FEATURED AUTHOR - Art Blegen is the author of “The Adventures of Kris”, a series of early middle-grade chapter books for young readers from six to ten years old. Each child is important, and each family matters to Art. He is an advocate for educating children and their parents to ensure they have a healthy balance of positive examples in their lives. Wholesome stories and a healthy imagination can lay the foundation they will use for the rest of their lives. Whether playing with his grandchildren or coaching…
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Recent comments: User reviews
The story begins slowly but some twenty pages later I couldn't put the
book down.
The plot is complexe, fast-moving, with plenty of impressive twists and
turns, maintains an interesting equilibrium between a rational detective mystery and an assortiment of paranormal solutions, and explores a good variety of hypotheses in both directions.
One result of this construction is that the mysterious scenes are really
scary (I don't scare easily), and there is plenty of them.
Also, the most supranatural (apparently) twist of the story is a very possible paranormal occurence.
A great read that keeps your emotions going and leaves you with a good
feeling.
Strong and industrious characters that always have some last trick to try on
their adversaries.
Probably, the best of the author. I've read another book of him, a clever story but dully narrated, and downloaded this one almost by mistake, without recognizing the name, and while in this one the narrative is just acceptable, the rhytm is so much better and some twists of the intrigue
are impressive.
Set in London and Paris, has a distinct French taste.
Strange happenings, mysterious and artful personages, aristocracy, jewels, very bad guys versus very good guys but not too sweet, and a great variety of action.
You won't lose sleep reading it but you also won't quit until you get to the last page.
Mystery and humour tied in one.
Leaves you with a good feeling.
With more than a century in advance, Allan Pinkerton anticipates the true crime books style: the narrative is a pure succession of actions and contra-actions.
And also, obviously, it's a real case and real experiences.
The author, the great A.P., is a clever, resourceful and sometimes humouristic narrator, and his detectives are more skillful and apt than the usual fictional detectives.
As I have only a vague recollection of my school physics, the first two
episodes were totally lost on me.
All the episodes have to do with physichal or chemical sciences and many of them were comprehensible even to me. Nonetheless, if your interest in science is zero, you won't find the read too exciting, as it evolves
around the devices that the main character uses to solve the crimes, while the crimes themselves and the characters are only secondary in the
narrative.
But some of the scientific methods are curious both in themselves and as
surviving in the modern forensics, and their variety is impressive.
There is even a reference to Tesla's first idea of the alternative current.
forgotten fact that it's easier identify someone by their gestures rather than by their face.
Gets your attention at once and keeps it almost to the end. But in the
final chapters the tension disolves itself in too many and too prolific
explanations of simple facts, in dialogs that revert to a succession
of monologues.
Good portraits of the principal characters but not much eh... character... beyond their distinctive physical appearance.
A good, clever plot but loses intensity in the final chapters, where the bad guys are fulminated and the good ones win too rapidly, to easily.
and doubtful situations, followed by a succession of solutions too easily found.
The good guys are soooo good and good-looking, the bad ones are flashy dressed men.
The detective is notably slowly-thinking and too profuse and repeating
himself explaining any new circunstance to his accolites.
The story evolves through too many weak situations, is clumsily constructed and monotousely narrated.
The worst of all, it isn't really a detective mystery: you know at once who the bad guys are and all the detective and his seven helpers (seven!: four policemen, his would-be fiancée and two friends) do is follow, lose and follow again the suspects.
A cunning, beautiful, courageous and resourceful female detective and her
clever assistant.
The plots don't make it easy for them to solve the cases, which have some
astute twists and turns.
A variety of interesting sceneries and characters.
You can't stop reading.
Adventures of a group of gold-miners working at a Russian concession in Alaska, year 1920.
Dangerous tigers, malevolent natives and poisonous plants, in a mostly plain narrative.
But also, mysterious grammophon disks messages, treacherous Orientals, murderous Russians, a dirigible balloon, a strange community of political exiles and many, many gold everywhere.
Not a great book but nicely readable, relatively fast-paced (after a somewhat slow first chapter) and showing a curious historical moment.