Movie - The Postcard Killings

Pandemic Movies Seen at Home That Should Have Been on the BIG SCREEN

(1:44)

3/13/20 Limited and Streaming

Viewed date at home on Sunday, 12/20/20 via HULU

IMBd: 5.7/10

RT Critic: 24   Audience:  37

Critic's Consensus:  

Cag:  4 Liked it a lot, even though it was gritty and sad

Directed by Danis Tanovic

Good Films Collective, K. JAM Media

Based on the book by Paterson

Jeffrey Dean Morgan

My comments:  Set in London, Stockholm, and Helsinki with brief encounters in Hamburg, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris....very grizzly piece which left me feeling a little bereft, but which took my mind away from my own troubles for a bit.  Jeffrey Dean Morgan is great...

RT/ IMDb Summary:  A New York detective investigates the death of his daughter, who was murdered while on her honeymoon in London, the victim of an apparent serial killer.

16. One Kick - Chelsea Cain

# 1 in a new series about Kit Lannigan

Audio read by Heather Lind

8 unabridged discs

2014 Simon & Schuster

309 pgs.

Adult murder mystery

Finished 2/20/2015

Goodreads rating:  3.77

My rating:    3.5 I liked it

TPPL

Setting: mostly Oregon/Washington and a bit of SanDiego - contemporary

1st sentence/s:

My comments:  Whew!  So what do I think about this book?  Setting, plot, characters, let's see.  Plot, though horribly grizzly, was well conceived and written in an interesting way; jumping back and forth on itself as memories from Kit's kidnapped years keep appearing. There are really three mysteries being examined - current abductions, Kit's abduction, and the mysterious identity and intentions of John Bishop. The setting flips between the American northwest and the San Diego area. The only character I couldn't totally get into was that of the protagonist!  She was so cockily sure of herself, but many of her actions were immature and poorly thought-out.  I felt no sexual pull at all between Kit and Bishop, so when it began straying in that direction, I was disconcerted.  I want to know more information about her "brother", James, and look forward to another book that might answer many of the questions that Kit ... and I ... have about Bishop.

Goodreads book summary:  Kick Lannigan, 21, is a survivor. Abducted at age six in broad daylight, the police, the public, perhaps even her family assumed the worst had occurred. And then Kathleen Lannigan was found, alive, six years later. In the early months following her freedom, as Kick struggled with PTSD, her parents put her through a litany of therapies, but nothing helped until the detective who rescued her suggested Kick learn to fight. Before she was thirteen, Kick learned marksmanship, martial arts, boxing, archery, and knife throwing. She excelled at every one, vowing she would never be victimized again. But when two children in the Portland area go missing in the same month, Kick goes into a tailspin. Then an enigmatic man Bishop approaches her with a proposition: he is convinced Kick's experiences and expertise can be used to help rescue the abductees. Little does Kick know the case will lead directly into her terrifying past…

77. Snow Angels - James Thompson

#1 Kari Vaara, Finnish (Lapland) chief police inspector

Read on my iPhone

2010, G. P. Putnam

264 pgs.

Adult Murder Mystery

Finished 12/20/2014

Goodreads rating: 3.70

My rating:   4.5 Top-notch

Contemporary Finland

1st sentence/s:  "I'm in Hullu Poro, the Crazy Reindeer, the biggest bar and restaurant in this part of the Arctic Circle.  It was remodeled nolong ago, but pine boards line the walls and ceiling, like an old Finnish farmhouse.  Nouveau rustic decor."

My comments:  I've always been fascinated with the "idea" of Lapland - the Scandinavian winter (not the cold, harsh, DARK realities, but the pristine white ones), and complimentary artistry of Jan Brett.  This story takes us into the Arctic Circle at the very darkest time of year and gives it all the twist of a brutal murder from the point-of-view of the cop that has to solve it.  The twists and turns in the story are believable and were well appreciated. Believable characters, particularly the protagonists.  Kari Vaara's wife, Kate, an American expat who happens to be pregnant, is beginning to feel the depression of the 24-hours nights, which adds to the tension of the crime-solving. Searching for more information on American James Thompson in anticipation of more in the series, I discovered that he died suddenly a few months ago. Bummer.

