Another year, another list.. 😏
| Book | Score (out of 10) | |
|
Renko's relationship with his adopted son is getting increasingly complicated as the son gets older.. a chess prodigy who is unwilling to take it further than playing for money at the local station while hanging out with a gang of feral teenagers, he then comes to Renko and tells him he wants to join the army.. Then as a train pulls into Yaroslav Station, Moscow, a teenage girl wakes to discover her baby has been taken... Renko meanwhile is teetering on the brink of resignation when he becomes drawn into a strange new case. A prostitute has been found dead in a trailer in Three Stations, without a mark on her. With the local police keen to dismiss the death as a mere overdose - Renko starts investigating | |
|
|
9 |
|
Five months of hell indeed.. this book was hard going as
well, nit because it wasn't well written, it was brilliant, and full of
first person observations from both sides and civilians caught up in the
fighting, but because the nature of the war in Italy during this period
of winter 1944, was utterly appalling, from both a men and weather
perspective... the nature of the terrain the Allies were fighting over,
coupled with intense rain and cold, made their overwhelming mechanised
and air superiority largely nil.. cancelled by their inability to
actually use it.. this period of the war also covered the Anzio
landings, intended to land a Corps level assault behind the German lines
and force them to retreat, but which failed miserably due to either poor
leadership, or misunderstanding of the basic intent of the plan..
such a wasted opportunity.. I finished this with an increased opinion of Alexander, a man on a par with Eisenhower in his ability to manage a multi national force, and I thought Clark excellent (but a bit prima-donna'ish at times), but so many commanders in theatre under performed for one reason or another.. Lucas (who commanded at Anzio) and Freyberg especially.... |
|
|
See
blog post review [clicky].. |
|
|
My regular reader will know that Dick Francis is my (not so) secret vice.. this is the one where we first meet one of his most famous characters, ex-jockey and now private investigator, Sid Halley ... financial shenanigans surround the potential sale of a failing race course... | |
|
Another entertaining horse racing based story, this time where the hero is an architect (Francis used to love bringing in examples of various professions as the occupation of the main protagonist of his books). Lee Morris (the architect) is dragged back into the orbit of his mothers ex-husbands truly odious family when some shares he has left him turn out to be the deciding vote in the ownership of their racecourse.. cue fires, beatings, and explosions as the family in fighting gets out of control... | |
|
Renko's current partner, Tatiana - who we met in the previous book - is an investigative reporter, in modern Russia, with an axe to grind and a love of controversial stories.. in Putin era Russia, a dangerous career choice. She disappears off to Siberia on a story concerning oligarchs and oil fields, but doesn't return when she says she will, so Arkady goes looking for her.. once he's there he's attacked by a bear (seriously), manages to rescue Tatiana from a sinking helicopter in a frozen Lake Baikal, and yet again manages to defeat the efforts of his boss to get him killed... | |
 |
On the verge of the Russian invasion - with nationalist feelings running high, and Putin cementing his position in power by removing any opposition, Renko is asked by a Moscow gangster to find his daughter (who has disappeared) - selling it as an official enquiry to his boss he tracks down the flat the girl was living in and discovers that she was heavily involved with one of the Opposition movements, as was her flat mate. The flat mate, a girl, is a Crimean Tartar (which I now know a lot more about in terms of Soviet/Russian history), but also involved with the same group, and the trail leads to the Crimea - where all is not what it seems.. as the series is coming to a close, it is also very very obvious that Renko is increasingly unwell | |
 |
Last in the series.. and set against a background of the ongoing Russian war in Ukraine, this time focussing on the paramilitary groups that operate with the Russian Army like the Wagner group. A Russian minister is killed brutally, with what turns out to be an entrenching tool commonly used by Spetsnaz.. was it a Ukrainian attack or not... Arkady finds the killer, but this marks the end of his career as his diagnosis of Parkinson's is confirmed, but more importantly gives his boss the excuse to finally get rid of him.. exceptionally poignant given the author also had Parkinson's and died of it the year this book was released... Ave, Martin.. thanks for such a body of work.. | |
 |
. | |
|
|
. | |
|
|
. | |
|
|
. |
No comments:
Post a Comment