"Deep Dark" by Laura Griffin [Review]

Deep Dark by Laura Griffin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a difficult novel to review. There were some things that were absolutely awesome, and some other things that were absolutely awful. Together, they add up to a decent novel.


Reed Novak is a dedicated but troubled detective, still struggling with the aftermath of his divorce. He finds himself baffled by a serial killer who seems to know forensic evidence better than he does. When you're trying to catch someone who's covered their tracks so well that they even wear plastic gloves and shoe covers, clues are in short supply. He's a great character, tough but with a soft center looking for love.

Laney Knox is a hacker for the Delphi Center, a non-profit group that offers freelance crime scene investigation. She's still traumatized from an attack late at night by a mysterious man who almost killed her. When she discovers her best friend was murdered by the same man, she tries to anonymously tip Novak off to the killer. When he tracks her down, she reluctantly joins forces with Novak to stop him. But she also finds herself attracted to him, and they form a professional and personal bond.

THE GOOD

+ Writing
The writing is some of the best I've ever seen. Within a few words, the author is able to conjure up an entire scene. She puts in just enough information for us to visualize the world without putting in unnecessary exposition. She sprinkles in details that not only describe things, but also gives us a lot of background. Without coming right out and saying, "This character is a police officer," she will allow those facts to be implied and expressed in actions and description.

For example, this is the second paragraph of the book:
"She [Laney Knox] stared into the void, trying to shake off her grogginess. The outdoor lightbulb was new-her landlord had changed it yesterday. Had he botched the job? She should have done it herself, but her shoestring budget didn't cover LED lights. It barely covered ramen and Red Bull."

In those five sentences, we learn she's renting her apartment, she's independent enough to want to do things herself, she's poor, and she eats a diet that's favored by college students and (as is later revealed) computer hackers to maximize long hours and minimal flavor.

In other words, Griffin is a master of the writer's axiom: "show, don't tell." From the very first sentence, I was amazed at her command of the language. I can't say enough about that.

+ Characterization
Everyone in the novel feels like a fully developed character. The major heroes Novak and Laney have complex and detailed backgrounds. We learn about their family and friends and enemies and connections, so the novel is a journey of discovering who they are and what drives them. They also have their own little quirks and idiosyncrasies that show in the way they see the world, and even decorate their apartments. But the characterization continues all the way down to secondary characters. Even people who have one or two lines have little details that make them come to life as more than just clichés.

+ Romance
I'm not usually a romance reader, so I can't say if the romance in this novel is the best ever, but I thought it was good. As someone who doesn't particularly enjoy romance, I liked that the romantic subplot didn't overwhelm the actual story. It was a major element, but the suspense and tension didn't get pushed to the side. I did want the two of them to get together, and enjoyed their interactions together. Maybe some would think the romance was too thin, but I liked it.

+ Technical Details
From reading up on the back of the book, it seems like this novel is in the "Tracers" series. It seems like each novel is about different forensic research. I thought that showed because there's a lot of it. This novel is like an episode of "CSI" with different forensic scientists following clues on hair, blood, fingerprints, metal composition, and everything in between. Novak spends a lot of time talking to scientists, and various techniques are described in detail. I was especially impressed with how the novel following actual police procedure. I enjoy forensic science, so it was fun to read about people studying intricate clues to the mystery. As the description says, fans of "CSI" would eat this up.

+ Suspense
I've read a lot of suspense novels, and this serial killer is particularly diabolical. The idea of a killer who knows how to cover his tracks is an old one, but I've never seen one this detailed. I loved the chess match between the killer's hiding clues, and how the police still managed to find ways to track him down. The threat of impending death also ramped up nicely, and there were some good action scenes that made my heart race. A real page-turner.

THE BAD
- Action
For a suspense thriller, there aren't enough action scenes for me. There's basically a couple of chase scenes. I would have liked more actual action scenes - maybe a firefight or a car chase or something. If you made this into a movie, it would be people sitting around talking for two hours with about five minutes of action.

