Nov 18 - 24, 2018

Forever and a Day by Anthony Horowitz, by invitation of the Ian Fleming estate - 007 is dead and it's time for James Bond to be promoted to the 00 ranks. His mission is to find who is responsible for his predecessors death and the secrets he had uncovered. It's been a long time since I read a Bond book and perhaps I should have read one previous to this so that I could compare. This felt flat to me.

2 stars
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Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie - Hercule Poirot is traveling by train with quite a mix of people. There's royalty, diplomats, servants, secretaries, and assorted other travelers. Then a murder is committed and at the same time as the train encounters a snowdrift. So the only possibility is that someone on the train is the murderer. Poirot is at his best as he uses his interview technique and his mind to find the culprit.

4 stars
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Past Tense by Lee Child - Jack Reacher decides to travel from New England to San Diego to spend the winter there. On one of his hitchhiked rides he sees the sign for the town his father was from. He decides to take a little detour and see what he can find out since his father never talked about it. When he learns no one named Reacher lived there he decides to dig a little deeper. Meanwhile, two young people from Canada have gotten into a bad situation at a remote hotel. Somehow the two intertwine. The usual Reacher-style violence.

3 stars
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Proof of Life by J.A. Jance - a J.P. Beaumont book and he's not dealing with retirement very well. So when the goddaughter of his old nemesis, Maxwell Cole, asks him to look into death in a fire, he's more than eager. But with no official standing it's going to be tricky. There's also a side story involving J.P.'s wife and a dog. The first few chapters involve a lot of reminiscing about an old case that was quite complicated, I had to read it three times to get things straight. J.P. has always been a favorite of mine, partly because he lives in Seattle. But now that he's getting up there in age he's getting a little more crotchety and does a lot of remembering when. It may be time for his books to retire as well.

3 stars