Just finished Scarecrow by Mathew Riley. Wow! Total boy's own rubbish really, but what a pace! I can't think of an action thriller I've read with more pace - far too fast, left me breathless.
Completely far fetched - a megolomaniac has a list of the World's best soldiers/fighters and opens a bounty on their heads. The main character is on the list and won't go down without a fight. About four hundred pages of action, shooting, fast jets, car chases, a few shock main character deaths and more action. A great book for a beach holiday.
Amazon #1 Bestselling Author. If you enjoy crime, espionage, action and fast-moving thrillers follow this link:
Ooh, wasn't that made into a film with Gregory Peck as said sniper?
'Fraid not. Rogue Male was filmed twice: first by Fritz Lang as Man Hunt, with Walter Pigeon; and there was a TV movie in the mid-1970s with Peter O'Toole in the lead.
Just read a new manuscript from my all time favourite author ! LOEFFELHOLZ !!!! B-) :v ;%
In my completely unbiased opinion, it has best seller written all over it. Just gotta figure out how to bring it to the masses.
Nice work man !!!
Congratulations -{
I'm reading THE LAST TEMPLAR by Raymond Khoury. SO good. it's like the Davinci Code...but BETTER. I'm only a little over halfway through, but I can tell that this book is going on my favorites list. :x
I have started Royal Flash, the second Flashman novel. It's good stuff, just three pages in he's behaved in a dastardly fashion. It's a film tie-in cover, and it has a great cast: Alastair Sim, Alan Bates, Joss Ackland, Roy Kinnear, Michael Hordern, Britt Ekland but sadly I can't buy Malcolm McDowell as Flash. Oliver Reed is in the cast, but he plays the young Bismarck. A shame, reverse the roles and it might have played better, although I suppose Reed has BK's rotundness actually. McDowell just looks too weedy to play the dashing cad. I've not seen the film and it's not on lovefilm.com either.
"This is where we leave you Mr Bond."
Roger Moore 1927-2017
LoeffelholzThe United States, With LovePosts: 8,998Quartermasters
Post Captain, by Patrick O'Brian B-)
Second in the increasingly impressive Jack Aubrey/Stephen Maturin British Naval adventure series, set in the early 1800s. This one starts as a brief peace between France and England is shattered by Napoleon in 1803; it deals in more detail with Aubrey's inability to exist on dry land (hounded by creditors, awkward in romance with two different lovelies)---in fact, this one is significantly landlocked when compared to its predecessor, Master And Commander, and pays more attention to Maturin's career as a spy---but it is nevertheless incredibly entertaining. Certainly O'Brian is an acquired taste, but once you get into step with the rhythm and pacing of his elegant prose, it becomes quite easy to smell the salt air and hear the creaking of the ropes---the taughtening of the courses and topgallants---as the ship heels over two strakes before the wind and makes a solid eight knots, in pursuit of a fleeing Spanish ship, carrying a fortune in gold... -{
I was quite tickled to score a nine-book lot of O'Brian books for a song a few months back on ebay...it's very comforting to know I can time-travel back to the Napoleonic Wars whenever the 21st Century becomes too boorish...
Check out my Amazon author page!Mark Loeffelholz
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
Well, I've finished Royal Flash. That means I enjoyed it; books are like women, you either enjoy them and then finish with them or you can't get into them at all. Oh dear, it seems Flashman's attitude has rubbed off on me...
George MacDonald Fraser's footnotes add a lot, namely authenticity. But when a footnote suggest more information about Lola's bosom, you just have to follow it up.
However, I didn't enjoy this as much as the first one. It's set in Munich and one of the southern German states, and I prefer the Afghanistan setting of the first, it made Flashy's unPCness even more enjoyable somehow. The Prisoner of Zenda type plot here is contrived and increasingly preposterous. You have none other than Bismarck showing up; admittedly he's in his younger guise and as cool, arrogant and chilly as any Flashman nemesis, but it jars a little, rather like if Bond tangled with a young Tony Blair in Devil May Care. And Flashy has to be coerced into his adventure, which spoils things a little. It's a problem presumably resolved in later books, but it seems as if the author has come unstuck early with a self-confessed coward as a hero; if he's such a coward how does he get repeatedly involved in these yarns? He's not a troubleshooter like Bond who has to get invovled.
