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Wild by Cheryl Strayed - A review

2012-02-12T11:59:00.004-07:00

Hiking is good for the soul. It helps center one’s life. And so it was that Strayed took off at a moment’s notice to conquer her fears, depression to hike the Pacific Coastal Trail (PCT) the trail that spans 2,650 miles from Mexico to the Canadian Border, crossing through California, Oregon and Washington.

For Strayed it was not so much the distance she hiked but he distance she was away from real life. Starting in Modesto, CA she made it through ice fields, rock falls, bear and the occasional rattlesnake to the far side of Oregon. With all the physical difficulties of hiking, from sore muscles and broken feet to the extra precautions any young woman hiking on her own has to face the journey was accomplished and life began anew.

I was very pleasantly drawn into this story of accomplishment having hike the PCT’s eastern cousin the Appalachian Trail, under similar circumstances, about ten years ago and so many times I found myself nodding or uttering agreement to the trials and tribulations Strayed voiced. It was quite the mini flash-back and I really enjoyed basking with her on her backpacking journey.

Like those before and those to come this life’s journey was one of abolishing one’s fears and striving for a new beginning.

http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Found-Pacific-Crest-Trail/dp/0307592731/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

Jesus, My Father, The CIA and Me: A Memoir... of Sorts - A Review

2012-01-19T21:57:00.001-07:00

Growing up in the Golden Age with a father that moved the family from Hollywood to England, who hung out with movie stars and the nations star politicians made young Ian, a thoughtful young boy, very curious. The family had good times and lean times, times when father was gone from the home. As he got older he realized his father was working for some clandestine branch of the government, a spy know less.
Unfortunately it was his father’s drinking that caused the family hard times, times when he was unemployable and young Ian often felt the wrath of his control-freak of a dad. It is the same for all boys that love yet abhor their father’s ways, they become shaped for better or worse by the experience and how they conduct their life from thereon is the same as or as diametrically opposite as they can from the example they had to live with, but no matter what no matter how hard you try a little always rubs off and scars you forever.
In Ian’s case it was the call to the ministry that saved him. God can be a harsh task master himself. Did he switch out one controlling father for another? Either way it is an interesting read, one of hope and inspiration a fractured memory and finally a mother’s love.

Queen of America - A Review

2012-01-15T22:07:00.004-07:00

Like sweet nothings whispered by my lover to leave my marriage bed, to dalliance with her, I listened, spending the day enamored with Teresita, ‘Saint of Cabora’, until my wife accused me of an affair with the book and then I could not leave it alone until it was done and dusted.

Intended as a sequel to his other work, The Hummingbird’s Daughter, this novel stands alone in its own glory. Here, Urrea takes us on a journey with young Teresita, accompanied by her willful father, Tomas, as they leave their family ranch in Mexico where she is adored by many as a saint and pursued by others who saw her as the leader of rebellion, of change. Her father’s politics and her laying on of hands to heal caused mixed reactions in all they touched.

Along with their entourage, publishing mogul and rebel-rouser Don Lauro Aguirre and Segundo the trusted friend, the family moves to protect the Saint and to allow her to find the weary pilgrims, the sick and dying and instill hope whether it be in Yaquis, native to the area, or the son of rich businessmen travelling from afar, Teresita uses her powers, embodied in her after a near death experience as a child, as well as her healer’s knowledge of plants and roots, to heal all and sundry.

In an historical journey through Tucson, El Paso, San Francisco and back East to New York City we learn with great detail how this great land was tethered by rail and how commerce and religion where joined through newspapers to spread the word. We learn how a revered healer can be seen as a witch under other religious customs and we follow their plight through all its trials and tribulations. Not since John Galworthy wrote about the Forsyths has a saga of a family been so documented.

From his humble beginnings to now revered storyteller, this masterpiece elevates Urrea to a class above his peers, a first class, nay master class writer, who lays the narrative with poetic license at our feet, painting postcards with paragraphs. If Teresita is the Queen then surely, today, Urrea is King.

Dead End - A review

2012-01-13T14:27:00.000-07:00

Detective Inspector Geraldine Steele again graces the pages of Russell's latest British police procedural. Well plotted with a back story that is relevant for today's day and age, "Dead End" is another grim and gory murder that crosses her path to help Steele gain the eventual promotion to London's Metro force.
Although the story line was well paced, enthralling and the characters feel very real, both cops and victims, I feel like Russell actually missed out on a bigger picture here. True, DI Steele was investigating a murder--or two as it turns out--but I really liked the authenticity and the feel for the bereaved family and the kidnapping of the daughter by her Internet chat partner. This is just another murder mystery until you introduce the kidnapping. It almost makes me want to see the book written about the creepy developments of the abandoned teen and her running away, making the murder the back story. Although the book is fine and stands on its own merit, I was disappointed in the direction Russell took.
Hopefully with the next novel in the series, the London Metro adventure, Steele can have seen a psychiatrist and be over her depression and neurosis, because, although reflecting reality, we need our super-heroine to be back "on her game" and ready to enthrall us with powers of detection. It's okay to have a flawed antagonist, actually more entertaining when they are that way, but not when it gets in the way of the investigation. Save that for the side-kick.
Russell has a nicely developed character in the prime of her career. I'd like to see both of them continue to be successful.

Measure of Darkness - a review

2012-01-13T14:20:00.003-07:00

I was at once intrigued and beguiled by the bubbling point of view of administrative assistant Alice Crane, who basically narratyes the entire story for us with tongue-in-cheek humor. Naomi Nantz, private investigator extraordinaire, has put together a team of retired law enforcement, attorneys, and hackers, not to mention their live-in cordon-bleu chef, to review and resolve those crimes that lesser human beings cannot handle.
In this case, the team is brought in by world famous child rescuer and former FBI agent, Randall Shane to help solve the murder of a MIT professor whose five-year-old musical child prodigy has been kidnapped and for whom Shane has been set up for the disappearance by murky unknown shadow-government agent-types.
When Shane is kidnapped from what was supposed to be the impregnable walls of the Nantz offices, the team takes it personally and sets out to sleuth the truth, rescue Shane, and find the missing child. In a web of deceit that leads to upper levels of government conspiracy to the Chinese triads, we are whiplashed through a fast-paced thriller and left with a well wrapped satisfying package.
The Alice Crane point of view throughout, especially when the action takes place out of her immediate view, becomes awkward. I thought the incessant babbling of the female view point a little heavy-handed, but this was before I found out that Chris Jordan is a Nome de plume for Rodman Philbrick, a man writing as a woman, and then I realized he over-dramatized the female role which affects the style. Another irritating habit is that each character exhibits the same sense of humor as the author (and narrator) which produces only a skin deep character evaluation. Elmore Leonard’s rule of writing Rule #10 should be applied, ‘try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.’ The book has a fine plot, effective outline, and is a scintillating thriller, but would benefit from being effectively edited.

The Retribution - a review

2012-01-08T18:39:00.002-07:00

In the most recent of the Tony Hill novels, McDermid again takes us into the dark recesses of the psychotic mind of not one but two criminals. One is a throwback to earlier work that Dr. Hill, a
law enforcement profiler, assisted Detective Inspector Carol Jordan with, the imprisoning of Jacko Vance. On the eve of D.I. Jordan’s murder, the investigative team having broken up and reassigned,
news comes that Vance has escaped from jail. Not only was there a murderer on the loose but he was looking for retribution on all and sundry who helped put him away.
While aiding in his capture and ducking his advances against them, family and their friends, Jordan’s team is asked to assist in solving what appears to be a serial killer that is attacking hookers, the regular street girls. Three have died so far and Hill has to try to get inside of the murderer’s head before the fourth one is found, bearing the tattoo, MINE, on one of their wrists. The deaths have all been so dissimilar in patterns: a drowning, crucifixion,and dismemberment, that without the tattoo they may never have been linked. When Hill finds the common link, the murder team heads in to arrest the suspect, but will they be too late.
Meanwhile Vance is playing havoc at his ex-wife’s home and is off on his own killing spree as Jordan and Hill stay close on his heels. When the deaths hit home, Jordan snaps, blaming Hill, and the eggshell membrane of their potential relationship is ripped, possibly beyond repair. Never before have I found two such unlikable protagonists as the uptight Jordan and the needy, clinging mess that Hill has become, actually mesh so finely that throughout all the flaws of their stuttering lives, the story still flows well.
Hats off to McDermid. Her storytelling ability is outstanding and “Retribution” is a top-drawer tale.

Nazareth Child - A review

2012-01-08T18:33:00.002-07:00

As a trained investigator, Del Shannon tracked down one missing person after another, yet one proved more elusive than most, her mother. Having been taken from her Kentucky home as toddler by her father, Del
had never been able to put together enough information to discover her missing past, but with the death of her reclusive and alcoholic parent she has been given a chance to find out her heritage.
Turns out that the FBI are investigating the flamboyant cult leader Silas Rule back in Del’s home town of Nazareth Church and she is offered the opportunity to go in under cover to help the government discover if Rule is a blow-hard preacher or a Jim Jones figure leading his flock to eternal damnation, not to mention the last undercover agent they sent in has not been heard from for six weeks. Since Del has inherited the house in the community after her father’s passing, she has a legitimate reason to be in town to claim her property.
With ATFE agent Frank Falcone masquerading as her husband, the pair go into the lion’s den bent on discovering if the missing FBI agent is dead, or if Rule converted him to his right-wing zealot religion, and
for Del, a chance to ask the people of the area if they know her mother. Armed with an old photograph and a nine-millimeter Baby Eagle, Del heads out looking for her lost mother and runs into more trouble than can be expected.
Locked in the windowless church with all the preachers, other faithful followers, and with the dam at the top of the valley about to blow and flood the plains, will she ever get the chance she so desperately wanted or will the town be obliterated from Kentucky’s blue grass existence? James takes us on a wild chase to love life and redemption proving there is nothing to compare to a mother’s love. A great debut novel that will hold you spellbound to its dynamite conclusion.

Cold Glory - A review

2012-01-08T18:26:00.000-07:00

During the surrender at Appomattox, Grant and Lee were left alone for a short period,Anderson surmises what might have happened in that moment and introduces the reader to a secret treaty that the two generals agreed upon.
When this sought after treaty is unearthed with a clad of civil war-era weapons in southern Oklahoma, Nick Journey, a small college professor and amateur historian, inspects the findings and is
attacked by a secret society, the Glory Warriors, in an attempt to recover this forgotten treaty in an effort to overthrow our government, home-grown terrorists.
When the key political figures are assassinated, RIO—a small investigative branch of Homeland Security—takes the threats seriously, but not knowing who to trust on the inside agent Meg Tolman and
Nick Journey have to put their trust in each other as they race to save the life of the President. The race takes them on a wild chase, with the Glory Warriors operatives hot on their trail.
With well-built and engaging characters, Anderson throws in a part-time concert pianist as a Federal agent and a protagonist with a severely autistic child that allows converging relationships to develop and sets up the reader for the sequel: the next adventure.
In a tale rife with intrigue and suspicion, this debut novel from Anderson has something for conspiracy theorists, history buffs,Civil War aficionados, and mystery readers alike and is a fast-paced page turner down to the final twist.

Use Portal3W to promote your next project

2012-01-08T11:08:00.000-07:00

As a self-published author writing the novel was only half the problem. Once I had figured out it was going to take longer to find an agent than it had taken the write the book – three years carved out of my life – I decided to rush print and go with a Print-On Demand house, InfinityPublishing, and get my first book out to my adoring public. After all I had another book to write and that was more pressing than getting an agent at that precise moment; finish and move on.

As all self-marketers realize, and I now became a salesman more than an author, I had to find a way for the public to discover me and while Facebook and Twitter are wonderful avenues it takes more than that. I had spent a lot of time researching publishing choices and so now my time was used in finding promotional ways to get Blood on His Hands discovered and at the lowest possible cost, I am the proverbial starving artist.

John Kremer has a great book out ‘1001 Ways to Market YourBooks’. Not all of the described ways where appropriate or possible but many were and I religiously went bout following his suggestions.

One of the most important ideas is to build a website. I had the ideas but not the knowhow and so I roped in my good friend James, who put together a spectacular site for me. I had studied other authors professionally done sites and using what I considered the best ingredients and my photography (along with a couple of video’s to enhance the effect) we concocted my site. Now people could get a visual before buying, and something other than just the Amazon page.

You do however need to now promote not just you and you book but your website too. As one of the many choices out there I turned to WORLDINACLICK, specialists in developing website internationally and at recession-pricing, definitely something with in my budget. They have put together a site designed for product marketing at Portal3W. Designed to promote you internationally, to offer exposure in over 20 languages their professionally prepared websites provide unlimited pages using your own specification and design. I urge you to check out their professional website and consider giving your product and website the opportunity to be promoted by these specialists so you can get on with your next project and put the marketing in the hands of the specialists.

The Writing Life - a review

2012-01-08T10:24:00.001-07:00

As a writer with only one published novel I am always looking to learn more about the writing life, looking to hone my skills, to improve. I had hoped to glean some rare look into how to write skilfully from Dillard's writing. This 111 page book took me three days to read (normally I would have finished in 30 minutes) however I wanted to absorb each gem of knowledge, and so kept reading intently, taking breaks hoping it would get better the next time I picked it up. Most writers seem to spend an inordinate amount of time doing anything to avoid writing Dillard seemed to spend most of her time avoiding writing about writing, and if that was not annoying enough - I wanted the good stuff - the time she did spend on the writing life was so depressing that if I was reading this book in hopes of becoming a writer I'd have probably gone a slit my wrists. What a complete waste of time this book was.

The Leopard - a review

2011-12-14T21:19:00.002-07:00

Inspector Harry Hole is at it again, resigning that is. After the last traumatic episode his wife and stepson have left him and Hole finds his way to the opium dens of Hong Kong to wallow in self-pity and disappear from the real world.

He is dragged from the viper’s pit when two young women are found, brutally murdered with another unique method that Nesbo seems to relish in bringing to the unsuspecting public, along with a third suspected of the same murderer. Hole is Norway’s expert at catching serial killers. The news that Hole’s father is on his death-bed has more reason for him to return. He is done with police work, just ask him.

In a wild chase that leads us through the ski slopes and lakes of Norway to the outer regions of the Congo on Africa’s western plains Hole traces the suspect, now of several other bizarre murders as he tries to find the common link that brings all these hapless soles into the path of the killer.

When State run authorities impede his progress Hole strikes out alone, as usual, with all the skills of a modern-day Colombo, to unmask the culprit in his own style. Talking of style, for those of you that have had the pleasure of reading Nesbo’s other US published novels I started to complain to myself when I discovered a pattern in his work only to have that shattered in a matter of pages, almost like Nesbo set a trap. Don’t try and get into his or Hole’s head; he will shred you.

The Leopard is a work of pure genius, a skillfully woven mystery with enough action and gore to thrill the regular suspense lover in you. Nesbo has done it again; brilliant.

The Hypnotist - a review

2011-12-14T21:16:00.000-07:00

The most exciting book that I have read all year! This pulsating medical thriller pores on the adrenaline fuel chase in this sensational Scandinavian crime thriller like nothing since the Stieg Larsson trilogy.

When Stockholm’s eminent psychologist, Dr. Erik Maria Bark, is called in to assist in a gruesome triple homicide, he has to place a teenage boy, the only witness to his families devastating annihilation and in a semi-coma with a multitude of life-threatening stab wounds, under hypnosis. The results of his action let lose a plague on his family as if the horsemen of the apocalypse had ridden into town.

With the help of detective Joona Linna the author takes us forward, through a series of flashbacks on a chase to rescue Bark’s teenage son, kidnapped by unknown forces, and to find the murdered families eldest daughter before she took is wiped from the earth. The police suspect the two cases are linked but the how and why will rock you to the core.

Not for the faint of heart the journey exposes story-lines of incest, torture, and sex-crimes that delve into the past of all concerned and produces a liturgy of sins and repentance, exposing human deeds we only dare see in nightmares. This is a barnstormer of a novel that, in the end, casts a hypnotic spell on its readers through to the very end.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1250007585/ref=cm_cr_mts_prod_img

Into the Silence - a review

2011-11-20T16:35:00.004-07:00

The sub-title to this tome is The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest, all three complex subjects that could be described in separate volumes but that Davis has combined a 580 page story that reads like a fantastic yarn of British school-boy adventures.

We are treated to a history of England’s elite young men, the poets and dreamers of the public-school variety as they interact in Britain’s schools, until they are called up and led away to the slaughter of World War I; the best and brightest left dead and dying in the mud of the battlefields in France and Germany defending their hearth and home. The great detail that Davis delves into on the dreadful spectacle of battle in the trenches shoes his aptitude for history, a s does the fact finding he went to in procuring the intricate backgrounds of the climbers that where sent on the mission to be the first to conquer Everest.

In 1921 this elite group of men joined forces in India and trekked through the country, sometimes on foot, horse or yak and led a British unit of climbers assembled on a mission not just to climb Everest but to explore, chart the geography of unknown regions of the world and to explore and bring back samples of fauna and flora from the entire region on behalf of the Royal Geographic Society.

As we read we ravel with this noble group as they discover and describe the complications of a trek of this nature and learn the pitfalls that will befall this and any subsequent mission. Mallory the lead climber, who ultimately perishes upon the slopes of the grand giant of a mountain he helps popularize for the world, is a complex character unto himself and thanks be to all the historical notes and letters he and his fellow climbers on the expedition wrote we can find out now all the intrepid adventures and people they discovered on the way to the world’s greatest adventure.

A fine story told in a masterfully readable way Into the Silence shows how the British were the backbone of the world during the time of the Empire.

Outsourced - A review

2011-11-07T21:30:00.003-07:00

The modern day scourge of the middle-aged man is being laid-off and replaced by younger hires, willing to work for less money. To top of the humiliation when the company sends those same jobs overseas and outsources them to workers in Asia or Central America then the felling on worthlessness is complete. In fact it makes you want to do something to stick it to the man!

Dan was luckier than most. At least he had managed to scrape together a three-month contract building a security system for a local bank but was summarily dismissed when an Indian firm was given the chance to implement his system. When a mistake closed the security window from twenty-eight seconds to twenty-eight minutes each day Dan didn’t point it out to the bank‘s president. Stick it to the man. In fact when he was unable to find another job in the tech industry he decided to take advantage of that twenty eight minute daily window and with another laid-off tech buddy, Shrini, devised an unstoppable plan to rob the bank.

