A Bit of a Catch Up

So, last night was fairly uneventful. Yoga ... but Loulou came to try it out for the first time so that was cool. Except for the fact that the class was packed! Literally zero space between mats. Me, I like a quieter class. Anyway, Loulou seemed to like it so I think she'll be back again. And then home for some dinner and a muscle-relaxing bath with my latest book (Hannibal Rising) ... I'm trying to finish it before seeing the movie, which is currently scheduled for Friday night! And I even managed to squeeze in one episode of Grey's.

And then there is some catching up I need to do here. I've been reading like a demon what with all these public holidays, so I've got two books to review. The first was The Sacred Art of Stealing by Christopher Brookmyre.

With one of the most baldly obscene opening paragraphs of any modern novel, The Sacred Art of Stealing slaps its way into orbit with more expletives than prepositions. But get through the gang-rap obscenity nonsense and there's a clever, off-beat storyline handled with funky dexterity. 30-year-old Detective Sergeant Angelique de Xavia is taken hostage in a bank robbery, run by a bizarre quintet of robbers dressed as clowns who entertain the bank staff by creating artworks on the blanked-out windows. De Xavia connects uncannily with Zal, one of the gang, and there is a mutual magnetism, even though the only part of him she can see through his mask is his fearsome blue eyes. Siege over, robbers on the run, they meet up face to face and she is much taken by the art-loving Las Vegas criminal. He understands her, the pressures of her job - well, he would, wouldn't he?

I loved this book. It starts out a bit like Lock Stock or Snatch. And it has some fabulous twists which, if you've been paying attention, you'll know usually make a book for me.

The second was David Hosp's The Betrayed.

Washington D.C. A woman is found murdered in her own home; her throat slit, her corpse brutalised, subjected to the most appalling torture before she died. A piece of incriminating evidence leads to the swift arrest of a local drug dealer. Case closed. But local cop Jack Cassian has questions. The victim came from one of the city's wealthiest families. So why was she living in such a rough part of town? Why is her mother, the icily formidable Lydia Chapin, so hostile and unhelpful? Teaming up with the dead woman's sister, Sydney, to find the answers, Cassian's investigation leads him from the crack dens of the inner city to the country clubs and gilded offices of the nation's political elite. The answers lead only to further questions - and, before they know it, Sydney and Cassian are slipping deep into a labyrinth of money, power and deceit to uncover a decades-old conspiracy and could rock the nation. Can they survive long enough to learn the secrets of ...the Betrayed?

Blegh. This was decidedly average and you can figure out exactly who dunnit towards the end anyway. Not merely because the kill off half the cast in the process :P Not very impressive.