-CSI Clichés
It felt like Griffin has been watching too many episodes of "CSI." I mean that literally, as evidenced by the fact she calls the crime scene forensics team "CSI" at one point. To those who watch this show, the term "CSI" is a made-up term, an explanation for why the forensic scientists on the show will go out into the field, interview suspects, and carry out raids, none of which real crime scene technicians do. In the real world, crime scene forensics is known as "CS" or "forensics." Calling them CSI is comparable to someone calling the American space program "Starfleet" instead of NASA.

- Characterization
As much as the characters are more than clichés, they're not exactly complex. For example, the main character Laney Knox is described as being awkward and uncomfortable in social settings, but her actions show anything but. She has lots of friends, goes to parties and work where there are lots of people around, and her dialogue shows confidence and humor. This chick is practically an extrovert. Other than her interior dialogue and people saying she has social anxiety, there's no attempt to actually follow through on that. Lizbeth Salander of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" is a great example of real social anxiety portrayed in fiction. Laney Knox is pretty much your cookie cutter "spunky chick" cliché heroine. That's not necessarily bad, since she's a fun character. I just was disappointed Griffin chose not to portray social anxiety realistically.

- Hacking
The author clearly knows forensic science, but has a limited understanding of the hacker community. She uses terms like "script kiddies" and actual hacking techniques, which shows some research, but other areas are weak. For example, Griffin describes the heroine as a legend in the hacking community because she did a DDOS attack. DDOS attacks are one of the most overused and easiest to carry out "script kiddy" hacks, so it's unlikely that would impress the hacker community as much as the author claims. Also, the heroine manages to guess people's passwords using various social engineering tricks, which impresses people, but real hackers know guessing passwords is a waste of time. As someone who works tech support and has to deal with people who can't even guess their own passwords, I know it's virtually impossible to guess someone else's. Especially when many accounts will lock after too many attempts. Real hackers will use tools to reset the password themselves or guess the password with automated cracker tools or bypass the password entirely. It seems like Griffin did some research to sound like she knew what she was talking about, but not enough to be an actual expert. Bottom line, the tech speak would fool someone with only limited knowledge of hacking, but real hackers roll their eyes.

- The Ending
I assumed this book was a typical thriller like James Patterson or Thomas Harris where the killer is unknown. I didn't realize it was supposed to be a mystery where the killer is one of the book's characters, and I was supposed to figure out who. When they revealed the killer as one of the characters already introduced, I was dumbfounded and disappointed. I mean, out of all the millions of people in the city, what are the odds the killer would turn out to be one of the twenty or so people in the novel? I know that's standard for mystery novels, but I wasn't expecting that in a novel billed as a thriller. I also found the revelation kind of ridiculous. Most of the clues the detectives spent weeks analyzing and pursuing ended up having almost nothing to do with finding the killer. Without spoiling anything, I'll just say the detective basically trips over the name of the real killer without relying on any of the research performed. Most of the clues didn't point to the real killer except in the vaguest sense. That means 90% of the novel could have been cut without affecting the resolution in any way.

When you put the good and the bad together, you get a novel that I would still recommend, but is held back by some major problems.

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"The Girl Who Played with Fire" by Stieg Larsson [Review]

The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist is back, this time in pursuit of a ring of human traffickers who are forcing women into prostitution. An idealistic reporter approaches his magazine "Millennium" with a killer story. He and his girlfriend are planning to release a report on the sex crimes industry in Sweden. Not only will the report detail the horror of these crimes, it will also expose the identities of police officers, judges, and politicians involved. It will also discuss a mysterious figure known only as "Zala" who is the mastermind behind the operation. "Millennium" plans to publish an issue dedicated to it, as well as publish a book that will out the names. But before the book can be published, the authors are brutally murdered, and Salander is accused of the crime. The police are hunting her while Blomkvist tries to find the truth and clear her name.


