'TIL DEATH DO US PART'.....WRATHFUL GRAPES AND MYSTERIOUS DEATHS AMID THE NAPA VINEYARDS.....

  Til Death Do Us Part by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn (2024)

        In this domestic thriller, there's mystery and murder alright, but the heavy emphasis here is weighted toward domestic drama. Troubled marriages, family secrets deeply buried, infidelities and toxic sibling rivalries of children coming back to unsettle their parents.

        And all of this unfolds amidst Napa Valley wineries, where the grapes ferment to fruition right along with those familial grapes of wrath of the growers.

        Back East, the tragically widowed June, the owner of a Brooklyn wine bar is now, ten years later, happily planning a wedding to her fiance Kyle. But she lives with haunted memories of her brief marriage to the impetuous force-of-nature Josh who mysteriously drowned on their honeymoon, his body never recovered.

         And here's where the book starts to hook you, so you'll know you won't stop til you finish it. June catches glimpses of Josh, or someone who looks exactly like him. A double? Or a resurrected Josh for real? Her ceaseless, obsessive google searches lead her to a Napa winery, whose owner looks exactly like the man she spotted on the streets.

          On her own secretive mission to Napa, June stays at the winery's small hotel, hoping to meet Andrew and Sadie the married couple who own the vineyard.....especially 'Andrew', who's conveniently out of town on business.

         End of me talking plot, because of course, here's where the revelations and twists begin to make themselves known. To deepen the story and characters there's parallel flashback chapters dealing with Josh's mother Bev (also a vineyard owner with husband David). These occur around the time of Josh's tumultuous adolescence, riddled with.......well, that's for readers to find out.

        "Til Death Do Us Part' kept me intrigued and reading but I found some of the twists problematic and at least one major twist that's simply too far-fetched and pushes a reader's ability to swallow it. And leaving one of the mysteries unsolved and forgotten didn't help my impression either.

      A great set-up that makes you determined to find out all the answers. But I'm not sure how many people will go along with those reveals when they're finally laid bare. 3 passable stars, (***)....but only if you revel more in the domestic angst rather than the actual plot twists.....some of which might prompt, "You have got to be ****in' kidding me!"

'UNDER THE SURFACE'.....TEEN GIRLS LOST IN THE PARIS CATACOMBS....WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?

  Under The Surface by Diana Urban (2024)

      First thing I want to do is compliment the publishers and the artist-designer responsible for that terrific cover art.. Clever, precise rendering of what's in store for a reader, a breathless thrill ride that combines YA horror and romantic teen angst all in one package. A genuine rollercoaster ride that makes a reader want to make sure their safety bar is locked in position before they zoom off into danger.

         Ruby, Selena Val and Olivia are on their high school trip to Paris when an unwise adventurous impulse leads them into no end of peril. Julien, a charming French boy, promises to lead them into one of the wild secret parties held deep in the city's legendary, but notoriously creepy catacombs.

        Not exactly big surprise, as you might have guessed........the girls and Julen find themselves seriously lost within the endless dark tunnels stacked with bones and skulls from centuries of corpses. Stumbling from one literal dead end to another, they also discover they don't just face a fate of dying from thirst or starvation. They're not alone. They've become hunted prey of something or someone sharing the catacombs with them. And some of those ancient corpses appear a little fresher than ancient.....more like newly murdered.

        Since nobody knows where the girls went, the suspense generated here is relentless. Main character Ruby and her three companions struggle to survive as they carry the weight of connected backstories filled with friendships ripped apart by betrayals and romantic misunderstanding. As their situation grows more harrowing and dire, up above them Sean, Ruby's longtime crush (and vice versa), makes a desperate attempt to out-think the slow moving police in finding out how and where the girls disappeared into.

       A fast fun read, this one, sometimes scary, sometimes heartfelt and all of it designed to keep you glued to it to the very end. 5 stars (*****)    (and beware looking for all night parties in catacombs, a definite health hazard....)

