His Father's Son; The Queen's Lover

I met Bentley Little years ago, when I was an undergrad at Cal State Fullerton, his own alma mater. He's a good gross out writer, and I liked a lot of his earlier stuff, but some of the things I bought eight or nine years ago didn't impress me much. Every year I would keep buying his latest book and put it on the shelf, swearing to get around to it but never would. I went to Chicago and knew I would need something to read on the plane that would hold my interest and yet not be too demanding of my brain, so I grabbed one of my Bentley backstock "His Father's Son". I was quite impressed with how good it was. It was less crude than some of his previous works and the plot had a really neat twist to it. Plus it was set in this part of Orange County, so he mentions familiar landmarks, which always makes a book more interesting to me, since I can easily see in my mind what he's talking about. In this story a normal editor from Irvine thinks his dad, who has been hospitalized with sudden onset dementia, is confessing a murder to him when he visits. He starts investigating and convinces himself his dad is a closet serial killer when his dad starts describing more murders to him. He ends up becoming the worst kind of monster in his pursuit to learn the truth about his dad. Fun, gruesome stuff.
I was sadly unimpressed with Vanora Bennett's "The Queen's Lover". Catherine, Princess of France, marries King Henry V of England, who dies not long after their little son Henry is born, leaving an infant as King of England and thus a power struggle for control of the throne ensues. It was just dull and the characters, even though they are drawn from some interesting people in British history, were lifeless.