Number 50- The Transit of Venus- Shirley Hazzard

 

This was a book group choice.

My second DNF in as many books, for some of the same reasons. I managed 110 out of 340 pages before I got too wound up with the overcomplicated writing style that had started intriguing, but became more and more wearing as the pages wore on.

It was a better writing style than Pynchon, but not much. The plot was just a very basic pair of love triangles with two sisters, one at the apex of each of the triangles. The level of extra detail was ridiculous.  One character was introduced and we were presented with 10 pages detailing his father's war record in WWI, despite that having nothing to do with the story in hand.

Tedious, uninspiring characters and a dull and opaque writing style combined to make this a truly putdownable book for me. One of those books that when you put it down, you don't want to pick it up again.

Your mileage may vary, I'm sure some people out there love it.  The strange person who wrote the introduction apparently reads it at least once a year and this copy is in the Virago Classics range. It's not one for me though.

Number 49- The Crying of Lot 49- Thomas Pynchon

 

Again- no prizes for guessing the reason for this choice.

Apparently this is one of the great American novels, according to the blurb on the back.

I don't get it though.  I think there's some serious Emperor's New Clothes happening there.

This is only short, but I found myself DNFing after 70 pages. I thought the writing was terrible, overblown and hyperstylised to the point of obfuscation of even the simplest plot points. I've no idea what was happening. Something about an inheritance, but it was all over the place and not going near that plot line in before I gave up.

I hated it and refuse to waste any more keystrokes on it.

Number 48- 48 Clues into the Disappearance of My Sister- Joyce Carol Oates

 

No prizes for guessing why I chose this one.

I was a little bit worried because I wasn't entirely enamoured of the last (only  other) JCO book I read. But this sounded interesting, and fit the theme.

In small town uppstate New York, the beautiful Marguerite (aka M), Sculptor and older sister to our narrator Gorgene (aka G or Gigi), has vanished. Last seen as a reflection across a pair of mirrors, she seems to have waked out of the house and disappeared.

Each of the 48 chapters is a further piece of the puzzle of what happened to her.

There are unreliable narrators and there's Gigi. Her fractious relationship with her sister is revealed in glimpses and we are left to pick up the pieces of the truth from gaps and other people's reactions.

The first several chapters are very strange in their formatting and style. They're also very short. About half way through, the chapters start getting longer and we gain more clarity into the other characters on the sidelines of the story.

I zoomed through this book in two days.  Despite the oddness, this is a compelling read. G is an entertaining narrator who doesn't give up her secrets too easily. It's a very literary but still an incredibly easy read. 

I would highly recommend this to anyone who likes their psychological thrillers with more than a touch of weirdness and literary prowess.

Number 47- Remarkably Bright Creatures- Shelby Van Pelt

 

THAT octopus book indeed. This was a book group choice and not one I've regretted having to read.

Tova has been widow for decades, and also is still mourning for the loss of her only son in an unfortunate and mysterious accident 30 years earlier. She works in the local aquarium as a late night cleaner for something to do.

Marcellus is a Giant Pacific Octopus. He lives in the aquarium and likes to escape his tanks and go for a a wander at night.

Cameron is a bit of a loser in life, abandoned by his mother at an early age, he's crossed the USA to come to this small town after finding a photo of a local rich property developer he believes to be his father.

Their lives will soon mix and intertwine in a feelgood story of hope and revelations.

This was nicely written and never boring. The friendship that develops between her and Marcellus is amusing and surprisingly feels plausible as written.

BUT- there are so many coincidences going on in this book it fast becomes truly ridiculous. If you thought that Oliver Twist getting caught trying rob his own grandad randomly chosen out of the entire population of London was a bit of a stretch, that's got nothing on some of the coincidences that happen in this book. 

Also, there are too many instances where the book could have finished 200 pages earlier if character A had just said what they knew to character B- where they knew that character B was looking for this information.