WEEKEND MADNESS WRAP-UP.......SPECIAL "DON'T WALK YOUR BEAR CUB IN CENTRAL PARK" EDITION

Kamala Harris's popularity drives Trump into increasingly deranged rants......claiming he drew bigger crowds than Martin Luther King, "Which just goes to show you, " Trump claimed, "that when it comes to skin color, orange is the new black....

J.D. Vance's 'stolen valor' smear against his fellow V.P. candidate Walz proves completely false.......prompting Donald Trump to boast, "You know, if it wasn't for those pesky bone spurs in my foot, I could've been drafted and single handedly killed enough North Vietnam troops to win the war in less than week....."

RFK Jr. admits he dropped off a dead bear cub in New York City's Central Park......In a tearful, heartfelt apology, RFK Jr. explained, "I'm so very sorry.....but when the worm crawled out of my brain, it must have fallen into cub's ear. My doctor explained that the worm vacated my head because there just wasn't enough brain matter to sustain it......"

American astronauts stuck on the International Space Station can't find a ride home back to earth......Jeff Bezos sent them a transmission explaining that if they order a minimum of 75 dollars on their Amazon accounts, a company delivery rocket dropping off their stuff will also take them back with only a 10 percent shipping charge....

Trump claims he could have made a much better hostage swap with Vladimir Putin....."Such a terrible deal.....if I was there, I could've dialed up Vladdy's private line, did you know he only gave me his private line?   He's such a sweetheart, really, I remember those good times when we used to piss on Russian whores to see who had the longer stream.....I could've talked him into releasing every single American hostage and the only people I'd give him in return is Sean Hannity and that little KGB guy who snuck a microphone in the bottom of Joe Biden's Metemucil can...."

'UNDER PARIS'.....KILLER SHARKS DRIVE PARISIANS INTO A STATE OF IN-SEINE-ITY

Under Paris (Netflix streaming 2024)   If you thought France's opening ceremonies for the 2024 Olympics were downright weird.....you  ain't seen nothin' yet.

         That grand opening, as bonkers and off-the-rails a spectacle as you'd thought you'd ever watch on TV pales in comparison with what a bunch of French filmmakers did to the well-worn genre of "You gotta be ****in' kidding me!" shark movie. 

          We've gotta hand it to them......'Under Paris' makes the 'Sharknado' comic atrocities look like Academy Award Winners. And believe us, that kind of unabashed craziness takes serious, dedicated commitment to pull off. 

         In a spot-on metaphor for the movie itself, our story opens in an ocean full of floating garbage. Enviromental activist-oceanographer Sophia (Berenice Bejo) is searching for big-ass shark Lilith, on whom she's stuck a tracking device. Sophia's husband and two other guys dive under the fields of floating trash to get up and close and personal with Lilith. Bad move, boys.

           After Lilith's gobbles up those three suckers, a broken distraught Sophia exiles herself to tour guiding at a Paris aquarium. But that's also near where another environmental group of rebel rousers has tracked Lilith making herself at home in the filthy waters of the Seine.

           To Sophia's horror, Lilith's mutated in all sorts of disturbing ways. She's adjusted to fresh water and can pump out mass quantities of shark babies all by herself without need of shtupping a boy shark.

          In a lake underneath the catacombs, Momma Lil's bred a swarm of offspring......right on the eve of the Mayor of Paris's pride and joy, a Triathlon race in the Seine by scores of competitive swimmers. Whoo-hooo! Lilith can hear that dinner bell ringing......

          The film's finale does not disappoint. It more than delivers every gory, blood-soaked, ridiculous moments you could ever possibly dream of.....a veritable carnival of carnage that doubles down and escalates into apocalyptic, demented delirium. 

         We don't mind admitting we giggled like an 8th grader as Lilith snacked on the Triathlon-ers like it's all-you-can-eat-humans night. Throw in unexploded World War 2 shells blowing the living crapola out of every Seine bridge, then touching off a tsunami and you know you're wallowing in Guilty Pleasure Valhalla. 

