TV Series - Furies (French)

In French, with subtitles

Watched on Netflix
Season 1
Number of Episodes: 8
Length of Episode: 45 min.
IMBd: 6.2/10
RT Critic's Consensus: n/a
RT Audience Score: no ratings
cag: 4.5

Premiered: 3/1/2024 (US)

Note:  VERY violent 

My comments:  This kept me totally engrossed all day Sunday, despite its violence and having to read subtitles.  Twists, turns, surprises, love triangle....what's not to like?  I didn't enjoy the huge amount of violence, but the relationships and story were great!

Storyline from IMBd: A dive into Paris's criminal underworld, where Lyna meets the enigmatic and brutal Furie, the boss of this hazardous environment.

Storyline from IMBd:  Seeking to avenge her father's death, a young woman becomes entangled in the web of the Fury, peacekeeper of the Paris criminal underworld.

41. Crime on the Fens by Joy Ellis

DI Nikki Galena #1
listened on Audible
2010 Joffe Books
285 pgs.
Adult Mystery - Police Procedural
Finished 5/1/18
Goodreads rating:  4.19 - 3407 ratings
My rating:  3.5
Setting: Contemporary Lincolnshire, England

First line/s:  "A night wind blew along the alleyway, bringing with it the smell of ozone and red diesel. Nikki Galena leaned back against the rough brickwork of the derelict warehouse and wondered how many other women of thirty-six would feel quite so comfortable in such unpleasant surroundings."

My comments:  Read with a thick lilt and including a few references I was unsure of, (the cabra?  Cabra?  since I read it I didn't know if it was a proper noun place or an improper noun place) I enjoyed this mystery (not loved, but liked). Perhaps not the most exciting or surprising that I've ever read, but entertaining nonetheless, more in the characterizations than anything else.

Goodreads synopsis: 
THE DETECTIVE DI Nikki Galena: A police detective with nothing left to lose, she’s seen a girl die in her arms, and her daughter will never leave the hospital again. She’s got tough on the criminals she believes did this to her. Too tough. And now she’s been given one final warning: make it work with her new sergeant, DS Joseph Easter, or she’s out. 
HER PARTNER DS Joseph Easter is the handsome squeaky-clean new member of the team. But his nickname “Holy Joe” belies his former life as a soldier. He has an estranged daughter who blames him for everything that went wrong with their family. 
THEIR ADVERSARY is a ruthless man who holds DI Galena responsible for his terrible disfigurement. 
The town is being terrorised by gangs of violent thugs, all wearing identical hideous masks. Then a talented young female student goes missing on the marsh and Nikki and Joseph find themselves joining forces with a master criminal in their efforts to save her. They need to look behind the masks, but when they do, they find something more sinister and deadly than they ever expected . . . 
THE SETTING
The Lincolnshire Fens: great open skies brood over marshes, farmland, and nature reserves. It is not easy terrain for the Fenland Constabulary to police, due to the distances between some of the remote Fen villages, the dangerous and often misty lanes, and the poor telephone coverage. There are still villages where the oldest residents have never set foot outside their own farmland and a visit to the nearest town is a major event. But it has a strange airy beauty to it, and above it all are the biggest skies you’ve ever seen.

MOVIE - Black Mass

R (2:02)

Wide release 9-18-15

Viewed 10-1-15 at ElCon with Sheila and Connie

RT Critic:  76  Audience:   76

Cag:  5/Loved it 

Directed by Scott Cooper

Warner Bros. Studios

Based on the true story of Jimmy "Whitey" Bulger,  South Boston crime lord

Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton, Benedict Cumberbatch, Kevin Bacon, Dakota Johnson, Julianne Nicholson....and even Peter Sarsgaard

My comments:  This was a good one.  A true story I could relate to (being "from" Boston) - excellent story retelling and super actors.  Enjoyed every minute.  Interesting to watch the goodness in someone collide with the badness and watch a psychopath become crazier.  And then there's corruption.  Cops.  I grew up in the 60s and cops have always given me the heebie-jeebies, my 60s residue.  This movie reminded me of so much - especially Southie vs. the North End.....

RT Summary:  In 1970s South Boston, FBI Agent John Connolly (Joel Edgerton) persuades Irish mobster James "Whitey" Bulger (Johnny Depp) to collaborate with the FBI and eliminate a common enemy: the Italian mob. The drama tells the story of this unholy alliance, which spiraled out of control, allowing Whitey to evade law enforcement, consolidate power, and become one of the most ruthless and powerful gangsters in Boston history.

25. Forced Out - Stephen Frey

audio read by L. J. Ganser
BBC Audiobooks America, 2008
10 unabridged cds (12 hrs.)
480 pgs.
Rating:  I'll settle for 2: see below

Hard to rate – the ending is bizarre and the characters are a bit ridiculous at times....

Jack Barrett, 63 years old…the “old” age thing is brought up over and over and over again, by him and by all sorts of people that he meets. Tiring. And ridiculous. He’s a grouch and way too proud, very unlikable through the first half of the book. He has been fired after many years as a scout for the NY Yankees. He’d been framed and let go but the whole story only comes out in bits and pieces. He now lives with his daughter, Cheryl, in Sarasota. They scrape to get by. She’s in her early 30’s and somehow keep picking lousers to fall in love with. She’s pretty desperate, but loves her father….for some reason…unconditionally.

At the same time, a hit man for a mafia family in NYC has discovered that the young baseball player who SUPPOSEDLY hit and killed the boss’ grandson has discovered his whereabouts and is after him. The story flip flops between characters, adding interesting, yet odd, bits and pieces along the way. Some are left unmentioned and unresolved, and the author throws in information about activities without detailing them…they just “happened,” while others are described in painful detail.

I’m not really thrilled with the writing or the plot. I almost stopped listened three or four times, but wanted to see how it was resolved. I wish I hadn’t wasted my time. Why Mr. Frey added the twists at the end are a mystery to me. Oh well. On to another story.