There's a key part of the plot where I still don't understand how Marcellus knew the body it had once found under the sea was who it was.

The most egregious sin this book commits though, is when one of the characters drinks Scotch WhiskEy with an E.  That's a disgrace.  the copy editor should be sacked.  Scotch whisky NEVER has the E. That's for the imitators out there in the world to distinguish them from the real thing.

I had fun with this book despite the flaws. The premise is so silly, I suppose the flaws are forgivable. Except for the whisky obviously.  It was an easy read and I rated it 3.25 out of 5 at the group.

Number 46- Rattlers- Joseph L Gilmore

 

On the base of this book, there's a small dot in marker pen which tells me I must have picked this up from a bargain bin sometime in the distant past.  I have no idea how long I've had this or where that bargain bin might have been.  I do know that I got myself a real bargain since the cheapest copy of this online seems to go for £40 or so. Probably due to that remarkably tasteful cover.

These 80s/90s horror mass market paperbacks are a gamble. Frequently I tag them as I read them so you don't have to. This one though, is a lot better than that. 

This review contains some spoilers.

Big Sam DeBlase is a Vietnam vet and construction worker who knows that if the luxury lodge he's been hired to build doesn't go to plan, it will mean the end of his construction firm that he's struggled to start up. Unfortunately, quite early on in the build, the ground levelling machines unearth part of a nest of rattlesnakes.

After consulting the experts, he's assured that there are probably hundreds of rattlers in the nest and he's got a snowball's chance in hell of getting rid of them. The chief investor and owner of the lodge (who also needs this to go ahead or he loses everything he owns) disagrees and together, big Sam DeBlase and the owner settle on a plan to rid the site of snakes.  A plan that initially seems to work, even though big Sam DeBlase's business partner, best friend and alcoholic site foreman, is killed quite horribly in the process.

We then jump several months to the grand opening of the lodge.  No snakes have been seen for months. Everything seems fine. We're introduced to a full cast of potential shreddies on their respective journeys to the event of the century. Who will survive? Like all the best 70s and 80s disaster stories, these rich and famous attendees are a bunch of people with relationship crises that are going to be solved in the most efficient way possible at some point.

The snakes are back. A chemical leak from the refrigeration unit is driving them to the surface. From the moment one of the cleaners discovers one hiding in a linen closet, Joseph L Gilmore starts building the tension quite expertly. There are lots of close calls in the build up to the grand finale when the snakes invade the lodge and start biting.

This is all good fun. Joseph L Gilmore's writing is solid throughout. There are some downsides.  Throughout the first half of the book, every character is referred to by their full name every other time they're mentioned. Joseph L Gilmore seems to think we'll forget who Big Sam DeBlase is if we just see the name Sam. It's weirdly noticeable and distracting. There's some distinct homophobia in the book. There's no issue with the lesbian couple, but when two of the male characters are revealed to be a couple, there are several references to the other (apparently nice) characters feeling disgusted about it.

The big finale is a bit of an anticlimax. After such good build up, if kind of fizzles out. It's too short. There are just not enough deaths. The escape from the lodge is too easy. The character who pulls a Dennis Nedry gets away scot free. He certainly should have been snake food. The beautiful new wife of the famous baseball player is subjected to a very weird fate indeed and might well have been better off being eaten. 

In summary, this was a good read with a really frustrating last act. It's probably not worth the current online prices, but if you can get it for the price of a regular book, go for it.

Number 45- Pier 45- Scott Alderman

 

This is an ARC I was sent by the author a couple of months back, that I held onto for a while to fit it in with my numbers theme. Sorry Scott, silly reason for delaying the review.

Seth is a recovering addict and ex-rentboy on the streets of New York in the height of the AIDS epidemic. The book follows two timelines, 1981/2 when his career on the streets started, and 1988 where he works at an AIDS hostel/hospice opposite the eponymous Pier 45 where he used to turn tricks.

