Book reviews: September 2022
New books to check out this month
One Heart One Spade
Alistair Luke
$35
Your Books—self-published
Reviewed by Steve Atkinson
Kiwi architect/first-time novelist Alistair Luke delivers a semi-interesting Wellington-located detective yarn that follows a sensitive soul on his quest to solve a murder and a few other random crimes while trying to keep his personal life under control.
The author does a decent job of getting the retro-time facts right, but it would be interesting to get a real cop’s opinion of the policing details because, stealing a quote from those two movie cops Murtagh and Riggs, it all looked pretty thin.
If you can push past the frequent, awkwardly written emotional outbursts, then it’s a little trip down memory lane of the late 1970s and reminds us that it wasn’t all fun and disco mirrors.
Killing Floor
Lee Child
$24
Penguin Random House
Reviewed by Steve Atkinson
If you’re like me, then chances are you never read the first Jack Reacher novel, so Penguin Random House has released a 25th-anniversary edition. It centres on our man, who finds himself in a small-town US and charged with a crime he didn’t commit.
Yep, like all JR reads, it lays out a formula that became familiar over the following years, but also the reason the books became so successful, as Jack hooks up with a honey before efficiently dispatching the bad guys.
Then he’s off down the road towards his next adventure. If you want to find out how it all began, then start right here, with one of the best-priced books I’ve seen in a while.
Jumping Sundays
Nick Bollinger
$49.99
Auckland University Press
Reviewed By Steve Atkinson
Kiwi musician/historian/rock critic Nick Bollinger gives us an in-depth view of the rise and eventual fall of counterculture in New Zealand during the 1960s and ’70s. He gives a well-researched insight into the hippie culture, the growth of underground media, and the reasons why he believes the university students of that era were more prone to protest against what they saw as injustices.
Interestingly, quite a lot of focus then was on overseas issues when problems within New Zealand seemed to be much overlooked. The book, however, covers a much wider range of topics and people, some of whom eventually made their way into areas of influence with large corporations and government. And why is it named Jumping Sundays, you ask? Why for the Sunday gatherings of like-minded people at Myers, then Albert parks, of course. Recommended reading.
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