This is a very different book from the first novel, "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo." "Tattoo" was a dark and twisted mystery, mainly set on a remote island, dealing with grisly murder. At times, it felt like a horror novel along the lines of "Red Dragon" or "Silence of the Lambs." Readers of "Dragon's Tattoo" will probably go into this looking for a taut and gripping mystery. That's not what they get. The killer is revealed earlier on, a blond giant with a resistance to pain. The only mystery is the identity of Zala, but it's not a mystery that the main characters are even pursuing for most of the novel. This novel is more of a traditional thriller.

The feel of "Fire" is also much different. Most of this novel takes place in the city of Stockholm. It doesn't have the claustrophobic horror of the first novel. There's more police procedure with a team of detectives trying to track down Salander. Along the way, they dig deeper into Salander's past while Salander and Blomkvist try to get one step ahead of them. We find out some of the trauma that led to her emotional problems, and also discover she has a shocking connection to the man behind the slavery ring. There's also some political intrigue as Blomkvist's investigation of Zala leads to a government conspiracy.

Most of the familiar characters from the last novel are here, including the return of Advokat Bjurman, who Salander tortured and tattooed in the last novel. It turns out he's dedicated himself to avenging himself on Salander. Unfortunately, his plans don't go as he expects.

This is a good novel, but not as good as "Dragon Tattoo." Besides the lack of mystery, there's also a lack of Salander, who was the big star of the last novel. She spends most of the novel hiding from the police. While her fugitive status should be a source of tension, it's not. In the early stages, she finds an apartment which she rents in another name that the police don't know about, so she's untraceable. No car chases, no close calls. She just sits in her apartment, surfing the Internet, eating frozen pizza, and reading about how people are chasing her. Though Salander isn't as involved in the story, her moments are dynamite. She does a lot of sleuthing with her hacker skills, trying to help Blomkvist and find Zala. There's also a scene where she faces down two huge bikers, and comes out a winner. But Blomkvist is clearly more the hero in this novel, and he's just not as interesting to me as Salander.

I would also argue this novel has a lot of the same flaws as "Dragon's Tattoo," which desperately needed editing. There's a similar lack of focus as the last one. While there aren't as many sandwiches in this novel, we do get an exhaustive amount of information about Apple computers, Swedish politics, police work, and geography. One particularly memorable section where Salander goes to an IKEA store reads like a catalog as the author details the name and model of every stick of furniture she buys. There's also a scene where one of the detectives meticulously sweeps the dead couple's apartment for clues, cataloguing everything in every drawer and every pocket of the clothes he finds. Interesting to a point, but way beyond what we need to know for the story.

The opening of the novel is also unnecessary, dealing with Salander traveling the world on the ill-gotten gains she stole in "Dragon Tattoo." We read about Salander lounging on the beach in the Caribbean, having an affair with an underage boy (but she's a woman, so it's okay), and her suspicions about the couple in the hotel room next door to her. That subplot about the couple leads to its own conclusion which never comes up again, making it more like a short story than an actual part of the novel. You could have cut that whole section out, sold it as a separate novella "The Girl With the Sunburned Tattoo," and it wouldn't have changed a thing.

There are also more chapters about how incredibly attractive Blomkvist is, including a whole subplot about how a new intern at "Millennium" is desperately trying to seduce him, which doesn't factor into the plot at all. Poor Blomkvist moans about how frustrating it is for a hot teenage girl to be banging on his front door at night. Yes, Mikael Bonkvist is in full effect. Pretty much any female in the story is either sleeping with him or wants to sleep with him. Since Blomkvist is clearly a stand-in for the author, a fun game is to replace "Mikael Blomkvist" with "Stieg Larsson" and it makes his gushing praise even more ridiculous.

Let's also mention that Salander gets breast implants, which a lot of readers who enjoyed the feminist theme of the first novel found upsetting. It's a controversial move, but not surprising. Larsson was so focused on her small breasts in the last novel that it seems he simply couldn't handle writing another novel about a woman who doesn't have huge boobs. Certainly all the other women in the novel do.

The novel ends with a cliffhanger, leading to the third novel. But this book is still worth reading, even with its flaws.

