Hotel Lucky Seven

Isaka, Kotaro. Hotel Lucky Seven. New York: Overlook 2024. Print.

First Sentences:

 

It's Room 415 right? 

Description:

Ever since I read Kotaro Isaka's Bullet Train, I have been addicted to his four-book series about quirky Japanese Assassins. His newest thriller, Hotel Lucky Seven, continues the dark humor mis-adventures of Nanao, code-named "Ladybug." He is tasked by his superior to perform a simple task: deliver a birthday painting from his daughter to a man in Room 2016 located in the elegant Winton Palace Hotel. What could be easier for the self-described unluckiest assassin in the world? Well, everything.

 

First, the man in the room seems suspicious as to why he is receiving a portrait that is not of him. Nanao also is wary in general due to his profession as a hit man, and thinks this delivery may possibly be some sort of trap to harm him. Sure enough, when Nanao is leaving the room, the hotel man rushes at him with arms outstretched as if to strangle him from behind. But the hotel man trips, falls, and hits his head on a table, killing him. 

 

Was this man another "professional" tasked to kill Nanao or merely surprised by Nanao, and decided to end any possible threat to himself? Ladybug realizes he mis-read the room number as "2010" when it was actually "2016" where the true recipient of the portrait probably awaits. Nanao/Ladybug sees it as just another of his simple tasks unluckily complicated by circumstances, just like on the Bullet Train.

 

And so it starts. Ladybug's mistake and resulting accident occur in the first few pages, but set in motion circumstances that just keep building. While beating a hasty retreat to the elevator and escape, Ladybug rescues a young woman, Kamino, from nefarious pursuers. He learns from her that their mission is to kidnap her and then tap into secrets held in her perfect memory that forgets nothing. Especially passwords which someone would rather not have unleashed into the world.

 

Soon the hotel is crawling with assassins on different missions. Many have rather silly nickname, such as the teams of Blanket and Pillow who clean up criminal scenes, Soda and Cola, the explosive experts. Others are more straightforward in their identities: the blowgun-wielding Six and the elderly woman, Koko, who can erase your past and set a person up with a completely untraceable new life. 

 

All these deadly strangers chase after or try to escape each other, like an old film where corridor doors open and shut as occupants look for friends or enemies. While there is certainly some killing and always the threat of death, Hotel Lucky Seven  has a rather dry sense of humor about it, much like a Keystone Kops film as characters miss each other by seconds or are captured, only to reverse fortunes on their antogonist.

 

I admit, this kind of scenario is not for everyone. But for anyone who enjoy a thriller with oddball characters with uniquely deadly skills who are trapped in unusual situations, Isaka and his Assassins series of books are definitely for you. Well-written, gripping, unexpected, and overall satisfying, Hotel Lucky Seven is the right kind of read for the adventurous reader.

 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

  

Isaka, Kotaro. Bullet Train.   

Unlucky Nanao/Ladybug is tasked with another simple job where absolutely nothing could go wrong. Just board a specific Bullet Train, pick up a suitcase from the rack, and get off at the next station. But unbeknownst to him, that particular suitcase has great value to many people, including a trainload of other assassins who encounter and try to deal with each other and the suitcase without other passengers being alerted. Fascinating. (Previously reviewed here.)

Happy reading.

Fred

 

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The Keeper of Lost Causes

Adler-Olsen, Jussi. The Keeper of Lost Causes. New York: Dutton. 2011. Print.

First Sentences:

 

She scratched her fingertips on the smooth walls until they bled, and pounded her fists on the thick panes until she could no longer feel her hands. At least ten times she had fumbled her way to the steel door and stuck her fingernails in the crack to try to pry it open, but the door could not be budged, and the edge was sharp. 

Description:

I'll start this book recommendation with a caveat: This book is not for everyone.  Jussi Adler-Olsen's The Keeper of Lost Causes is a Scandanavian noir thriller, full of exciting action, fascinating characters, and can-put-down writing style. But like other books in this genre, it depicts some shocking plotlines, stomach-churing situations and pccasionally graphic violence. So, if this type of reading is off-putting to you, stop reading now and move on to another book.

However, if you are drawn to police procedurals, gripping writing, Scandanavian settings, and flawed, complex  characters (both good and evil), then Adler-Olsen is your author. The Keeper of Lost Causes is the first of his ten novels in the Department Q series featuring the Copenhagen homicide police division assigned to take on unsolved murder and missing person cases.

It's a hopeless assignment for Carl Morck, the abrasive detective who, since no one in the Homicide force could get along with him, is kicked downstairs to to tiny basement office and a one-person staff named Assad. Carl is prepared to nap and quietly avoid any work until the five-year-old missing person case of Magete Lynggard is randomly selected to appease his boss that he is actually working on something.