Enrolling two other laid-off over-the hill geeks, one with a penchant for guns, the other for women they went about their plan. Nothing could go wrong. When the group emerged from the bank, no longer ‘thicker-than –thieves’ the plan starts to unravel. Not only are the police now involved because they shot a bank customer, but the safety deposit boxes they hit where the property of local Russian mafia big shot Petrenko.

With the merry band disappearing one by one, a harpy of a wife chapping his ass, the Russians and the police closing in and his failing eyesight threatening to make him completely blind, Dan has to make his move, one that will surprise you.

Although the story took its time unwinding the twists it takes at every opportunity leads for a fine well-plotted story and an unforgettable finale.

Traitor's Emblem - A Review

2011-11-07T21:23:00.000-07:00

Gomez-Jurado brings us a ripping good yarn that thrusts in the streets of Munich as Hitler and the Nazis come to power. Lines are drawn and crossed, not just by tradesmen and racial divisions, but in families and lies their feuds uncover.

We are introduced to a less familiar field than many have discovered previously. As well documented as the crimes of terror imposed on Jews, homosexuals and the mentally impaired, less was known, or at least to me anyway, about the Nazi’s pursuits of the Free Masons.

The emblem that is in the title of this spell-binding thriller is a Masonic one, and it is the one connection that fifteen-year-old Paul Reiner has with the father he never knew. Was he the traitor he had been led to believe sold out the Masons to Hitler?

The night Paul’s war-wounded, veteran cousin commits suicide, the secret of what really happened to Paul’s father is revealed and Paul and his mother find themselves cast out from the nobility that have known to become street urchins on the run from the wrath of the family that never quite accepted them in the first place.

As war in Europe threatens again, Paul grows in to a young man in the school of hard-knocks. He strikes back at his reluctant family to avenge both his parents' death, impersonates an SS officer in a bold move to release his true love, Alys, from the clutches of Dachau and as he reunites with the family he never knew he had, he faces the inevitable conclusion that he has spent his whole adult life searching for his father’s real murderer and the reason he was killed, a map detailing the treasure that awaits them in the Dark Continent.

With Nazis at their heels they must get out of pre-war Germany and to a neutral country such as Portugal. Perhaps they can survive but as the war reaches South Africa and touches them they will need more than good luck to survive, they’ll need diamonds.

Love Lies Bleeding - A review

2011-11-07T21:12:00.002-07:00

Trying to recuperate from a major head injury she received after a mugging, Samantha finds herself installed in a house out in the country far away for her job as an advertising executive at her father s firm in the city. Her parents’ life doesn’t give them time to be embarrassed by her accident—they can’t call it an attack—Sam feels shuffled out of the way and unable to decide what is good for her, held at the mercy of her surgeon fiancé Jackson and parents.
Determined to take her life back she fights tooth and nail at every decision they make on her behalf until she realizes that she has an ally in the physical therapist her father hired, Anne, a local, single mom. Stuck out in a small country town far from Minneapolis, Sam finds that not only does she have to fight the family’s desires, but the small town crowd.
Someone wants her out of the cottage, or so it seems, but is it pranks by local youths or is she haunted by the ghostly visions she sees at night, that of the missing Blanche who used to live in the same home? Are the headaches she gets causing her to have nightmares and is she being slowly driven crazy by those closest to her and for what reason?
McConkey weaves a family drama, allowing her readers to learn the truths at the same time as Sam. Along with her new found friends, Sam peels back the layers from the buried past as the truth unravels, threatening her engagement and past life as she knew it. The story reminded me of a similarly titled debut novel, “When Dreams Bleed” by Robin Cain, an apt comparison in the vein of self-solving mystery romance, female protagonist genre. Part thriller, part ghost story “Love Lies Bleeding” unearths just what lengths some people will go to keep the past buried.

In Malice, Quite Close - A review

2011-11-07T21:00:00.000-07:00

In a modern day scenario lifted straight from Nabakov’s “Lolita,” we are transported to New England where Frenchman Tristan Mouralt has installed his new love, Gisele, a fifteen-year old teenager with stars in her eyes and adventure in her heart. As in the afore mentioned novel a young girl is seduced and plied with sexual favors, had her name changed and poses as the daughter rather than the lover of a man much too old for her amorous attention.

Not an original plot line and one that Europeans are supposed to take as matter-of-fact, as they are deemed to be more opened-minded their counterparts in the States. It is however here that Ryder—in her debut novel—takes us down new found paths in this uniquely told, if somewhat awkwardly titled, mystery.

Settling into the new town, making friends in the art world, one that is familiar to Tristan who is rumored to have a world-renowned collection of impressionist masterpieces, the two make a life for themselves for the next fifteen years. Tristan is surrounded by artists and flim-flam men, rogues and curators and he foists a husband on to Gisele, formerly Karen Miller of San Francisco, an aspiring artist Luke who helps keep up appearances, especially now that Gisele has a daughter of her own, Nicola.

The plan seems to work until Luke has an extra-marital fling while on the West coast on business, with Amanda, a young blonde student. When she follows him, after he tried to break-up, and discovers his real wife is the sister she thought was dead years ago, the drama is ratcheted up a notch as Ryder takes us on a closely contained edgy ride atop a powder keg. When Gisele’s body is discovered you decide if this is a murder or a suicide and which of the culprits just lit the match. BANG!

Before I Go To Sleep A review

2011-11-07T05:01:00.002-07:00

Christine wakes in a strange bed, doesn’t recognize the roomor the man snoring next to her. He has grey-flecked hair and she surmises shemust have had a one-night stand with an older man. When she makes it down the corridorto the bathroom and looks in the mirror she has no recollection of ever seeingthe middle-aged woman reflected back at hair.

In answer to her screams her husband Ben shows up and tellsher, as he does every day, who she is and how she has amnesia. The photographssurrounding the bathroom mirror show her each day a history of her life so far,and as she relaxes into the day all is well. She just knows that as soon as shegoes to sleep tonight it will all start over again.

After ben has left for his teaching job the phone rings anda Dr. Nash reminds her to look I the shoebox in her closet. Apparently she hasa journal that she writes in every day that she keep hidden from her husband. Thefirst note in the journal is DON’T TRUST BEN! As the novel progresses day byday and we get used to her routine Christine’s life unfolds to us and to her.Gradually her memory increases until she no longer needs a daily reminder ofthe hidden journal and as Dr. Nash takes her to places she lived and workedpreviously she begins to have flash backs of her prior life. When she confrontsBen as to why he never told her of the novel she published or the son she borehis answers are not glib, they make sense in order to protect her dailyfragility.

When her flash backs are of a man in her bed with a beardand a scarred face – definitely not Ben - and memories of a brutal assault, notof the automobile accident she has been told caused her head injuries Christinebegins to question Ben’s trust again and by the time she wakens in the veryroom she was assaulted in you can just hear the shrieking music of the soundtrack of her life. Nothing is as it appears and as the reader you shouldquestion everything you see and then never go to sleep again!

BLOG TOUR: Who’s abducting children from 911 emergency scenes?

2011-11-05T11:43:00.002-07:00

Today I have the pleasure of introducing two two fine authors C K Webb and D J Weaver, a mother and daughter team, who have written the chilling debut thriller series 'the Innocents' and who are stopping by my blog today promoting the release of the second novel in the series 'Collecting Innocents'.

'Highway travel can be lonely and treacherous. Broken down vehicles litter the Emergency Lane like corpses on a battlefield. What if you were alone with no one to call when you found yourself stranded? Your only companion; your small child sleeping in the back seat. What would you do?
On I-10 in Louisiana the answer is simple… you use the Emergency Call Box. But, while you sigh a breath of relief in the knowledge that help is on its way, a much more sinister listener has heard your 911 call.
Calls for help are coming in from Emergency Call Boxes along I-10 in Louisiana. But, when the State Trooper or wrecker service arrives to assist, there is no sign of the vehicle. Days later, the driver is found savagely murdered with no trace of their tiny passenger in sight.
When a police officer, formerly of the Aberdeen Police Department sees a twisted pattern of murder and child abduction arising from 911 calls, he contacts Sloanne Kelly, now known for her work with child abduction cases. Together, Sloanne, Shawn Tyler and Mac Mackenzie, with the help of reporter Birney Sullivan, go on the hunt for a killer and the innocent children he is collecting.'

This book grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go till the very last word of the last page. A terrific read by two authors who know their way around a story."
--Shane Gericke, Torn Apart

"...harrowing, edge of your seat thriller, the frightening premise sucks you in, while the twists and turns will keep you guessing to the last breathtaking word.”
Richard Doetsch, Half-Past Dawn

Cruelty to Innocents, the first book in the series reads like a parents worst nightmare.

'What if you were in your car alone with your small child and you came upon an emergency scene? Would you stop to help? What if, while you are trying to assist a victim of an accident or mugging, you left your young child alone in the car, thinking he or she would be safe. What if, instead of help, the call to 911 brought a terrifying, sinister result?
Someone’s abducting children from 911 emergency scenes in Aberdeen Maryland, while their parents call for help and lend aid to accident victims. Someone who’s also listening in, is a monster and vicious child abductor. In the midst of the chaos and confusion of the scene, that monster slips in and steals the innocent children leaving behind no trace for authorities.
Sloanne Kelly is unprepared for what awaits in her hometown as she travels back to Maryland. Her goddaughter is one of the victims and the clock is ticking. Together with her best friend and a local fireman, Shawn Tyler, Sloanne will face the most insidious of criminals and fight to recover the children before there is anymore.'
'
"...This is a poignant, big-hearted novel that finds good in the midst of evil, hope in the midst of despair. Cruelty will touch your heart and give you plenty to think about after the last page has been turned." John Locke, Saving Rachel

"The 911 Abductions is a heart wrenching, emotional roller coaster readers won’t soon forget." Tasha Alexander, Dangerous to Know.

Watch their website for Avenging Innocents: the Final Chapter soon!

Sand - A review

2011-10-30T17:00:00.001-07:00

An epic sweeping family drama of the South African veldt; I kept thinking what a great movie this could be, similar in style and focus as Australia – featuring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman – back in 2008.

Sand takes place about one hundred and fifty years ago when in defiance to the church and their family three young people flee from their Dutch heritage to escape and build a live in the Transvaal, the plains of South Africa. Bartering with Kora, the last tribal chief of the Korana clans, Claes and his best friend Baptiste take enough land to farm and build a small ranch house on while waiting for Catherine to arrive on the next ship. They are some of the first migrants from Holland that helped establish a strong Dutch hold in South Africa.

By the time the book ends Catherine has had a half-dozen children, Baptiste is dead and several out of wedlock children from both men inhabit the tribes and her home. She had taken her husband’s best friend as her lover and both their Baster children as her own. Life is a lot different than the staunch upbringing they had back in Europe. They raise ostriches, horses, run a diamond mind and face many dangerous excursions’ with local tribesmen over poaching and water.

The river banks that have provided shelter and resources for their agriculture over the generations now become the last stand as the natives rise up against the whites and the British Colonial troops get involved in the melee. Will the family survive and if so at what cost?

Sadler – no relative, we share happen to share a family name – has presented us with a factually historic view of the settling of South Africa by Europeans and a peek into the little known Korana tribe who had their last-stand in 1879, so vividly displayed and woven into a fantastic tale in this gem of a novel.

Fly By Night - a review

2011-10-04T21:13:00.000-07:00

Jammer Davis is just an investigator with the NTSB, but you wouldn’t know it. Once again, he finds himself up to his eyeballs in another fine mess somewhere remote, the Sudanese desert. When the call comes from a two-star general at the Pentagon, he finds himself on a mission sponsored by the CIA in an attempt to recover a UAV, the unmanned drone Blackstar that is believed to have fallen into the hands of unscrupulous, private parties at an airport in Khartoum. A Moslem cleric, Rafiq Khoury supposedly has the drone squirreled away in a hangar belonging to his recently formed transportation airline FBN Aviation.

Under the guise of investigating a plane belonging to FBN Aviation reported to have gone down in a recent flight over the Red Sea, Davis is sent to find out the truth. The chief pilot at this airline is an old nemesis from his military days, a fellow pilot he helped drum out of the air force on corruption charges, Bob Schmitt. On his arrival in Sudan, Davis is greeted with threats of death from the get go, almost as if his cover has been blown before he even starts. By the time he discovers the two pilots from the ‘crashed’ plane in a shallow grave with bullet holes in their skulls, he knows he is up against the odds.

He’s surprised with help from three, unlikely sources: the cleric’s own followers, a ‘mystery’ CIA contact, and the beautiful Italian doctor, Regina Antonelli who is on a volunteer mercy mission in the desert region. Davis is able to unearth the dastardly plans to assassinate an Arab leader at a national conference and deflect all blame being fabricated against the US government meanwhile ridding the world of another set of bad guys.

In a James Bondesque performance Davis charges on ahead, no cavalry in sight, on a thrilling journey of espionage at its finest—where the guy in the white hat wins again.

Sweet Money - a review

2011-10-04T21:11:00.002-07:00

When Mole Miranda is released from jail he pledges to never again rob banks and to go home to his wife and child. After all, his cohort in the crime has been keeping the money safe, right? When it is revealed that the lovely young daughter of his friend has been diagnosed with cancer and all the money has been used for her treatment Mole decides one last job is in order.
Mallo brings us in to the dubious character painting him at once wretched and loveable, and in fact by the time you think that he is the protagonist along comes former superintendent Lascano, a man left for dead and who has even been replaced on the police force so that he has become persona non grata. Not a bad place he surmises, since it is the corrupt cops on the force that had originally done him in anyway.
Like Orwell before him, Mallo is one that believes to be successful you don’t follow the norm, in fact, break any of these regular rules. All dialogue takes place is a separate paragraph, all run together, and written in italics. For a speed reader like me it takes an immense amount of concentration to read each sentence and figure out when the other party is talking. More than a little confusing. Luckily for Mallo is does not detract from either the plot or the eloquent language that this fine work of art is written in.
When female problems and money become a common denominator the former criminal and the former cop find their paths crossing at every occasion possible to the point that they cannot deny the bond that has developed and the liking they have for each other. With the final scene you find yourself whistling the theme song “The Girl from Ipanema” and visions from an old Bogart movie dance before your eyes.
All in all, a most satisfying read.

The Devil's Puzzle - a review

2011-10-04T21:04:00.002-07:00

Another beautifully written, well thought, and plotted cozy.
I went into this wondering how I was going to stay awake reading about the obviously boring subject of quilting in New England. I was already stifling a yawn when suddenly the skeleton showed up and suddenly no one in the town of Archers Rest was boring anymore.
O'Donohue carefully manipulates the small town folklore with the modern day gossips, and using the cliff-hanger approach leaves us at the end of each chapter with a little tidbit of new information that makes you have to read just one more chapter.
Nell, grand-daughter of the towns quilting shop owner, Eleanor, is the town's nosy snoop. She gains a little insider information into the curious goings on in town through pillow talk; her boy-friend in the town's police chief. When the skeleton is discovered in the grandmother's rose garden she has to fight to defend Eleanor from the rumors that she was the murderer. It turns out that everyone in town is harboring a secret and one-by-one Nell overturns the rock that everyone has hidden that secret under.
When she receives written threats on her own safety, and discovers that someone is secretly following her around town Nell turns up the heat. Not known for her tact, she treads on more than one person's toes on her way to the undeniable truth. When an attack on the niece of the dead man leaves her unconscious, lying in a pool of blood, the amateur sleuth realizes that the murderer is still alive.
In the fashion of a modern day Jane Marple on steroids, Nell puts together the final piece of the puzzle just in time to stage the quilting display for the town carnival and have the suspect arrested simultaneously.

The Snowman - a review

2011-10-04T20:58:00.002-07:00

The seventh installment featuring Nesbo’s antihero police detective, Harry Hole, shows us again why he is the current reigning Scandinavian author writing for American audiences.
By using the US presidential elections to establish a timeline for his latest novel Nesbo immediately establishes a rapport with his American audience and makes this a truly international novel, so much that we forget he has us running around the streets of Oslo not New York, so we can concentrate more on the storyline.
And what a story! Hole, the recovering alcoholic, as usual strikes out on his own, following a path of investigation that only he seems to understand, a veritable Norwegian Colombo, with the exception that he is tall, blonde energetic, he does however have the subtle power to interpret the clues that others squander. Hole is the dragon-chaser, seeing serial-killers where Norway never has. Serial-killers are an American phenomena in the police world and Hole is considered quite barmy for even considering Oslo could entertain one of their own.
For several years women have gone missing in Norway, and now both bodies and snowmen are showing up in Oslo. When Hole is assigned a new female partner, Katrine Bratt, a transfer from another department, the two of them discover a link between the snowmen Hole is chasing to one that appeared in case of a missing police detective a decade before and the clues start to fall into place. The fast paced action never stops in the this police procedural that takes you down and around so many thrills, chills and false leads that your head spins.
Nesbo’s style is persuasive, irreverent and hard-boiled. He takes you places you thought you’d never go and then ties you up and leaves you there alone! Be prepared to wowed.

Headstone - a review

2011-10-04T20:50:00.000-07:00

What is a former cop to do when he gets a medical discharge off the force? Become a private investigator, of course. Jack Taylor is one of the best, always was, but his gimpy leg and hearing aid have left him with a thirst for adventure and a bottle of Jameson.

Taylor seems to have annoyed everyone he ever came in contact with, from the clergy and the nuns to his former employers, to the criminals he helped put behind bars, all who seem to go out of their way to great him as maliciously as possible. It’s enough to drive one to drink. This being Galway, Ireland drinking is as much the national sport as curling is.

One of the malfeasant characters that he arrested as a teenager has rousted a small group of hoodlums and preached to them his twisted version of Darwin’s evolutionary theories, one that includes ridding the world, or at least Galway of misfits, retards, gays and parasites. Christening his band of warriors “Headstone,” he leads them on a killing spree. Taylor is not only on the case he is also on the list for extermination and so the plot builds as one by one those in his community are attacked, molested, and killed all in the name of saving the purity of the human species.

