Read a number of good novels over the holidays. Started with two Henning Mankell novels over the Christmas weekend. I've now read seven Mankell books (starring detective Kurt Wallander), and have just two more Wallander books to go. He has intricate plots, and Wallander is kind of an anti-hero. He grows on you, slowly. It's the great plots that keep bringing me back to Mankell. These books are set in southern Sweden.

Then I read my third Jack Reacher novel by Lee Child. Reacher is a tough, tough guy. The villain was about as evil as they come. No fun streak to him, ala Hannibal Lecter or any James Bond nemesis. Just pure human carnage.

Threw in a Robert Littell spy novel called "Walking Back the Cat." It's a post-Cold War book, a major character being a KGB assassin who is a sleeper agent, and has been awakened. Good, but the weakest of these five books.

Alex Berenson's "The Faithful Spy" stars a CIA agent who has infiltrated Al Qaeda. Definitely a spy novel for the post-9/11 world. It was really good.