This sounds like it should be a depressing and gritty tale of tragedy but it isn't. It's packed full of memorable characters, some of whom you'll fall in love with. Hope shines through even the darkest parts of the narrative. 

It's laced with a decidedly wicked sense of humour amongst the tragedy. There's a scene where he goes to his sister's house (his sister managed to marry out of the life traps that Seth got stuck in) for possibly the funniest and most awkward dinner party scene I've read in years.

Alderman's prose is excellent. It dragged me mercilessly through the story. It's cliched to say it, but this book will make you laugh and it will make you cry.  Alderman will have you at his mercy. There are some ideas in this book that genuinely pull hope from one of the worst atrocities in human history.

It's not a perfect novel.  I'm not sure the ending worked entirely for me, but the journey to get there was more than worth it. It comes out next month and I highly recommend you get your dirty mitts on a copy ASAP.

Number 44- Bloodshot reborn- Lemire, Syayan, Allen, Baron

I may have made a slight tactical error on this one.  I suppose it should be obvious that a series called Bloodshot Reborn might be a sequel to an earlier series called Bloodshot... but that didn't occur to me. 

Lemire does give a very brief recap in the opening pages of all the salient events in the Bloodshot story to that point, which means when I do get around to reading it, I won't have too may surprises.

Bloodshot was a supersoldier for Project Rising Spirit. He was controlled by nanites in his body which made him super strong and able to heal better than Wolverine. He lost the nanites, making him fully human again. Now the nanites are loose, possessing new hosts and killing indiscriminately.

It's up to the OG bloodshot to stop these killing sprees and collect the nanites back into his own body, solving the mass killings, but possibly at the cost of his newly regained humanity.

This was nominated for a record breaking 8 Harvey awards the year it was released and I can see why.

Lemire's writing rarely been better, and the artwork is phenomenal (in issues 1-4). There's a change of artist in issue 5 and some of my favourite quirks of the artwork vanish- particularly the way that a character who only exists in Bloodshot's head is now drawn the same as all the other characters instead of the cartoony way he's drawn in the first 4.

That's no real issue though. Even the "lesser" of the artists is still excellent. Lemire's writing manages to be action packed and emotional. The impact of the deaths of one set of characters was somewhat lost on me since I didn't know the original series, but that's definitely a Me problem.

I have already ordered volume 2 and can't wait to get back into this blood soaked world.

Number 43- The Hunted- Kathryn Ptacek

This was a random grab from my TBR of a book that's been languishing for far too long as I know Kathryn is a reliably good read.

It's 1975, Jessie Morrison is a lonely young girl who's just moved across several states to a small town in New Jersey. Her parents are borderline abusive, and her only friend in town is her new next door neighbour Wendy. Jessie has started to experience strange inexplicable episodes and needs help.

Stefan, a Czech journalist and holocaust survivor is in town, apparently to cover the bicentennial celebrations where the local pediatrician is due to be honoured with a humanitarian award. Can Stefan and Wendy work out what is troubling Jessie in time to save her from the forces haunting her?

This is a slow burner, but once the pieces have all slotted into place, it becomes a tense and powerful race against time.

The closest writer I can compare Kathryn Ptacek to is Charles Grant. They both share the same talent for quietly building a sense of dread. Grant has long been one of my favourite writers and Ptacek is just as good at his style of horror.

She writes with a smooth and fluid prose, building her characters believably and sympathetically (except for her villains, who are truly evil in this book). Even in the slow build, this was always a compelling read. If there is such a thing as a slow pageturner, this is it- until the final act when it was truly unputdownable.

Highly recommended.

Number 42- Life, The Universe and everything- Douglas Adams

 

Book number 42 of course, legally has to be a Douglas Adams related read. So I went for a hugely delayed reread of book three, the midpoint of the trilogy.

