Although I'd never recommend Val McDermid for the faint of heart, the author is one of the best crime fiction writers on the market. It was a no brainer to pick up A Distant Echo , and while it's become a bit dated since its publication twenty-two years ago, it still kept me absorbed right up to the end. The novel is told in two timelines. First 1978, when the body of a young barmaid is discovered by four uni students in a Scottish cemetery. The only suspects in her brutal murder end up being the four boys who found her, and they all suffer greatly because of the incompetence of the police and the viciousness of the barmaid's brothers. All of them are changed forever by the incident. No one is ever charged with the murder. The second timeline is 25 years later, when the murder is reopened as a cold case. The four uni students are now grown men with careers and families; one has a pregnant wife. When two of them are murdered, it seems like the past has finally cau...
I want to say upfront that watching the Chinese historical romance drama Pursuit of Jade can become very addicting, and by the time you reach the final episode you'll wonder if you just spent a couple of years in the past watching all the fascinating characters play out their equally absorbing storylines. This series has become notorious for several reasons, including one of the most justifiably admired, show-stealing antagonists ever (my hat is off to Deng Kai, the actor who played the role, but we'll get to him shortly.) This story sprawls in different directions, but it basically follows the romance between Fan Changyu (Tian Xiwei), a female pig butcher with super human strength, and Xie Zheng,(Zhang Linghe), a wounded warrior she finds in the snow. Yes, I know, that doesn't sound appetizing, but in reality it's brilliant. Changyu believes her guy is simply an ordinary soldier who needs her help to recover and survive; Xie Zheng is in fact the Marquis of Wu...