Bruen has written a plethora of novels and his style slips easily across the eyes and the tongue. I found myself repeating his dialogue out loud to hear the brogue in which it needs to be read. The technique instantly reminded me of the master of dialogue, Charlie Huston in the form of the paragraphing and I too was drawn to the prose, simple two and three word sentences that just pop on the page.

I was totally entranced with the originality of the plot, the humor, and the grit in this novel of the dark side.

Cemetery Girl - A review

2011-10-04T20:40:00.002-07:00

Our children always leave us. It is especially hard when it is a girl that leaves home or worse gets married, so that they in essence now belong to someone else too. It is even harder when they leave home unexpectedly and not of their own accord.

Caitlin was twelve when she disappeared, presumably kidnapped. Her parents were so sure she would never have run away. The police tried, but nothing ever came of it. The parents searched high and low, but after four years not only did they take for granted they would never see Caitlin, but the stresses their fragile relationship had gone through cracked and Abby moved out leaving Tom. He couldn’t leave just in case, you know, she came back. Her bedroom was the same as she left it.

On the eve of the memorial service Abby has planned, a lead surfaces from an unlikely source: a local stripper saw Caitlin in the club with a man six months ago. News headlines, police involvement and the girl’s age—she is after all now sixteen—all encourage the kidnapper to turn Caitlin lose and she is picked up wandering the streets. The tension that Bell builds in the story up until this point are high-strung, taut, but tempered somewhat by our knowledge that Caitlin is coming home, after all the author tells us this on the cover blurb.

Similar to Emma Donoghue’s “Room,” a recent novel featuring abduction, the book now takes us on the second journey. Since Caitlin refuses to discuss anything that has happened to her in the years she was away, and will not testify against a man she professes to still want to be with, the homecoming is postponed. Tom makes it his personal mission to find out what has happened to his little girl, but will he be prepared to face the reality that is waiting for him?

“Cemetery Girl” is a parent’s worst nightmare, one steeped in reality in today’s world. It is altogether disturbing, brilliantly engaging, and a must-read for thriller fans.

Collecting Cooper - a review

2011-10-04T20:35:00.000-07:00

Now an ex-cop and fresh out of Christchurch Prison after four months on a drinking charge, Tate is dragged into an ongoing investigation. The last killer he chased ended up with Tate’s daughter dead and his wife brain-dead, hence the drinking that got him in the slammer in the first place. Now they want his expertise again. There’s a new serial killer on the loose.

Adrian just finished burning his pseudo-mother to death. She was the head nurse at Grover Hills, the institution he was raised in after he got his own back on those bullies in junior high. When the government ran out of money, the patients were all let out on the street, Adrian wants back in. He tasers criminal psychologist, Dr. Cooper, a college professor, and part-time serial killer, and imprisons him in ‘The Screaming Room’ where Adrian and others where punished all those years ago. He’s added Cooper to his collection of serial killer souvenirs. What’s better that an actual killer himself.

Meanwhile Emma Green has gone missing, the daughter of Tate’s former lawyer, who just happens to be the same girl he hit and injured while drunk. The lawyer feels he is owed one and Tate is set loose to find the young lady. The paths of the ex-cop and the serial killers cross as it comes to light that the missing girl has also been kidnapped and is being presented as a victim for Cooper by Adrian.

Stumbling across clues at ongoing police investigations, Tate is at least given a little bit of a glad-hand by his former partners since he is also helping them track down the elusive Melissa X, New Zealand’s most elusive serial killer, who’s connected to the missing Dr. Cooper.

Cleave leads us on a tantalizing, mouth-watering specter of horror, never knowing what will be revealed around the next corner, or turning of a page. This is one in a series of novels centered on Detective Tate and he withholds just enough to make you want to get that next book now

Before I Go To Sleep - a review

2011-10-04T20:28:00.000-07:00

Christine wakes in a strange bed, doesn’t recognize the room or the man snoring next to her. He has grey-flecked hair and she surmises she must have had a one-night stand with an older man. When she makes it down the corridor to the bathroom and looks in the mirror she has no recollection of ever seeing the middle-aged woman reflected back at her.

In answer to her screams her husband Ben shows up and tells her—as he does every day—who she is and how she has amnesia. The photographs surrounding the bathroom mirror show her each day a history of her life so far, and as she relaxes into the day, all is well. She just knows that as soon as she goes to sleep it will start all over again.

After Ben has left for his teaching job, the phone rings and a Dr. Nash reminds her to look in the shoebox in her closet. Apparently she has a journal she writes in every day that she keeps hidden from her husband. The first note in the journal is DON’T TRUST BEN! As the novel progresses day by day and we get used to her routine, Christine’s life unfolds to us and to her. Gradually her memory increases until she no longer needs a daily reminder of the hidden journal and she begins to have flashbacks of her prior life. When she confronts Ben as to why he never told her of the novel she published or the son she bore, his answers are not glib, they make sense in order to protect her daily fragility.

When her flashbacks are of a man in her bed with a beard and a scarred face—definitely not Ben—and memories of a brutal assault, not of the automobile accident she has been told caused her head injuries, Christine begins to question Ben’s trust again. Nothing is as it appears and as the reader you should question everything you see and then never go to sleep again!

SoWest So Wild, A Desert Sleuths Sisters in Crime Anthology - a review

2011-10-04T20:21:00.003-07:00

These twenty tales of the American South West are brought to us by a chapter of the Sisters in Crime organization based out of Phoenix, AZ and are stories linking our past to our present through charlatans and sheriffs, housewives and trail hands. Regular readers of Suspense Magazine will already be familiar with a couple of the authors whose work has been highlighted in the pages of the magazine previously: Deborah Ledford and Leslie Kohler.

From the streets of Tombstone in the south, to the far reaches of Arizona’s Canyon de Chelly, we are treated to stories of murder and mayhem, myth and malice. Old Indian tales of the spirit world, Pinkerton agents and family squabbles make up the entertaining stories in this anthology of the Wild West.

The Southwest has seen its share of troubles and violence, stories we have seen documented in the movies on the silver screen to the current news headlines on our televisions, and these twenty authors have managed to fan the flame to keep alive in an anecdotal way, the stories that have helped fashion the South West.

“So West, So Wild” takes us from the comedic to the noir, modern day methodology to the past’s practicality, and shows us why many Arizonans still find a reason to strap on a six-shooter in this desolate and wild part of the United States.

Cryers Cross - a review

2011-09-20T23:40:00.002-07:00

The ghosts of the poor children virtually abandoned and many beaten to death in the confines of one of Montana’s worst reform schools over a hundred years ago, are crying out from the grave to be saved. The teenagers from Cryer’s Cross, a small, one-room school town, are disappearing, two are gone, Tiffany and now Nico, leaving no trace or clue. They simply just vanished.

Kendall, Nico’s lifelong friend is distraught after his disappearance. Her whole life is interrupted, the school’s soccer team is disbanded, Juilliard turned her down and two new teenagers have moved into town, as if to take over the place of the missing teens. At least it keeps order in her OCD-riddled mind.

Unable to rest with her friend gone, Kendall finds herself drawn to the new boy, eighteen year old Jacian, when they are thrown together as the town imposes a curfew and travel restrictions on the teens in town until the mystery can be solved.

As school continues, Kendall keeps noticing the desk Nico sat in keeps getting out of place each morning. She would notice since she has to align them all in correct order every morning. She realizes this is the same desk Tiffany—the other missing teen—sat in last year and graffiti is scratched in the desk top that she doesn’t recall seeing before. It reads Please Save Me. Sitting at the desk she too is put under a spell as the voices of the past call for her help. Will Jacian be able to figure out the town’s secret in time to save Kendall from being the next to vanish forever?

McMann is again at her top-draw best as she weaves another young adult novel into a story that crosses all ages and simply becomes a great yarn that anyone will want to read.

Room - a review

2011-09-20T23:32:00.000-07:00

This novel takes us into an eleven foot by eleven foot storage shed that Jack and his mother call home. Jack was born in this room and it is his reality. Mother has known the outside world however, and until his fifth birthday Jack never knew that once, a long seven years ago, Mother was lifted from the streets and kidnapped to be held hostage by their nightly visitor, Old Nick.

Told entirely from the point of view of this intelligent little boy, “Room” shows us the great love that Mother has for Jack. They have a few books, the TV, a wardrobe—where Jack sleeps so Old Nick will never see him—and whatever they can beg for as a Sundaytreat. In return for Old Nick never seeing her son, she has given up all attempts to escape and allows her body to be sexually violated whenever he needs her. Jack, awake in the closet at night, counts the number of times Old Nick makes the bed squeak.

After explaining to Jack how she actually got in the shed, the two make an audacious attempt at escape, and miraculously pull it off. I don’t want to spoil the surprise except to say it was the fastest I have ever read, skipping paragraphs and pages to get to the finale which brought me to tears. The book, if written as a novella, could have ended at their freedom. However, Donoghue has gone on to feed us a second well-crafted story, still from Jack’s point of view to show the adjustments that the child had to go through to adapt to what we all think of as our reality.

This is a bright uplifting story that takes us from the near depths of a hellacious existence to a new life. I loved the imaginative, original work Donoghue placed in my hands. It is one for the ages, a plausible, but dark story with the light of hope shining as a beacon for all who dare read it.

The Unwanteds - a review

2011-09-18T11:33:00.001-07:00

On the island of Quinn your future is decided at the age of thirteen. Once a year all the youths and their families gather for final judgment. By this point most know what role they will be assigned to. If you have been reported to the council as one who has expressed undesirable qualities, artistically inclined, then you are one of the Unwanteds. Alex had known for three years, his parents kept him informed that he was an Unwanteds. So, as he and his twin brother Aaron sat waiting for their names to be called out, he was reconciled to being sent on the Purge.

Aaron was a “Wanted,”he had a bright future at the university and probably in the future government. Many of Alex’s friends joined the ranks of the Wanteds and the Necessaries, the rest of them where loaded on to the bus for the drive to The Death Farm.Once the Eliminator got their hands on these Unwanteds they would join a succession of generations of poor souls cast into the Great Lake of Boiling Oil. Shaking in their shoes and ready for the worst, they were surprised as their shackles magically fell to the floor and a white-haired, old man strode toward them and delivered the news, that he was Marcus Today the ruler of Artime, and they were all now part of the biggest ruse of all time.

By the time they met all the other residents however, it did not take long to assimilate into their new life. Now circumstances happen—as they always do with twins—that brings to the attention of the residents of Quinn that something is just not right behind the gate to The Death Farm.

“The Unwanteds”is the first in a series of a delightful world of young adult stories that feature a young male wizard. For my money this story is actually better than the other wizardry tales that came before and is an absolute gem that should not be missed by adults or teens.

The Unconquered - a review

2011-08-30T21:22:00.001-07:00

Perhaps our last frontier is still here on earth with tribes that have yet to have contact with others humans. Scott Wallace, attached to the National Geographic, went on one such excursion into the Amazon jungle in search of a lost tribe, trying to find the inner sanctum of the mysterious People of the Arrow, the flecheiros; Wild Indians.
An ancient tribe of Brazil, it was rumored they had not made offical contact with the outside world. Sydney Pussuelo, president of Brazil's Indian affairs agency, known under the Portuguese acronym of FUNAI led an expedition, not to contact these people; an encounter would mean a disatrous end to a way of life thousands of years old. In fact they where there to protect the Indians, to ensure the land they lived in was saved from the destructive activity in the Amazon, logging and gold mining, both of which are causing awful destruction to the land and forcing the natives to move from their tribal areas. Many tribes had been close to wiped out with white man's disease and subsequent way of life. Nature needed to be left alone.
In a harrowing journey, half of which was conducted on foot, a group of over thirty men helped map out the land area to conserve, while fending off attacks by snakes, piranha, and the potential of a curare-tipped arrow, eating monkeys that reminded them of cannibalism just to survive. This rugged group of men where bought to their knees, scourged with disease and hunger, willing to give of their lives in order that others might maintain theirs.
A magnificant story ripely told in colorful language that delves into the politics of South American countries and the rape of the Amazon forest that will leave you aghast and full of wonder of what men will do the harm and help others. A most impressive report.

The Secret Soldier - a review

2011-08-16T21:37:00.001-07:00

The Saudi government is in trouble. One of the princes of the kingdom is undermining the King in an effort to seize the throne. So, who do the King and his trusted henchmen turn to? Former CIA operative John Wells. This demonstrates the fiction in this incredulous turn of events; as the prince says “You think this pleases us? To ask an American we don’t know for help.” What else would you do though when your own secret service is compromised?

Once Wells gets his head in the game, he and his partner Brett Gaffan go deep undercover, with literally a king’s ransom at their disposal, to race to find out who the secret operatives are, where they are and what diabolical plot they’re hatching against the government. From New Hampshire to Montego Bay, South of France to Milan, or Lebanon to Cyprus the pair race against time to discover the truth.

When the leader of the rebel force goes rogue and inflicts pain not only on the king, but on ‘the American infidels,’ the CIA gives it’s blessing to send in the secret soldier while government red tape holds up any involvement from a Delta Force unit confined to the embassy grounds. Using the latest satellite technology they are able to pinpoint the location of the missing Ambassador. Since a video of impossible demands has already been broadcast over the airways through Al Jazeera, it is a race against time before a video of his decapitation is shown next, leading to the scenario of an American invasion and the downfall of aging King Abdullah.

Berensen takes his time establishing his characters credentials in an effort to make this a fine stand-alone novel for those not already introduced to his protagonist John Wells. His work is as much a historical and political fact finding tour of the Middle East as is it a spellbinding page turner and espionage thriller, one that his hard to put down.

The Target - A Review

2011-08-14T07:40:00.000-07:00

When a dirty-bomb explodes at Chicago’s Union Station killing hundreds of commuters taking the train home from work, Maggie Curran is one of the deceased. Her husband, Mike, an Iraqi war veteran, disillusioned in the government’s ability to protect its citizens confers with a group of like-minded ex-military types and scientists who decide to do something about it themselves.

Starting with the revenge for his wife’s death Curran arranges for the one living bomber to be assassinated, brings into his confidence the money-men and the group decide to strike back at the Muslim world during Ramadan, and launch a nuclear missile near Mecca to show that the Western world also has the opportunity to strike deep in the homeland of it’s perceived enemies.

One member of the inner circle has other plans for the bomb, deciding to strike at Mecca itself and the groups plan gets unraveled as the seat of power changes at the last moment. Will the conscience of the bombers win out or will the dissent member wreak havoc in the Middle East.

In a thought provoking counterpoint from both sides of the world that leaves us with eye-opening propositions, Bowen shows his expertise in the fields of military intelligence and international security. The political philosophies expressed appear to be meant as what is needed to force both sides to give consideration to the final option but also shows what could happen if that same solution was left to the well-meaning but ignorant masses disenchanted with what our government is doing. As the suspense builds I found myself with just as many questions as the book leaves answers, and I think they could have been addressed in the portions of the book that cried out for more dialogue. It is used effectively in places, but to delve more deeply into the family situations, into what makes each of the characters act the way they do, I would like to have read a little more discourse. This lack of dialogue in key places does not distract from the melodrama of this thriller however I felt it would have enhanced the storyline if we read what they said rather than being told how the characters felt.

The Sherlockian

2011-08-14T07:24:00.001-07:00

Having been steeped in the writings of Sir Author Conan Doyle as a boy from The Lost World to Sherlock Holmes immediately seeing this book’s title prickled the hair on the back of my neck. How could someone think they can emulate or worse still try to copy one of the greats. So I was pleasantly surprised to find Moore’s version of events quite within the realms of possibility.

A well thought through approach, obvious research in the private life of Doyle, and information only a Sherlockian would be aware of are self-evident throughout. A Sherlockian is a member of a group that devotes themselves to the study of Sherlock Holmes, quoting passages as some folks quote famous movie lines, and holding occasional meetings to study and discuss the famous detective. Doyle would have been disgusted at such loyalty to his creation, after all, as the books points out, Doyle killed Holmes off because he had become bigger than Doyle. The author was playing second-fiddle to the character he wrote about.

The Sherlockian starts with a meeting of the devotees, whose organizer claims to have discovered the missing diary of Doyle; the one that has had everyone talking for months. Doyle apparently kept a very detailed accounting of his life and the missing chapter would be of great interest to historians, let alone this group of readers. Unaccountably the diary is stolen and the finder apparently murdered before he can bring to light his findings. Smelling a rat, Harold White, an ardent student of Holmes’ techniques, and Sarah Lindsay, the journalist who was to report on the findings of the diary, pair up to track down who killed their esteemed leader and to find out where the missing diary might be now. If this mystery wasn’t enough to keep one turning the pages, Moore switches back and forth between current times and the nineteen hundreds, every other chapter, so the reader is finding out for himself exactly what is transpiring that Doyle wrote about so ardently that will make the discovery of these lost months so important to his fans of today.

The back-and-forth ploy is a tremendous asset to the novel and it kept me up late into the night unable to stop reading until I turned the file pages to discover the final ending to this astutely written historical thriller.

Missing Persons - a review

2011-08-14T07:16:00.000-07:00

O’Donohue puts her journalistic skills to work building her new character, Kate Conway, a Chicago television reporter and begins her second series with a rollicking good start.
Conway produces one of those true crime local cable shows and is used to dealing with dead bodies and missing people but when the dead body is her soon-to-be divorced husband who just happens to die while she is starting up a fledgling new show on finding missing people then local homicide detectives find cause to question her motives and alibi.
Throw into the mix the husband’s new fiancé, who all of a sudden wants to be Kat’s new ‘best friend’, a old high school jock friend and unhappy in-laws Kate finds her personal life as much as a juggling act as the new television show. When the body of the girl she is reporting on as missing shows up and Kate starts to receive death threats of her own she has to figure out is the hidden danger from the results of her reporting or from someone a little closer to her personal life.
O’Donohue exhibits a masterful approach with her classic red-herrings and carefully placed foreshadowing as she drags us through the muck-racking of yellow journalism but still finds a way to keep as close as family when worrying about her protagonist. This novel kept me interested and still left room for unexpected twist in the end. This will be a series worth collecting.