Following on directly from the ending of Restaurant At The End of the Universe, Arthur is still stranded on prehistoric Earth. Soon after running into Ford prefect, he finds himself chasing a Chesterfield sofa across a field, which then, as these things do, transports him to Lords Cricket Ground in the middle of a match, about 2 days before the imminent demolition of the planet.

Another old character pops up and whisks them off on an intergalactic adventure to prevent an all out war across the universe that could wipe out existence forever.

This was adapted from a rejected idea for a Doctor Who serial and Adams had to really work hard in shoehorning the least heroic set of characters in literature into a story about  saving the universe.

I remember thinking this was probably the best of the books on my first time through. On this reading, I realised how much of this book is infodump, and how little the characters actually do. That's not to say it's not a good book at all. It's still a great read and I was laughing out loud from the first paragraph. It's just that the story is not as strong as I remember it being.

That said, Agrajag and Wowbagger are two of Adams's greatest creations. The Agrajag chapter is possibly the single funniest segment in his entire oeuvre.  

So in summary, not as brilliant as I recall but still brilliant. 

Number 41- A Winter Grave- Peter May

 

Perfect reading for the midst of a month long heatwave- a thriller set in a snowstorm in the Scottish mountains.

It's the year 2151, climate change has ravaged the planet, huge swathes of land are underwater (including half of Glasgow, where the novel opens properly), refugee crises are worse than ever, the UK has split and Scotland is an independent state. In the middle of all this backdrop, a dead body is found frozen on a Scottish mountaintop.

Veteran cop Cameron Brodie has just found out he has a life ending illness. He volunteers to take the case. He has an ulterior motive since his estranged daughter is the person who found the body and he wants to reconnect before the end. He finds a lot more than family problems in the sleepy village, he finds a conspiracy worth killing for.

It's a very busy novel. May is juggling lots of plotlines and it has to be said that he does this with ease. The detective mystery bit of the story almost takes back seat. The number of potential suspects is very low so the answers are relatively predictable.

There are some unlikely elements to the story and the science really doesn't seem to have improved much since 2023 when this was written. The worldbuilding is done extremely well though. The politics are woven nicely into the story and the climate issues never feel like preaching.

This is much better than Lockdown by the same author that I read back in 2020. I will be trying more of his books as soon as I can get around to them.  This has shifted him up the readability meter by a fair distance. I will even overlook the fact that he describes a character as having thick pubic hair over his belly and chest...

Number 40- Don't Let Him In- Lisa Jewell

 

My first Lisa Jewell book, and probably not my last.

This is 400 pages but I steamed through it in 2 days. It's pretty much the definition of a pageturner. The short chapters mean you look to see how long the next one is and think 'oh sod it, one more chapter'- several times.

It's the story of a man who inveigles his way into women's lives, marries them, steals their money and runs off to join another family. 

I was reminded very much of the old film the Stepfather with Terry O'Quinn as a similar character- although when he got bored of his families, he didn't just run off with their money. He ended things much more finally.

This book did slightly lack that level of drama, but it was still a compelling and very very quick and easy read.

After all the build up, I did think the final showdown when all the plot lines converged was more than a little bit anti-climactic. But I can't deny that the journey to that ending was so much fun, it's not as much of a complaint as it might otherwise have been.

All in all, 7 out of 10. It takes talent to make the reader hate a character as much as I hated he of many names who was at the centre of all the storylines. I will definitely be reading more of hers.  This was practically a cheat read.

Number 39- Royal City Volume 1: Next of Kin- Jeff Lemire

 

And this was the second of the pair of Jeff Lemire graphic novels. Volume 1 of his Royal City saga.

A struggling writer returns to his roots in the eponymous city after his father suffers a stroke.

To say the family is dysfunctional would be a vast understatement. His little brother Tommy drowned several years earlier as a child, and his siblings and his mother are all haunted by a different version of Tommy.

We are thrown into the internal politics of the family and the city itself.  His family run the manufacturing plant which is the heart of the town's wealth, but they're struggling badly.

