Dead Simple by Peter James.

Michael Harrison is on his stag night and 4 of his mates are playing a prank on him. This prank goes wrong and Detective Superintendent Roy Grace leads the hunt to find Michael who is now missing.

But there is more to this tale than a missing person and a stag night prank. Dead Simple is a thriller about when things go wrong and efforts to fix things backfire. There are many twists and turns in this story with plenty of important details woven into the plot. It is set around Brighton and is an enjoyable tale where you do not know how it will pan out. It keeps the reader guessing. There is a good plot and motives are developed from actual true cases in the past when criminals have been brought to justice. It deals with jealousy and the hold women can have on men.

Dead Simple is one in a series of Roy Grace novels. These books can be read as standalone novels because there is plenty of back story to make them work. They give a clear illustration of police culture, although it does seem that Peter James attended an open day at Sussex Police HQ taking loads of notes to use in his novels. He is very good at describing police procedures. There is some lovely dry humour between the characters. A good example is on page 47 when Roy Grace is being cross-examined in court...

'So you regularly turn to the dark arts in your work as a senior police officer, do you, Detective Superintendent Grace?'
An audible snigger rippled around the courtroom.
'I wouldn't call it the dark arts,' Grace said. 'I would call it an alternative resource. The police have a duty to use everything at their disposal in trying to solve crimes.'
'So would it be fair to say you are a man of the occult? A believer of the supernatural?' the silk asked.
Grace looked at Judge Driscoll, who was staring at him as if it was he himself who was now on trial in this court. Desperately trying to think of an appropriate response, he shot a glance at the jury, then the public gallery, before he faced the silk again. And suddenly it came to him.
Grace's voice notched up a gear, more strident, more confident, suddenly. 'What is the first thing this court required me to do when I entered the witness stand?' he asked.
Before the silk could respond, Grace answered for him. 'To swear on the Holy Bible.' He paused for it to sink in. 'God is a supernatural being - the supreme supernatural being. In a court that accepts witnesses taking an oath to a supernatural being, it would be strange if I and everyone else in this room did not believe in the supernatural.'

...Dead Simple was written in 2005 and has 457 pages. This is a good book which entertains and is awfully British. I vote it 4 stars. The ending is rather far fetched but Peter James is a big fan of the paranormal.

divine justice by David Baldacci.

Follow Oliver Stone in another adventure. This time he is being hunted for the two murders he committed. divine justice is another Camel Club novel, this time set in Divine, a small mining town in Virginia. This book continues the brand but it can be read as a standalone novel as there is loads of back story about Oliver.

You start reading divine justice and you wonder, why has Oliver stumbled across this or that? It is because that detail will be used later in this story. There are a small cast of suspects involved in the darker side of Divine. This novel is light reading and you know that our hero, Oliver, will turn out okay. There is a steady progression with the plot of this book and it is a simple tale of circumstances. The ending is okay and is just what you would expect.

There is nothing radical about this book, it is just like a made-for-tv movie. It is a run of the mill novel, not quite a thriller. It is rather drab. David Baldacci is a best selling author but his writing has become lazy. This tale is sloppy and at one point Reuben has a puncture on his Indian motorcycle. Not having a spare wheel with his sidecar, he wheels his outfit into Caleb's van. Later on Reuben takes his motorcyle out of the van and rides happily away. No puncture repair or tyre change had been done!

divine justice has 534 pages and was written in 2008. I took nothing away from this novel. It was a disappointment. This book is a poor read and I vote it only 2 stars. I suggest you give it a MISS as divine justice is not one of David's best. This was the last of David's paperbacks that I purchased a while ago and I will not be buying another. David Baldacci seems to ride on his best selling status and does not bring anything new to the game.

Big Brother can be rather dumb.

