Two Graves, Unhallowed Ground, City of Dark Magic

Two Graves from Net Galley and Grand Central Publishing, is the latest Pendergast novel by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.  ISBN-13: 978-0446554992

Twelve years ago, Pendergast's wife died while on a safari, a terrible accident.  Later, he learns she was murdered.  Now, however, it turns out that Helen was alive and in hiding, but just as the two are about to be reunited, she is abducted.

Typical Pendergast novel, and regardless of how fantastic, outlandish, and unbelievable each one is, I eagerly devour each new installment about the redoubtable FBI Agent Pendergast.

I'm along for the ride each time, and on each finish, I wonder at myself having been seduced one more by this silliness.  Nevertheless, I'm sure I'll continue reading these fast-paced fantasies; they are guilty pleasures.

Suspense/Thriller.  Dec. 2012.  print version 480 pages.


Unhallowed Ground by Gillian White is an ebook from Net Galley, originally published in 1999; Open Road Integrated Media. ISBN-13: 978-0684855424

This mystery has a few good parts, scenes of intense suspense, and bad parts, revisiting an earlier event in Georgina Jefferson's career, repeatedly, and a complete lack of resolution.  It is as if the author couldn't be bothered to give the novel a conclusion or actually connect several threads that had been woven throughout the novel.  I wasn't sure if I'd been sent the entire manuscript!

Mystery/Suspense.  republ.  Feb. 11, 2013.  print version 288 pages.


City of Dark Magic by Magnus Flyte.  ISBN9780143122685

Magnus Flyte is the pseudonym of Meg Howrey and Christina Lynch, and although the pseudonym and title might make you think it is a YA novel, it definitely is not.

OK -- an interesting premise that could have developed into a fun and entertaining novel; interesting information about Beethoven, his Immortal Beloved, and about Prague; a couple of secondary characters who were actually interesting.

But -- no real character development for the majority of the characters--including the protagonist, no sense of chemistry between characters, a lack of flow, some egregious sex scenes that seemed thrown in at intervals and would have been more appropriate for an erotic novel, a disjointed feeling in the narrative, and at the conclusion, a feeling of the authors having missed the boat on what could have a good novel....

An easy and quick read, but not worth the time even at that.

  2012.  print version 464 pages.