I was starting to feel real emotions for this cast of characters, and then the book finished. The characters are well drawn and utterly believable, even the ghost.

This is all illustrated by Lemire as well as scripted. His artwork is distinctive. I tend to find it quite ugly until I settle into the story, at which point it weirdly makes sense and starts looking strangely pretty. 

Again, I need to order part 2 of this sooner rather than later. This is Lemire at the height of his creativity.

Number 38- Black Hammer- Secret Origins- Jeff Lemire/Dean Ormston

 

It occurred to me that I've not read many graphic novels this year, so i thought I'd fix that with a pair of Jeff Lemire offerings.

This is Lemire's non-DC take on the superhero genre.

A group of Golden Age superhero types are stuck in a small town that they can't escape for reasons not yet disclosed. They've been there for 10 years, since they and Black Hammer defeated the AntiGod and saved Spiral City. They vanished from their own universe at the moment of victory and are assumed dead.

This is absolutely vintage Lemire. It's got great characters, a mind-bending premise (especially Colonel Weird's storyline) and an emotional heart the size of Texas. 

The artwork by Dean Ormston is top notch. I need to get volume 2 of this ASAP given the cliffhanger ending.

Number 37- Hampton Heights- Dan Kois

 

This is a strange little book. I'm not entirely sure why I bought it.  That cover is not particularly enticing.  But I must have thought so on the day.

Kevin is a newspaper distributor.  He decides to take a bunch of his paperboys to the Milwaukee suburb of Hampton Heights to try to sell some subscriptions. This is not his wisest decision. Hampton Heights is no ordinary neighborhood, and the boys find themselves facing werewolves, witches and trolls as they wander the streets.

This is more of a short story collection than a straight novel. Kevin has his story, and the three pairs of boys he sends off around the streets each have their own segments, which only really merge into one story in the closing pages.

I wasn't finding much to love about the book in the first two stories.  There wasn't anything to hate either, it just wasn't pushing any of my buttons. Then the Mark and Ryan story started.  This was a radical departure from what had come before, with a sleek fairy tale feel to the narration which was just brilliantly handled.

That segment saved this book for me. Dan Kois can really write when he wants to.

Kevin stars in the first story, meeting a mysterious woman in a bar and falling for her otherworldly charms. The weirdly named Sigmone (I assume pronounced Simon) and Joel meet up with warring gangs of werewolves. Ryan and Mark encounter a pair of witches who have a story to tell them. Al and Nishu run foul of a mischievous troll with an appetite for memories. then they all go to Burger King for the final short segment that ties the narrative together.

This is never scary. It's almost a YA novel and I would hesitate to call it a horror novel, despite all the tropes in play. It's more of an urban fantasy crossed with a coming of age story. I had fun with it, and the last half is very good indeed.

If you're looking for something a bit out of left field, give this a try.

Number 36- (Don't) Call Mum- Matt Wesolowski

 

Another cheat read from last weekend. It's another of the novella's in Wild Hunt Books' Northern Weird Project. I think I only have one more till I've read the full set, and very good they've all been so far.

This is set almost entirely on a train. Our protagonist Leo is trying to get home to the remote town of Malacstone. An obnoxious man boards the train thinking he's headed for London, but he couldn't be more wrong.

When the train starts breaking down in the middle of nowhere, they can hear noises from outside. There are local legends surrounding the next stop, if they ever make it.  Could there be truth to the stories of the mysterious Underwood?

This short novel manages to build an incredible atmosphere, as well as making us well and truly loathe the man who initially thinks he's headed south.

It's a masterpiece of how to create convincing characters with minimal brushstrokes. I raced through this book in a couple of hours and loved every page.  

Highly recommended.

For reference, the other Northern Weird Project books are This House isn't Haunted But We Are (Stephen Howard), The Off Season (Jodie Robins), Good Boy (Neil McRobert), Turbine 34 (Katherine Clements), all of which I have reviewed in the past 12 months or so, and The Retreat (Gemma Fairclough) which is close to the top of my TBR. It's an excellent selection of short novels.

