Dennis Wheatley’s supernatural thriller The Satanist is so ugly and offensive that I often found it unintentionally hilarious. It revolves primarily around the attempts of a special branch of British intelligence to unravel the schemes of a cult of communist Satanists (some of whom are also, no joke, ex-Nazis).
The novel was first published in [...]
Entries Tagged as 'thriller'
Dennis Wheatley: The Satanist
15 Apr 2008 · No Comments
Tags: s-title · thriller · w-author
Neal Stephenson: Cryptonomicon
05 Jan 2008 · 3 Comments
Cryptonomicon has several attributes that will be familiar to readers of other Stephenson novels like Snow Crash and The Diamond Age. There’s the crazy see-saw between action that’s basically naturalistic and surreal, exaggerated sequences. If Cryptonomicon were a movie, I feel like most of it would be live action, but many of the scenes [...]
Tags: c-title · historical · s-author · thriller
John MacLachlan Gray: The Fiend In Human
04 Apr 2007 · No Comments
I think the first time my friend Marty and I had a conversation about books, he said something like “I read classic literature [which gave us substantial common ground] and thrillers about serial killers.” [which didn't much increase it] and he expressed a distinct lack of fondness for modern “serious” fiction.
We’ve spent plenty of time [...]
Tags: f-title · g-author · historical · thriller
David Hewson: A Season for the Dead
17 Dec 2006 · 1 Comment
I’m a longtime fan of the Daedalus Books remainders house. I’ve learned about some of my favorite authors from their chatty, informative catalogs.
Every once in a while, though, I follow up a recommendation for a real dud. Hewson’s A Season for the Dead drew many comparisons to Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, because [...]