Magete was traveling with her younger brother, a mute, damaged young man who, along with Magete, had survived a terrible car crash that killed their parents and several other people. When her ferry was unloading, Magete's car was left untouched and she was nowhere to be found. Because she was a noted political figure, news interest in her spiked for awhile until it was concluded that probably she had either fallen overboard or committed suicide.

But as we read in the opening paragraph, she is very much alive, but trapped in a hopelessly impenetrable prison, in complete darkness, with only an occasional voice over a PA system to fill the silence. Why she is there and what her outcome will be are a mystery until the final pages.

What drives this book and others in the Department Q series are the characters. Detective Morck has become deeply uninterested in his job after an unexpected shoot-out where one of his partners was killed and another paralized by a stray bullet. Assad, Morck's assistant, slowly shows special talents that take him away from his copying, filing, and cleaning jobs to providing valuable insight and help with the Lynggard investigation. Then there are themembers of the homicide division: some brilliant, many incompetent, all of them to be avoided by Morck at all costs.

This is a book that is impossible to put down. I read it during every spare moment, and late into the night, always regretting whenever I had to stop. It is thrilling on every page, providing questions and, little by little, possible answers as Carl begins to peel away confusing layers of this long-dead case.

Highest recommendation for lovers of thrillers, procedurals, unsolved mysteries, and absorbing characters.

 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

  

Adler-Olsen, Jussi. Locked In.   

Carl Morck, fresh off of solving the nail-gun murder case, is thrown into jail when a suitcase full of money and drugs is found in his attic. Can Morck and the Department Q team unravel the reasons behind this situation and get him out of prison before he is murdered by one of the inmates he had put into the same jail? (Previously reviewed here.)

Happy reading.

Fred

 

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Locked In

Adler-Olsen, Jussi. Locked In. New York: Dutton. 2024. Print.

First Sentences:

The predicament in which Carl now found himself reminded him of childhood, of the moment when its haze of innocence had been cruelly and definitively lifted. When, for the first time, he had come to see everything a little too clearly,to feel the sting of lies. It was the experience of injustice burning itself into his cheek after an unearned slap.

[**Note: I strongly suggest you read the first Deparrtment Q book, The Keeper of Lost Causes (see below) before reading Locked In as there are spoilers in Locked In involving characters, situations, clues and references from previous cases. FR]

Description:

In the opening chapter of Jussi Adler-Olsen's Locked In, Danish homicide detective Carl Morck finds himself in handcuffs while being driven to the "bleak, mammoth" Vestre Prison. He and his Department Q team, assigned to work on a cold murder case, had just successfully investigated and stopped the person responsible for a brutal crime spree involving nail guns, kidnapping, and other atrocities. 

But instead of congratulations, Morck is heading to prison. His crime? A long-forgotten suitcase was found in his attic containing copious amounts of drugs and cash, with Morck's fingerprints on the bills. Years ago, Morck had agreed to hold that suitcase for his partner who was relocating his residence. Unfortunately, this partner was killed and Morck eventually forgot about the suitcase. Morck never had any knowledge of what was in the case, assuming it to be clothing and personal property of his partner.

Now, he is thrown into a prison full of men who he had been instrumental in solving their crimes and putting them behind those same bars. Worse, for some unknown reason, Morck is not put into a protective solitary area, making his life vunerable to any attack. Communiction with his department, family, and friends is completely cut off.

Survival is key. Will he be able to fight off any attackers inside the prison? Can his team figure out what is going on, and who is behind the program to imprison and potentially kill him? And why, after his years of dedicated service on the Danish police force, is Morck accused of corruption?

This plotline revisits several ancient Department Q cases, especially the nail gun murder spree that left one of Mork's partners dead (the man with the suitcase) and one parnter paralized by a bullet in a police raid gone wrong. Morck has carried the guilt from that raid and the results because he hadn't pulled his gun out in time to stop the criminals from shooting his friends.

Slowly, painstakenly the Danish police, Department Q, and others work on Carl Morck's situation, some trying to free him and others seeking to hold him responsible for corruption, drug-dealing, and other criminal activities. All the time, Morck sits locked in to his prison cell, unable to defend himself much less get to the bottom of the accusations.

It's a gripping, thrilling, and twisty-turny police procedural, one that is unusual because the Danish force is investigating one of their own stars. I loved it as one of those novels not easily put down, grabbing a few pages to read during any moments of free time.

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]

  

Adler-Olsen, Jussi. The Keeper of Lost Causes.   