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"Triplanetary" by E.E. "Doc" Smith [Review]

Triplanetary by E.E. "Doc" Smith
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This review is for any modern reader who didn't grow up reading pulp fiction from the 1930s: this probably isn't the story for you. "Triplanetary" is a classic science fiction story, but it doesn't hold up well compared to modern fiction.

I was born in the seventies, so this story is about forty years ahead of my time to begin with, but I'm a big fan of pulp sci-fi. While a lot of it is cheesy and thin compared to works of today, I enjoy the over-the-top action, and lack of concern for scientific accuracy. If they wanted to have green bug-eyed Martians flying around space in hot air balloons, they did it, and didn't think twice about whether they'd be proven wrong. That's kind of refreshing with the hard sci-fi of today. But even compared to pulp fiction of the time, this story is pretty weak.


The novel starts with a cruise ship attacked by space pirates led by a mysterious man known only as Roger. Roger has advanced technology, including a moon-sized starship base (inspiration for the Death Star), and an army of human-like robots. Using deadly "Vee-Two" gas, he seizes secret agent Costigan and Costigan's love interest Clio, along with the ship's captain. But before they can escape, an amphibian alien warship arrives, determined to drain every last molecule of iron from the solar system. They even drain the iron from buildings, spaceships, and human blood. Costigan has to lead his team to escape the alien menace and save the Triplanetary systems from iron-stealing aliens and Roger.

Some of the scifi concepts are still in use today, like laser beams (called "rays") and video screens (called "plates"). But other technical inaccuracies are unintentionally hilarious. Like space is filled with "aether." At one point, someone actually says, "It's a good thing that space isn't an absolutely perfect vacuum..." To which I said to myself, "Yes, it is." Also, iron is the most powerful atomic energy source in the universe. As opposed to, you know, uranium. And at one point, a spaceship has its "inertia" removed (which even the characters admit is impossible), which somehow allows it to shoot across the galaxy beyond light speed.

The dialogue is full of terms that probably sounded very hip and contemporary when it was written, but now sound almost incomprehensibly dated. This is an actual line from the book: "I'll pick those jaspers off with a pencil ray and then stand off the bunch that's coming while you rub out the rest of that crew there and drag Bradley back here." If that doesn't make immediate sense to you, then you'll have a hard time reading the story.

The characters are little more than vague stereotypes. The hero Costigan is a swashbuckling, two-fisted tough guy. No details of who he is or how he became a secret agent or even what motivates him. His girlfriend Clio is even worse. I don't even know what her job is. She's just a swooning pretty girl who is constantly in need of rescue. Roger is a ruthless sociopath with no redeeming qualities. He barely has emotions, save for lecherous appetites towards Clio.

Their relationship amounts to Costigan saying things like, "Well, twenty-three skiddoo, you're the bees knees! I love ya, but I'm too much of a tough guy to marry you, beat me daddy, eight to the bar!" And she responding with, "Oh my darling, you're simply wonderful! You're so handsome and strong, and oh I'm so frail and delicate! I so love you, too, oh! I'll follow you to the end of time, oh!" Repeat that a few hundred times, and you've got the romantic subplot. No real sense of why they love each other or even how they related to each other before the novel began. They're dropped into the story in love, and it runs in circles from there.

Another big problem is the magical technology. All the problems are resolved through the use of some obscure gadget instead of actual logic or effort. I can describe it this way: A character is locked in a room. They don't have a key. They use the objects in the room to build a machine that unlocks the door. They're now outside. The bad guys attack. The bad guys are wearing armor. The heroes build weapons that are strong enough to melt through their armor and kill them. They need to get to the shuttle craft to escape. They use a machine that lets them escape unnoticed to the craft to escape. They're being chased by the enemy. The hero uses a machine that makes the shuttle go faster so they escape. It's just a series of deus ex machina where the heroes carry an assortment of devices that let them overcome any problems. If they don't have it, the heroes are virtual McGyvers who can actually build whatever they need from whatever they have. At one point, the hero manages to create a toxic gas (the aforementioned fictional "Vee-Two") capable of wiping out entire cities from the random stuff in his prison cell. Literally.

