Deceit was a good, but not great story. Siegel has a gift for creating great characters with plenty of depth. His protagonist in this story, like the one in Derailed, is a likable, smart guy with a flaw that's his undoing. Siegel's dialog is excellent. Read it aloud and you'll find yourself performing... that's the sign of a good storyteller. Why only 3 stars? Deceit was a little weaker than Derailed. There were a couple of places where I had to suspend reality in order to make it work. Then there was the cardinal sin of getting the details of a 1960s TV show wrong. The sheriff calls Tom Valle, "Lucas" as in Lucas McCord, the disgraced Army officer accused of cowardice in the TV show Branded. He's saying that Tom is a liar-- which he is, or has been. Neat touch that I liked. But then Siegel incorrectly refers to the battle where McCord was accused of running as Bull Run, NOT Bitter Creek. Wrong battle, wrong war. There are a few things you have to get right-- references to guns, music, movies and TV shows. I had to fight not to put it down. I'm glad I didn't. I give Deceit 3 Stars.

Derailed is a Winner!

Derailed is a classic, cautionary tale with enough suspense and plot twists, to keep a jaded reader like me turning pages. Charled Schine is is an advertising executive with job troubles, a sick daughter and a preoccupied wife, trapped on the commuter treadmill. When he meets a dropdead gorgeous woman on the train from Long Island to NYC, sparks fly. She's just what his bruised ego needs. They meet for dinner, have an affair, and then the blackmail starts. Derailed is a well-crafted novel. Siegel throws in enough action, suspense and humor to keep you turning pages. His dialog is flawless. I gave Derailed 5 stars and intend to read more of Siegel's thrillers.

Interview by Kitty Bullard

I was interviewed by Kitty Bullard from Great Minds Think Aloud today:

http://www.greatmindsthinkaloud.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=interviews&action=display&thread=798#ixzz1cyTFbDO4

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

I resisted reading this book when it was the rage. I am glad I did. It was unpublished at the time of Stieg Larsen's death and was translated by Steven Murray under the pen name Reg Keland. It won awards in Sweden and Great Britain, including Best First Novel. Originally titled “Men Who Hate Women,” in Swedish, I waded through 600 pages waiting for a shock that never came. Not a bad story mind you, but the “twists and turns” reviewers gushed about simply weren’t there. More importantly, the combination of translation from Swedish to English and a hesitation by the editor to take a knife to the first novel of a man who has passed-on, really hurt what would have been an okay story.

Larsen’s gift was his ability to create three-dimensional characters, particularly the book’s namesake, Lisbeth Salander, a pierced, inked waif with Asperger’s Syndrome. Their quirks came through the translation unblemished and were the best part of the story. The book needed to be pared-down from 600 pages to perhaps 400. The old writer’s axiom of “Get it written and then get it right,” kept coming to mind. I won’t be reading books 2 and 3 of the trilogy. I fear they have probably suffered the same production failures, which is a shame.

The work of Greg Iles kept coming to mind as I read Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Iles takes his readers to the same dark side of human nature as Larsen-- with the benefit of an editor with a sharp pen. I give Girl with the Dragon Tattoo it 3 out of 5 stars-- not a bad book, but certainly not up to all the hype.


all my reviews

I had to post a link to this short story. It's really well done and all of you uber smart women will love it! So will your dumb male friends...

http://www.fictionaut.com/stories/benjamin-matvey/smart--2

Book Reviews aren't just for the NY Times

GMTA by Dave Diamantes

You meet some great people on sites like Good Reads (www.goodreads.com). I met Kitty Bullard there. She is the founder of Great Minds Think Aloud. She’s also a mother and wife, who is working on a degree in business. How you do all that, find time to read lots of books, and write detailed, concise reviews is beyond me!

Kitty started Great Minds Think Aloud in early March of this year. In only 8 months, the site has 200 registered members, 700 Face Book followers and scads of readers who read reviews and author interviews without registering. Stop in and check the site out. GMTA staff has grown to seven reviewers in 8 short months!

You can find her on the forum at: http://www.greatmindsliterarycommunity.moonfruit.com/ OR email her at: greatmindsthinkaloud@gmail.com.

Great Minds Think Aloud by Kitty Bullard

Great Minds Think Aloud started as a conversation and became something much larger. In March of 2011 we started Great Minds as a book club that was originally designed just for women. Over the course of that month it quickly evolved into a place for everyone. Great Minds is now a hub for not only readers, but authors, publishers, publicists, artists and anyone that has interests in the literary world.

Great Minds has an established presence on virtually every social networking site on the internet. They have their own Facebook pages that include the initial friend page, group page, and like page. To find them all you have to do is type in Great Minds Think Aloud on Google and they are the first thing you see.

Membership has been growing rapidly over the past few months, they now boast over 900 members on Facebook and over 200 on the forum not including the followers of their blog as well as the numerous other sites they are associated with. Their main website can be found at: http://www.greatmindsliterarycommunity.moonfruit.com/ and was established late last month, already there have been close to 2000 hits.

Their work includes doing PR for numerous publicity firms, publishers, and authors. They also do reviews on books that are posted on every site where they have established a web presence, and they hold monthly contests and exclusive interviews to heighten the knowledge of the many talented Indie Authors out there today.

One of the largest draws at this point are the themed e-book giveaways they have begun starting Halloween of 2011. Each holiday through Easter they will host a new event where lots of different authors offer a donated e-book to create packages for the lucky winners.

Their reviews have become some of the most followed reviews on the web, and their process is one formulated to be honest, precise, and intellectual. They review all genres and have what they call the "Raven" system set up to rate the books they receive. Being a long time fan of Edgar Allan Poe, Kitty Bullard the creator of Great Minds, chose the Raven to be an integral symbol of the literary community. Interviews with authors are always done on a personal basis by researching the author and their works before forming questions that are for them alone. At the bottom of the home page on their website you can find all the various hubs where reviews, interviews, blogstop posts and any other correspondence with authors, publishers, and publicists are found.

Great Minds also prides themselves on their versatility, as they have made a point to work with well-known publishing agencies as well as Indie publishers which they take a special interest in. Please feel free to contact us: greatmindsthinkaloud@gmail.com

I like my bad guys bad. Creepy and bad is even better. Forensic anthropologist /artist Paul Bern makes his living recreating the heads of crime victims, by building up layers of clay on their skulls. A women brings him a skull, says she bought it off the street in Mexico and asks him to recreate the features-- she thinks it may be her late husband’s skull. He doesn't believe her, but completes the work, even after she disappears, only to find that looking at the completed head is like looking in the mirror... The plot twists and turns from there, as Bern meets one of the creepiest characters I've seen since Hannibal Lechter. I really liked this book!