Consequences: The Criminal Case of David Parker Ray - a review of a True Crime

2011-08-13T15:43:00.000-07:00

When a young woman is found running naked down a country road in Elephant Butte NM with nothing but a collar and a chain fastened around her neck the killing and torture spree of David Parker Ray came to a halt.
Cindy Vigil, was one of the lucky ones. Only a few had survived at the hands of the criminal sexual sadist and those that had where so drugged on ametriptoline as to not remember little to anything of their experience. When authorities followed their leads back to the home of DPR they were all flabbergasted at the extent of the crimes committed.
Along with his torture chamber, labeled The Toy Box, they also found extensive diaries describing in great detail all the gruesome tortures and murders he had committed over a forty-four year span starting when he turned fifteen
This true life crime saga is told in clinical detail covering all the known facts, as horrific as they are, and the subsequent trials of DPR, his girlfriend, daughter and other known associates. It makes for a gruesome read and a look at a little slice of America that we all would prefer to forget existed.
Hard to rate it, cant say I liked it but found it fascinating, well told and a good research avenue for novelists who are writing abut aspects of S&M or BDSM

Bourne Dominion - A review

2011-08-11T17:37:00.000-07:00

One assumed with Robert Ludlum’s untimely passing that Jason Bourne passed on with him, however the character is alive and well and in the capable hands of Van Lustbader.

From South America to Europe and back to the Middle East, Bourne helps track down and kill the worst bad guys in the world while apparently being marked for death by the Russian spymasters, FSB-2, who send the one man Bourne has ever trusted, Boris Karpov as his assassin.

Meanwhile, Severus Domina, an underground secret terrorist group, is out to attack America again in her homeland. This multi-faceted group has agents in every part of the world, imbedded in government and business, all with one goal in mind, world domination.

As usual nothing in Bourne’s life is as it appears. From the diabolical female triplets to the Mossad agent masquerading as an airline stewardess there are obstacles and assistance placed in his path at every turn. And let’s not forget the murderous Columbian drug dealer that just won’t let matters rest either. I don’t think Bourne ever has a restful night, but then again who needs sleep when the country’s sole survival is on your shoulders.

There are so many interwoven complex plots, secret organizations, inter lapping characters, and dead people who really aren’t that the reading of this novel about scrambles the brain. I already had a hard enough time truly understanding the twists and turns that Ludlum took us through with Bourne and so I was interested in seeing where Van Lustbader would take the character. Would he simplify matters and allow us to see inside Bourne for who he really is or use the same mad-scramble style of storytelling of his predecessor? If you liked Ludlum’s Bourne then you are in luck, you will love this new edition of Jason Bourne too.

Faces of the Gone - A review

2011-08-11T17:29:00.000-07:00

Even in notorious drug–infested cities such as Newark, NJ four bodies, killed gang-land style and stacked like cordwood, still pulls headlines for the local press. Carter Ross, investigative journalist for the Newark Eagle-Examiner catches a break when he feels that the local police have drawn a hasty conclusion to the reason for the killing and his leads take him to the dark under-belly of the city.

Making a connection with all four dead gang members through a special kind of heroin, almost pure and the best on the street, leads to dire consequences for not only the families and friends of the people he interviewed to get the story correct, but for himself too. A lucky rendezvous with a horny editor finds Carter not sleeping in his home when it is blown to smithereens.

Rather than be warned off, Carter takes aim with both barrels while being helped by his gay, Cuban side-kick intern, a plucky local stripper with nothing to lose. With a nudge from local gang members wanting to help keep their name out of the police blotter for being involved with selling drugs, manages to outwit the Federal Drug Bureau and the local police by getting to the source to get the real story on the front page as an exclusive.

Parks, drawing on his experience as a journalist, takes us on a page-turning, stomach-churning race across Newark. The humor dispersed through the sarcastic vein that Ross expels had me chuckling aloud and reading paragraphs to whoever would listen within the first three or four pages, and continues throughout in rich fashion. This debut novel has a plot that is solid and well developed. For lack of a better word, the story rocks! A page turner that I finished the same day I started, I just couldn’t put it down.

The Devil's Star - A Review

2011-08-11T17:15:00.000-07:00

After writing half-dozen best sellers in Scandinavia and Europe, Norway’s answer to the next rising star of Scandinavian thrillers is Jo Nesbo and he brings the pounding beat of “The Devil’s Star” to take America by storm.

Detective Harry Hole, is climbing out of the wrong side of the drunk-tank trying to recover from his partner’s murder and the demise of his long term relationship with Rakel. To make matters worse, Hole suspects the detective he is forced to partner with now, as being implicated in his partner’s death and is generally a crooked cop.

When the initial investigation unearths a dead woman with a missing finger and a small, red, star-shaped diamond under her eyelid, the crew is stumped. With no leads and no new information, they are surprised when five days later the finger of a missing woman shows up with a red diamond ring. Correctly, they surmise a serial killer is on the loose. By the time the third woman shows up dead with a missing finger and a red diamond, they have pin-pointed evidence to who they refer to as the Courier Killer. A man on a bicycle is acting as a deliveryman to gain access. Hole has to determine whether these are random killings, or where these woman chosen for a special reason.

It all centers on the diamond, a red pentagram that when diagrammed and placed on a map, leads them to the time sequence and the place where the final killing while take place. With no PD support, Hole has to strike out on his own. As we peel through each layer of witnesses and suspects the tension builds. With the killer closing in and his partner trying to kill him, too, Hole is on his own. By the time he finally unmasks the sociopathic murderer, we have been treated to a story like never before. This is a police procedural for the ages.

Unsinkable - A review

2011-07-19T17:52:00.001-07:00

Expectations are a terrible thing because so often they let you down. I started this book really wanting to love it. I mean what's not to love here. A wonderful story of grit and determination in a teenage girl, who at sixteen isn't even a woman yet, striving against all odds to break the world record as the youngest female to single-handedly sail around the world non-stop. That she does not succeed is not the story here the story is thee fortitude and perseverance she demonstrates having to repair the ship, following instructions over the phone from hundreds of miles away in the worst conditions imaginable, and the will to survive when her yacht almost capsizes and then the disappointment when her mast snaps off leaving her drifting in a spot on the Indian Ocean just about as far from land as she could be. My heart broke along with hers when she had no choice but to activate the emergency beacon and summon help.

The problem is that I just gave you the entire book in one paragraph. It would have been longer obviously if the trip had not been cut short, so the preparation for the journey is dwelt on too long to give the book some filler. We are a third of the way through the book before she even sets sail. Now I am going to assume that, like any other athletic event, the party performing the feat has trained. it would really be a story if they did the deed without preparation. The only book I had read that I could compare this one too was Dove (Sunderland mentions having read this herself) a story of Robin lee graham, who sailed the world as a sixteen year old over thirty years ago. He was a pioneer in this type of single-handedly sailing the world and an inspiration to the author here. His book spends the first chapter on the preparation and the rest on the journey. Unsinkable should have followed suit.

The other problem, and it is because of the elongated beginning that this is even discussed are the parents of the author. I recall when this journey actually took place and the press questioned whether or not she was capable and if the parents were out of their mind letting her do this trip. Now Sunderland showed all of us she was capable, level-headed and courageous. However, the fact that she had to call for help pack to her dad and the team she had assembled rather than being able to figure it out or jerry-rig the boat shows that perhaps she was really not a 'seasoned salt' and could have used a little more time in real life before sailing on this trip. The book does little to convince me of that fact and the parents somehow take the blame in the court of the people for not realizing this fact.

Anyway, hats off to Abby Sunderland for surviving her adventure and for being able to tell us all about it in this stirring book. It should be proposed reading for all teenagers that are sitting around each summer bored. They don’t have to sail the world but they can apply themselves whole-heatedly to some task or other, and that is the lesson Sunderland brings us. I salute her efforts.

Random Violence - a review

2011-07-19T17:14:00.001-07:00

Mackenzie thrills again with the next in the Jade De Jong series. Jade, a private detective has recently returned from self-exile in England after needing time to get her head together following her last caper.
She immediately falls back in not only with the criminal underworld informants she had cultivated, but also into a semi-partnership with police detective David Patel. Hoping to stay close to Patel in order to foster a romantic relationship, they find themselves at loggerheads, especially when he admits that he has married and had a child since her absence. The fact that his wife and he are separated only seems to open more wounds for the couple.
Her arrival back in Johannesburg is also timed for the release of a hardened criminal that Jade believes was involved in the death of her father—a police commander whose death was set up to look like a simple auto accident—a decade previously. Along with helping Patel solve a possible home invasion style murder that leads to a much more complicated case with multiple victims and a vicious gang of murderers, Jade has her hands full keeping Patel’s new commander off his back as well as keeping from him the knowledge that she has already shot and killed a notorious thug with a gun she was not supposed to have been carrying.
All of this mayhem helps complicate a simple plot. One that is a simple P.I. out does the police at their own game, figures out the bad guy first, girl gets guy in a happy ending. At least the murders and car chases keep us entertained enough to stay interested.
Not quite a page turner, but remarkable nevertheless as the reader is held spell bound by the author’s interpretation of South Africa, the rhythms of her cities, and their cry for help.

A Death in Summer - a review

2011-07-01T16:59:00.000-07:00

With humidity as thick as molasses, an Irish heat wave threatens to bring Dublin to a slow crawl in this 1950s drama. Like Ireland itself, time moves slowly and this novel could have been written in a time dating from 1920s forward. Only references to concentration camps and the French resistance give us an accuracy to bring time forward.

Like a take-off on Holmes and Watson, Inspector Hackett and his trusted partner, pathologist Dr. Quirke make an odd pair poking around in the affairs of dead newspaper owner, Richard ‘Diamond Dick’ Jewell. In a country still torn with prejudice after World War II the Irish seem surprised to find a Jewish conclave here in Dublin, one treated with respect unless they happen to get in the way. Jewell apparently got in someone’s way.

Dropping clues like flies on a sticky summer day, Black allows us to see ahead of his investigators and we want to shout out warnings and have them discard the red-herrings. As the only so-human, flawed protagonist, Quirke, stumbles blindly ahead, only seeing the clues like a mole suddenly blinded by the bright sky after sticking his snout of a hole for the first time. Surely he can’t help but notice what he has been tripping over, especially when a bloody finger is attached to his front door in an envelope.

Jewell’s death has so many possible suspects that it takes the entire book to whittle them down slowly, one at a time keeping you guessing until the very end. The plodding pace of the book helps evolve the storyline and makes this one worth hanging in there until the inevitable conclusion.

Blind Fury - A Review

2011-07-01T16:54:00.002-07:00

In this sexually charged thriller Detective Inspector Anna Travis, finds herself leading the investigation of the murders of three women whose bruised and raped bodies had been dumped in a field close to the M1, the major thoroughfare between London and Manchester. All the girls had the same MO and no DNA had been left at the scene.

Carefully piecing together the clues, digging up dirt in places the former investigator missed, Travis has to work carefully not to antagonize the crew she was working with as well as keeping her former lover, and now boss, at arm’s length. The evidence mounts and they run into increasing dead end after dead end until a letter arrives from Cameron Welsh, a prisoner who Travis previously helped put away for sexual homicide. Welsh is kept under close surveillance in a top security wing at Barfield Prison in Leeds.

Welsh claims to have information to help solve the murders. Is this just a bored prisoner looking for sexual kicks of his own or does he really have knowledge on the subject that will help another young lady from meeting a similar fate?

During her trips to Barfield Prison, Travis is subjected to all manners of disgusting tirades from Welsh, who does however, prove to be useful in some of the scenarios he poses, and at the same time Travis falls hard for the young prison guard Ken Hudson. In the process of falling head-over-heels for the guard, she finds evidence which suggests that perhaps he may be involved in the disappearance of the murdered girls.

This tear-away thriller will keep you awake at night, prying your closing eyes open with toothpicks, to get to the next clue. Definitely a rip-roaring, can’t-put-it-down read.

Gone YA Trilogy review

2011-06-27T18:54:00.002-07:00

McMann is back on track in this five-star finale of her trilogy as she delves into the emotions of teenagers Janie and Cabel as they have to make those angst filled decisions regarding their future.

The book begins with picking up on the end of book two. Having helped the police bust a teacher who was a child molester their cover is blown at school so to get away from the stares, side-wise looks and cat-calls of narc the two head for a remote cabin to spend time with relatives and consider what comes next. In the middle of the holiday Janie receive an urgent call from a neighborhood friend that she has had to rush Janie’s alcoholic mother to the hospital. Cabel drives Janie, still unable to drive herself because of the seizures she suffers while under the power of other’s dreams, only to find out the emergency is much different than they could have imagined. The patient is Janie’s long-lost father.

Having never known her father and having lost her mother to a battle with alcoholism Janie is unsure what to do or feel. She sees inside her father’s dreams, his tormented mind as he lies dying from what is assumed a tumor of the brain. She settles for looking into his background and discovers a life she never imagined. She also discovers that her father had not been aware that her mother was pregnant when they split up. Realization, through dreams and facts shows her that he too was a dream catcher and had lived a life of isolation in order not to have to deal with the mind-blowing experiences that other people’s dreams lead to.

Janie realizes that the decision she had made to isolate - therefore not put Cabel through a relationship like she had learned from her mentor, Ms. Stubin, would lead to a life where by the time she turned mid-twenty would see her become crippled and blind because of the stress her body would take on from other’s dream resolutions – was not the correct decision too as apparently not using the gift turned you brain to mush just like her father. A decision awaits her both leading to equally terrible results but one has to be decided.

Can’t wait for the movie!

Fade - A YA Review

2011-06-27T18:49:00.000-07:00

Working closely with her new employers, the local police department, Janie and her now boyfriend Cabel, the undercover ‘narc’ at her high school, have heard that there is the possibility of a pedophile teacher that needs to be set up.

Janie, through the powers allotted to her, manages to overhear inklings of this perv teacher through infiltrating the dreams of some of her schoolmates and then pinpoints Mr. Durbin, a popular science teacher, as the possible target. She allows herself to become ingratiatingly close to him and gets herself invited to a private party. Cabel meantime, just a teenager himself, has problems with his girlfriend getting this close, and looking like she is showing affection to the older man, even though he hears from Janie that she hates it. She also reminds him that in their last assignment he had allow himself to become close to one of female students in the drug bust he was working.

The party gets out of hand, there is alcohol served, HGB is in every liquid you can imagine and not only do we have basically a fill scale orgy there are two other males teachers frolicking with the female students. Now while all this is titillating and exciting to read, and nothing outside of the realms of what today’s teenagers have seen or heard from their peers, it did seem to be a little unlikely to me that this many teachers would be involved so openly and that a high school student would be allowed to be involved so much as the bait under these circumstances. It is for that reason that out of the three in the trilogy I only gave four stars to this book; the unbelievable meter took over.

Know what your teens are reading. Use these books as a talking point, something to help your teens understand some of the perils of youth so they can find answers just as the teens in this novel did, and enjoy this rip-roaring novel that you just can’t put down when you start.

Agent turned Author

2011-06-22T17:31:00.000-07:00

When I began the search for the ever elusive (and still to this day nonexistant) literary agent I did as all novice authors do and perused the pages of Hermann's Guide to Publishers and Agents, looking atwho was at which location and who seemed to be the best fit for my genre and personally. I came across on name, Rose Sefton. Not only did we seem to have a lot of things in common but she also lived in Phoenix AZ. Since I am in Tucson that was great. I could have my own agent and not have to fly to New York or other parts of the country. I immediately sent all the required information and patiently waited. I figured she was a one man shop and probably busy. After three weeks I made a call and found out to my chagrin that not only did Rose no longer reside in Arizona but because of an aciudent was no longer prepared to my a literary agent. She had indeed moved to West Virginia and was writing books herself.

I might have lost a potential agent but I did gain a friend. We spoke several times over the phone, and joined up on Facebook and now I want to help anounce the important news that Rose has published her latest book. As soon as I get an ARC you will see the review but in the meantime check out Rose's website for the latest information, and here is the anouncement her publisher forwarded to me to provide to you.PublishAmerica is proud to announce the recent release of Rose Sefton's new book: The Confederette!

Here's what the author says about the book: The Confederette gets its hands dirty in this Southern novel about Posse Comitatus.Leila Gale MacDonald, an impoverished soap-maker from rural Pottsboro, North Carolina, is raped after the Civil War by a gang of renegade Union soldiers, occupationalists roaming the back-woods, looking for prey. Pregnant and alone on the family farm, she begs for death. But, having a stronger will, she seeks justice where none is to be found. After her horse us killed and her house burned to the ground, she enters the lion's den with a vengeance and files charges against the men who ruined her. Southern justice at its best, one of the rapists is tarred and feathered, but Leila finds herself tried as a murderess and horse thief, trapped in a jail cell with a date with the hangman. Until she creates an army of widows, children and crippled Confederate veterans who take back the town.

We are offering you an opportunity to secure your personal copy of Rose Sefton’s exceptional book today. Please click here: http://www.publishamerica.net/product42211.html to secure your copy of the book*, then click Add to Cart. For an introductory discount of 20%, use this coupon code: Discount20.

Fade - A YA review

2011-06-22T05:05:00.003-07:00

Fast paced and edgy this first in the McMann trilogy features Janie Hannigan , a high-school senior who has lived with a dreadful secret for years – she can see your dreams.

In this young adult thriller we are treated to influences from Stephen King. Consider this language worthy of the master himself as McMann describes her class-mates, “The oversleepers, latecomers, and don’t-give-a-shitters” … perfect. The dreams of her friends, class-mates, mother and anyone she happens to walk or drive by at the time they are sleeping causes seizures and convulsions in Janie. She goes through the turmoil of World War II, hiding in the trenches with an old man in the nursing home where she works after school, and sees her soon to be beau’s father spray lighter fluid on him and light it.

It is not until she runs into an elderly blind lady, Ms. Stubin, who as she dies lets her know there are other dream catchers out there. Learning to not only see but enter dreams Janie channels powers she never knew she possessed until she is able to influence the outcome of her ‘victims’ dreams and discovers a world far beyond anything she would have been able to conceive previously.

This was a quick two-hour read. I couldn’t put in down. Now I have to go find Fade and Gone so I can satisfy my craving for this highly addictive series.