I'll read the next book however, it's just with this one I felt the author was trying to shoehorn the thing around the 1848 Revolutions. I felt the format presented him with an uphill struggle.
I am trying to read the next Flashman novel but I'm a bit nonplussed. I'm not sure which is the next one after Royal Flash, I went to wikipedia to find out which the next book was. However, later books were published that were set earlier. Which do I go for?
I finished reading Alfie Darling by Bill Naughton a few weeka ago, the belated sequel to Alfie, made into a career defining film by Michael Caine during Swinging London.
The sequel is just like sitting down for a pint with an old friend, you fit back into the old routine although does occur to you that you're only ever talking about the past.
There are some brilliant observations by Naughton. I liked his description of someone coming out of a pub after they'd been there for while, and their shocked expression at encountering the bleak hostile outside world. I wanted to quote some of these back but ran into the main problem with this book; because the book has no real narrative, much of it is just Alfie's thoughts about life, it's hard to find the comments again. He doesn't seem to have learnt too much, he's back in the old routine of picking up birds who are mainly vacant dollie birds, mumsy housewives and rather po-faced professional women. In fairness I think the film's Alfie implied more of a learning curve for the Casanova, if only because Caine looked too sharp not to pick up on a few truths about life. The Alfie of the novel was a bit more simple emotionally, a decent but two-dimensional bloke.
This Alfie, set in the early 1970s, does seem a man out of time really and it comes as a shock to find he's meant to be in his mid to late 20s; the way he rambles on about his opinions, you'd place him as a lot older, and Caine was in his early 30s in the film. I also wonder if Naughton wasn't trying to deliberately make him a bore at times, to deglamorise him. Some of the stuff he comes out with, he really doesn't seem cool at all. In the first book, he seemed a lot wittier.
This one was made into a film, though I'm not sure they used much of the plot and it didn't have Caine, it had Alan Price in the role. It's no classic and without the moral twist of the first, it's hard to see how this could have made a decent film although I admit it's a page turner in the sense not of "What will happen next?" more "Is anything going to happen at all?" I finished 300 pages in three days.
I am trying to read the next Flashman novel but I'm a bit nonplussed. I'm not sure which is the next one after Royal Flash, I went to wikipedia to find out which the next book was. However, later books were published that were set earlier. Which do I go for?
Strictly speaking, it doesn't matter--all the Flash novels are stand-alone affairs; you can read them in any order you like!
The Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton. A great heist novel based on a true story. I found it to be suspenseful, funny, and a completely enjoyable read. Crichton really brings his characters and Victorian London alive. I highly recommend it. It was also made into a movie starring Sean Connery. I haven't seen it yet but if its half as good as the book it will be worth watching.
"A blunt instrument wielded by a Government department. Hard, ruthless, sardonic, fatalistic. He likes gambling, golf, fast motor cars. All his movements are relaxed and economical". Ian Fleming
I'm making my way through Karin Slaughter's novels, and now on her 5th, having just finished Indelible.
They are quite dark, and focus on two protagonists who were married (now separated, but re-exploring their romance....) Jeffery, who is the Chief of Police, and Sarah who is the County medical examiner. Their cases often explore the rather dark side of criminal activity - and Karin really pushes the boundaries on exploring the reasons behind such crimes like rape and torture.
However, her ability to portray interesting and 3 dimensional characters is what makes these books irresistible - and the continuing story and back story of these two main characters (which is where indelible explored) is excellent.
Once I had finished Indelible, I immediately started Faithless
She's worth whatever chaos she brings to the table and you know it. ~ Mark Anthony
LoeffelholzThe United States, With LovePosts: 8,998Quartermasters
HMS Surprise, by Patrick O'Brian
The third of the Aubrey/Maturin historical/nautical adventures, and quite possibly the best so far, with a protracted naval engagement with the French in the Indian Ocean taking up most of the final third of the novel, with Captain 'Lucky Jack' Aubrey in command of the titular frigate. O'Brian is such an elegant and erudite wordsmith that it's probably not a good idea for me to be reading him whilst in the throes of a rewrite of my own work, which is decidedly cast in the idiom of the hardboiled gumshoe... ;% So my next leisure read will probably be one of Raymond Chandler's...
