2009 Suspense Thriller Reading Challenge Wrap Up

One more challenge concluded! Since the beginning of the month the only books I've read are the ones that can be included in this or that challenge but it is starting to pay off as this one is concluded and another one is 1 book away of being finished.

The books I've read for this challenge were:

Amateur Detective - The Secret of Chimneys by Agatha Christie
Cosy Mystery - Carrot Cake Murder by Joanne Fluke
Forensic Mystery - Predator by Patricia Cornwell
Historical Thriller - Dissolution by C.J. Sansom
Crime Thrillers - One False Move by Alex Kava
Police Procedural Thrillers - I Can See You by Karen Rose
Murder Mystery - Snobbery With Violence by Marion Chesney
Private Detective Mystery - Sick of Shadows by Marion Chesney
Psycological Thrillers - Quietus by Vivian Schilling
Romantic Thriller - Indelible by Karin Slaughter
Serial Killer Thriller - Cry Wolf by Tami Hoag
Supernatural Thrillers - Hiding in The Shadows by Kay Hooper

It was definitely one of my favourite and least difficult challenges to complete of this year.

Dissolution - C. J. Sansom

It is 1537 and Thomas Cromwell has ordered that all monastries should be dissolved. Cromwell's Comissioner is found dead, his head severed from his body. Dr Shardlake is sent to uncover the truth behind what has happened. His investigation forces him to question everything that he himself believes.

This book had been in my TBR pile for a few months now. I don't really remember why I put it there, a good review I read somewhere no doubt. It fitted perfectly as a Historical thriller for the 2009 Suspense & Thriller challenge and that's why I picked it up.

I have to start the review by saying that I enjoyed it very much and I can't wait to continue with this series. Master Matthew Shardlake, hunchback and commissioner to Lord Thomas Cromwell, is a very interesting and complex character, and Sansom creates a very interesting mystery with plenty historical detail namely the turbulence that surrounded Henry VIII's closing of the monasteries, the political intrigues that were very much a part of his court and the corruption that was common to both places.

Master Shardlake is ordered by Cromwell to go to the Scarnsea monastery and investigate the murder of the commissioner previously sent there to organise the closing of the place. Shardlake goes with his assistant Mark Poer and finds that the previous comissioner had found some problem with the accounts when he was murdered. While the Abbot and the Prior would like to convince themselves and Shardlake that someone from the outside is the murderer, Shardlake is convinced that one of monks must be responsible. Corruption seems to run rampant and more than one of them is hiding a few secrets. Could it be the murder? While trying to understand their motivations, Shardlake also starts to reflect on his life, his choices and his blind faith in Thomas Cromwell...

Unexpectedly a young novice dies and the plot thickens when it discovered that he was poisoned. Shardlake also discovers that the previous helper at the infirmary, a girl named Orphan, disappeared eighteen months before and the mystery of her disappearance may well be related to everything else...

This is one of those books where the mystery is as interesting as the background story; one can't help like Shardlake, not because he is terribly sympathetic but because he is human. He starts very confident in his beliefs and actions and slowly starts to doubt his faith and the rectitude of the man he follows, all that reflex ion of what was going on in England at the time and the worries of the common people whose situation is not improved by the Reform made this a very engaging story and I can't wait to continue reading the series.

Grade: 4.5/5

Borrower of the Night - Elizabeth Peters

Meet art historian Vicky Bliss, She is as beautiful as she is brainy-with unassailable courage, insatiable curiosity, and an expertise in lost museum treasures that often leads her into the most dangerous of situations.

A missing masterwork in wood, the last creation of a master carver who died in the violent tumult of the sixteenth century, may be hidden in a medieval German castle in the town of Rothenburg. The prize has called to Vicky Bliss, drawing her and an arrogant male colleague into the forbidding citadel and its dark secrets. But the treasure hunt soon turns deadly. Here, where the blood of the long forgotten damned stains ancient stones, Vicky must face two equally perilous possibilities. Either a powerful supernatural evil inhabits this place. . .or someone frighteningly real is willing to kill for what Vicky is determined to find.

I've heard so much about this Vicky Bliss series that when I finally had the chance to pick it up I was almost afraid that my expectations would be too high and I would be disappointed. I'm happy to say that I wasn't. It was a fun, cosy, gothic read, just the kind you pick up when you need a comfort read. The book has very funny quotes as it is written in the first person and Vicky has the kind of self deprecating humour that appeals to me.

Vicky Bliss is an Art Historian; when the story opens she and her boyfriend Tony discover the possible location of an important artistic piece - a shrine - and they become competitors, both setting off for Germany to find it. As soon as they arrive they find that they are not the only ones looking for it, that their chosen place of stay is a gothic castle complete with ghosts and some pretty disagreeable characters and that to find the shrine they have first to solve an old mystery dating back to the 16th century.

