Bundu Reviews

Now THIS was a cracking little read. I really enjoy the easy reading style of Harlan Coben and this book was no exception… In fact I’d go as far as to say that I reckon this was probably the best of his books which I have read.

The story is a curious mix of characters where the good guys are not quite as good as they seem, while the bad guys are both really bad … but with a soft spot. The problem is you can never quite work out who is where until the end of the book.

In a nutshell the story reads a little something like this:

Eleven years ago, Julie Miller was found brutally strangled in the basement of her house New Jersey. On that day, Will’s brother, Ken Klein, became the subject of an international manhunt accused of the crime. He has not been seen since. Will has tried to get on with his life in the intervening years. He has a beautiful new girlfriend, Sheila, and a job working with the homeless. But when his mother reveals on her deathbed that Ken is still alive, and shortly afterwards Sheila disappears, the cracks start to show in his landscape again. But it is only when he finds that Sheila herself is wanted for a savage double-murder that his life actually starts to fall apart…

This book moves at a really nice pace and keeps you interested the whole way through!

Title: Gone for Good

Author: Harlan Coben

ISBN: 978-1-4091-1708-7 

This is a really cracking little read and we rated it a 4 out of 5.

You can buy this book online from retailer Loot for R92 in paperback.

Well worth it!

This is a cracking little read from Harlan Coben.

If you like fast-paced crime fiction then this will definately tickle your fancy and it has a nifty little twist at the end of the tale!

The story line is good and reads a little something like this:

8 years ago David Beck and his wife were having a romantic getaway at a cabin in the woods when they were brutally assaulted. His wife’s body was discovered a few days after the assault, battered beyond recognition.

Fast forward 8 years and Beck is still battling to get on with his life and it isn’t helped when he receives a link to a street-cam which mysteriously features an image of his presumed dead wife. Suddenly Becks’ life is turned upside down as he begins to investigate the case again. However the deeper he digs the more people wind up dead or threatened.

The book rollicks along at a great pace and I’d finished reading it inside of two days – a real page turner (if you can use that term when you are reading something on the Kindle?)

Title: Tell no one

Author: Harlan Coben

ISBN: 978-0-440-24590-2

This is a cracking little read and I rated it a 4 out of 5 while my wife threw in her 2c and rated it 3 and a half.

You can buy the book online at Loot for R81 as a paperback.  It is definately worth 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.