Bundu Reviews

I was a little bit wary about reading a CSI book. I’ve always enjoyed CSI Las Vegas and the Gill Grissom character but was worried that a book would disappoint me.

Fortunately my concern was mis-placed and I really enjoyed reading CSI: The Killing Jar from Don Cortez.

Below is the write-up attached to the book:  

A teenager is found dead in his motel room, the cause of death: millipede poison…Now crime scene investigator Gil Grissom must aid CSI’s Nick Stokes and Riley Adams against a serial killer whose knowledge of entomology rivals his own — a brutal murderer who is not only using insects as the tools of destruction, but actually modeling the attacks after their behavior…. In the meantime, CSIs Catherine Willows and Greg Sanders must investigate a bizarre death, where the victim had gotten mixed up with two very different groups of people — one involved in using and dealing crystal meth, the other an avant-garde group of artists — a collision of subcultures where everyone is a suspect and nothing is as it seems…. 

The book made for a really good read and at no stage did you feel like it was going to under-deliver compared to a CSI episode. In fact, the only difference was that you got a bit more time for character development – it was a goodie.

Title: CSI: The Killing Jar

Author: Don Cortez

ISBN: 978-1439153703

You can buy the book online at Loot for R65.

A really enjoyable read – rated it 3 and a half out of 5.

I am an avid CSI Las Vegas fan and I decided to take a chance with a CSI book. I downloaded the Don Cortez – CSI: The Killing Jar on to my Kindle and have just started to get through the first few chapters of the book.

So far so good… although it is not quite the same as watching it on TV.

It basically involves a killer who likes killing with crafty schemes that include a variety of different insects. A bit bizarre but typical CSI!

You can buy the book online for R65 from Loot.

So what else is the community reading this week?

Geez – talk about a book which fell apart.

9 Dragons from Michael Connelly started really well and probably held its own for 75% of the book and then it well… lost the plot.

I am not going to go to the effort of running over the plot, the synopsis of it is below in the previous post.

Suffice to say it didn’t grab my attention:

Title: 9 Dragons

Author: Michael Connelly

ISBN: 978-0-316-16631-7

Rated it a 2 out of and wouldn’t rush to recommend it.

This is the follow-up to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and all I can say is “Wow what a read!”.

If the first book is a little slow to get into, this second book starts off on a flyer and doesn’t slow down for the next 560 odd pages.

The reader again meets up with do good journalist Mikael Blomkvist and the psychologically unstable but brilliant Lisbeth Salander.

Salanders bank balance is bulging and she’s been taking some time off as she tours the world before returning to Sweden to take stock of her life unaware that her court appoint guardian is planning some violent revenge.

Blomkvist is working with another young journalist and a researcher on a story about the Swedish sex-traffic problems that is likely to name and shame a number of high-profile people.

Suddenly the journalist and the researcher are shot and killed and Salanders prints are on the gun which killed them and she quickly becomes the most wanted woman in Sweden. But in typical Salander style she doesn’t take this lying down and she goes on the hunt for those who have framed her.

The more that her, Salander and the police dig into the story the more they find evidence of a cover-up which many people are prepared to kill for to keep quiet.

The book ends on an absolutely thrilling and spine-chilling climax and keeps the reader in absolute suspense and looking to get their hands on the final book in the trilogy.

Without a question it is a thrilling read and it ties a lot of the unanswered questions from the previous story together. You find a lot of interesting aspects of the characters starting to emerge and there are twists and turns where you least expect them.

Title: The Girl Who Played with Fire
Author: Stieg Larsson
ISBN-13: 978-1-906694-18-0  

This is one of the best books I have read in a long time and I can comfortably give it a 5 out of 5 rating – provided you had read the first in the series to give yourself the background info.

You can buy this book online from retailer Loot for R107 – well worth it!

Maybe I should be a little circumspect about writing a negative review of “The Death List” considering that’s what opens up a world of trouble for one of the characters in the book….

… But I won’t lie – the only reason the book came into my possession and I actually read it was because it came as a freebie with my latest copy of the Getaway magazine in December.

The story revolves around author Matt Wells who has hit something of a slump in his career. His agent and publisher have dumped him and he is battling to write anything of any substance.

That is until a serial killer makes contact with him and begins blackmailing him into writing his story. The killer knows his every move and who his friends and enemies are… and nobody is safe.

Wells, a former rugby league player then decides to fight back when he finds his back to the wall and the body count climbing rapidly. He partners with his mates – one a multi-millionaire, one a technology wizard who can break into any computer system and one an ex-SAS soldier to try and turn the tables on his adversary.

Right…

In all honesty the story wasn’t half bad, but the characters cost it – they just weren’t believable. If characters count for nought in your reading then the story will be passable, but you will find it bugging you.

Also if you don’t have the stomach for silly levels of graphic violence then you might also want to ignore this book. 

Title: The Death List

Author: Paul Johnston

ISBN: 978-0-7783-0159-2

Rated the book two and a half out of five – good story line but the characters were just a little too unbelievable for me.

You can buy this book online from retailer Loot for R100 but I wouldn’t. 

Admittedly I have been a little late to this whole Stieg Larsson lark, but as they say: Rather late, than never at all.

A very quick piece of trivia around Larsson – he was a Swedish author and journalist who died in 2004 (Born 1954). This trilogy was the first of his books to

be published in the US and 2009 proved a bumper year for him as these books remained top of the bestsellers lists for much of last year.  It is definately interesting to see how almost five years after his death, the books have finally jumped into the spotlight.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is the first in the series and revolves around disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander, a young private investigator with many dark secrets.

Blomkvist is asked by a wealthy industrialist to investigate the disappearance of a young girl (his niece) who went missing almost 30 years ago.

Apart from the investigation there are three other key story lines in play – the first being Salanders battle with her own demons, the second being the future of the magazine operated by Blomkvist and partner and finally the relationship which develops between Salander and Blomkvist.

Initially I found the story a little slow going, particularly as the characters were introduced. My wife says that the second book – which she has read – is much quicker and easier to get into .

The other issue for me was that it was the first book I was reading on the Kindle and it did take a bit of getting used to. As the story built itself up though it definately gathered momentum and I found it harder to put the book down.

Initially the writing style was a little difficult to get my head around. There are places where the dialogue comes across as a little stilted and you get the sense that there are some sentences which have literal translations from Swedish to English – the book was tranlsated – but after a while you find yourself getting used to it.

A lot of work was also put into the development of the characters and there is a lot of depth to them. There are no larger than life “American” style characters and that makes them very believable. 

Title: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Author: Stieg Larsson
ISBN: 978-1-84724-545-8

This was probably one of the better reads and I rated it a four and half out of five with just the dialogue thing bugging me. A brilliant read.

You can buy this book online from retailer Loot for R112.