Carl Morck, the crusty Danish police homicide detective, is banished downstairs to form a one-man, unsolved crime division, Department Q, where he will be buried in impossible cases. He is immediately involved in a missing woman case. This is the first in the Department Q series. Clever, powerful, sometimes violent, and always totally engrossing. 

Happy reading. 

Fred

Click here to browse over 435 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

The Appeal

Hallett, Janice. The Appeal. New York: Simon & Schuster 2021. Print.

First Sentences:

As discussed, it is best you know nothing before you read the enclosed.


Description:

I am always intrigued by epistolary novels. You know, the ones told completely through written documents (e.g. letters, diaries, newspaper clippings, texts, emails, etc.). Here, in Janice Hallett's first novel, The Appeal, she frames the story through the eyes of two junior lawyers assigned by their boss to read through a file of correspondence and related notes, then come to a conclusion about what really happened. Apparently, Tanner, their boss, needs information for an upcoming case he is defending and wants fresh eyes to study the details and present him with their thoughts.

 

Slowly, slowly, we read with the copious emails and notes exchanged between a small group of people who are preparing their roles for a community theater presentation. While they find nothing exciting at first, soon an email surfaces that the director's two-year-old granddaughter, Poppy, has been diagnosed with a rare brain cancer that is probably incurable. But fortunately, her grandfather notes, Poppy's doctor has heard of promising results from a new drug in its test stages that might help, possibly even cure the child. It has not yet been approved for the general public, the Poppy's doctor has a means of obtaining the medicine at a stiff price: $175,000 for the first of four treatments.

An appeal goes out to the theater players and their friends and family to help raise the funds to acquire this test drug privately which can then be administered by the girl's doctor. Everyone contributes, creates fund-raising opportunities, and even dedicates the proceedings from the upcoming play to Poppy's medication.

But there are hints that maybe something might not be quite right in this appeal. And when a cast member is found dead after apparently falling off the balcony, no one knows quite what to think or whether anyone from their group might be responsible.

Epistolary novels usually reveal themselves slowly as we need time to, piece by piece, understand the characters and actions. Lots of writing is placed in front of the researching lawyers (and us readers) full of thoughts, ramblings, misdirection, rumors, accusations, dreams, and relationships flicker across the pages, writings presented to the lawyers (and us readers), for analysis and then discarded or held onto as key information.

Hallett is the master of spreading subtle clues buried in a complex plot and benign yet somehow suspicious characters. As I read these missives, I kept seeing something out of the corner of my eye, unable to clarify whether it was really there or even what, if anything, it was, yet thinking that it might be important to remember and understand. Such is the skill that drew me to Hallett and novel, The Appeal. And I was not in any way sorry to be immersed in its story and characters. A challenging, satisfying read.

 

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Hallett, Janice. The Twyford Code

The best, most baffling, intriguing mystery, full of twists, turns, questionable narration, undiscovered treasure, and a possible code/treasure map found in a child's book. Fantastic. (previously reviewed here)

 

 

The Fix

 Baldacci, David. The Fix. New York: Grand Central Publishing. 2017. Print.

First Sentences:

It was normally one of the safest places on earth. But not today.

Description:

OK, I admit it. I am a huge fan of David Baldacci's Amos Decker character, the ex-policeman/football player with the perfect memory. Having nothing to read that could quite match the intensity of the brilliant 787-page The Year of the Locust by Terry Hayes that I had just finished, I returned to my old reliable crime-solver, Amos Decker in Baldacci's The Fix. This is the third book in the 7-book Amos Decker detective series, the crime-solver introduced in Memory Man, the first (and in my mind the best in the series), and then the second book, The Last Mile. The Fix, I found, was a fine chaser to my Amos Decker thriller binge reading.

In the first four pages of The Fix, Decker is walking in front of the J Edgar Hoover building, home to the FBI, heading to a meeting. Several yards ahead, he notices a well-dressed man, Walter Dabney, walk up to a woman, Anne Berkshire, pull out a gun and shoot her in the head. Then, before Decker could intervene, Dabney put his gun under his chin and shoot himself.

Wow, what a start. Two deaths, sudden, intentional, in front of the FBI Headquarters, and  with memory-perfect Decker as an eye-witness.  Seems an easy case. But the only question is who were these two people? Why did Dabney kill Berkshire? And why did he choose the very public FBI building for this action?

Not much to go on, but Decker is roped into the investigation of these questions mainly due to one other minor point. The FBI has intercepted messages that very soon there will be a terrorist act on the magnitude of 9/11. And it is scheduled to take place sometime very soon. Where, when, how, and by whom are a new set of questions. Could these recent shootings and terrorist threat somehow be linked?