Glass Demon - A Young Adult Novel Review

2011-06-13T22:09:00.001-07:00

When the first thing that happens to you upon moving to a new town is discovering a corpse perhaps that should be taken as a sign of things to come! When you are a teenage girl moving to Germany from England, at the behest of your father the professor, and he doesn’t want to call the police to report the finding so he won’t get delayed, it becomes the worst thing that has ever happened to you.

In this Young Adult novel Lin, a teenage girl and her family move to a small burg in Germany in order that her father, the Professor of Medieval Studies, could be the next Indiana Jones; or at least in his mind. Never mind it meant uprooting his two teen daughters, their step-mum and the new baby while he chased the myth of Bonschiarant - the Glass Demon. The town of Baumgarten was part of German folk-lore that linked the Allerheheilgen Abbey to the five-hundred-year-old masterpiece of stained glass that to a Medievalist was a kind of Holy Grail.

Intent on discovery the family settle in to their new rural surroundings while accidents happen around them including the death of a local historian, a brush with death for her half-brother and the murder of her sister. With the help of a local boy, Michel, who lived on the farm up the road, and who had developed a crush on Lin, the teenagers do what the parents can’t, discover the glass and discover the deaths in the area are all depicted in scenes on the stained glass. With both their lives in jeopardy the two move quickly to solve the real mystery behind the demon in the glass in order to bring some sense to the tragedy it had caused in both their families.

A Question of Belief - A Review

2011-06-13T22:02:00.000-07:00

Ms. Leon’s work is not the in your face thrill-a minute storyline that I am accustomed to reading bit a slow burning smoldering story that builds in intensity as the book progresses. It comes at you like neighborhood gossip caught at wisps and gestures over the garden fence, like returning for a cup of coffee to a an old and trusted friend as little by little the whole story emerges and you tell yourself ‘of course why didn’t I see it coming.’

I actually started the book before I left on vacation to England, came back and picked up the book and carried on without missing a beat. The slow moving police officers, hampered by the sweltering summer in Venice, go about their business , while looking for shade or heaven forbid actual air-conditioning while laying out two stories for our enjoyment. Inspector Brunetti aides his fellow officer with concerns he has over a charlatan of a palm reader, tarot waving soothsayer that his mother appears to paying a rather unsightly sum to and then the two of them become embroiled in what appears to be a scam in the making involving a lady judge and her bailiff.

When the inspector’s vacation is interrupted to the point of him having to change trains on the way out of town with his family to return to oversee what is the untimely murder of the afore mentioned bailiff does the storyline suddenly take on overtones of menace. The sudden lull in crime in Venice is over-ridden with blackmail, fraud and charges of indecency and Brunetti’s skills are bought to task as he ably puts our fears to rest.

A most delightful tale told at the pace of the hot summer with enough sizzle to the action to keep one intrigued to the last.

The Silent Girl - a review

2011-06-04T12:24:00.000-07:00

In Chinese mythology the immortal Monkey King is born from stone, and is skilled in the secrets of Martial Arts. He is also to fight for justice, to avenge a death and to cause havoc while doing so. When monkey hairs are found clinging to the clothing of the corpse of more than one killer-for-hire homicide cop Jane Rizzoli brings in rookie detective Johnnie Tam to help unravel the mysteries, the culture and the language to the legend behind the murders at the Red Phoenix restaurant, in Boston’s China Town, over a decade ago.

On the anniversary of the slayings an unsigned letter arrives at the relatives of the victims of this mass murder. The common belief of most of the families is that the letter is sent my crazy Mrs. Fang, the wife of the murdered restaurant owner, who runs The Dragon and Stars Academy of Martial Arts. The investigation unearths this cold-case and when the forensic lab gets involved hidden footprints are discovered to show that there was a witness to the crime that no-one was ever aware of.

If that was not enough two of the families, the Fang’s included, also had a child go missing in the years surrounding this crime and when the now retired homicide detective, who led the investigation originally, comes up dead after passing on information that there where perhaps more missing girls the detective find themselves chasing an elusive prey that swings through the night as if not human, almost ape-like. Are they chasing a spirit God that is avenging the deaths of the Red Phoenix?

Of course Rizzoli is never alone in her investigations; there is always the presence of Maura Isles, the forensic pathologist Maura Isles – the team up on the TNT television show known as Rizzoli & Isles - who works in the medical examiner’s office. With Isles team backing up all the new discoveries that link up to the past investigation you can bet the two of them find a way through the red-herrings and puzzles thrown their way to unearth the scandal that threatens the families still after all these years.

Gerritsen’s background as an internist greatly enhance the details of the story and help bring to life the reasons of how and why such a mystery could have led the Boston PD astray for so long. This will not be the last Rizzoli & Isles mystery I read. I definitely will have to go back and dig out Gerritson’s past works too.

One Rough Man - A review

2011-05-28T16:51:00.003-07:00

Taylor has developed a character in Pike Logan that is ready ready to stand up and fight alongside the likes of Higgin’s Sean Dillon or Flynn’s Mitch Rapp, who definitely are rough men.

The Taskforce is made up of a group of hardened paramilitary men culled from the ranks of the SEALS and Delta-Force and used in two teams, at the discretion of the US President, to take on and take out bad guys wherever it is deemed necessary to protect the welfare of the United States.

Logan suffers undue hardship on a fire-fight gone wrong and drops out of the unit, disappearing into an alcoholic haze into never-land. Rescuing a damsel-in-distress, Jennifer, in a local college bar he finds himself pulled back into the game when two hired-hands show up to rough-up the girl and he uses his defensive prowess to dispatch of them with extreme prejudice. The two of them find themselves chasing an Arabic hit-man with a purported WMD, an ancient curse that if placed in the wind could cause hundreds of thousands of deaths. The plot is to use the weapon on Israel, blame Iran and start a full- fledged aggression with America leading the charge.

Pinned down in a battle that is too much for the two of them to handle, and a mercenary hot on their tail with a bounty on both their heads, Taylor finally calls on the one man that can save him and Jennifer so a team from the Taskforce is sent to the rescue. The hunter and hunted roles change so often and so rapidly as we are jolted across the world in the chase of a lifetime, that the book leaves you physically exhausted. You better be a rough man (or woman) to hang in to the last page.

Potsdam Station - a review

2011-05-28T12:33:00.000-07:00

With the Russian advancing on the burned out husk of Berlin, what little was left after the Allies had bombed it to hell, young Paul made his way back into town to try to shed his German uniform so as not be recognized as a German soldier, while at the same time avoiding marauding gangs of let over SS who were rounding up and shooting deserters.

His father, John Russell, who had fled Germany for the United States at the beginning of the war, abandoning his wife and young son to avoid his own arrest, has come back in into Berlin as part of the Press Corps and is trying to arrive ahead of the troops hoping that his son, and former girlfriend Effi have somehow miraculously survived the war.

Effi, has survived well enough, harboring fugitives, mainly Jews, as they made their escapes out of Germany, but has been arrested as the surrender of Berlin is inevitable. Along with a young orphaned girl, Rosa, the two barely escaped with their lives from the camp as the commandant decided to not kill off the remaining Jews in hope to curry favor with the conquerors.

The path of these three individuals is steadily drawn together in this suspenseful World War II yarn skillfully woven by Downing on the brink of the final days before Hitler’s death. The details of the layout of the town and its surrounding countryside lead the reader to a greater overall knowledge base and draw a fine photograph of the war-torn city on the verge of collapse. Downing does a fine job of creating suspense above the already stress-filled carnage that the war has created and shares with the reader the constant threat of annihilation each survivor of the war felt on a continual basis.

Due Diligence - A Review

2011-05-28T12:29:00.000-07:00

A debut novel that like Grisham brings the world of torts and spreadsheets alive with intense stress and tension; who knew the corporate board could be so exhilarating?

When Mike Wilson, CEO of Louisiana Light set his mind on a new acquisition there were no boundaries he wouldn’t cross to get there, especially in a billion dollar takeover of one of the largest power companies in Great Britain.

Pete Stanzy, the patsy Wilson sets up as the fall guy at investment bank Dyson Whitney, only sees the seventy million dollar commission and is happy to ignore suspicions of infractions for the almighty buck. When junior partner Rob Holding sees this is going to be the next Enron he is told to button it by Dyson Whitney’s upper management and go with the flow.

The secret deal is accidently discovered by an investigative journalist who overhears a brief conversation with Downing and a local DA. When Downing inadvertently verifies those secrets, and then is given more information by a secret inside agent, his life is in jeopardy as Wilson pulls out all the stops, including dealings with an underworld boss he owes a bundle to, in order that this deal of a life time goes through.

Although Rush takes his time in letting us know who the real protagonist is once we cotton to it, get past the inner workings of corporate deals and recognize that this is a familiar plot that follows the expected storyline, the how-it-all-goes-down comes flooding out and drags us through the whole saga with a wild rush of hide-and-seek.

A highly entertaining and electrifying ride

Mind Storm - a review

2011-05-13T13:19:00.000-07:00

Twenty years after the child prophet Aisling foresaw the future the human mutant psions, Threnody Corwin and her partner Quinton Martinez are dispatched to what remains of Los Angeles, now known as ‘The Slums of the Angels’ on a suicide mission for failing to obey orders on Corwin’s last mission. The two are part of the Strykers Syndicate, enslaved solders contracted out on the most dangerous missions.

Psions came in various class and strengths, armed with telepathic strengths with the ability to teleport at a moment’s notice. This time they were to hunt down and eliminate Lucas, the rogue son of Nathan Serca, a high-level, gene-trash human who was posing as a genetically-registered human. Serca, who was in charge of gathering the humans for a journey on the Arc to Mars. Earth was seriously depleted of all its natural resources after The Border Wars. The World Court convened and decided who is worthy to travel to the colony and Earth will be left to the mutants and unregistered masses.

Lucas has another plan in mind, rescuing those that deserve to be, those who will make this world a better place. Once he can arrange to have the neurotrackers cut out of the necks of the four Strykers he recruits, once he convinces them that his powers and skill levels are superior to theirs, they take on the project of protecting the followers Lucas has gathered together.

Serca pulls out all stops to get the remaining Strykers to bring in the fallen four and a pitch battle over human rights on Earth takes place during the twenty-fourth century. With the help of matron they raid the Gene Bank and the Seed Bank in an effort to save humankind. Will the destiny that Ailing prophesized come to pass or was it just the ramblings of mad child?

In Pursuit of the Dream

2011-04-11T12:00:00.000-07:00

This is a copy of the blog I guest wrote for the Sirens of Suspense.

I have always been a writer in some form or another. By the time I was ten years old I knew that I would write a book. I went into college preparing for a degree in journalism. Although life got in the way of pursuing my dream job I flirted on the side-lines for years. I wrote and performed jokes on stage, free-lanced every opportunity I could, wrote articles and letters published in various newspapers and magazines and even had a prize-winning poem published.

When I wrote my first novel in 2009, Blood on His Hands, I self-published; this meant that I was responsible for all and every portion of promotion. One of the steps I took was to arrange for a copy of my novel to be sent out to as many reviewers as I could find. One such reviewer was Suspense Magazine. The publishers in turn asked would I be willing to write reviews for them, and so a second career in writing started to form, novelist and reviewer.

As a huge reader I had no objection to being mailed boxes of books for free. As a natural speed reader I generally go through a couple of books weekly, and I could follow this up with writing my opinion and helping influence others. This was win-win for me. Op-ed pieces are great as there is really no right or wrong answer and to have a platform to promote my work to a new audience was brilliant.

One of the things that an agent asks of writers is to compare themselves with other writers, whose work is similar to yours? Initially I always thought this was an arrogant question. Of course as a writer of suspense or thrillers you want to be compared to King or Patterson et al. but at the same time you want to feel unique. Unique doesn’t sell books until others compare themselves to you however. I realized eventually that this was just an advertising ploy and is an easy way for publishers to market your book. If your character is the next ‘Jack Reacher on steroids’ then readers have a comparison to help them make a decision. By having the opportunity to read dozens of books over the course of a year, all of which were written in a genre similar to my writing gave me the chance to make some of these comparisons. I pay a lot more attention to style and point of view, how characters written in the first-person are handled and I attempt to ascertain how much research is done in order to give the stories a feeling of reality wrapped in the cover of fiction, something I feel very strongly about.

There have been less than a handful of books sent to me for review that I either didn’t review or felt so poorly about the story that I didn’t finish. I will not name them as I don’t wish to embarrass the writers, but suffice it to say they were all self-published books. They were people with a good story to share but perhaps had a poor editor or lacked the skill to write ideas in a cohesive form. On the other hand there where a few that jumped out at me as outstanding and I made personal contact with a few of the authors to discuss ideas.

I do want people to know that although I have read my fair share of thrillers, mysteries and suspense novels, and indeed write in that genre, those are not predominantly the books I read. I find that genre writing sometimes takes away from literature. I am influenced more by the true artist of the written word, in books with complex relationships, in writing that is intelligent and heavy with prose. I love to find words that I have to stop occasionally and look up not sure of the exact meaning of it and relishing in the expansion of my vocabulary and in the context in how a word is used. I hope that my writings will show the fruit of my reading.

I would like to leave you with a brief list of books that I love - my bookcase is full of books that I read over and over from year to year and far too many to make a complete list of here however if you are interested in books to read visit my page at Shelfari - and see for yourself my influences beyond these listed below that I would suggest that all writers avail themselves of for the rich language, complex relationships or multi-layered plots and learn how to use them in their writing. Enjoy.

Becoming Abigail - Chris Abani; All That Follows – Jim Crace; Sons and Lovers – D. H. Lawrence;
Captain’s Courageous – Rudyard Kipling; Jamaica Inn – Daphne du Maurier; The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame; Lord of the Flies - William Golding; A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute

Shaken - a review

2011-03-29T23:25:00.000-07:00

Travelling back over a span of twenty years, detective Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels finds herself as a rookie entwined in the process of tracking a sadistic killer, code named “Mr. K”. The book twists back in time twenty tears, and then in a three-year increment to the current where Jack has not only identified the killer, but with no physical proof of his committing the crimes has now retired as a police officer. It is at this moment when she finds herself ensnared and captured by the very man she has been hunting for years.

Is he a monster, a killer-for-hire or just a little of both? His routine trademarks: putting salt in the wounds and placing a ball-gag in his victims’ mouth are ever-present. However the actual deaths have been routinely different—though a few evidently are favorites from the number of times they pop back up. After all, there are only so many ways to kill over one hundred people without repeating the method.

The details are gruesome and Konrath threads the story with sarcasm as thick and liberal as a street whore’s mascara in an attempt to slice through the horror. He expertly introduces enough humor into the storyline that stops the reader from running, screaming from the torture he laces the tale with. The dialogue is expertly woven. The scene when two detectives are sitting in the car eating dry cereal from a box will have you gagging along with them.

A no-holds-barred page-turner that will capture your rapt attention until the last page

Stolen Lives - a review

2011-03-29T23:21:00.000-07:00

During a raid on a brothel in the London suburbs, the Human Trafficking team of Scotland Yard, unearth a nest of young teenage girls from South Africa. By following a lead from a seriously beaten young girl as to a friend that was abducted and sold into private slavery the British police engage in a joint operation with their counter-parts in Johannesburg.

Mackenzie, a journalist living is South Africa, has concocted a fine thriller featuring private investigator/bodyguard Jade De Jong. Recently out of her on again off again relationship with police detective, David Patel, Jade takes what looks to be a cushy assignment watching over Pamela Jordaan, whose husband has disappeared. However when within the first hour of driving he charge an attempt is made on Pamela’s life Jade discovers that she is in for long hard haul. Pamela’s husband, a brothel owner and trafficker in people, “the third most lucrative criminal activity in the world” has many enemies. When they discover his maimed and tortured body and his daughter, who was also involved in the ‘family business’, is discovered missing Jade teams back up, in and out of bed, with Patel to discover who was responsible for shipping these young girls out to parts unknown.

Other mysterious forces are at work as the back story builds solidly to catch up with the flow of the human traffic and Mackenzie does a grand job of guiding us expertly through this dangerous world and then dropping us in the middle of mix in an effort to gather clues, along with the police investigators, to find the missing heiress of the Jo’burg porn world and discover which of the players are lying as we are left twisting and grasping at straws as the novel explodes in the final few pages.

This, not to be missed debut novel, will entertain, enthrall and enlighten and all at lightning speed.

A Song For You - a review

2011-03-29T23:16:00.000-07:00

When heavy rains flood the streets the hilly town of Dudley, AZ the renovation behind a retaining wall unearths the body of a man long buried. When Rachael reads of the discovery she reckons it belongs to a missing member of a band that her mother, Annie, sang with; a man who disappeared just days before her mother was killed.

The accused killer, let of on a technicality, has never been guilty in Rachael’s eyes and so rather trust the police and judicial system that had ignored do many possibilities the first time out she hires a private detective, Brian Flynn to discover the truth. Flynn is aided by a former old flame, and local victim advocate, Chloe Newcombe.

The story is told through the point of view of Chloe, who fills us in very neatly on the local inhabitants of Dudley, the history of the town and leads us to discover that members of the band that Annie, then a young care-free hippy-type, fronted for are still in the area. Rachel, scared of her shadow ever since discovering her mother’s body as a young girl, takes on a voyage of personal discovery and leaving her comfortable home in Tucson and re-visits her mother’s old haunts and friends for the first time since her father removed her all those years ago.

Suddenly other bodies are discovered as the real murderer, hidden in plain view all this time, finds themselves close to be discovered, and Rachel may be in mortal danger. Can Chloe and Flynn put the pieces together fast enough before another innocent is taken? Thornton leads us through twists and turns, feeding us red-herrings and false clues at every turn in the road, in this cleverly thought-out twisting tale of mystery and mayhem.

The King of Diamonds - a review

2011-03-29T23:09:00.000-07:00

With such a name, drawn from an illustrious heritage, one expects great things. No magical tales here, no golden rings or underground caves, however we do find our share of monstrous Nazis, hidden diamonds and damsels in distress.

The tale, set in Britain in 1960, has Inspector Trave of the Oxford constabulary investigating two murders at Blackwater Hall, both allegedly committed by young David Swain, the jilted lover of young Katya. The first murder was the new boyfriend, out of jealousy and the second, for which Swain had to breakout of prison to commit, the revenge killing of Kaya herself.