Goodreads book summary:  Kaamos: Just before Christmas, the darkest time of the year in Lapland, above the Arctic Circle. The unrelenting darkness and extreme cold cause everyone to go just a little bit insane, whether or not they’ve just killed someone… 
          A beautiful Somalian refugee-turned-actress is found murdered on a reindeer farm, gruesomely mutilated, a racial slur carved into her chest. Inspector Kari Vaara, head of the rural police force, is under great pressure not only to solve this crime himself, without the help of the big-city cops from Helsinki, but also to keep the potentially explosive case out of the news. Sufia Elmi had become a tabloid fixture, and her death—not to mention the awful way she met it—is sure to send shock waves across this insular, secretly racist country. Was this murder a hate crime, a sex crime—or both?
          Kari is dealing with culture shock at home, too. His wife, Kate, is a young American woman, newly pregnant with their first child. She doesn’t understand much about Finnish customs or the Finns themselves and is struggling to come to terms with her new home. Kari himself is haunted by his rough childhood and his past, and even as he tries to shape a new life with Kate, the past keeps biting at his heels: the rich man his ex-wife left him for years ago may be Sufia’s killer. 

67. The Cutting - James Hayman

McCabe & Savage #1

Read on my iPhone/through Kindle/Audio eBooks

Audio read by Jonathan Davis

9 unabridged cds (11:00)

2009 Minotaur/McMillan

336 pgs.

Adult Murder Mystery

Finished 10/21/2014

Goodreads rating: 3.80

My rating:   (4) Loved it, despite a few "flaws"

Setting:  Contemporary Portland, ME

1st sentence/s:  from prologue:  "July, 1971.  He pressed the terrified creature firmly against his body.  He was a sturdy boy, tall for his eight years, with dark hair and a long, thin face.  After more than a month of summer sunshine, his normally fair skin had turned quite brown."
from Chapter 1:  "Portland, Maine; September 16, 2005.  Fog can be a sudden thing on the Maine coast.  Even on the clearest mornings, swirling grey mists sometimes appeared in an instant, covering the earth with an opacity that makes it hard to see even one's own feet on the ground."

My comments:  I love intense murder mysteries (does that make me ghoulish?) but this one had a few "grizzly" factors that almost took it too far for me.  This always happens when it involves any cutting of the skin with a knife or scalpel.  I have a difficult time with this.  The title should certainly tip one off......  That said, I greatly enjoyed this mystery.  I love the setting - Portland, Maine and upwards to Blue Hill (home!), and I really like the very human protagonist, Mike McCabe.  He's a police detective who has relocated from NYC with his 13-year-old daughter, Casey.  He made a few assumptions -- perhaps you could call them gut feelings - that seemed a bit over the top, but without which he could not have followed the clues to catching the bad guy. And this one one bad-ass bad guy.....

Goodreads book summary: From a formidable new voice in suspense fiction comes an edge-of-the-seat story of a homicide detective on the trail of a killer, who slays with exacting precision, and who harbors a terrifying motive
          Detective Sergeant Michael McCabe moved from New York City to Portland, Maine, to escape a dark past: both the ex-wife who’d left him for an investment banker, and the tragic death of his brother, a hero cop gone bad. He sought to raise his young daughter away from the violence of the big city . . . so he’s unprepared for the horrific killer he discovers, whose bloody trail may lead to Portland’s social elite.
          Early on a September evening, the mutilated body of a pretty teenaged girl, a high school soccer star, is found dumped in a scrap-metal yard. She had been viciously assaulted, but her heart had been cut out of her chest with surgical precision. The very same day a young businesswoman, also a blonde and an athlete, was abducted as she jogged through the streets of the city’s west end. McCabe suspects both crimes are the work of the same man---a killer who’s targeting the young---who is clearly well-versed in complex surgical procedures, and who may have struck before. Just as the investigation is beginning, McCabe’s ex-wife reemerges, suddenly determined to reclaim the daughter she heedlessly abandoned years earlier.
          With the help of his straight-talking (and, at times, alluring) partner, Maggie Savage, McCabe begins a race against time to rescue the missing woman and unmask a sadistic killer---before more lives are lost.