However interesting I think it lacked a bit more character development and a better expression of Vicky and Tony's relationship. A friend has already mentioned that this is more of a prequel to the series so that won’t bother me in future books. Other than that I have no real complaints, it's the perfect light mystery to read on a rainy afternoon and close with a satisfied sigh.

Grade: 4/5

New Additions To The TBR Pile

Finally one book arrived at my house this week. This one comes highly recommended so I am very curious about it. But I have to finish all my 2009 challenges before starting it so maybe in middle December... I hope...

What I've Been Watching

I guess I've been a bit predictable in my DVD viewing lately... and there are still 3 seasons to go... ;-)

The Birth of Venus - Sarah Dunant

Alessandra is not quite fifteen when her prosperous merchant father brings a young painter back with him from Holland to adorn the walls of the new family chapel. She is fascinated by his talents and envious of his abilities and opportunities to paint to the glory of God. Soon her love of art and her lively independence are luring her into closer involvement with all sorts of taboo areas of life. On excursions into the streets of night-time Florence she observes a terrible evil stalking the city and witnesses the rise of the fiery young priest, Savanarola, who has set out to rid the city of vice, richness, even art itself. Alessandra must make crucial decisions about the shape of her adult life, as Florence itself must choose between the old ways of the luxury-loving Medicis and the asceticism of Savanorola. And through it all, there is the painter, whose love will change everything.

I am starting to feel that maybe I have a problem with art related books, I always feel like I should like them more than I actually do. This has happened in the past and it happened again with this The Birth of Venus.

The book opens with the death of a nun and the sisters discovering that she had a shocking tattoo. The story then moves back to the late 15th century where Alessandra Cecchi is a young girl from a wealthy family in Florence. She is interested in art and resents the lack of freedom women have. While part of the story is her fascination with painting and her relationship with a painter her parents hired, most of it is her desire for more freedom which she believes she will find in her marriage to an older man, her relationship with her husband which is not as she believed him to be and the historical turmoil surrounding Savonarola and the invasion of Florence by the French.

I'm afraid I found myself more interested in those political aspects than in Alessandra, who didn't really appeal to me as character, or her artistic worries. In fact most of the characters didn't seem to be fully explored. I do understand that art was Alessandra's way to freedom, her revolt against the world who did not let her be who she wanted to be and who did not let women be more than inferior beings. However I'm afraid she failed to hold my interest enough to make me explore all the undercurrents and symbolism of the novel.

But it might be just me, if you like your historical fiction with a feminist perspective and lots of symbolic images this might be for you.

Grade: 3.5/5

Into The Wilderness - Sara Donati

It is December of 1792. Elizabeth Middleton leaves her comfortable English estate to join her family in a remote New York mountain village. It is a place unlike any she has ever experienced. And she meets a man unlike any she has ever encountered--a white man dressed like a Native American, Nathaniel Bonner, known to the Mohawk people as Between-Two-Lives. Determined to provide schooling for all the children of the village, she soon finds herself locked in conflict with the local slave owners as well as her own family.

When I first heard of Into The Wilderness I must confess I was a bit doubtful that it was the book for me. It was presented as a sequel to The Last of The Mohicans and usually the sequels are a bit (or a lot) of a letdown (it isn't exactly a sequel though as the events take place quite a few years after TLoTM and only some of the same characters appear). However Marg was so sure about it and recommended it so well that I ended up putting it in the TBR pile and this weekend I finally read it. And I am very happy that I did.

This is the story of Elizabeth Middleton who travels to the New World to meet her father and become a school teacher. Her father has other ideas though and wants to see her well married with one of his neighbours, Richard Todd, whose primary interest is Elizabeth's dowry - the mountain Hidden Wolf. But Elizabeth has other ideas, not only wants she be independent but she is also attracted to Nathaniel Bonner, Cora and Hawkeye's son, who lives with his family in the mountain and has his own reasons to dislike the Richard. To help Nathaniel gain what he wants Elizabeth must plot to apparently to her father's wishes till the moment is right to show her hand.

But there's a lot more to like than just Elizabeth and Nathaniel's story. There's the vivid portrayal of the native way of life and the settlers way of life. The tension in their relationship and the problems faced by those who live between both worlds.

I think the best thing about the story is Donati's vivid descriptions and complex characters, you really feel transported to that world for the space of the reading and when it closes you really want to know what is going to happen next with the characters. Fans of Diana Gabaldon will be happy to know that her famous characters are mentioned in the space of a page.

Grade: 5/5