Trave, who is the lead detective, refuses to remove himself from the investigation even though the owner of Blackwater Hall is now courting his soon to be ex-wife and indeed seems to be going out of his way antagonize the family. This period tale reads more like England in the stilted era of the thirties more than the country of loosening mores of the sixties. Without the references to the happenings of Nazi Germany one might be forgiven to think they where reading about circumstances after the Great War, however in no way does this period-mixing detract from the grand storyline that has Tolkein sweeping us away with its telling.
With a trail of blood diamonds from Antwerp, two Jewish brothers seeking the truth of what happened to their parents and a trail that leads to the concentration camps of Mechelen, Belgium, Tolkien leads us on the familiar and mysterious path of deceit, revenge and betrayal.

Three Seconds - a review

2011-03-29T22:58:00.000-07:00

As Scandinavia becomes the home of the next bestseller, these Swedish authors make their mark in the growing market. One, a former, award-winning journalist the other, an ex-con put their heads together to write a grim look into the life of the rat—a criminal under the pay of the police to become turncoat against others in the underbelly of society.

Piet Hoffman is one such informant. Recruited the day he left jail after a petty crime and now finds himself in deep-cover with the Polish mafia. When he agrees to go back in jail to take over the heroin sales and to eliminate the opposition, life takes a turn for the worse. Initially having to lie to his family was bad, but when his cover is blown within the first week by the very cops who stood by and promised to protect him, Hoffman finds himself on the run within the confines of the walls he is incarcerated behind.

He takes hostages and sets himself up for an unusual escape in order to confront his betrayers. Homicide detective Ewert Grens—a bull-dog of a cop who hangs onto to the crimes he investigates and worries them to death—is investigating a murder Hoffman witnessed prior to going undercover. Grens digs up clues that lead him to Hoffman and to the truth behind the betrayals, but will he turn against the police force to help rescue the life of an undercover con?

Hoffman, to his credit, is a very careful man. He has planned for every eventuality so when all starts to go wrong his plan is in place and his three-second window of opportunity—from the book’s title—is amply played out. Of course, he did not share those plans with you, my dear reader and so you are left to assume and wonder until the very last play is made.

This ranks up there with the ultimate police procedurals and thrillers and is an absolute page-turner.

Last to Fold - a review

2011-03-29T22:52:00.000-07:00

Former KGB operative, Turbo Vlost, landed in New York City running a one-man investigative company, or as he so eloquently states, “No company, just me. I get paid to find things.”

He has spent his entire post-KGB career staying away from the two sons of his mentor, the man who rescued him as a teenager from the brutal life of the Soviet Gulag, his surrogate father. The two men he avoided run the Russian mob, one still in Russia and the other in Brighton Beach, NY. Their paths have not crossed in the past twenty years until he discovers that his current client, a man whose daughter appears to have been kidnapped, is also married to Turbo’s ex-wife.

As the layers of deceit are peeled back Turbo once again finds himself on the wrong side of his former rival who in turn had also been married to Turbo’s ex-wife. When his own son, a young man who Turbo has not seen since early childhood, is threatened to keep him in line Turbo finds himself working with the United States Attorney’s office to help bring down his current and once former enemy, while managing to help his current client happy too.

Joining the long line in the popular anti-hero movement Duffy brings us a relentlessly violent look at life, showing the influence wielded in this country by America’s former enemies since the cessation of the Cold War and the decline of the Berlin Wall. From guns, drugs and espionage we get the full gambit in the fast and furious look within the Russian mob.

Testarossa - a review

2011-03-29T22:41:00.000-07:00

A hard-hitting, flawed protagonist, an all-important back-story that twists serpentine-like through the plot, and an ability to expertly entwine a foreign language throughout the novel without having to translate every expression, but still present her case, all help Dolcemaschio implant her red-headed, Italian cop into your world.

Elmore Leonard’s character in justified, U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, is portrayed as an angry individual, but he has nothing over John Testarossa, a rage-filled man, dark and brooding. From the back-story, we pick up snippets of his past as the child of a New York cop, a father who was shot and killed after being accused of being on the take. Testarossa is revenge-filled, always searching for the version of what he would like the truth to be.

In this debut novel, we are introduced to Testarossa on his new beat. He and his partner, Alex Ortiz, are called upon to solve a murder case involving a bunch of frat boys from the university row team. When the body is discovered and it turns out to be the coxswain, several of his room-mates and college team-mates come under suspicion, especially when they all seem to be caught up in a conspiracy involving illegal steroid use. The team coaches and doctor all seem to harbor their own secrets.

To complicate his life, Dr. Karen Gennaro, a local physician who always seems to be around whenever Testarossa or his detainees need stitching up—which is quite frequently—catches his attention, and Dolemaschio captures the romantic interludes in stride. Don’t be deceived, this is not your romantic-thriller genre. This is a down and dirty police procedural with all the blood and guts and all the bloody violence that drags you along into the streets. This non-stop brawl spills over from the street to the bedroom in this fast-paced tale that draws from today’s headlines for a feel of reality.

I was so affected by the story that I actually called the author—something I rarely do—to express my excitement for her work and to interject my thoughts. She was most gracious. She assures me there will be a sequel, for which I was eternally grateful. I need to know more about John Testarossa.

Double Play - a review

2011-03-03T09:57:00.000-07:00

Although many books and movies have been made covering the sad events that happened on that day I have not seen one, until now, that was written covering an in-depth look at the life of Dan White. Most points of view are portrayed from the story of Harvey Milk and his rise to fame as the first nationally-elected homosexual. “Double Play” not only provides an historical expose at how Moscone, San Francisco’s mayor, and Milk, a city supervisor, fit into the political stage of San Francisco thirty years ago, but gives us insight into the up-and-coming newcomer on the political arena, Dan White.

White, a hard-working, God-fearing young man of Irish descent had grown up in the Bay area and worked in both San Francisco’s police department and fire department. He was well-liked and used these relationships as a spring-board to get elected as a city supervisor. He arrived on the scene ready to take on the world, knowing he could make changes but ran head-long into the political machine that was City Hall and quickly became disenfranchised.

Weiss, a former journalist who covered the killing and trial, then leads us on a trip through White’s life and allows the reader to examine the trials and tribulations of home life, the depression that wracked Dan White that very few folks, other than close friends and family, where privy too. Weiss follows up his storyline with an unforgettable ending. As conversant as I was with the circumstances that happened that day, I was completely caught unaware with this dramatic ending as my interest in the affair waned after the trial occurred. You will want to read this highly entertaining version of the drama that is “Double Play”.

Blood Stains - a review

2011-03-01T19:31:00.000-07:00

After their father’s funeral they buried him near dear Momma’s grave. Maria,Savannah and Holly expected to inherit the ranch in Montana. What they did not expect was the video Andrew Slade left for the three of them. In it, the trio learned that not only were the parents they had known not their actual parents,but they had never officially been adopted and that they were not sisters either!

What they just learned was made clearer by the diary their father kept for each of them detailing the reasons each child had been left with him and who their real parents had been. He had been a travelling preacher in a past life and accumulated the girls from parents who, for some reason or another, had fallen upon such difficult times that is was wiser to separate themselves from their child than to put that child’s life in danger.

Maria’s mother had been a hooker who was murdered when the little girl was only four. The child witnessed the killing, but had been removed from the scene of the crime by do-gooder neighbors and blocked out all memory of that awful day. Now with her father’s death she took off to find out more about her mother only to discover that the murder had never been solved. After arriving in Tulsa, OK she began ferreting into her mother’s past and that past caught up with her sooner than she expected.

When her life is threatened and she ends up in hospital after a bomb planted under her car by a thug-for-hire explodes, the Tulsa police department takes what appeared to be an unsolved cold-case a little more seriously. What Maria did not count on was falling in love with Bodie Scott, the handsome cowboy homicide detective.

Sala treats us to romantic mystery al a Nora Roberts style as a challenge to be the headliner in her genre. “Blood Stains” evoked the right number of chuckles, tears and edge of your seat thrills to make this a major hit.

Fatal Error - a review

2011-03-01T19:18:00.000-07:00

Computer dating takes a new twist, in Jance’s “Fatal Error”. Richard Lowensdale is a despicable man who preys on vulnerable women in an online dating scam. Using fake names he has several fiancés around the country until he becomes bored with their particular neurosis and cuts loose, usually dropping them right after he has had them pick out their engagement rings. When he is murdered and several of his girl friends suddenly show up at the same time to check on him, there are suspects aplenty.

The protagonist, wealthy widow, former Los Angeles TV news anchor and aspiring cop, Ali Reynolds finds herself smack in the middle of the investigation when a former colleague, now down-on-her-luck recovering alcoholic, Brenda Riley goes missing. Brenda had been the target of Lowensdale’s particular cyber-sociopathic behavior and was in the process of writing an exposé to blow the lid off his cover. Using her boyfriend’s security company to gather behind-the-scenes information, Reynolds teams up with over-worked homicide detective Gil Morris to ferret out the truth behind her friend’s disappearance and the death of Lowensdale.

“Fatal Error” takes us beyond just cyber-stalking to the warped mind of a victim of the Bosnian wars who applies her own sociopathic skills to gain untold wealth by dealing with cartel criminals in the drug-smuggling wars of the Mexican borders. As Reynolds and Morris discover the depths of depravity, it all boils over as they find themselves stumbling into the middle of an FBI sting in San Diego. Can they rescue Riley before she gives the ultimate sacrifice in reporting a news story, in which she has become the unwitting pawn?

Kissing Arizona - a review

2011-03-01T19:08:00.000-07:00

Gunn ratchets it up a notch in this third novel in her series regarding her Tucson based police detective Sarah Burke as she takes on the nefarious world of people smuggling. “Kissing Arizona” is two stories blended together by Gunn’s immaculate style of writing. In a timely message for Tucson, she examines the world of the illegal,Mexican immigrants and brilliantly diagrams the problems from both sides of the border, delving into how pick-ups are made once the illegal alien reaches Arizona and discusses the underlying issues of the underworld of stowing these undocumented, migrant workers.

Young Vicky lived in Tucson as a small child coming over the border as an infant. When her father leaves and her mother gets busted and deported, Vicky is torn from her baby sister who was born in the States and so is a citizen. The younger child stays with an aunt while Vicky and her mother are sent home to Mexico. Vicky is not satisfied with her lot in life and uses her teenage wiles to get a boyfriend to aide her return to Tucson and tells him America is so grand she cannot wait to kiss the ground once she gets back to Arizona.

Meanwhile, Detective Sarah Burke has found a collection of human bones: a broken body deposited in concrete and has to hunt for the head. She and her crew of police detectives are also investigating the bloody deaths of a long-time business owner and his wife, their bodies arranged in what could be a murder-suicide until the forensic's report comes back. With two murderers to track down, Burke attempts to juggle her career, as well as the lives of her displaced niece and mother, both who reside with her, until they decide to pool resources and with help from her police officer boyfriend, all move in together. Of course, they will need the assistance of a local cleaning firm, one that Vicky’s aunt owns and so the taut story twists in the shimmering, summer heat of Arizona.

Agent X - a review

2011-03-01T18:53:00.000-07:00

Boyd brings us the second installment in the Steve Vail suspense catalog and I sense there are many more to come. Vail, a former FBI agent keeps being pulled back into his past occupation because he appears to be the only man for the job. Having left the special agent business behind because of problems with the management wanting him to do it their way, he seems to be intrinsically linked to any case touched by Kate Bannon.

Having left the employ of the FBI, Vail has made his living as a bricklayer, and sometime sculptor in Chicago, he finds his background in counterintelligence, coupled with a master’s degree in Soviet history, invaluable to the Bureau in their latest case, brought to them by a man known as Calculus. The offer is to turn over a list of the current spies working with the ranks of government and defense contractors in the States.

Once Calculus’ cover appears blown and the spies all seem to be getting killed ahead of the FBI getting to them, Bannon and Vail have to put their on and off again relationship on hold to discover who is behind the spy threat.

When Bannon herself is framed as a spy and jailed, it is up to Vail and a fellow agent Steve Bursaw to fi nd a way to prove her innocence.

In Boyd’s introduction to this bricklayer agent, we found him to be a sole operator and to provide him with a partner in Bursaw felt off the mark just a little. It did not take away from the urgency the story told, but perhaps humanized Vail a little more than I would have liked. If Boyd really wants Vail to be serious competition with the likes of the Jack Reachers of the novel world, he should stick with his original plan.

“Agent X” advances the reputation of Boyd as an excellent spy master and this thrill-a-minute story pulls out all stops, just as Vail does.

Past Tense - a review

2011-03-01T18:34:00.000-07:00

In the quiet, English countryside an old lady dies in her bed at the local nursing home. Janet Wakefield receives notification—her husband Bill, who is stationed in South America by his company, is the next of kin—which is a surprise because neither of them even knew Josephine Short existed.

Sent to make the funeral arrangements, Janet discovers that all the particulars have been laid out by the decedent. The church, the hotel and “bun wrestle”, as the reception is described, and the ‘no flowers’ request are already in place. She shows up for the funeral service to find several of the local villagers: a friendly, old man who claims to have known Ms. Short, a beautiful, young lady with auburn hair and in the pew behind her, the nursing home matron as well as the attorney handling the estate. As the service starts, a tall, dark-haired, young man sits next to her on the pew reserved for family. Joe Short, the grandson.

Making the acquaintance of another family member previously unknown to them helps the Wakefields discover who Josephine Short is and where she fits into all their lives. The discovery that she is well off and has a large estate is even more confusing. When the auburn beauty’s body is found in the river under suspicious circumstances, the heirs are forced to reveal their alibis, which brings down suspicion on both of them, as well as a local thug whose mother was working at the nursing home.

When using material that Aird senses her reader may not have a complete understanding about, such as subject matter, she will have her characters ask questions to show their ignorance of the subject, which in turn edifies both the character and reader at the same time.

Aird weaves the red herrings and suspicions throughout the story, making you look back into the past pages for clues missed, words uttered that might have been a clue, a hint of foreshadowing glossed over until the pieces all fall together, making perfect sense of the tale.

Separate from the World - a review

2011-03-01T18:20:00.000-07:00

If you switched Agatha Christie over a century and placed her in the middle of Amish country you would have “Separate from the World”, it is that type of a cozy.

Here you have Professor Michael Branden, teacher at a small town college and a native of the area, who has been best friends with the local sheriff, Bruce Robertson, since grade school. Along with another grade school buddy, Caleb Troyer, the local pastor, the trio becomes this group of investigators in a series of books that Gaus gives us, solving mysteries that involve the complexity of the Amish.

In “Separate from the World”, we meet the Erb family, and it’s descendants, that through apparent cross breeding with the families, has developed an unusual number of dwarf’s in the gene pool. The study of the genetics, blood studies and inbreeding becomes a study subject for a number of the students at neighboring at Millersburg College, and surprisingly the Erb family provides them with family history until the split in the Amish way of life is discovered and the elder forbids any further discussion with the students.

At the same time an apparent suicide of a female student opens an investigation into improprieties from another professor which opens the lead for Gaus to link her death with the controversial genetics study into the Erb family. He leads us a circuitous route, unraveling clues until the very last moment, leading to a very satisfying ending.

Snare - a review

2011-02-11T16:38:00.002-07:00

At an electrifying pace from tribal ritual drums and flutes to the beat of the modern pop music scene Native American pop singer, Karina Salvo prepares to emerge from her reclusive cocoon to her first concert on a national stage.

Having written and performed her songs as a recording artist Salvo’s agent Petra Sullivan has prepared the singer to meet her adoring public for the first time in the heart of Appalachia, a small theatre in Bryson City, North Carolina. The concert is sold out and the local Sheriff appoints Deputy Steven Hawk to handle all security issues. Hawk’s preparation for the concert reveals that Salvo’s delayed introduction to the public has been because of her reluctance to have her private life peered into by journalists and paparazzi as she has a secret. Her father is in jail for killing her mother when Salvo was barely eight years old, and he has been released from jail the week of the concert and is considered to be behind the death threats that the young singer has been receiving in the form of hate mail for several months.

Salvo had been raised on the reservation by her mother’s people on the Taos Pueblo along the plains of New Mexico and is the first of her tribe to be recognized for her musical talent. It is to her aunt’s house that Salvo runs, needing a place to hide after the attempt on her life at the concert that has left her petrified and estranged from her manager, and has left Deputy Hawk injured in his attempt to protect her from a malicious Native American presence at the concert, the appearance of her uncle, Taima. Was he there in spirit or in person? Witnesses at the reservation swear he was on their land at the time of the attack but neither Salvo nor Hawk are convinced and as they heal, her spiritually and he physically, they conduct their own investigation from the confines of her aunt’s home.

Is it her revengeful father, the ghostly appearances of her uncle or the tribal drum beat itself that sound the death knell for Salvo and will Hawk, in Ledford’s second in a trilogy featuring the young African American deputy from North Carolina, be up to the task to protect Salvo from the snare he has inadvertently placed her in by bring her home to the Taos Pueblo?

Blood of Like Souls - a review

2011-01-29T20:34:00.001-07:00

Life’s secrets have a way of surfacing at the most inopportune time. Julie Madigan’s past comes to the fore when she is the victim of a bomb explosion while on the site of a murder investigation. Madigan, a medical examiner in Michigan was running from her past as officer with the New Mexico State Police and from her abusive husband who she killed in self-defense. Her past was revealed during her hospitalization when she had to explain the scars on her body, identifying the reason her neck had a jagged knife wound from ear to trachea.

While her friends and new employer struggled to grasp the significance of the subterfuge, a murderer was sending messages to Madigan, making a game out of her inability to solve the next death even with hints as to how it would happen. This mysterious game-playing killer knew more than anyone else about her past, the how and why are what is so cleverly bought to light until the skillful penmanship of debut author Val Conrad. Struggling to maintain her relationships and her life Madigan is forced to endure more than anyone should have to in order to eventually expose her private monster.

Conrad’s expertise in the field she writes about is obvious and her familiarity with the geographical areas she takes us to give this novel the finite touches to make the subject as real as possible. This was a page turner that had me on the edge of my seat.

