a monthly email newsletter that is very clever and funny and it seemed like he tried to incorporate that into this book. It didn't work for me.

And apparently not for many others either as it garnered only a 3.8 of 5 from Amazon readers. I gave it a 5.

Other books I finished included:

-- Transgressions, which featured two novellas, Keller's Adjustment by Lawrence Block, and Forever by Jeffery Deaver.

-- The Crash by Freida McFadden.

-- Lethal Prey by John Sandford

-- A Purple Place for Dying by John D. MacDonald.