Told largely through the eyes of a private investigator “After the Crash” is an absolutely brilliant psychological thriller that open in 1980 with a plane crash in the Jura Mountains on the Franco-Swiss border. Out of the 169 passengers on board one three month old baby girl survived. Two families came to claim the surviving child but only one will win the legal battle for custody.
Crédule Grand-Duc, is the part time narrator and the main player in finding the true identity of the child. The heart of the drama starts 18 years after Grand-Duc was assigned the case. Sitting at home he chronicles his 18 years of efforts, misses and successes in a journal and this diary hurls us deep into the book. Be warned from the opening pages this drama is unputdownable.
The author scripts a taut thriller and shows how much he has invested time developing all his main characters: Lylie, the surviving baby, 18 years later goes down memory lane, Marc Vital, her brother will eventually find the truth, Malvina de Carville will go to any length to see Lylie be her sister. Mr. Bussi is a master at the art of dropping clues into the narrative and leading the reader into a solution which raises more and more questions. The pacing is interesting there are more than enough unknowns to keep us guessing until the very end. The language is quite formal during the investigation and sharp and young when Lylie and Marc’s voices come to play.
The story is brilliantly told, extremely captivating and quite suspenseful.
Excellent read I highly recommend it.
I received this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. This is the Way I see it.
Book 4, in The Tudor Court series
“The Taming of the Queen” is set in the 1540's, and takes as its heroine and narrator Katherine Parr, the sixth and surviving wife of Henry VIII. It is an elaborately embellished political novel as well as a compelling historical fiction about a surprisingly unfamiliar period of Tudor history. It also provides an overwhelming sense of the sheer terror that comes with living under a capricious tyrant—especially if you’re married to him. This book is breathtakingly intimate portrait of the first woman to publish work under her own name in English.
Miss Gregory makes history lively, fascinating and real. Of course the story is told with some twists and enhancements to makes history accessible. At the end of the book the author explains what is known and what the fruit of her imagination is. Although a bit repetitive, this is nevertheless a solid book with more steamy and graphic scenes than usual. The characterization is good. The players shine in all their glory even the ridiculousness of the king’s games and the foolishness of Will Somers, the king’s fool. Katherine survived by using her wits and submitting to Henry’s caprices and we are taken through this scene by scene in a pleasant retelling tale. The novel is also rich in the extravagance of the Tudor Court including its exotic feasting, its clothing, its furnishings etc.
“The Taming of a Queen” is a captivating book that works well both as a standalone historical fiction and as a continuation of the Tudor Court series.
Really?
After the TV program called “Hunting for Hitler” that theorizes Hitler escaped to South America it is just right to come up with books touching the same subject. While interesting, rehashing this subject isn’t exploring the paranoia about ex-Nazis hiding out in South America and plotting a Fourth Reich…..
“Hitler is Alive” is an exposé taken from files written by investigative journalists of “The National Police Gazette”, a tabloid like publication who enjoyed considerable popularly during its heyday and ceased print publication in the late 1970 to eventually be resuscitated by Steven Westlake in 2006. After WW11 these reporters investigated any rumour of Hitler`s survival after all covering the Führer was a big contributor of sales. Real or fabricated, the book reprints many of these articles from 1951 to 1968, over 400 pages of truth, rumours and lies.
Although somewhat tedious, the book has interesting points nevertheless. Fiction or not, whether believable or not, this anthology contains all sorts of creative theories convincingly written to make us wonder if all that could be possibly true. We find a lot of repetitiveness as each journalist’s article takes its spot in alternate chapter: say the same thing using exactly the same words. The mention of Hitler’s Shangri-La in Antarctica where he planned in restoring his empire…Is this believable ….To be frank, at this point the book lost all credibility and became more of a conspiracy theory and a highly fictionalized account…..
I received this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. This is the Way I see it.