Karma by Nancy Deville

2011-01-29T10:13:00.000-07:00

While attending a medical seminar in Istanbul, Meredith Fitzgerald, an engaged, beautiful, blonde, young lady is duped by her taxi driver in the old, city bazaars. Intent on spending one last day exploring Istanbul before leaving for India, to sprinkle her father's ashes in the Ganges, she allows her guard down in the market environment. Instead of engaging in a tourist-style adventure she finds her tea laced with choral hydrate. Having been slipped a Mickey she slips into unconsciousness. When she awakens she finds herself naked, imprisoned in a dark room and realizes she has been raped.

Her feats mount as she realizes she has been taken prisoner by a sex-trade trafficker who, along with his American companion and bodyguards, conspire to move her to Mumbai, India. Fitzgerald gives up hope of being found, knowing her fiancé, Paul, will be searching in Turkey, not across the border in India, for her.

By making herself personal physician to Mrs. Pawar, Fitzgerald tries to curry favor and to place her in a situation where she can escape, not just from the ritual daily raping from her immediate kidnapper, but from under the noses of her Indian task-masters.

An on-the edge-of-your-seat, unforgettable adventure that takes us to the edge of madness and back and shows that with perseverance, and a never-say-die attitude, even the most evil circumstances can be triumphed over.

The Devalera Deception - A Review

2010-12-27T19:48:00.000-07:00

The time frame is the 1920’s and we are drawn into the thick of a plot that revolves around a young Winston Churchill. Having tasted political office as head of the British Admiralty, he has been sent as the personal envoy of Prime Minister Ramsey with a message for US President Hoover.

The world is once again teetering toward war in Europe. The Germans are struggling to find a footing and a young upstart in the form of Adolf Hitler is making overtures on the German political scene. A group known as the Geneva group is influencing the finances of the world and involved with factions of the Irish Republican Army who are trying to over throw, members of the Free State of Ireland. The historical factions of the novel are especially true to life, giving a strong factual feel to this fictional story.

Churchill is travelling with a personal bodyguard, a female journalist, Mattie, and employee of Randolph Hearst the publisher and members of the British Secret Service. But he goes out on a limb and employs young Irish American, Bourke Cockran, the son of the former Congressman from New York that Churchill befriended years previously. Cockran makes a hash out of everything he touches, as he doesn’t seem to comprehend that he is being followed by several groups of people. Even after his home, office and hotel room are burglarized and several people he associates with are killed, beaten or reaped, he does not seem to be able to turn around and notice the same, black sedan at every corner.

He does finally learn his lesson as on the run, with an arrest warrant for murder out on his head, he continues to knock heads with the IRA, German agents and even Al Capone’s gangsters until he manages to wreak revenge on his wife’s murderer and win the new girl to boot.

In a fast-paced, historical thriller, the first of a trilogy, McMenamin leaves us hoping Cockran’s skills as an investigator increase if he is to make it to the third book in one piece.

“Wicked Plants : A Review

2010-12-27T19:24:00.000-07:00

This is the one book that should be on the reference shelf of every suspense, thriller or horror novelist.

In an A to Z such as you have never read before, Stewart lays out the chemical nature of over two hundred plants that can be used to kill, blind, paralyze or at the very least, leave your victim curled up in bed very ill.

From deadly nightshade to killer algae, ratbane to hemlock, Stewart lays it all out on the line. If you want to kill off your victim in some mysterious, painful and particularly nasty way, she has a toxin to get the job done. White Snake root is what does in Mrs. Lincoln (Abe's mother). Known as milk sickness, the plant contaminated folks in the early-farm life of America, often wiping out entire families.

Written in entertaining jargon, hitting on the scientific, the historical and the medicinal, Stewart enlightens us to the use of weeds, plants and seeds and advises to “consider yourself warned”.

Rogue Island - A Review

2010-12-27T18:52:00.000-07:00

Investigative journalist Mulligan drags us through the graft of the corruption that is Providence, Rhode Island,
his beat; one that includes both crooked and inept cops, the mobsters they are chasing and the politicians who fund them all. Definitely an eye-opener for me, who always had thought of our smallest State as being full of Portuguese fishermen thanks to Rudyard Kipling. He would be surprised at the change!

Mulligan is one of us, the common people. He has a wife he’s trying to divorce, a boss who is never satisfied, long-standing friends and an ulcer he is trying to nurse. He also has a couple of informants on the wrong side of the street, a bookie with ties to the local mobsters he is investigating and a girlfriend who is holding out again. He is also totally believable; the fl awed protagonist we can all relate to.

When a fire-bug starts burning down the neighborhood he grew up in, house by house, he takes to the streets with his newspaper colleagues in an effort to find out who is behind the fires. When he discovers the truth of who is really behind the tragedy, death and destruction, Mulligan is forced to take matters in his own hands.

Bruised, battered and scarred we are given an open-eyed tour of Mount Hope. What you find there may surprise you. With charisma, grit and the knowledge that all will be right in the world as long as the Red Sox win the pendant, DeSilva leads us through the world of the local newspaper reporter. In this tough, barred-knuckles fight the good guy is triumphant this time… until the next big story, and boy I’ll be waiting to read that one too.

Damage - A Review

2010-12-27T18:39:00.001-07:00

Lescroart churns out his twenty-second novel with the ferocity of a mother lion defending her cub, and indeed she is. Mrs. Curtlee’s boy Ro has been tried for the rape and murder of the family maid and seeing as the Curtlee's own the local newspaper and had a lot to do with getting the new District Attorney elected, they want to get their unjustly-punished son out of jail.

Wes Farrell, the new DA is still getting his feet wet in San Francisco politics and allows a little infl uence to go a long way. As soon as Ro is out of jail, the bodies start turning up. One of the two witnesses who originally helped convict him is brutally murdered and her home burned, as is the wife of the lead juror who put him away. Ro has cojones, showing up at the home of lead homicide detective, Abe Glitsky, just to give him some of the same harassment the police are handing out. Is he that brazen or is it an attempt to make the
police believe he really is innocent, nothing to hide? When a lead investigator, who is following Ro shows up with a bullet in his head, the police decide enough is enough and do everything in their power to get Ro back in jail, before he kills the last witness standing.

Lescroart does a great job in casting suspicions to make you think perhaps a copy-cat rapist is at work. He shows the reader several out and out truths that the police are yet to discover, leaving his audience a step ahead, creating a sense of urgency as we hope that they will pick up on the clues before it’s too late. We find out that like a leopard, Ro just can’t change his spots, and after raping another household maid a week after getting his new-found freedom, Lescroart leads us down a coiling path that leaves you gasping, as twist after twist are unraveled in the end.

The Border Lords - A Review

2010-12-27T18:20:00.000-07:00

Eighteen months is much longer than the average law enforcement officer stays undercover, but Sean Gravas
was so close that to pull him now would see months of operational expenses go down the drain. Hood made
the decision to leave him in. He was working with gang members, the North Baja Cartel, across the Mexican border to break a gunrunners ring suspected of smuggling in a thousand machine pistols.

When all the gang members in the home are brutally slain, Gravas appears to be implicated, so Hood solicits the help of Gravas’ wife Seliah to bring him out of his undercover role as Ozburn even if it means he has to face charges. Seliah notices changes in her husband’s behavior, which the Blowdown team put down to the stress of being undercover for so long, until she is threatened by the same viral disease that is rampaging through both their bodies and is diagnosed with rabies. Weeks from death, Seliah is placed in a coma while she heals. LASD tries to convince Gravas that he too is ill.

However, this is more than just a story about undercover agents the Mexican border, drugs, guns and murder. Just who is the mysterious priest, Father Joe Left wich? Recognized as a local drugdealer and snitch, a.k.a. Mike Finnegan, who claims to have ridden with Murietta over one hundred and eighty years ago and the truth of the blood-transmitted disease becomes clearer.

In this fast-paced, action thriller Parker has once again demonstrated the ability to keep his audience turning pages until the last drop of blood is accounted for, and provides just the right twist in the end.

Frozen Assets - A Review

2010-12-27T17:57:00.000-07:00

With a great play on words the title of this book takes us to the frigid conditions of Iceland and straight into the economic crisis that is afflicting global industry and banking in the twenty-first century.

Big business, corrupt government officials and bankrupt banks are in a head-on collision course; graft is rife and something just a little more sinister surfaces when the first body washes up on the shores of the small fishing village of Hvalvik. Recently widowed rural cop Gunnhildur, pursues the inquiry as a murder, against the better judgment of her commander, until the second body is discovered and a common link is found. Juggling her family and her inept colleagues, Gunnhildur is the force that stands between right and wrong—city mouse vs. country mouse.

Put in charge of the task force and expected to fail by her superiors, Gunnhildur turns Reykjavik upside down in an attempt to out-fox the foreign national who has disturbed the peace in the routine life of the gentle fi sherman of her Iceland. Along with juggling a novice journalist assigned to shadow her and reports from an anonymous blogger who seems to complicate matters by accusing the very offi cials she is tagging in her investigation, she sets out to bring peace to the district.

In his debut novel Bates gives us an insider’s view by exposing us to a world outside of our norm and at the same time shows us the very problems that exist in our country are shared to some degree globally. As the bodies stack up and Gunnhildur fi nally corners her man, be prepared for the final breath-taking chase that will leave you blinking in wonderment as the cat-and-mouse search boils over.

Murder in the Mangroves - A Review

2010-12-27T17:44:00.000-07:00

The perfect little chic-lit for the beach and an easy quick read.

Mallie Monroe’s editor is on vacation and her replacement, the boss’ taskmaster of a twin sister, is pushing hard for a sensational story for the newspaper to boost sales. When the local mango queen is found dead, by none other than Mallie, she is assigned the story.
In the third tale of Coral Island Mysteries, we discover that Mallie is a bit of a body magnet. Th is is the third murder she has attempted to help solve. The Chief of Police, Nick Billie would have been fed up with her interference by now, except that he has cast an eye Mallie’s way romantically.

Now that a former boyfriend, surfer-boy Cole has shown up, a little island love-triangle is in the making.

As Mallie investigates the story for the island newspaper, will she help solve the crime or become the next body to be discovered?

Haunting tale of the international sex-trade

2010-12-27T17:30:00.000-07:00

While attending a medical seminar in Istanbul, Meredith Fitzgerald, an engaged, beautiful, blonde, young lady is duped by her taxi driver in the old, city bazaars. Intent on spending one last day exploring Istanbul before leaving for India, to sprinkle her father’s ashes in the Ganges, she allows her guard down in the market environment. Instead of engaging in a tourist-style adventure she finds her tea laced with choral hydrate. Having been slipped a Mickey she slips into unconsciousness. When she awakens she finds herself naked, imprisoned in a dark room and realizes she has been raped.
Her fears mount as she realizes she has been taken prisoner by a sex-trade trafficker who, along with his American companion and bodyguards, conspire to move her to Mumbai, India. Fitzgerald gives up hope of being found, knowing her fiancé, Paul, will be searching in Turkey, not across the border in India, for her.
By making herself personal physician to Mrs. Pawar, Fitzgerald tries to curry favor and to place her in a situation where she can escape, not just from the ritual daily raping from her immediate kidnapper, but from under the noses of her Indian task-masters.
An on-the edge-of-your-seat, unforgettable adventure that takes us to the edge of madness and back and shows that with perseverance, and a never-say-die attitude, even the most evil circumstances can be triumphed over

Final Option – A Review

2010-12-15T06:34:00.000-07:00

When Lindy Roller gets her orders from the Cartel bosses she heads back north to Tucson. The notorious professional killer has orders to rub out another dead-beat loser who is being used as an example by the Mexican drug-dealers.

That Lindy has a past in Tucson is no concern to her boss, Juan Pacheco, but it is to her. Having staged an escape from the Pima County jail before fleeing to Mexico Lindy has many people in Tucson that would be happy to see her back behind bars. From the attorney Larry Ross who she duped into hiring her while she was nothing more than a spy for the opposition, to the head of homicide, Greg Kelly who was unwittingly having a torrid affair with her while she was the most wanted felon in Pima County to poor old Jim Pierson the deputy she had at her beck and call sexually while she planned her escape, not to mention the two other murder complainants who had charges dropped as she was not there to testify after her getaway.

The dead-beat cocaine user she was to put on ice was a top orthopedic surgeon whose life was beginning to unravel after a nasty divorce and a suspension from the hospital. Dr. Jeff Young was also being sued by a patient that he had operated on and caused terrible harm to. Larry Ross, the attorney that Lindy used to work for, was chasing down the malpractice suit and attaching the hospital’s bond and so their lives became entangled again.

When Lindy is apprehended and brought to trial it looks like a slam dunk for law enforcement in Pima County. The whole circus performance is out to make big waves I the media with the trial and until the elevator in the courthouse gets stuck on the inevitable day the prisoner is being transported to the courtroom it looks like they will finally get all the charges previously dropped re-charged. With so many possible people wanting Lindy out of the way she will have to be on her toes to avoid having final judgment passed this time.

In his third legal thriller featuring attorney Larry Ross, Rockafellow pulls out all the stops to a whirlwind crescendo of a tropical storm blowing in from Mexico making you wonder who will have survived when the waters finally roll back. This one blows it all away.

Move Over Jack Reacher

2010-11-26T09:46:00.000-07:00

Absolutely brilliant. Move over Jack Reacher, Steve Vail is now “The Man”.

When FBI, Deputy Assistant Director Kate Bannon reveals that she recognizes the behavioral traits of a missing hero, while watching the video of a botched bank robbery—botched, thanks to the intervention of one of the hostages—she is tasked with bringing the former renegade agent Steve Vail one last time.

The Bureau is being targeted, perhaps from within, by a domestic terrorist group who call themselves the Rubico Pentad and who have already targeted, kidnapped or killed several upstanding members of society and the FBI has been unable to put a stop to them. They are ready to do whatever it takes, even if it means bringing back Vail for a limited performance.

Heading out as a one-man destruction squad, Vail soon uncovers who is behind the destruction and innuendo that has handicapped the FBI. That it makes his former employers look bad is just a feather in his cap. Working on his own agenda, even after being dismissed by the officialdom whose judgment he made look inferior, he gets the job done right down to the bitter end.

Lessons on Life, Love and Marriage from the Appalachian Trail

2010-11-15T20:43:00.000-07:00

From the very beginning I had to have a good laugh. Being the anal retentive planner that I am too I really appreciated the thought and planning that went into the initiation process of the hike of this married couple, Randy "Windstalker" Motz and Georgia "Mom" Harris. Laugh, because when I started on my Appalachian Trail trip I planned not one iota and discovered myself on the trail as if by accident; this pair planned for years, something I normally would have done. It felt good to know that I was not be the only one that would have approached the hike in this fashion.

My hike was as a newly single man escaping the harness of marriage but this couple happily embraced their already strong union and actually considered if this six-month sojourn would be good for their relationship before fully embracing the journey. They are to people of great faith, educated and given over to a strong set purpose in their life. They knew each others strengths and weaknesses and learned how best to support each other while having no-one but each other to depend on. They learned along the way to accept the familiarity of others, the giving nature of the AT, the "trail-magic" that resounds from this phenomenal place known as the Appalachian Trail and, for a pair of self-proclaimed introverts, quickly adapted to the large 'family' of thru-hikers that inhabit it.

This book is truly inspirational, part hiking journal, part crash-course in marriage counseling, Motz and Harris imbibe in all that read their magnificent journey a desire to have the type of relationship that kept them together through thick and thin, 'for better or for worse', not only hiking but in their every day life too.

Enrique's Journey

2010-10-31T18:01:00.001-07:00

I have read umpteen books over the last six months on the subject on migrants leaving their Central American or Mexican homes for a shot at the dream of living in Ther United States. The ones that come here are predominantly wonderful loving parents ready to work hard and send the money they make back to the families so they can survive a little better than most of the people left behind to the abject poverty in Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala etc.

Their stories are always tragic full of loneliness, abuse and death. The people attacking them are robbers, gang members and renegade police officers, each countries el migra, ready to put a hold on the dream A hold is all that it is. These people are determined to run away from the poverty their lives have given them, willing to risk life and limb to reach loved ones who have gone ahead. I have to highlight Enrique's Journey as the one most exceptional tale that I have read on this subject. Reviews of other books on thsi subject can be found on early entries in this blog for you to make your own judgment.

While other authors too have travelled with migrants to trace their stories and steps none have done it as efficiently, none have laid bare the awful tragedy or shown the determination of the people she followed so graphically than journalist and authorr, Sonia Nazario. Having met seventeen year-old Enrique's she goes about back-tracking, following up on every detail of his story from visiting his home town, interviewing his relatives, riding El Tran de la Muerte and witnessing for herself the terror of bandits on the roof of the train carriages, of people falling or being knocked from their perches to fall on the rails to perish or to lose a limb. She stopped and interviewed the priests that helped the migrants with food and shelter, the ones that stood in harms way to help strangers. In short everywhere Enrique went so did she.

The story she wrote is adapted from the news story she earned a Pulitzer prize for and takes the reader along on the torturous decisions that humans make to leave their small children to give them a better life and how those same separated children so often turn to drugs and crime before making the decision to travel to America to find their family. We feel the agony of the attacks on the physical bodies - Enrique was thwarted seven times before finally reaching the promised land - and we gather into our souls the love expressed by the folk that help those worse off from themselves as they throw food and clothes to the trainriders. For the priests and health-workers that administer spiritual and physical food Nazario shows a side of humans that I have not seen described in other border crossing tomes. She brings indignation, faith, a feeling of hopelessness that one cannot do more and intense feeling to her writing. I shed a tear or two in the dramatic tale of Enrique's Journey.

The Severance - a review

2010-10-30T19:21:00.002-07:00

Captain Jake Roberts is given the task of commanding a group of misfits, a ‘rehabilitation platoon’ a modern day Dirty Dozen as it where, made up of “bitter, unruly, former drunks and drug addicts, troublemakers and other misfits” who—while not an a suicide mission—are put in a place where they are not expected to succeed during the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

In an intelligent plot Sawyer, a decorated officer himself, lets us tag along with these ‘short-timers’ as they contemplate their return the United States within a week. Although they are coming home as heroes with medals, they all face the reality of being unemployed, “disposable heroes”, and with their troubled pasts many of them will be unable to find work.