But HMS Surprise is fantastic, featuring an element 'borrowed' for the "Master and Commander" film starring Russell Crowe, where
...Stephen Maturin performs surgery on himself, pulling a flattened bullet out from beneath his own breastbone...
Fantastic...and as ever, highly recommended.
Check out my Amazon author page!Mark Loeffelholz
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
The biography of Francois Truffaut. Absolutely wonderful.
LoeffelholzThe United States, With LovePosts: 8,998Quartermasters
The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler
An extremely leisurely-paced read (sometimes only a chapter a week) while I've been editing/rewriting my own project. What economy, what craftsmanship. Written in '39, this has all the natural authenticity that can only be aspired to in the 21st Century. Police are 'coppers,' cars have starter switches, and everybody is just a little bit tainted...old time Los Angeles lives and breathes with hot dames and shifty-eyed heavies...Philip Marlowe is a lot of fun to watch work B-)
I was very lucky to score a Chandler omnibus on ebay, which contains the first four Marlowe books, for about five dollars. It's hardback, and was printed in 1964...Farewell, My Lovely is next -{
Check out my Amazon author page!Mark Loeffelholz
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
I finished off Stephen King's latest anthology of short stories a few days a go. While a good read overall, most of the stories are more recent efforts, and it shows as they are missing some of the energy and vitality of his earlier work. The best entries for me were...
Stationary Bike; a cautionary tale for all of those who take exercising a little too seriously.
The Things They Left Behind; King's attempt at dealing with the 9/11 tragedy.
Willa; a sentimental and wistful love story involving ghosts.
Mute; a man suffering thru a nasty divorce picks up a mute hitchhiker.
"N"; The standout of the collection by far, involving a psychiatrist's notes on a patient suffering from a particularly bad case of OCD. What starts out as a seemingly harmless analysis quickly takes a hard left turn into Lovecraftian territory. It was a real page turner and really stayed with me after I finished it (always a good sign). I would put this one right up there with King's best works.
All in all, a good diversion if you're a Stephen King fan; and even if you're not, try to find a copy of "N" somewhere as it's definitely worth a read.
I've just finished my first graphic novel, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
Good stuff, shame the film didn't have the saucy, dark edge to it. It went all Hollywood blockbuster instead. The novel has some wonderful eyepopping panels to the point where it sometimes slows down the action because you want to absorb it. I think the final third, an aerial shootout over Limehouse, London, got a bit OTT however. I'm not sure Connery should have been Quartermain, he looks the same but Connery always has to dominate everything and be The Man. This is an ensemble piece.
No flatulence jokes, please. This book pretty much smells on its own. Cussler's Dirk Pitt novels are a strange breed. Sometimes I revel in their ludicrousness, and sometimes I'm repulsed. In this case, I was pretty much underwhelmed by the novels rather boring escapes sandwiched in pages of dreadfully dull detail (who wants to read thorough descriptions of an engineer's procedure during a rocket's pre-launch sequence?).
I used to think Cussler really lost grips with sanity when he started writing himself into the novels as a cameo appearance, but he has now topped himself by giving Dirk Pitt a son...a son with the ingenious name of 'Dirk Pitt'! Now, fans can read as Dirk Pitt and Dirk Pitt fight side-by-side against the forces of evil. Talk about confusing storytelling. It gets even worse when Dirk and Dirk start talking to one another. And it doesn't help that the two characters are identical in virtually every way, from physical description to personal interests and 'voice'. Sheesh!
still finishing THE SANCTUARY and having to pick up "The Utes Must Go" for my history class...it's about the White's attempts to "deal" with "the Indian problem" when we began to settle the west...heart wrencher to be sure.
Comments
Completely far fetched - a megolomaniac has a list of the World's best soldiers/fighters and opens a bounty on their heads. The main character is on the list and won't go down without a fight. About four hundred pages of action, shooting, fast jets, car chases, a few shock main character deaths and more action. A great book for a beach holiday.
http://apbateman.com
James Bond- Licence To Kill
'Fraid not. Rogue Male was filmed twice: first by Fritz Lang as Man Hunt, with Walter Pigeon; and there was a TV movie in the mid-1970s with Peter O'Toole in the lead.
In my completely unbiased opinion, it has best seller written all over it. Just gotta figure out how to bring it to the masses.
Nice work man !!!
