Review: The Gun Seller

 

Hugh Laurie is best known as an actor – the volatile but brilliant Dr. House or Bertie Wooster to Stephen Fry's Jeeves – but he occasionally branches into other creative arts, like jazz music and writing. In 1996 he published a just-this-side-of-spoof espionage thriller called The Gun Seller.

Part Wodehouse, part Robert Ludlum, Laurie's only novel finds ex-soldier Thomas Lang bamboozled into infiltrating a terrorist group in order to short circuit an embassy attack orchestrated by an evil munitions manufacturer as a marketing stunt. The plot is complicated enough to stay interesting and internally consistent enough, just, to stay acceptable.

Best of all, it is funny. It is really funny, which is really hard to do. Laurie definitely channels his inner P. G. Wodehouse, but through a spy thriller filter, so it comes out like a James Bond story written by Mark Steyn.  Pure fun.  Too bad Laurie hasn't come out with a sequel.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

I bought this on a whim and finally read it for the TBR challenges I am doing this year:

• MT. TBR CHALLENGE (hosted by Bev on My Reader's Block) 
• OFF THE SHELF CHALLENGE (hosted by Bonnie on Bookish Ardour) 
• TBR PILE CHALLENGE (hosted by Adam on Roof Beam Reader)

Teaser Tuesday: Sea of Regret

Police Chief Sam Lowell scratched the gray whiskers on the blade of his jaw. The whisk of sound, like insects in dry grass, made Kate glance at her bare toes to make sure nothing was crawling toward them.

-- Sea of Regret by Carolyn J. Rose.  I love how this short passage evokes so many sensory images and reactions. Great stuff.

Sea of Regret is the sequel to An Uncertain Refuge, also set on the Oregon coast and featuring Kate Dalton.

Rose also sent me Through a Yellow Wood, set in the Catskill Mountains and the sequel to Hemlock Lake, a series starring Dan Stone.

Rose has written several mysteries set on the Oregon coast or in the Catskill Mountains where she grew up. She and her husband, Mike Nettleton, are both authors and have written a couple of books together.  They also blog together at Deadly Duo Duh.

If anyone is in Washington State this weekend, Rose is leading a workshop on the elements of mystery at the Wordcatcher conference in Kalama, Washington on Saturday, April 20. Click the link for details or to sign up for the conference. 


Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event. 

Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring event (details here).

MariReads is hosting in April. Please stop by her blog for some great reviews and other fun bookish posts.

Three books came to me out of the blue last week:



On the Level: A Mystery of Suspense, Romance, and Home Improvement by David Edgar Cournoyer.  The mystery involves restoring an old Queen Anne on Long Island Sound. It looks great!

The author sent me this at the suggestion of Carolyn J. Rose because we are in the middle of remodeling the kitchen in our 100-year-old house.



Direct Hit! How Facebook Destroyed My Marriage and How I Healed by Caroline Sutherland.  Sutherland is the popular author of The Body "Knows" books.  This book is the story of how her husband betrayed her, stole her identity, and tried to ruin her life.  Timely and riveting!


 

On Mount Hood: A Biography of Oregon's Perilous Peak by Jon Bell.  This is the new paperback edition, just in time for graduation of Father's Day gifts. It's the nicest feeling paperback I've ever come across because it has a wonderful, suede-like, thick cover. 

Jon Bell will be reading and signing books at Powell's on Wednesday, April 24, 2013 at 7:30.

What books came into your house last week?

Kitchen Remodel, Week Seven: Cupboards and Kitchen Revitalization

The cupboards are here. They are not installed yet, just crammed into the kitchen space all higgledy-piggledy. But they are here so we can see them for the first time.

We went with natural-stained fir, a less-expensive option than oak, which had been my first choice.  Fir is also an appropriate choice for a 100-year-old Oregon house because they most likely used fir in the original kitchen. 

My favorite bit is how our builder matched the inside moulding of the doors and drawers with the moulding in our dining room paneling. Kind of hard to see here, but cool in real life.

I am still reading Alice Waters and Chez Panisse: The Romantic, Impractical, Often Eccentric, Ultimately Brilliant Making of a Food Revolution by Thomas McNamee and am just at the part where Chez Panisse burned almost to the ground in 1983.  Alice Waters used the tragedy as an opportunity to rebuild with a better and more beautiful design more suitable to her evolved vision for the restaurant. 



Although our kitchen remodel was, thankfully, not necessitated by tragedy, I am trying to channel Water's optimism about a better, more harmonious, future kitchen.

Sadly, Chez Panisse suffered another fire last month and is closed for renovation until mid-June.  Hopefully this recent misfortune will also result in improvements for this California icon.

 

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

Book Beginnings: Sea of Regret

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name.

TWITTER, ETC: If you are on Twitter, please tweet a link to your post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I also recently signed up for Google+ and have a button over there in the right-hand column to join my circles or whatever it is. I don't really understand yet how that one works.

MR. LINKY: Please leave a link to your post below. If you don't have a blog, but want to participate, please leave a comment with your Book Beginning.



MY BOOK BEGINNING

When it was over, Kate Dalton vowed to abolish the phrase "if only" from her vocabulary and make peace with what they did to survive.

-- Sea of Regret by Carolyn J. Rose.  That opening sentence gives me chills!

This is the second of the Carolyn J. Rose books I got a couple of weeks back.  This one is the sequel to An Uncertain Refuge, set on the Oregon coast and starring Kate Dalton.

The other book I got was Through a Yellow Wood, set in the Catskill Mountains and the sequel to Hemlock Lake, a series featuring Dan Stone.

Rose and her husband, Mike Nettleton, are both authors and even have written a couple of books together.  Rose has written several mysteries, set on the Oregon coast or in the Catskill Mountains where Carolyn grew up.  She and Nettleson also blog together at Deadly Duo Duh.

Rose is leading a workshop on the elements of mystery at the Wordcatcher conference in Kalama, Washington on Saturday, April 20. Click the link for details or to sign up for the conference.