91. Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter

listened to Audio, not sure where (!*!) but also own Kindle
read by Kathleen Early
Unabridged audio (20:00)
2015 William Morrow
548 pgs.
Adult mystery
Finished 9/20/2019
Goodreads rating:  3.99 - 142,952 ratings
My rating:  2

First line/s:  "When you first disappeared your mother warned me that finding out exactly what had happened to you would be worse than never knowing."

My comments:  Well.  I'm not sure how to begin this review.  There were a few pros but lots of cons.  What should I start with?
The cons:
     -It was super repetitive.  Endless "thinking aloud."  Super slow in many places.  Dragged in many places.  If I'd been reading aprint copy of the book I'd probably have ditched it.
     --It was really hard for me to like Claire, one of the two protagonists, from the very beginning.  Spoiled, pretty much clueless because she wanted to be, right down to the end of the book and her dec isions about what to do with her future (nothing.)
     --an incredble amount of graphic violence, torture, all toward females.  A little I can take, this was overwhelming.
     -- so many chapters of diary entries from dear old dad.  Became pretty boring hearing over and over his reminisces about the pretty daughter.
The pros:
     -- a decent mystery Kept me guessing.
     -- I listened to this being read aloud and the reader was terrific.  That ups my review by a star.
I'm pretty sure this will remain a memorable read, but not for the reasons that people might like.  So violent.  So sadistic.  It's scary to think about such sickness and real crazies in our world.  However, my rating is based on my "cons" above, not on my thought about the state of our world.

Goodreads synopsis:  Twenty years ago Claire Scott's eldest sister, Julia, went missing. No one knew where she went - no note, no body. It was a mystery that was never solved and it tore her family apart.
          Now another girl has disappeared, with chilling echoes of the past. And it seems that she might not be the only one.
          Claire is convinced Julia's disappearance is linked.
          But when she begins to learn the truth about her sister, she is confronted with a shocking discovery, and nothing will ever be the same...

17. Blood Ties - Nicholas Guild

Audio read by Graham Rowatt (VERY nicely)
CD in my new car
(11:19) 10 unabridged cds
2015, Forge Books
320 pgs.
Adult murder mystery
Finished 3-10-16
Goodreads rating: 3.99
My rating: 4
Setting: Contemporary San Francisco, CA and vicinity as well as various other places in different parts of the country

First line/s:"The rain had stopped just before dawn, but up on the coast highway the air was still laden with heavy mist, enough to dissolve the flashers on the police cruisers into pulses of smeary read light."

My comments:

(For some reason I've been reluctant to give fives lately. This was very, very good....but not quite a five, and I'm not even sure why.) How do mystery writers keep coming up with so many really different scenarios? Because there's so much going on in the real world that boggles the mind? Hmmmm. This story has a really interesting premise, and it follows it through to the end, nailing it. It started out a little slowly, but it didn't take long for me to be thinking up any excuse I could to get into the car and listen a little more. Psychopaths. Mental disorders. If you read too many of these sort of books you start looking at everyone with a questioning eye....

Goodreads synopsis:  Homicide detective Ellen Ridley of the SFPD is tracking a serial killer terrorizing young women in the San Francisco Bay Area. Ridley is sure she's cornered her most likely suspect: Stephen Tregear, a hacker and code breaker who works for U.S. Naval Intelligence. But Tregear is not the killer... he's the killer's son.
          Ridley and Tregear team up to look for Tregear's father, Walter, in an elaborate game of murderous cat and mouse. As the body count rises, Ridley must race against the clock to stop Walter before he kills any more women--and Tregear must finally confront the father who has been trying to kill him for twenty years. Blood Ties is an elegant and frightening thriller from Nicholas Guild.