#26: The Son by Jo Nesbo

The son of a rogue cop ends up in prison, strung out on heroin supplied through a mysterious source; but when he figures out his dad might have been framed, the machinery of revenge (beginning with a prison breakout) begins to run in Jo Nesbo's superior crime novel The Son.

For those in a post-Dragon Tattoo malaise,  I can't recommend anyone more than Jo Nesbo.  His Harry Hole novels, about a flawed police detective in Oslo, are all top-flight thrillers accessible to audiences foreign and domestic.

This is a stand-alone story but the equal of his other work, told at a breakneck pace and featuring nothing but flawed characters, on both sides of the law, throughout.

I got this from the Morrisson-Reeves Public Library and read it quickly.  Recommended for thriller fans.

#25: Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

A series of child murders strike a small town, and a troubled reporter--who fled the town years ago--returns to cover the story, and pick at old family wounds, in Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects.

With the runaway success of Gone Girl, Flynn's earlier novels are getting another look.  Although this shares some thematic similarities--unreliable journalism, small-town secrets, returning to a place you never wanted to see again, and so on--Sharp Objects is a much more gothic-flavored story, right down to the creepy old mansion and the weird siblings.

The storytelling is much more straightforward (whereas Gone Girl double-backed and triple-backed on itself) but is just about as unsettling as more truths about the reporter's childhood come to light, and how that childhood could be connected to what is happening now is revealed.

I listened to a good audiobook version on loan from the Morrisson-Reeves Public Library in Richmond, Indiana and am eager to seek out the rest of Flynn's writing.