#5Books: Book recs and Des, is the creepiest show you’ll see this year and not a drop of blood is shed

Des.

David Tennant and Des. Holy s**t is it the creepiest thing you’ll see this year and no blood is shed. Instead, it’s about the horror humans are capable of.

Des Nilsen was a former cop, and public servant who murdered 15 men over five few years in the UK. It’s only 3 episodes, but really in three episodes David Tennant manages t convey a bone deep creepiness that is this man who killed all these men and then forgot their names. The promise of those names is what kept the cops coming to him for clues, and any other information to identify who the men he murdered were — and Des craved the attention.

The show is interspersed with real snippets of the news from that time, and I had to look up this perfectly horrible ordinary man who just lapped up any bit of attention he could get, even those of the men he murdered — I’ll spare you the details of that.

Tennant plays Des as if he’s tired of being surrounded by stupid people who just can’t understand him, what he wants and why he did what he did. That he insisted he needed to remember the names of the men he killed, in order to give them the respect they deserved was totally bewildering but he meant it.

The show is based on a book by Brian Masters, who was Nilsen’s biographer and continued to visit him 10 years into his prison sentence. I enjoy true crime, but I considered it for about two seconds and then couldn’t imagine reading about what was on the show.

The horror and genius of this show is wrapped up in Des, but also the inspector who spearheaded the case, and battled Des himself and politics in order to  identify the men he killed.

Sources Say

Two exes. One election. All the drama.

For fans of Becky Albertalli and Morgan Matson comes a funny, hearfelt novel about fueding exes running for class president and the scandal that makes the previously boring school election the newest trending hashtag.

At Acedia High School outside of Boston, student council has always been nothing more than a popularity contest. Nobody pays attention. Nobody cares.

But all that changes when the Frankengirls show up. During the very first week of school, someone plasters the halls with Photoshopped images of three “perfect tens”–images of scantily clad girls made from real photos of girls at school. The student body is livid. And the two presidential candidates, Angeline Quinn and Leo Torres, jump on the opportunity to propose their solutions and secure votes. After their messy break up, Leo and Angie are fighting tooth and nail to win this thing and their constituents are mesmerized as they duke it out.

As if things couldn’t be more dramatic, the school’s two newspapers get involved. The Red & Blue is run by Angie’s sister Cat and she prides herself on only reporting the facts. But her morals are tested when The Shrieking Violet–written by an anonymous source and based less on facts and more on fiction–blatantly endorses Leo. Rumors fly, secrets are leaked, and the previously mundane student election becomes anything but boring.

Politics and romance never mix, and even more so when its a school election! Leo and Angie have their own thing gong on, but I’m also interested about Cat and her competitor newspaper. There’s a lot going on, but it’s a mixture I hope the author can pull off.

Meme

For fans of One of Us Is Lying, a tense, psychological thriller for the internet age about the destructive combination of self-important goals and self-serving plans.

No one is going to miss Cole Weston. A loner without friends or family and an unhealthy obsession with the darker corners of the internet, Cole had become increasingly violent toward his ex-girlfriend, and threated to do so much worse. So it was only logical–only right, really–that his former friends took it upon themselves to rid the world of Cole Weston.

Now, Logan, Meeka, Holly, and Grayson are forever bound by Cole’s body, buried under the cold Vermont earth. The failsafe should any one of them consider betrayal: their old phones, buried with Cole, disconnected from service, and each wiped clean except for one file–their video confession.

As expected, no one misses Cole. Or even realizes he’s gone. But a few days later, the meme appears. It’s a stupid meme, old school and not even funny. But every terrible joke has one thing in common, the same photo–a screenshot from the confession video still entombed six feet under with Cole.

I am so ready for this. It sounds creepy, and uses I love that it takes something likes videos (which I truly admit, I can take for granted the ability to take one now) and uses it to create this thriller. There’s also something so cold about how the blurb describes the decision these former friends took: to rid the world of him.

Make them Cry

For fans of The Border and Jason Bourne, Make Them Cry is an explosive action thriller about a DEA agent sucked into a dangerous turf war on the US-Mexico border.

It’s hard to make Diane Harbaugh flinch. A former prosecutor notorious for her aggressive tactics, she’s now a DEA agent who interrogates witnesses so effectively, she has them confessing in tears. But when she hears from Gustavo, a high-ranking cartel member with an invaluable secret about the international black market, she’s thrown for a loop. She heads to Mexico to meet him, and her entire understanding of justice and duty is thrown into question.

Gustavo sends her down a rabbit hole that leads to a criminal conspiracy more pervasive than anything she and the DEA ever suspected. She teams up with Ian Carver, a disillusioned CIA agent, and begins to unravel layers of deceptions, grifts, and schemes that date back to the beginnings of the Afghanistan War. As they learn more, they become the target of cartel assassins, embittered spies, and even their own government. They are at the center of an international manhunt with world-changing consequences—and the only way out is for Diane to do the one thing she promised herself she’d never do. Stylishly written and relentlessly plotted, Make Them Cry is an action-packed thriller of unimaginable stakes.

I’m a little bit worried this might be too political but at the same time I am loving there’s this prosecutor (I’m on an SVU binge, and I miss Alex Cabot) in the middle of all this. It reads like a big sprawling plot and as much as the politics gives me pause I also want to see it all come together — and what does she find out?

The Assignment

In the vein of the classic The Wave and inspired by a real-life incident, this riveting novel explores discrimination and antisemitism and reveals their dangerous impact.

SENIOR YEAR. When an assignment given by a favorite teacher instructs a group of students to argue for the Final Solution, a euphemism used to describe the Nazi plan for the genocide of the Jewish people, Logan March and Cade Crawford are horrified. Their teacher cannot seriously expect anyone to complete an assignment that fuels intolerance and discrimination. Logan and Cade decide they must take a stand.

As the school administration addressed the teens’ refusal to participate in the appalling debate, the student body, their parents, and the larger community are forced to face the issue as well. The situation explodes, and acrimony and anger result. What does it take for tolerance, justice, and love to prevail?

I don’t know if I have the heart to read a book like this right now, but the premise sounds so promising I want to keep this for later on. Also, that cover, with the hands up just like a Nazi salute? Perfect choice for this book. (also, this was inspired by a real event — does anyone know who or what that is?)

The White Coat Diaries

Grey’s Anatomy meets Scrubs in this brilliant debut novel about a young doctor’s struggle to survive residency, love, and life.

Having spent the last twenty-something years with her nose in a textbook, brilliant and driven Norah Kapadia has just landed the medical residency of her dreams. But after a disastrous first day, she’s ready to quit. Disgruntled patients, sleep deprivation, and her duty to be the “perfect Indian daughter” have her questioning her future as a doctor.

Enter chief resident Ethan Cantor. He’s everything Norah aspires to be: respected by the attendings, calm during emergencies, and charismatic with the patients. As he morphs from Norah’s mentor to something more, it seems her luck is finally changing.

When a fatal medical mistake is made, pulling Norah into a cover-up, she must decide how far she’s willing to go to protect the secret. What if “doing no harm” means risking her career and the future for which she’s worked so hard?

I actually can’t stand Grey’s Anatomy or Scrubs, but this sounds fabulous — Norah’s pressures (personal and professional)  and then Ethan to boot. But whose secret is this “fatal secret”? Is Ethan’s? Someone else’s? What is Norah risking?