am tired. must complete reviews.

The silent dead by Tetsuya Honda.  I cannot read this: the writing is so wooden and stilted.  Frustratingly, I can't tell if this is a preferred style for Japanese crime fiction, or if the writing is poor, or if it is the fault of the translation. 

The night manager with Hugh Laurie and Tom Hiddleston.  Good.  Would watch again. 

Duet in Beirut by Mishka Ben-David.  I tried to get into this for one of my international titles; nope.  The early chapters make constant reference to events which preceded the book's opening.  Again, double-checked series status multiple times before packing it in.  I also found the writing (or, again, possibly the translation) too reliant on cliches and tropes. 

Cold barrel zero by Matthew Quick.  I was kind of psyched for this; great reviews, a hot item-- I actually checked it out twice before but brought it back before reading because the holds list was so long.  I'm disappointed once again: this is a solid two and a half star experience.  There are way too many characters who aren't super distinct from each other.  It makes it difficult to follow who's tailing whom or to follow along in rapid-fire conversations.  There were some pretty gigantic assumptions and guesses early in the story, where a lucky guess is just most convenient to move the plot along even though it has no basis in the facts presented.  Unrealistic.  The author also used a fair number of acronyms and jargon without explaining, so it's mostly accessible only to people who regularly read military fiction.  What background information did need to be shared was clunky and poorly incorporated, a blatant instruction paragraph between action paragraphs.  Would not recommend.