Posts about books, reading, and literature.
In Frederick Forsyth’s thrilling modern espionage novel, The Fox, a British teen with Asperger’s, Luke Jennings, turns out to be a cyber-genius who can hack into the world’s most secure systems, like the Pentagon, NSA, and CIA.
In Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, Michael Pollan simplifies the complex world of nutrition into easy-to-follow tips for eating well.
Dan Brown’s Origin follows Harvard symbolist Robert Langdon as he investigates the murder of a tech billionaire in Bilbao, Spain, who claims to have solved humanity’s biggest questions...
In The Midnight Line, Reacher finds a West Point ring in a pawn shop and tracks its owner, a female veteran caught in Wyoming’s opioid trade.
It is the thirty-seventh book in the Asterix series. Caesar organises a chariot race across Italy. Asterix and Obelix enter to represent Gaul.
In Homo Deus, Yuval Noah Harari looks ahead from the rise of Homo sapiens to a possible future where biotech and data give people the power once given to the gods.
Night School revisits 1996, with Reacher in Hamburg teaming with CIA and NSA agents to stop a jihadist selling a nuclear weapon.
Lucky Luke escorts the Stern family, Jewish immigrants newly arrived from Poland, across the country to the home a friend has waiting for them in the West.
In Robert Ludlum’s The Patriot Attack, co-authored with Kyle Mills, Covert-One's Jon Smith investigates a brewing war between Japan and China driven by a powerful new metal.
Make Me drops Reacher in the isolated town of Mother’s Rest, investigating a journalist’s disappearance into a dark web conspiracy. With her partner, he uncovers a sinister underground service.
It is the thirty-sixth book in the Asterix series. Caesar writes his memoirs but leaves out the Gaul village. A scribe leaks the missing chapter.
A junk tells De Cock that his addicted girlfriend has promised fifty thousand euros to whoever kills her wealthy father. Soon that father is found dead in the canal.
In a heatwave, De Cock finds the body of an animal activist with six small dead dogs beside him. The motive is a puzzle.
A young woman reports her brother missing, and De Cock finds him dead at the clubhouse of a charity. The dead man held five hundred thousand euros and a dark secret.
De Cock and Vledder find fashion house director Verbruggen dead with a note pinned to his lapel. A jealous mistress and a rumoured merger both seem to matter.
In Robert Ludlum’s The Geneva Strategy, co-authored with Jamie Freveletti, Covert-One's Jon Smith hunts kidnappers who seized officials at a Geneva summit and threaten a cyberattack.
Arendje van Nijmegen reports her husband missing, and he is soon found dead. When her lover dies too, De Cock stops believing in coincidence.
Soon after a young widow reports being stalked by a former lover, her new partner is found murdered. Money, blackmail and jealousy all seem to play a part.
A painter who is De Cock's friend fears for his life and asks him to lead the case if anything happens. Soon after, the man is shot dead while walking his dog.
On his last day before a forced holiday, De Cock hears of the murder of Alexander de Rijke, a charismatic leader with many followers, and people soon arrive asking for his help.
Jasper van de Gouwenaer is found dead in his flat with a dagger in his back, and a newspaper claims De Cock helped arrest him the day before.
In Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari tells the story of humankind from the rise of Homo sapiens in Africa to the present day, asking how a small ape came to rule the world.
A young man tells De Cock that his former girlfriend found her new lover dead, strangled and branded on the forehead. It is the start of a series of identical killings.
A young woman asks De Cock for help, but she is too late: her husband has hanged himself. It is the start of a grim case with no official support.
In Robert Ludlum’s The Janson Option, co-authored with Douglas Corleone, Paul Janson and Jessica Kincaid head to Somalia to rescue an aid worker held by pirates.