         If we applied normal critical standards to 'Under Paris, of course it's a Zero.......

          But for those of us who live to uncover and revel in a take-no-prisoners piece of unredeemable lunacy, a trip down the rabbit hole of cinematic madness.......this one's a 4 star (****) treasure. 

           Long live our gal Lilith, who, if we understand the animation of the end credits, has deployed her shark army into every single waterway on the globe.  Can't wait for the "Wrath Of Lilith" sequel....

'TWISTERS'......GONE WITH THE WINDS......

 Twisters (2024)    What a difference 28 years makes......the amount of time elapsed between this current summer blockbuster and its predecessor "Twister", released in 1996. 

         The original, produced by Steven Spielberg and conceived and co-written by bestselling author Michael Chrichton, took the time to build a believable backstory filled with memorable characters. So even amid the spectacle of CGI-generated tornados, audiences became invested in the fates of the storm chasers well played by Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt. And the quirky, supporting cast backing them up got their individual moments to shine as well (a young Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jamie Gertz, Alan Ruck and grand old film veteran Lois Smith, whose credits date back to "East Of Eden".

          And that kind of character building is what's sorely lacking in "Twisters", which strictly follows today's template of the typical Summer Blockbuster.......stripped down to nothing but non-stop, machine-tooled wham-bams, one cataclysmic tornado after another, each wreaking escalating amounts of colossal destruction. 

          Character?  Story?  A few paltry shreds in evidence, but brother, you came to the wrong film if you're looking for anything else other than gazing slack-jawed at the mighty winds of Industrial Light & Magic, blowing people and houses to Kingdom Come. 

           Just sit back in your reclining multiplex chair, chomp on your popcorn as cars, trucks, and various unlucky humans swirl through the air as they ascend to the Land Of Oz.....(or more likely, finally splatter like water balloons when gravity sends 'em back to earth. )

             The only true fascinating credit here is having the film directed by Lee Isaac Chung, the film festival artiste of 'Minari'. But not to worry, you won't spot any pretentious, indie-film, culture-vulture, mumblecore tropes in the proceedings,The film's so mechanical and methodical in its delivery of razzle-dazzle, it might as well have been directed by an air traffic controller or NFL referees.

              The generic leads here are Daisy Edgar-Jones (of "Where The Crawdads Sing" and Glen Powell (of every other movie this year). Powell's proven (in the Netflix 'Hitman') that he's got genuine acting chops, but if he does enough of these preening, snarky wiseguy roles in bloated Hollywood tentpoles, he'll find audiences start to tire of him in a hurry.....(just ask Chris Pratt and Ryan Reynolds).

             By the way, if anyone's interested, the technology on display here is wishful sci-fi thinking, at least for now. (Edgar-Jones' plan to weaken tornados by feeding them a special chemical concoction. ) But it does make for a truly.....uh.... mind blowing (along with everything else) finale. 

              As a mindless, soulless, Dollby Atmos ear pounding, popcorn muncher, "Twisters" does indeed achieve the low bar of its goals. For those fine with that, 3 stars (***).  But anyone hoping for a real fun crowd pleaser like the original 'Twister',.......sorry. They just don't make 'em like that anymore........

              

            

'AGONY HILL'....A SMALL TOWN'S BIG MYSTERY AT THE START OF THE 60'S MOST TURBULENT TIMES.....

 Agony Hill by Sarah Stewart Taylor (2024)

     On the plus side, - a beautifully rendered portrait of a unique time and place in history - a bucolic, picturesque little Vermont town and farming community of Bethany in 1965. But even such a seemingly peaceful place is beginning to feel the effects of the escalation of the Vietnam War. and all the subsequent societal, political and cultural upheavals in store for America. Another plus - the finely created cast of characters including newly appointed State Police.. detective Franklin Warren, A former Boston cop, he arrives a damaged, haunted man, tormented by the memories of finding his young wife brutally murdered.