55. Peter Pan Must Die - John Verdon

#4 David Gurney

2014 Crown Publishers

442 pgs.

Adult murder mystery

Finished 9/5/2014

Goodreads rating: 3.90

My rating:  4.5 Loved it

TPPL

Comtemporary upstate New York

  

1st sentence/s: (from prologue)  "There was a time when he dreamt of being the head of  a great nation.  A nuclear power."
(from Ch. 1) "In the rural Catskill Mountains of upstate New York, August was an unstable month, lurching back and forth between the bright glories of July and the gray squalls of the long winter to come."

My comments:  Ah, yes, another satisfying John Verdon mystery.  I love his intricate plotlines and the way you really do need to keep guessing the whole way.  I'm still unhappy with the relationship between Gurney and his wife, Madeleine.  It's not like any relationship I can relate to.....and I guess it's because I don't really like her.....at all!  I realized it's not a major part of the story, but it is a large minor part (ah, semantics!).  This creepy killer reminds me of some of the characters that M. E. Kerr has written about in her fabulous YA stories a few years back - not at all "normal" or "average" in appearance.  Which keeps me thinking about the evil in this guy - how much does odd appearance mold our personality?

Goodreads book summary: In John Verdon’s most sensationally twisty novel yet, ingenious puzzle solver Dave Gurney brings his analytical brilliance to a shocking murder that couldn’t have been committed the way the police say it was.
          The daunting task that confronts Gurney, once the NYPD’s top homicide cop: determining the guilt or innocence of a woman already convicted of shooting her charismatic politician husband -- who was felled by a rifle bullet to the brain while delivering the eulogy at his own mother’s funeral. 
          Peeling back the layers, Gurney quickly finds himself waging a dangerous battle of wits with a thoroughly corrupt investigator, a disturbingly cordial mob boss, a gorgeous young temptress, and a bizarre assassin whose child-like appearance has earned him the nickname Peter Pan.
          Startling twists and turns occur in rapid-fire sequence, and soon Gurney is locked inside one of the darkest cases of his career – one in which multiple murders are merely the deceptive surface under which rests a scaffolding of pure evil. Beneath the tangle of poisonous lies, Gurney discovers that the truth is more shocking than anyone had imagined.          And the identity of the villain at the mystery’s center turns out to be the biggest shock of all

26. Merciless - Lori Armstrong

2013, A Touchstone Book, Simon & Schuster

329 pgs PLUS discussion questions

Goodreads rating: 4.17

My rating: 4/Liked it a lot

Contemporary Murder Mystery; South Dakota

TPPL
First sentence/s:  "I blamed my unrealistic expectations of becoming an FBI special agent on The X-Files.  Granted, Mulder and Scully were fictional characters, but working in the FBI was nothing like portrayed on any TV shows.  Disappointment made e want to crawl inside the TV and kick some ass."

My reactions:  I love the complicated person that is Mercy Gunderson.  She's smart, tough, strong - physically - and loyal.  She's also got weaknesses and a few vulnerable soft spots that appear once-in-awhile.  She has an incredible urge to own, know, practice and know guns.  She was, after all, an army sniper.  She lives on a huge ranch in South Dakota on, near, around the Eagle River Reservation.  I've read the previous book in the series, but it was so long ago that I forgot all the numerous relationships.  This was one of the drawbacks of the book that took it down a star.  Everyone's related to someone, many generations worth, and it got very confusing.  There are a lot of "everyones."  If there's a fourth in the series I will, of course read it, but I'll begin by figuring out the family tree/s and posting it at the beginning of the book!   