Roger is a danger because he has technology that borders on magic, like robots that look and act exactly like humans, invisible spaceships, and beams that can move objects from entire spaceships to human beings. The solution is for the heroes to have even more magical technology, like guns that can burn through anything, and "spy rays" that let them see through any object and can't be detected.

The space battles are actually numerous and exciting. Lots of spaceships blasting each other and grappling each other with rays. Although they also have magical technology so battles tend to revolve around, "Hey, their weapons are really powerful. Fortunately, my weapons are even more powerful!" But it can be good.

Honestly, I can see why this book would have been great in the thirties and even fifties, but right now it's borderline unreadable. If it were released today, even with adjustments to keep up with modern science and dialogue, it would be on the level of bad fan fiction or "Fifty Shades of Grey."

But for those who love bad pulp fiction, it's great.

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"Neuromancer" by William Gibson [Review]

Neuromancer by William Gibson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"Neuromancer" is the classic novel that kickstarted the cyberpunk genre. It didn't invent cyberpunk, but it certainly set the tone for all the novels and movies that followed.

The novel is pretty much what we all thought computers would be like in 2016. Instead of clumsy keyboards and screens, users plug computers directly into their brains. "Neuromancer" tells the story of Case, a hacker who navigates cyberspace, a virtual reality representing all the computer networks of the world. After getting his hacking ability surgically removed by a double-cross, he jumps at the chance to recover his lost ability and pull off a new and dangerous job. But he soon discovers that the people he's working for have a hidden agenda, and he becomes embroiled in a conspiracy involving an ancient and powerful family and an evolving artificial intelligence.


The greatest achievement of "Neuromancer" is how Gibson makes the future feel real with what he calls "super-specificity." In our modern world, we don't just drive cars. We drive a Honda or a Ford, and the type of car can tell us a lot about a character in a story. In the same way, Gibson uses brand names for any products they use, even if he has to make one up. If Case sees a holographic projector, it's not just a projector. It's a Braun holographic projector. Case doesn't just use a cyberspace deck, he uses a high-end Ono-Sendai Cyberspace 7. He doesn't just put on a spacesuit, it's a Sanyo suit. Details like this help flesh out the story, and make it deeper.

Gibson also pioneered a style that moved against the typical portrayal of the future as sleek, clean, and miraculous. In Gibson's world, futuristic technology can be broken, grimy, cheap, and malfunctions, just like in our world. A character with a cybernetic arm has a "Russian military prosthesis, a seven-function force-feedback manipulator, cased in grubby pink plastic." Molly relishes a steak made from a living animal instead of "vat grown."

Gibson's prose is incredibly dense, poetic to the point of distraction. Sometimes, I have to read over his sentences a few times to translate his analogies and flowery text into real visuals. But I respect his love of words, and he often creates amazing sentences that bring the scene to life. Like: "Lifeless neon spelled out METRO HOLOGRAFIX in dusty capitals of glass tubing."

Unlike most science fiction, "Neuromancer's" future isn't just populated with white males. Case meets a variety of races from Japanese gangsters to space-bound Rastafarians. The beauty of the novel is how it takes us through a dizzying cross-section of the future. We travel from the seedy slums of Tokyo to the luxurious hotels of a space station. Istanbul, Japan, and other countries are all described so we can see an entire world with different cultures, not just the United States like most scifi novels.

Even Gibson himself mocked the outdated technology, like pay phones. But in a sense, we're living in the world Gibson imagined, where we can jump in and out of a digital reality at will, go anywhere virtually, and have any fact at our fingertips. The mistake Gibson made was imagining that accessing cyberspace would require brain implants and virtual reality. The cyberspace concept now feels dated and kind of cheesy. But even though the computer technology that caused such a stir in the eighties has faded in glamour, the rest of his world has become more vivid. Gibson described a world where things like weapons, genetic engineering, space travel, and body modification had reached new heights, and those still hold up. The overall conflict between security and those who would try to violate it still resonates.

