The search for truth and proof combine in a fast-paced, enjoyable read from Toronto’s J.J. Dupuis in Roanoke Ridge. Classified as A Creature X Mystery, the novel combines a mystery (though easily solved) with a healthy dose of, and balanced look at, cryptozoology. One cryptid in particular is at the heart of this story, that…
Category: The Book Shelf
The Hardy Boys: The House On The Cliff (1927/1959) – Franklin W. Dixon
The second adventure of Frank and Joe Hardy, sons of the Bayport detective Fenton Hardy, sees the boys taking on smugglers on the edges of their hometown, just outside the local police’s jurisdiction. Once again, the fast-moving story is more of an adventure than a mystery, and it also seems like most of the adults…
Lancaster: The Forging of a Very British Legend (2020) – John Nichol
I’ve always been a fan of history, it was one of my favourite classes in school. I would delve into it and try to imagine and conjure the world these people lived in, instead of simply memorising and delivering names and dates. When it comes to reading historical nonfiction I get a little reticent, because…
The Sittaford Mystery (1931) – Agatha Christie
The next mystery novel, The Sittaford Mystery aka Murder at Hazelmoor, from Agatha Christie didn’t feature any of her familiar characters, in fact it introduces us to a firebrand of a young woman named Emily, though she doesn’t enter the tale until a quarter way through. This time around, murder most foul strikes near Dartmoor,…
Whispers Under Ground (2012) – Ben Aaronovitch
The third book in what has become known as the Rivers of London series takes Peter Grant beneath London in the next volume of the urban fantasy series. Working a murder case, while still hunting down the Faceless Man and his students, Grant, alongside Lesley, who has now joined the Folly (where they work from)…
Battlestar Galactica 7: War of the Gods (1982) – Nicholas Yermakov, and Glen A. Larson
The next novel in the Galactica series, War of the Gods, seems to have eschewed the Galactica 1980 tie-in, and simply gone back to the Adama Journals intercut with chapters detailing the action of this adaptation of the epic two-parter that gave us a hint at a deeper mythology working in the series. After a…
Map of Bones (2005) – James Rollins
James Rollins second novel in his Sigma Force series continues the highly enjoyable combination of science, mythology, history and high adventure. This time, Sigma Force’s Grey Pierce is assigned with his team to investigate a massacre at a church in Germany, and the subsequent theft of ancient Catholic relics. Relics that have some strange properties,…
Fletch (1974) – Gregory McDonald
I first read Fletch back in the 80s when the Chevy Chase movie was coming along, and for some reason I had problems keeping the story threads straight, as most of the text in the novel is dialogue, not action, so I would lose who said what and would have to go back, and back…
Moon Over Soho (2011) – Ben Aaronovitch
Constable Peter Grant returns to investigate the supernatural in the second novel in the Rivers of London series written by Ben Aaronovitch. Picking up about six months after the first book, the novel sees Grant still dealing with the fallout from the events of the first novel, particularly the attack that left his friend, and…
The Hard Boys: The Tower Treasure (1927/1959) – Franklin W. Dixon
When I was a young boy in the late 70s, early 80s, I was devouring books at a variety of reading levels, and was delighted with the blue border hard cover editions of The Hardy Boys, I didn’t have them all, but I had a collection that would grow whenever I lacked anything else to…
The Mind Reels 