Congratulations -{
mountainburdphotography.wordpress.com
For me: Red Harvest, followed by The Princess Bride. The Hammett is amazing, just a brutal piece of writing that never lets up.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Second in the increasingly impressive Jack Aubrey/Stephen Maturin British Naval adventure series, set in the early 1800s. This one starts as a brief peace between France and England is shattered by Napoleon in 1803; it deals in more detail with Aubrey's inability to exist on dry land (hounded by creditors, awkward in romance with two different lovelies)---in fact, this one is significantly landlocked when compared to its predecessor, Master And Commander, and pays more attention to Maturin's career as a spy---but it is nevertheless incredibly entertaining. Certainly O'Brian is an acquired taste, but once you get into step with the rhythm and pacing of his elegant prose, it becomes quite easy to smell the salt air and hear the creaking of the ropes---the taughtening of the courses and topgallants---as the ship heels over two strakes before the wind and makes a solid eight knots, in pursuit of a fleeing Spanish ship, carrying a fortune in gold... -{
I was quite tickled to score a nine-book lot of O'Brian books for a song a few months back on ebay...it's very comforting to know I can time-travel back to the Napoleonic Wars whenever the 21st Century becomes too boorish...
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
George MacDonald Fraser's footnotes add a lot, namely authenticity. But when a footnote suggest more information about Lola's bosom, you just have to follow it up.
However, I didn't enjoy this as much as the first one. It's set in Munich and one of the southern German states, and I prefer the Afghanistan setting of the first, it made Flashy's unPCness even more enjoyable somehow. The Prisoner of Zenda type plot here is contrived and increasingly preposterous. You have none other than Bismarck showing up; admittedly he's in his younger guise and as cool, arrogant and chilly as any Flashman nemesis, but it jars a little, rather like if Bond tangled with a young Tony Blair in Devil May Care. And Flashy has to be coerced into his adventure, which spoils things a little. It's a problem presumably resolved in later books, but it seems as if the author has come unstuck early with a self-confessed coward as a hero; if he's such a coward how does he get repeatedly involved in these yarns? He's not a troubleshooter like Bond who has to get invovled.
I'll read the next book however, it's just with this one I felt the author was trying to shoehorn the thing around the 1848 Revolutions. I felt the format presented him with an uphill struggle.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
mountainburdphotography.wordpress.com
I finished reading Alfie Darling by Bill Naughton a few weeka ago, the belated sequel to Alfie, made into a career defining film by Michael Caine during Swinging London.
The sequel is just like sitting down for a pint with an old friend, you fit back into the old routine although does occur to you that you're only ever talking about the past.
There are some brilliant observations by Naughton. I liked his description of someone coming out of a pub after they'd been there for while, and their shocked expression at encountering the bleak hostile outside world. I wanted to quote some of these back but ran into the main problem with this book; because the book has no real narrative, much of it is just Alfie's thoughts about life, it's hard to find the comments again. He doesn't seem to have learnt too much, he's back in the old routine of picking up birds who are mainly vacant dollie birds, mumsy housewives and rather po-faced professional women. In fairness I think the film's Alfie implied more of a learning curve for the Casanova, if only because Caine looked too sharp not to pick up on a few truths about life. The Alfie of the novel was a bit more simple emotionally, a decent but two-dimensional bloke.
This Alfie, set in the early 1970s, does seem a man out of time really and it comes as a shock to find he's meant to be in his mid to late 20s; the way he rambles on about his opinions, you'd place him as a lot older, and Caine was in his early 30s in the film. I also wonder if Naughton wasn't trying to deliberately make him a bore at times, to deglamorise him. Some of the stuff he comes out with, he really doesn't seem cool at all. In the first book, he seemed a lot wittier.
This one was made into a film, though I'm not sure they used much of the plot and it didn't have Caine, it had Alan Price in the role. It's no classic and without the moral twist of the first, it's hard to see how this could have made a decent film although I admit it's a page turner in the sense not of "What will happen next?" more "Is anything going to happen at all?" I finished 300 pages in three days.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Strictly speaking, it doesn't matter--all the Flash novels are stand-alone affairs; you can read them in any order you like!
this is the first novel that I've had to read for class that I'm actually ENJOYING. quite a lot, actually. The TV series was awesome as well.
mountainburdphotography.wordpress.com
fantasy fans should deff. read the NIGHTRUNNER series and TAMIR TRIAD :x :x :x :x
mountainburdphotography.wordpress.com
They are quite dark, and focus on two protagonists who were married (now separated, but re-exploring their romance....) Jeffery, who is the Chief of Police, and Sarah who is the County medical examiner. Their cases often explore the rather dark side of criminal activity - and Karin really pushes the boundaries on exploring the reasons behind such crimes like rape and torture.