Traffilog is a vehicle data recording system used by National Express on all their coaches. This technology has many functions like GPS tracking and interior coach temperature recording. It is also used to record driver performance and monitors braking, acceleration, cornering and engine idling. Each driver has a Traffilog score depending on how well he has driven the coach. Every passenger comfort event is given a point, the more points against a driver lowers his grading. No or just a few points would give a Gold grading. A small amount of points would give a Green rating. A fair amount of points would give an Amber rating and a lot of points a Red grading.

This colour coded Traffilog grading system is then used by managers to discipline drivers. The goal is to ensure all drivers give their passengers a comfortable ride. However, Traffilog is a dumb system that does not work in the real world.

Driver - Brakes - Acceleration - Turns - Idling - Grade

A               3                   0                  5          1         Gold

B               1                   1                  2          1         Green

Surely driver A with more sharp braking and turns should have a higher score and a Green grading plus driver B with less sharp braking and turns should have a Gold grading. That would be a fair assessment of the data. Traffilog rates highly events of high acceleration. But high acceleration is simply not possible in a coach with a 9 litre engine pulling an unladen weight of 13,570 kgs. Therefore these acceleration events are FALSE. What happens is the automatic gearbox changes as the coach is going uphill and Traffilog records this as a surge. Traffilog penalizes drivers who drive comfortably and have done nothing wrong. Traffilog does not grade drivers fairly.

I think National Express have been sold a pup with this Traffilog motion sensor technology as the above grading example clearly shows.

Trainland: A Novel by Richard Denoncourt.

Jack Devins is an advertising copy writer who is facing changes at work. This novel starts off really good. Jack rides as a passenger on the New York subway trains. One day Jack goes onto the platform and enters another world, a world I can't relate to. From here this novel descends into a fantasy nonsense.

Trainland, an area and time within the New York subway system is another world full of horrors, a living hell. There are living dead people, zombies etc living in purgatory. They are all trapped in a world of madness they want to escape. Jack tries to get out of Trainland and must battle with many demons. He also has to deal with the grief of losing his daughter Kelly in an earlier accident and to stop blaming himself.

I gave up on this ridiculous plot and did not know where it would end. Thankfully there is a big twist approaching the end and you can finally make sense of this nonsense. Trainland questions our perceptions of reality. Details revealed earlier in this story now make sense and then you start to understand Jack's problems. I did not like this story format, the mix of reality and imagination that treats the reader as a child. Rather than entertain the reader, this book annoys because of it's distortion of reality.

Trainland is available as a 490 KB Amazon Kindle eBook and was written in 2012. I think it is a disappointing read, a poor book that I shall vote only 2 stars and suggest you give it a MISS.

Shadow Stations: Unseen by Ann Grant.

Amy Wung is walking her German shepherd dog Nikki when she meets a man who asks her for directions. This man is different as he has 6 fingers on each hand. She walks away and glances back to notice that he dropped his mobile phone. She turns and picks up the phone but this is a model of smartphone she has not seen before.

Shadow Stations: Unseen is a nice tale for dog lovers because of how people live with dogs. This novella is set in America and is a short story written in the style of a B movie. It is a fantasy adventure, a piece of science fiction that is not to be taken seriously. This daft silliness is easy reading due to it's clear writing style.

Amy has an attitude which is refreshing, although other reviewers disagree. This story however is lacking. Lots of things are simply convenient to make this story work. It is neither deep or gripping. There is nothing special about this book. It also lacks realism.

There is one funny paragraph that I can quote but this is the funniest in the whole book...


... Antoine stared at the palm trees beyond the beach. "Get up, man, get up. There's a house. I don't care if Granny Psycho lives there. I'm going to ring the fucking doorbell and get myself a cell phone and a rum and Coke."

... Shadow Stations: Unseen is a small 233 KB Amazon Kindle eBook and was written in 2012. I think it is a poor book and I will vote it only 2 stars. I suggest you give it a MISS. This is a 2nd class read. The ending is silly and tells me not to bother with the sequel called Shadow Stations: Black Friday.