John Dunning

[Madeline]

I've just finished book one of the three (The Bookman's Promise, The Sign of The Book, and The Bookwoman's Last Fling) that I've bought that are A Cliff Janeway Novel. I took a chance and read Dunning, never heard of him before, but I consider his writing very unique, in so much that he mixes history (1860's) and writers (example: Richard Francis Burton) from the past to create a very good mystery.

I wonder if anyone else has read anything by John Dunning?

 

[funes]

Madeline,
I've read most of the Cliff Janeway mysteries. Obviously, the plots are "no-brainers" for us book-addled types. However, you may have missed the first two Janeway novels (Booked to Die & The Bookman's Wake). To my mind, they are much superior to the later novels. Some of the newer novels seem, to me, to pander too much to current trends in publishing, or are too predictable.
In any event, all of the ones I've read so far were, at least, decent mysteries. If you are interested, I've recently been buying many "biblio-mysteries", and there are good resources out there on the net for interested people.

 

[Madeline]

Thanks for the referral. I wouldn't call the plots "no-brainers", I would say they are inimitable. I'm glad he made the biblio-mysteries list and now my reading may go a different directions with that vast list.

 

[funes]

Perhaps you mis-understood what I meant by "no-brainer". I didn't mean to suggest that the plots were brainless. Instead, I meant that for the person who is obsessed with books (like me), the choice to read Dunning's books is a "no-brainer". In fact, as I said, I thought the first two books were very good.

 

[Madeline]

Gotcha, I misunderstood.

 

[Madeline]

I just finished The Sign of The Book and John Dunning has made this character, Cliff Janeway, one of the best action people in books. I would compare Janeway to Jack Reacher, Alex Cross, Bruce Willis, and The Rock. I would give it 5 stars.