      Still settling in to a small town where everybody takes an interest of everybody's else's business, Franklin's confounded by the apparent bizarre suicide of Hugh Weber, Bethany's most disliked farmer.. A man of hot temper and raging opinions, what could have led him to lock himself inside his barn and set fire to it? Warren finds no rational answers from Weber's weary, but beautiful wife Sylvie, now struggling to maintain the farm with the help of her large brood of children, nor any help from Weber's equally cantankerous, volcanic=tempered brother Victor.

      And who's the elusive mystery man who may have started another fire and committed various thefts around town?

      While it's fascinating to follow Franklin and the young green cop assisting him as they methodically track down clues and question potential suspects and people of interest, the book slows to a crawl in when it delves into the small down lives of the Bethany residents and their official busybody amateur detective Alice Bellows. The story than begins to resemble the most antiquated, snail-paced Cozy mystery that takes forever to get wherever it's going...

      The only thing remotely interesting about the slow, slow townsfolk stuff is that Bethany has an unusual amount of neighbors with histories in the U.S. Intelligence community...........as if the place is Florida for elderly spies. A captivating idea, but nothing's really done with it.....at least in this first book in the series.

       As I mentioned, the world building is truly admirable, but the book depends on this to wander about if it had all the time in the world to fully lay out its story. Which is why I felt myself exhaling long sighs when it left detective Warren to go leisurely poking among the Bethany folk. A solid cast of characters and a surprisingly heart-rending resolution to the primary mystery.......but you'll need a measure of patience to arrive at it.   3 stars (***)....I'd definitely check out the next Warren case if it involves the town's geriatric secret agent brigade.....

'HOUSE OF GLASS'....A STRANGE LITTLE GIRL'S LAWYER PROBES HER FAMILY'S MYSTERIES.....

  House Of Glass by Sarah Pekkanen (2024)

        Now here's the kind of thriller I live for. Fast moving, loaded with no end of psychological dread but never ever, as so may similar books do, bogs down into a morass of internal monologue blah-blah-blah.

       Sarah Pekkanen's plot keeps a reader whipping through the pages, even while her lead character is already heavily weighed down with a horrendous backstory of her own.
Lawyer Stella Hudson, survivor of a childhood filled with tragedy and abuse, now serves as a court appointed advocate for children caught in the middle of their parents' ugly divorce and custody battles. Based on her assessment of the family and child, it's her recommendations that will inform a judge's ruling as to which parent's awarded either full or partial custody. Her own traumatic childhood normally keeps her away from cases involving small children but as a favor to a beloved mentor, she agrees to represent the best interests for 9 year old Rose Barclay.

         Rose, an unnaturally wise-beyond-her-years gifted child, stands in the middle of a wealthy family currently embroiled with scandal and sudden violent death. Now afflicted by muteness, the little girl may have witnessed her live-in nanny's fatal plunge out of a window, a suspicious death with no shortage of family suspects......her mother Beth, her grandmother Harriet, and her father Ian, whose affair with the nanny left the girl pregnant, touching off the divorce and custody war between the Barclays.

        Armed with a court order to conduct an overview of Rose and her family, Stella must plunge into the maelstrom of the Barclays' darkest secrets and the nanny's death, a mystery that's even left the police stymied. And all of her attempts to bond with the strangely silent, enigmatic (and just possibly, murderous) Rose, have brought back all the nightmarish memories of Stella's own childhood, including mysteries surrounding the death of her mother.

        While I can't claim the twists and reveals are all that shocking, the suspense, ominous clues and red herring pile up nicely and the pacing never lags for a single moment. The story does an exemplary job in making a reader constantly worry about Stella's safety and sanity, which for me, more than compensated for the absence of the usual head-shaking, 'say what, now?' twists. I'm always all in for a book that hooks you from the start until you race to the finish and this one even includes a heart touching moment that might leave you misty eyed. A full 5 star 'grab it' for sure.  Your final-weeks-at-the-beach-read has arrived.   5 stars (*****)