Tuesday, July 31, 2012

The Last Confession


For those avid readers out there (and I don’t just mean of my blog), have you been using goodreads.com? A friend of mine recommended it, and I recently downloaded the app. I am horrible at updating what I am reading, writing reviews, etc. I think the only thing that is working well for me is the “To-Read” shelf I have created. When I hear about a new book, or think of a new book I want to read, I try to add it to the shelf—kind of like my Netflix queue. Except Netflix sends me the movies…maybe I should talk to my local library about some kind of similar set-up ;) Anyway, here is a quick review of a novel I gobbled up over vacation. 

  

Over vacation I read an excellent crime/detective novel entitled The Last Confession. I first heard about it on NPR’s Crime in the City series where they profile an author who writes crime novels focused on a specific city--truly, the city acts like a character. Author Solomon Jones writes about the city of Philadelphia. In the The Last Confession, Jones weaves together a mystery involving the Catholic Church, heroin addiction, and the Philadelphia police department. It is truly a thriller that satisfied the parts of my brain that loved watching The Wire and reading Lillian Jackson Braun mysteries (two very disparate series of works.)

Right now I am going to add more Solomon Jones novels to my to-read shelf. 


Over vacation I also read the first novel in Adriana Trigiani's Big Stone Gap trilogy. I have most of her other novels, but never the trilogy. I am looking forward to finishing the series, but first I have Erik Larson's newest non-fiction narrative focused around the rise of the Nazi party to be tempered with a Nicholas Sparks novel I have been saving. 


I guess you can say I have varied literary interests.