Number 35- A Short Stay in Hell- Stephen L Peck

Another cheat read- trying to get my numbers up before the halfway point in the year ( I finished this on Saturday just gone- 5 days ago)

The title tells you in an ultra-sarcastic way what this book is about. When Soren Johanssen dies, he assumes he's going to heaven since he's been a good Mormon boy all his life and followed all the rules.

However, in a waiting room hosted by a genial demon, we find out that Mormonism isn't actually the one true faith, and therefore he's going to hell to repent. I won't reveal which faith it is that gets the free pass to heaven, you will need to read the book to find that out for yourself.

He finds himself in an almost infinite library and tasked with finding the book that describes his life. If he can find that book, he can move on. That's easier said than done though.

It appears that mystical, infinite (almost) libraries are almost becoming a subgenre of their own. And it's one I approve of.

This is a much better example of the genre than The Midnight Library was. The humour works and the whole treatment of the theme is much better. I think Mark Lawrence's Library trilogy might still hold the edge for me though.

I really liked the characters in this. The scope of the task they face becomes horrifically clear very quickly. The fact that Peck manages to make a hell of eternal tedium into such an intriguing and more than vaguely disturbing story is nothing short of miraculous. It's difficult to say if the Hell of other people is better or worse than the Hell of Loneliness that Soren also endures.

The Hell in this is based on a short story by Borges  this is openly admitted to in the book by the demon who decides which Hell to send our poor protagonist.

The world Peck builds is truly Hellish.  Far worse and more imaginative than any lakes of fire and brimstone.

I know this is a book that is going to stick with me.  It's also a dead easy read and very short- just over 100 pages, but more satisfying than a lot of novels four times that length.

Highly recommended.

Number 34- Turbine 34- Katherine Clements

 

Another entry in the numbers theme so quickly...

The year is 2050 something. The world is baking.  On the West Yorkshire moors, an environmental scientist is trying to determine the impact of a controversial wind farm on the local peat bogs. She camps up by Turbine 34. However, there is something else on the moors, something that knows her, something that shouldn't be there.

This is a nice quick read that builds its atmosphere with great efficiency. The images and visions she experiences are at times genuinely unnerving.

The acknowledgements highlight the strong environmental message that runs through the story about the importance of the peat bogs as habitats for the wildlife, and flood defence etc. The book manages to carry these messages without overloading the story.

However, I do think the ending was fluffed quite badly. The twist to the tale really doesn't work for me.  It's a shame because I was really enjoying it up until that point.

Your mileage may vary.  This was a damned good trip, even though the destination was a bit of a letdown.

Number 33- 33 Place Brugmann- Alice Austin

 

This book was specifically chosen for the number in the title, and it sounded interesting. The next part of my occasional numbered books theme for the year.

Set in the second world war, this follows the inhabitants of the eponymous Belgian house in their various experiences of wartime Europe. The Jewish family from the first floor flee to the UK. Other inhabitants join the army or the resistance. Others are more sympathetic with the invaders.

This is all very nicely written, but it's such a slow burn I struggled to get involved with any of the characters or their dramas. The second half of the book is definitely much more interesting, especially when the residents start running foul of a traitor.

Each chapter is written from the point of view of a different character, including two chapters told posthumously, which allows for a first person narration of the character's death. That was an interesting twist.

However, this falls foul of the old trap of all the characters talking with the same narrative voice. Older characters will not talk in the same way as younger characters. The old colonel will not have the same voice as a Russian immigrant Jewish girl. But in this book, they all sound the same. It robs the book of a lot of its potential.

I can understand why people would like this. The prose is undeniably good, even if it should be varied and isn't. The story, when it gets going, is good. The slow unravelling of plot points is actually very nicely handled where a passing comment from one character can take a whole new meaning later on. However, I just didn't get on well with this book.