Goodreads summary:  In the spirit of J.A. Jance, Nevada Barr, and C.J. Box comes Shamus Award-winning author Lori Armstrong’s sharp and gritty Merciless, about Black Ops army sniper-turned-FBI agent Mercy Gunderson and her quest for vengeance when a killer narrows his sights on her and her family.Mercy Gunderson is thrown into her first FBI murder case, working with the tribal police on the Eagle River Reservation, where the victim is the teenaged niece of the recently elected tribal president. When another gruesome killing occurs during the early stages of the investigation, Mercy and fellow FBI agent Shay Turnbull are at odds about whether the crimes are connected.

              Mercy can’t discuss her reservations about the baffling cases with her live-in boyfriend, Eagle River County Sheriff Mason Dawson, due to job confidentiality, and the couple’s home on the ranch descends into chaos when Dawson’s eleven-year-old-son Lex is sent to live with them. While hidden political agendas and old family vendettas turn ugly, masking motives and causing a rift among the tribal police, the tribal council, and the FBI, Mercy realizes that the deranged killer is still at large—and is playing a dangerous game with his sights set on Mercy as his next victim.

     Torn between her duty to the FBI and her duties to those she loves, Mercy must unleash the cold, dark, merciless killer inside her and become the predator, rather than the prey.

26. Evil at Heart - Chelsea Cain

#3 Archie Sheridan/Gretchen Lowell

Audio read by Carolyn McCormick

8 unabridged cds

McMillan Audio, 2009

345 pgs.

Goodreads rating: 3.98
My rating:  4/Really, really good
Read on the ride from Maine through probably Ohio, August 2013

Genre: Murder Mystery (adult, of course)

Setting: contemporary Portland, Oregon

My comments:  Chelsea Cain is certainly a master storyteller, and her stories aren't pretty.  I have a huge aversion to cutting the skin and this is Gretchen Lowell's forte; sad for me, because I find this continuing story extremely fascinating. This one is particularly grizzly. Gretchen has made Archie a troubled soul, a pill-popping drug addict,and she never lets up.  What is truth and what is lies?  Are there elements of truth in every lie....are there elements of falsehood in all truth? 

Goodreads summary: Gretchen Lowell is still on the loose. These days, she’s more of a cause célèbre than a feared killer, thanks to sensationalist news coverage that has made her a star. Her face graces magazine covers weekly and there have been sightings of her around the world. Most shocking of all,Portland Herald reporter Susan Ward has uncovered a bizarre kind of fan club, which celebrates the number of days she’s been free.Archie Sheridan hunted her for a decade, and after his last ploy to catch her went spectacularly wrong, remains hospitalized months later. When they last spoke, they entered a détente of sorts---Archie agreed not to kill himself if she agreed not to kill anyone else. But when a new body is found accompanied by Gretchen’s trademark heart, all bets are off and Archie is forced back into action. Has the Beauty Killer returned to her gruesome ways, or has the cult surrounding her created a whole new evil?

53. Whiskey Sour - J. A. Konrath

Audio Read by Susie Breck and Dick Hill
Brilliance Audio, 2004
For: adults
6 CD's/7 hrs.
288 pgs.
Rating: 4

Grizzly murders, humorous female protagonist, overeating side-kick, and the city of Chicago frame this humorous introduction to Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels, a lieutenant of detectives in the Chicago PD.

Jack is in charge of a particularly grizzly murder of a Jane Doe, dumped into a 7-11 trash can, badly brutalized. The next day, at another 7-11, the same thing. The Gingerbread Man is taking lives quickly...brutally....and has become mesmerized by Jack, trying to get to her, too. He is meticulous, thinks through every move, hard-to-track or catch. But Jack is smart, funny, brave and brazen and she figures it all out, much to the sociopath's chagrin. Hair-raising, scary, and quite funny, I'm sure I'll look for the next in this bar-drink titled series.

At the end of the audio the author himself reads the short story from which this book came. Great way to end the book.