However, her ability to portray interesting and 3 dimensional characters is what makes these books irresistible - and the continuing story and back story of these two main characters (which is where indelible explored) is excellent.
Once I had finished Indelible, I immediately started Faithless
The third of the Aubrey/Maturin historical/nautical adventures, and quite possibly the best so far, with a protracted naval engagement with the French in the Indian Ocean taking up most of the final third of the novel, with Captain 'Lucky Jack' Aubrey in command of the titular frigate. O'Brian is such an elegant and erudite wordsmith that it's probably not a good idea for me to be reading him whilst in the throes of a rewrite of my own work, which is decidedly cast in the idiom of the hardboiled gumshoe... ;% So my next leisure read will probably be one of Raymond Chandler's...
But HMS Surprise is fantastic, featuring an element 'borrowed' for the "Master and Commander" film starring Russell Crowe, where
Fantastic...and as ever, highly recommended.
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
An extremely leisurely-paced read (sometimes only a chapter a week) while I've been editing/rewriting my own project. What economy, what craftsmanship. Written in '39, this has all the natural authenticity that can only be aspired to in the 21st Century. Police are 'coppers,' cars have starter switches, and everybody is just a little bit tainted...old time Los Angeles lives and breathes with hot dames and shifty-eyed heavies...Philip Marlowe is a lot of fun to watch work B-)
I was very lucky to score a Chandler omnibus on ebay, which contains the first four Marlowe books, for about five dollars. It's hardback, and was printed in 1964...Farewell, My Lovely is next -{
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
another Archaeology historical crime action/drama. oh yes. they exist.
mountainburdphotography.wordpress.com
I finished off Stephen King's latest anthology of short stories a few days a go. While a good read overall, most of the stories are more recent efforts, and it shows as they are missing some of the energy and vitality of his earlier work. The best entries for me were...
Stationary Bike; a cautionary tale for all of those who take exercising a little too seriously.
The Things They Left Behind; King's attempt at dealing with the 9/11 tragedy.
Willa; a sentimental and wistful love story involving ghosts.
Mute; a man suffering thru a nasty divorce picks up a mute hitchhiker.
"N"; The standout of the collection by far, involving a psychiatrist's notes on a patient suffering from a particularly bad case of OCD. What starts out as a seemingly harmless analysis quickly takes a hard left turn into Lovecraftian territory. It was a real page turner and really stayed with me after I finished it (always a good sign). I would put this one right up there with King's best works.
All in all, a good diversion if you're a Stephen King fan; and even if you're not, try to find a copy of "N" somewhere as it's definitely worth a read.
Good stuff, shame the film didn't have the saucy, dark edge to it. It went all Hollywood blockbuster instead. The novel has some wonderful eyepopping panels to the point where it sometimes slows down the action because you want to absorb it. I think the final third, an aerial shootout over Limehouse, London, got a bit OTT however. I'm not sure Connery should have been Quartermain, he looks the same but Connery always has to dominate everything and be The Man. This is an ensemble piece.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
No flatulence jokes, please. This book pretty much smells on its own. Cussler's Dirk Pitt novels are a strange breed. Sometimes I revel in their ludicrousness, and sometimes I'm repulsed. In this case, I was pretty much underwhelmed by the novels rather boring escapes sandwiched in pages of dreadfully dull detail (who wants to read thorough descriptions of an engineer's procedure during a rocket's pre-launch sequence?).
I used to think Cussler really lost grips with sanity when he started writing himself into the novels as a cameo appearance, but he has now topped himself by giving Dirk Pitt a son...a son with the ingenious name of 'Dirk Pitt'! Now, fans can read as Dirk Pitt and Dirk Pitt fight side-by-side against the forces of evil. Talk about confusing storytelling. It gets even worse when Dirk and Dirk start talking to one another. And it doesn't help that the two characters are identical in virtually every way, from physical description to personal interests and 'voice'. Sheesh!
mountainburdphotography.wordpress.com