Lots of potential, but for me it fell well short.

Number 32- Make Room! Make Room!- Harry Harrison

 

When this was chosen for a book group, I was very excited. I'd not read a Harry Harrison since a few of the Stainless Steel Rat books several decades ago.  Plus, when I looked for it on google, I discovered that this was the basis for the film Soylent Green.

As a result, I went into this book expecting a light hearted science fiction adventure with a dark twist in the tail.

That is not what you get from this book in the slightest. This is a grim dystopian novel set in a massively overcrowded future version of New York.  The far distant future in question here being 1999.

Andy Rush is a New York detective. When he's asked to solve the murder of a local criminal with high up connections, he finds himself caught in a whole heap of trouble- although he does has the benefit of a fresh love life in the shape of the victim's ex-mistress.

The world building in this book is brilliant.  It all feels so grimy and horrible that you find yourself wanting to take a shower after some sequences. 

The story seems to take second place to the world-building as there's not really that much happening in relation to the case. In a city this crowded, with 50s style technology that isn't up to even supplying water to the whole population, detective work won't go far. 

In alternating chapters we follow Andy and the killer as they live their lives over several months leading to the dawn of the new century. It's not a cat and mouse situation, literally just their lives in different parts of the city. That's not to say it's not interesting.  The writing is top notch. The world Harrison creates is a character in its own right and the novel is never even close to boring.

As predictive dystopias go, it missed the mark by a huge distance, thank goodness.  It failed to take into account that technology would improve. This is a nightmare vision of a world that could have been. It doesn't have the famous twist from the film, and I think I only recall one or two events from the book being used in the film although it's been a long long time). 

If there are any flaws, I would say that the repeated lectures from Andy's flatmate about reproductive control near the end of the book seem to come from nowhere, and the second time he rants on the subject could almost be a cut and paste from his rant 5 pages or so earlier as it covered all the same points again, just with the character talking to someone else. 

Despite being entirely different to what I expected- a bleak dystopian warning about overpopulation- rather than a light and fluffy adventure with a twist- I still really enjoyed this. And just check out that gorgeous cover art. They don't make them like that any more.

Number 31- At Risk- Stella Rimington

 

As you can see from that cover quote, this is the debut novel by Stella Rimington, the former head of M15. Stunning is a matter of debate.

Liz Carlyle is an intelligence officer in MI5. When a report says that an attack is about to be carried out by an "Invisible" operative, an ethnic native terrorist who therefore can pass through borders unchecked and access our institutions freely, the stage is set for a race against time.

This was published in 2003 (therefore probably written in 2001/2, in the wake of 9/11, which probably explains the complete lack of any balance in the narrative about Muslims. There are three in the story, the non-evil one is sidelined very early on and forgotten about, and the other two are sociopaths dead set on killing innocents. There could have been the use of the word extremist, but I don't recall it in the book. that would at least have served to tell us that these characters are at the fringe of their group and not representative of the faith. 

Anyhoo... rant over.

It's a slow burn of a story, with little action for the first two hundred pages or so. When one of the killers commits a murder in self defense after paying to be smuggled in, our plucky Liz is on the case, sleuthing around and finding clues to the exact nature of the treat to the country.

It all plays out rather sedately, which is probably more realistic than an all action shoot-em-up type thriller, but it doesn't make for a compulsive read until about 100 pages from the end. Liz does a lot of ringing around and asking people to find information for her, or receiving a fresh message from one of her sources rather than actively finding out for herself. The section with the passenger manifest would have been better if she'd done it herself instead of trusting subordinates to check it for her for example.

The prose is unremarkable, but not actively bad.  The book is never less than readable.  I don't personally think it ever reached the heights of "stunning" as stated on the cover. It's worth reading. Given who she is, it's probably a better insight into how these things actually work. It's a shame that it does highlight why these types of books do embellish detail.

6/10 if I'm feeling generous.