Mechanical Apple Apple itibaren Khirasra, Gujarat 360570, Hindistan
The Queen of Unbelievable Coincidences made it all the way to page 221 (hardcover) without an Unbelievable Coincidence. Progress! And it's a minor one, at that. (After reading two Kathy Reichs books back-to-back, my new irritation, by the way, is that at the end of nearly every chapter, it seems that Tempe is stunned or shocked or can't believe what she's seeing. It's reminiscent of Dan Brown's abuse of chapter-ending exclamation points in his earlier books.) It was a quick and kind of fun read, but still...this book was missing something. Let's see...what might that be? Oh, yes. Andrew Ryan. Tempe stays firmly planted in Charlotte this time, working on a body that turns up in a barrel filled with asphalt in a landfill adjacent to the Charlotte Motor Speedway. Tempe teams up with a disgraced former cop to find out whether the body is connected to a double missing persons case from 1998 and why the FBI are lurking around. I'm not sure if this book is actually shorter than most of the books in the series, but it felt skimpy. I'm hoping that #15 takes Tempe back to Montreal and has a lot more Ryan in it.
Extremely heartfelt and really goes to the gut of the issue about soldiers in times of war. Not overly sentimental, and very honest and well-written.