Slowly, slowly, Decker and his partners on the FBI investigation team, uncover tiny nuggets of interesting information that may or may not contribute to these investigations. As they peel back layers based on new discoveries, the two cases become more and more unclear. Rather

than getting closer to a solution, Decker and his team feel increasingly confused with the disjointed information.

And the day of the terrorist event is rapidly approaching.

Highly recommended for readers who love to watch detailed crime procedure, grapple with tiny clues, and then try to puzzle out for themselves who is telling the truth and who is involved in these events up to their necks. The Fix, through Baldacci's terse writing and dialogue, encourages readers to immerse themselves and binge read until their eyes droop. But what a pleasant way to stimulate your mind and wear out your eyes.

 

P.S. If you are new to the Decker series, start with the first and second books, Memory Man and The Last Mile to get some background on Decker and his partners, The Fix can clear up their backstories on its own, but it is more satisfying to start at the series' beginning and read the first two equally complex and brilliant Amos Decker books, then dive into The Fix as a dessert.

 

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

 

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Baldacci, David. Memory Man.   

The first book in the Amos Decker mystery/thriller series. Decker, due to a football accident, cannot forget anything: words, pictures, faces, events. After his wife and child are brutally murdered, and even though someone has confessed to the crime, Decker takes on his own personal investigation and uses his perfect memory to identify key clues to unravel the event and find the true killer(s). Highest recommendation. (previously reviewed here)

 

The Year of the Locust

Hayes, Terry. The Year of the Locust. New York: Scribner 2023. Print.

First Sentences:

I once went to kill a man.


Description:

Now there's a first sentence that does it's job. With those seven words that hint of upcoming violence, probably most readers will either be excited to read further or else dismiss the book as a topic they have no interest in.

 

But Terry Hayes' The Year of the Locust is, for me, a worthy addition to my "Highest Recommendation" category. It is a worthy sequel to I Am Pilgrim, my all-time favorite international thriller. 

 

Written ten years after Pilgrim, The Year of the Locust brings back Ridley Kane, the "Denied Access Area" CIA spy whose specialty is sneaking into (and successfully returning from) forbidden countries (Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, etc.) and doing what's necessary to stop terrorists who threaten the United States and the world.

Here, the CIA is alerted to a terrorist, al-Tundra, forming his own anti-Western army of hatred in Iraq for nefarious ends. Thought long-dead, al-Tundra (identified by the huge locust tattooed on his back), is revealed as alive in a grainy photograph smuggled out of Iraq for the CIA. Kane's mission is to infiltrate into Iraq, meet with the informant, and understand what al-Tundra is plotting for the world so the CIA can figure out how to stop him.

 

What could go wrong ... besides everything.

 

And that assignment is only the first in Kane's encounters with al-Tundra over the course of 700+ pages in Locust. Adventures follow in Russia, Pakistan, and even the United States. Yes, there is violence, some very graphic, but author Hayes relies on building plotting, unraveling situations, and nail-biting tension rather than glorifying blood. You are side-by-side with Kane, in his head as he pours over even trivial or complex detail ("like digging a well with a needle") and decision as he works out to best deal with each encounter or threat he faces.

The action is compelling, and, although the book is 700+ pages, it goes along rippingly due to the very short 1-3 page chapters. It's so easy to binge-read Locust, saying "Oh, I have to read just one more chapter to see how he decides/executes/escapes this situation." I won't say it flew by, but definitely it read as quickly as humanly possible since I was completely engulfed in the action, Kane, his CIA boss Falcon, the elusive CIA traitor Magus, and al-Tundra, the Locust. 

 

Locust is able to humanize Kane more over the pages, introducing his partner Rebecca, and her dealings with his profession. Kane is a loner of a man with many worries, but his relationships with Rebecca and Falcon, as well as several characters he encounters during his "Denied Access Area" missions, make his a rounder character, someone with internal conflicts.

 

Of course, the writing by Hayes is superb. His attention to every detail and descriptions of people and environment paint a totally enveloping atmosphere that make us lucky readers get hopelessly caught up in the action. There are new age weapons like a rifle scope with a built-in GPS system, an completely undetectable missile, copious use of satellite surveillance and recordings, a deadly virus, and even a bit of science fiction in the end to make the world right again. All seems reasonable and acceptable due to Hayes able writing style, terse dialogue, and believable character personalities.

I loved it, can't you tell. Won't spoil any more of the plot, but by now you should be able to decide whether this book is for you. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but for me it was gripping and fully immersive on every page. My highest recommendation.

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out

Hayes, Terry. I Am Pilgrim.   

Simply the best, most thrilling, unexpected, spy caper ever as CIA agent Kane tries to track down an unknown terrorist threatening a nefarious, unstoppable act that will destroy America. My Highest Recommendation. (previously reviewed here)