Related: Why William Gibson Confuses Me

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"The Ruins" by Scott B. Smith [Review]

The Ruins by Scott B. Smith
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Holy crap.

That could be my entire review, but I'll expand on it a little.


There's a blurb on the back of the book which I think is very descriptive. It says this book does for plants what "Jaws" did for sharks. That's a fair assessment. I never thought a simple plant could be so terrifying and horrifying and spine-chilling as the one in this novel. I'll never see flowers the same way again.

"The Ruins" is about a group of four college students on a vacation in South America who decide to investigate some ruins. It's an archaeological dig where a friend's brother is supposed to be waiting. When they arrive at the ruins, they discover to their horror that everyone at the ruins is dead, and a local Mayan tribe won't let them leave. But besides their fear, hunger, thirst, and attempts to escape, they discover a mysterious and malevolent vine is stalking them. To say more would ruin a lot of the surprises, so let's break that down.

The thing about this novel is that it's really a very well-written B-movie. I wasn't surprised this actually was made into a cheap B-movie, because it reads like one. Dumb kids on vacation? Check. Stereotypical characters like the jock, the bimbo, the good girl, and the jerk? Check. Monster hunting and killing them? Check. Characters getting picked off, one by one? Check. But the novel takes that format and expands it considerably.

The characters in the book are extremely well-defined in surprising ways. For one thing, we don't even learn their names until page two. I don't think the novel ever revealed their last names. But they all feel like real people. They start out as the aforementioned cliches, but their internal monologue and actions reveal much more complex personalities. Stacy (the bimbo) knows she's stupid, and struggles against her own limited imagination and libido. Jeff (the jock) seems like the boy scout who knows what he's doing and will save them all. Eric (the jerk) is always trying to find the funny side of things while secretly knowing they're in more danger than he lets on. Amy (the good girl) is frustrated with how no one listens to her because of her constant negativity. But over time, they begin to unravel and become deeper characters. Jeff turns out to be so focused on their survival that he loses his humanity. Eric becomes more and more panicked as he sees their plight before anyone else. Amy's desperation to escape turns her against the others. By about halfway through the story, I was fully invested in all of them and was fascinated with how they clashed and struggled against their own misconceptions. They all have secrets and make emotional journeys that change them. Their inner struggle was just as compelling as their external struggle for survival.

The descriptions in this book are sparing, but extremely powerful. Reading this book truly transported me into the plight of the heroes. I felt their thirst as they tried to ration out their meager water, their hunger as they shared a handful of scraps, and their exhaustion from the burning heat. When the vine began its work, I felt panicked and frightened, sharing their horror at what miseries they endured. When I would put the book down and pick it up, I was always surprised how quickly I was carried back into their world.

I haven't gotten into the vine, but I really don't want to say too much. I knew the story was about an evil vine, which baffled me, because I couldn't imagine a plant being a threat. I was wrong. Man, I was wrong. The things the vine does to the heroes in this novel are almost unbearable to read. I cringed at times just reading the descriptions. Other times, I would read the same passage over and over, because I couldn't or didn't want to accept what had happened. The vine isn't just bloodthirsty. It isn't just frighteningly intelligent. It's also sadistic. That makes it much, much worse. It's like the vine spends the entire story just thinking of ways to make the survivors suffer more than they already are. And it does. By the end, the deaths of many of the characters seems like a relief.

Another thing I loved about the book is that there is very little exposition, but it delivers just what we need. What is the vine? Is it an alien creature? Is it a prehistoric creature unearthed by the dig? Why do the Mayan villagers not allow the survivors to leave? What have they been doing with this vine and how? What happened to the archaeologists? There are signs and hints to answer all these questions and more, but some are left as mysteries. Which works. Sometimes, the unknown is scarier than the known.

I could go on, but I'll leave it at this. This is truly one of the scariest books that I've ever read. And I loved it.

One nitpick, though. As far as I could tell, there are no actual ruins. Just a big hill with a shaft dug in the ground. Minor, but significant, considering the title.

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