This is where the severance is ready to kick in. The platoon accidentally discovered five million dollars in unmarked bills in the back of a corrupt contractor’s car and discreetly purloined it for themselves. Now all they have to do is to find a way to smuggle it stateside so they all have a new leash on a financial start to civilian life. Unfortunately someone other than those ‘in the know’ has also discovered their secret and is quietly trying to muscle in.

In his debut novel Sawyer has found a way to paint a feasible picture describing life in the desert and mountains of Afghanistan. We become embedded with the platoon on their last mission, learn about the characters who make up the group of bad boys that are striving to succeed in the face of impossible odds and ultimately find ourselves pulling for this bunch of rag-tag soldiers to make it home with the loot. What with ex-girlfriends threatening blackmail, top-brass that stay out of harm’s way and each member of the platoon under special scrutiny from the Criminal Investigation Division, it’s a wonder the soldiers can get their job done, but Sawyer’s realistic portrait makes this an all too believable story

Dead ball - A Review

2010-10-30T19:12:00.000-07:00

Allsport is a not-for-profit sports organization run by millionaire, champion golf legend, Reid Clark to help challenged athletes find their greatness. The challenges these young people face where poverty, no education, former gang members, normally kids that would never have gotten noticed because they were not your normal, high-school or college athletes. Through the program at Allsport many of these athletes went on to either professional careers or Olympic success.

As the book opens Reid is giving a personal tour of the facilities to the President of the United States when a body is found in the flower beds on campus. Once the President is rushed to safety the body is discovered to be that of Reid’s best friend and CFO of Inner City Sports Foundation dba Allsport, Bob Thomas.

This is the second book in a series by Balkind regarding the fictional sports campus at Allsport, the first being “Sudden Death” and once again brings us into the realm of private detective and chief of security at Allsport, Jay Scott. Scott, with the reluctant help of the local police department, takes over the investigation and along with his team of investigators, funded by the multi-millions that the foundation has raised, go into the field to chase down every lose end from the accountants that the deceased Thomas fired just days ago, to his angry wife and the stalking ex-girl-friend from a recent affair, to the members of the mob and street gang members. It appears Thomas had been involved with causing distress in many people’s lives. As the alibis are met, one by one, we are led on a path that is closer to home. Could someone on the staff of the foundation, one of the trusted inner families of Allsport, have a score to settle with Thomas?

Balkind’s complex plot suddenly rushes to a climax as the bodies stack up along the way and Scott and his investigators eliminate the suspects one by one until the truth is illuminated…or is it?

the Murder Room. true crime review

2010-10-12T19:25:00.000-07:00

In what I took to be a series of vignettes, Capuzzo leads us on a journey into the mind of the sadistic, sexual, serial killer. His style led me to see this was a much better story than when I originally picked up the book. Not until I discovered a sheath of photographs halfway through the book did I realize this was in fact an actual true-crime book. The stories he had woven together where stranger than fiction and all of them chillingly real.

From cold-case headlines, predominantly, at least initially in the Philadelphia, PA area we learn about a pro-bono, crime-fighting unit named the Vidocq Society. The group, formed by former FBI agent and private detective William Fleisher, psychic forensic artist Frank Bender and forensic psychologist Richard Walter lead us through the most bizarre, traumatic crimes ever committed, and one by one, with help from the other society members, finally put to rest scores of unsolved murders.

During brainstorming sessions where lunch was often, ‘chicken, steamed vegetables and a corpse with a small and unforgettable face’ these miracle workers brought closure to many a forgotten family who were glad to know these, ‘were men who had a green thumb in the garden of death.’ Without impeding on going, police investigations they refused any case until it was at least two-years-old. Many cases where two decades old. They discussed centuries old murders and had a melding of minds and enjoyed lively discussions with like-minded individuals.

These larger than life characters will open your eyes and your minds to the impossible, and transport you to a world you don’t want to believe exists outside of your comfortable living room.

Red April - a review

2010-10-12T19:04:00.000-07:00

Life is a constant struggle for prosecutor Felix Chacaltana Saldivar in Ayacucho. Having recently divorced, he has left Lima for a smaller town and becomes embroiled in political corruption and deceit at the highest levels. Struggling to find his place he is thwarted at every turn, made to accept the status quo and required to go along to keep in the graces of the local militia and police. The story reminded me of David Pearce’s Red Riding Quartet, not only in the aspects of his superiors looking the other way, but at the sheer brutality of the deeds he was asked to pretend were not happening for his own good.

As his own investigation into the murders escalates, he exposes additional cover-ups performed by the church and the local priest. When a suspected terrorist is allowed to escape from jail—only to be brutally butchered—and the priest Chacaltana confesses to is tortured and slaughtered in his own church during Holy Week, the prosecutor becomes the pursued, or is he? In his own mind, swamped in confusion, he talks to his recently departed mother and the young girl, Edith, he is trying to court.

As the story builds to a crescendo, we are treated to the written notes of a third party as a clue to who is behind the rumors, the troubles and the murders themselves. Will Chacaltana discover the truth before he becomes the next victim? In an inspiring tale of one man trying to make a difference in this private hell on earth, Roncagliolo presents us with a flawed protagonist that we can relate to and gives us hope for mankind in this political thriller. But do not be fooled by the shy, unassuming attitude of the prosecutor; he is out to get his man no matter the cost, even if it is his own demise.

A brilliant debut novel from one of Latin America’s newest and compelling authors.

The Geneva Deception - a review

2010-10-12T18:57:00.000-07:00

James Twining’s intricate plot sends Tom Kirk, on his fourth assignment since reforming from being an art thief. From the casinos of Las Vegas to those in Monte Carlo where along the way he crosses paths with his former partner in skullduggery Archie Connolly they team up with Italian detective Allegra Damico. The chase is a hunt to find the missing Caravaggio masterpiece with attempts to solve several murders along the way.

Each murder has been staged to represent a Caravaggio scene and the implications of these deaths tie in not just two, warring Mafia families of Rome, but reaches to the very heart of the Catholic Church—through the Vatican bank.

Politics, religion and mobsters all jockey for that place of power and wealth, through police corruption, deceit, lies and betrayals. Kirk is driven on by the death of his lover—an FBI agent—and is intent on seeing justice done for her sake. While death waits at the end of the journey, will it be his or will he and his assembled team of experts bring an end to the tyranny the Delian League has perpetrated on the art world in Italy for generations.

This story, loosely based on facts garnered from the tales of the tomb raiders of Europe, will leave you gasping and struggling to reach your own conclusion, as the pieces dramatically fall into place one-by-one. I promise you the surprise is well worth the wait.

An Ordinary Decent Criminal - a review

2010-10-12T18:53:00.000-07:00

They say behind every successful man is a woman. Monty is no different. His wife and baby son's lives are in his hands. Literally. When the three bad guys break in to his home he has to defend his family. Monty just wants to be left alone. Left alone by the police, the local Winnipeg mob, his boss who fires him prematurely, his neighbors and their nasty notes and the landlord who is trying to evict him before his lease is up. See, Monty used to be a really bad guy, but having done his time is trying to live a straight life, if everyone will just let him alone. With the help of an occasional employer, his attorney and his wife and child, Monty tries to solve the problems of his corner of the world. This witty, fast-past, edgy, action thriller will keep you cheering for the bad guy in this debut novel from Canadian author, Michael Van Rooy.

Meet Detecive Inspector Nate Duarte of the Tucson Police Department

2010-10-02T07:00:00.001-07:00

For those of you that want to know what are you writng now well here is a brief overview.

Meet Nate Duarte, a Tucson sex crimes detective. In a five-book series spanning from 2006-2010 Duarte is tasked with solving four unspeakably evil crimes and then in the final novel, because of a specific knowledge that he has, which is the back-story in the four proceeding books, he helps a Federal Task force bring to justice a heinous Mexican drug lord, head of the Sonoran cartel, who is held responsible for much of the border crime between Arizona and Mexico. In a storyline ripped from day-to-day news headlines in Southern Arizona Duarte brings life in Tucson to the fore for the world to read about.

In book one, as we first meet detective inspector Duarte he and his partner, Hector Martinez, have been brought into an investigation to help solve the disappearance of five missing women. What started out as a missing persons crime has rapidly escalated into a sex crime once it is discovered that a fugitive sex-offender Charleston Ficus is involved. Ficus has set up a bogus health resort to entrap women, using money from a mail-order sex-toy distribution company that he and a former cell-mate have organized as a legitimate corporation.

Unbeknownst to Duarte the women have all been kidnapped and tortured and are being held in chains in a ramshackle horse-barn in the outskirts of Pima County in the small town of Three Points, where meth and incest are the predominate forces of nature. With time running out Duarte and the local southern Arizona SWAT team are called upon to attempt the rescue.

In book two a child molester has killed his step-daughter to stop her from accusing him. He uses his job as a janitor in the downtown Tucson police headquarters to cover up the crime. By collecting hair samples from commodes and showers he plants police officer DNA on the bodies of other teenage girls he kills to draw attention to a supposed corruption in the TPD.

Book three is a story of wealthy and bored housewives from Tucson who, for lack of excitement in their lives, form a club online where they arrange to perform naughty deeds in public and post photos on a web site to titillate each other. The deeds escalate as they attempt to out-do each other. Little do they realize that they have been infiltrated by a male; in fact he was the one that met them through an online chat room and instigated all their plans for his own sick interest. As the performances become more and more daring he can’t help but get involved, resulting in the rape and murder of one of the members.

The fourth crime is the story of an office burglar who targets small offices as they are closing, stealing cash, jewelry and wallets etc. from unsuspecting folk, caught unaware at the five-o’clock closing. They are all concentrating on leaving for home when the burglar strikes. His SOP is to make all the occupants of the office strip naked – the theory is that they will less inclined to go running out in the street nude to bring attention to themselves while he effects his escape – taping each other to office chairs while he ransacks the place. Eventually he starts having unlikely members of the staff perform sexual deeds on each other while he watches their embarrassment until it escalates into he having to get involved too.

The back-story influences the fifth and final book in the series. Duarte has a couple of secrets. The flawed protagonist has an affinity for prostitutes. Not for going with them but in protecting and aiding them. It turns out his mother was a prostitute. Initially she was secretary – and second cousin – to Jose Napoleon Duarte, who was running for president of El Salvador. When he was over thrown and sent into exile to Venezuela in 1970 his followers and staff had to flee the country to avoid prosecution, or worse. She fled up through Central America, making it to Arizona, where she was arrested by the US Border Patrol. By flirting with the Border Patrol officer she was able to coerce him into an affair which resulted in her pregnancy. Unfortunately the BP officer was shot to death two day after they met by the return of the coyote who guided her to the border, as he attempted to get paid for his actions.

All alone in a strange country, abandoned and scared, Consuela Duarte learns she is with child and has to protect it at all costs. Eventually the child, Nathaniel (Nate) is born in the border town of Nogales, born a US citizen. When Consuela is arrested not long after that and returned to Mexico with her child she spends the next eight years living life the best she can waiting for cousin Napo to be released from exile and his triumphant return to El Salvador and she can return to her home. She makes the best life she can for the child eventually becoming a dancer and a prostitute to make ends meet. One day a Mexican mid-level gangster comes to the club and sees her perform. He recognizes her as the illegal alien he helped transport over the border almost a decade ago. In a fit of rage he followers her to her private room and strangles her to death. The eight-year old Nate witnesses his mother’s murder and manages to escape.

Later that month Nate is plucked from the streets of Nogales Sonora, where he is running as an orphaned urchin - the little blonde Mexican, looking like Mowgli and the wolf-pack, by a young novice stationed at the Catholic Mission. When this nun-in-training discovers Nate has a US birth certificate, just about his only personal affect, she helps re-unite him with the American family that knew nothing of his existence, the Border Patrol officer’s parents. Wealthy land owners and owners of a timber mill in Minnesota they retire and embrace a new life in Tucson to raise Nate as their own son, giving him a family and an inheritance of untold wealth. When Nate graduates from Notre Dame, Jose Napoleon Duarte’s alma mater, with a law degree he surprises everyone by pursuing a career in the TPD, his full intent to bring his parent’s murderer to justice.

By this time the Mexican gangster has risen in the ranks to head of the Sonoran cartel. During his career as police officer Nate has studied and kept track of the coming and goings of this beast of a man, waiting for the right opportunity and is drafted into a Federal Tax force to help bring him to justice for corruption against the American people. Of course Nate has his own agenda.

As I fixed this plot in my head I was unsure how to bring out the back-story without overwhelming the first book and taking away from the sex-crime that needed to be solved. The back-story line is so strong, a story in its own right, and so important. It weaves through the books as the gel that keeps them together. Each book will be a stand-alone novel but by reading then in order will help their cohesiveness. It bothered me so badly that I could not write anything for a while until I found a way to string out the back-story without it overwhelming the first book. I decided to bring back the novice that rescued him off the street in Nogales, only this time as a nun in a convent in Tucson. A chance meeting, over an abused child, brings the two of them back together. A strong spiritual bond of friendship is forged between the two characters, allowing Duarte to turn to the sister and tell her, over the course of the four books, the things that have transpired over his life since they first met twenty-eight years previously, including the one secret Duarte as never told anyone - even his child-hood therapist - that he saw his mother murdered and can identify the killer.

I am well into about ten half-formed "first-shitty drafts" chapters but the thoughts keep flowing and I am working to get going as best I can in the limited time I have to write in my stress-filled life. If anyone knows an agent who can get me a deal for five-book series lets talk. I can invision that once Duarte captures his parent's murderer that he will go on to pass the bar, seeing as he has a law degree, and maybe he will have a new series about his life as a Tucson attorney!.. and then perhaps a judge! The ideas are endless.

The Long Quiche Goodbye - A Review

2010-09-27T19:52:00.000-07:00

A frothy tale of frommage, fraught with falsehood, framing and frippery. Lovelorn Charlotte Bessette has converted her grandparent's little, cheese shop into the Fromagerie Bessette, stocked with the finest wines and cheeses from around the globe and is prepared for her grand opening. Everyone in the quaint village of Providence, Ohio--bordering Amish country--will be there, as well as busloads of tourists from Cleveland including Zinnia, the gourmet food critic from Delicieux magazine.
The scene is set for disaster. Add in local politics, crooked real estate agents and a flock of wealthy women and one is hardly surprised to find a body on the sidewalk outside the fromagerie. When Charlotte's grandmother--the current mayor of Providence--is found crouched over the body covered in blood, Charlotte has to strike quick to prove her grandmother's innocence.
Stepping on the toes of the local police chief, Charlotte and her side-kick, Rebecca--recently converted from the Amish life--gather clues and red-herrings until the entire town is suspect of the murder. Not since Agatha Christie has a female author created an amateur sleuth with a penchant for details.
Aames experience in co-starring on Murder She Wrote and Matlock has kept her in good stead. This debut novel in the three-book mystery series, The Cheese Shop Mystery series, is a well-thought-out cozy of a mystery that will keep you engrossed for hours.

Jamaica Moon - Robert J. Sadler

2010-09-25T11:36:00.000-07:00

Step aside 007; a new “international man of mystery” just rode into town. Michael Grant - “ex- Dallas police homicide lieutenant, sometime-government spook and private investigator - steam-rolls through Dallas causing mayhem to all the crooks he encounters.

Handsome, debonair the recently widowed, Grant fights off the attention of the ladies as he uses his newly found wealth to bankroll a successful investigative company. As a former cop he has all the right connections and let’s not forget his past with ‘the agency’ and the wealth of knowledge that position has endowed him with. The bad guys don’t stand a chance.

In Jamaica Moon, we find Grant working a couple of missing-person cases. One is the daughter of a mayoral candidate, the other an amnesiac girlfriend of a dying man. On a thrill-a-minute, all action story we find Grant and his companions involved in high-speed chases, good old Texas shoot-‘em-ups and highly-charged sexual situations - and the bad guys are just as bad. There’s never a dull moment in Dallas, or Jamaica, where Grant attends a writer’s conference as the featured speaker. Not satisfied being good-looking and suave, but a poet too. No wonder the women flock to hear his readings.

If you enjoy your thrillers shaken, not stirred then don’t miss out on Jamaica Moon.

The Steam Pig – James McClure RE-RELEASED

2010-09-25T11:27:00.000-07:00

When the wrong body is sent to the crematorium it’s either an opening for a comedy act or a dramatic turn. Since the body in question was involved in a murder investigation Lieutenant Kramer was, to be expected, more than a little concerned.

Set in Trekkersburg, a small unfashionable town just north of Durban, South Africa this police drama sets itself down smack dab in the middle of 1960’s apartheid. Bantu gangsters fill the town with crime which Kramer and his surprising side kick, Sergeant Zondi, a Bantu native get to solve. Zondi is able to get the other kaffirs to open up to him where they would not have to a white police officer and so the remarkable team gains a foothold on local crime.

The surprise we find in The Steam Pig is that the criminals are local politicians who get themselves mixed up with a Miss Le Roux, who it turns out is a mixed-race female passing herself off as white. Unable to face that they have had a relationship with the young lady she turns up on the slab at the mortuary.

Kramer seems to stumble through the mystery, the debut novel in a series starring the two policemen, as clues seem to get dropped at his feet. Luckily for him he is astute enough to recognize them and along with the information passed on from the Bantu informant, the unfortunate Shoe Shoe, and the invalid Indian Moosa, who watches the neighborhood from his upstairs bedroom window, the mystery begins to unravel as the pieces fall in place.

Just the title alone, The Steam Pig, spoke of a juicy, mouth-watering story. I knew in an instance that is somehow referred to the beautiful blonde laying on the stone slab, but McClure keeps the secret literally until the last page. A taut, secretive story that leans on the hate of an apartheid society, to the shocking conclusion that shows that nothing is as it appears, and that even a mother cannot grieve publically for her daughter in case the secret of their life is revealed.

On The Line by S.J Rozan NEW RELEASE

2010-09-25T11:24:00.001-07:00

Bill Smith’s longtime partner. Lydia Chan, has been kidnapped.

The kidnapper, a man Smith sent to jail a decade ago, is hell-bent on revenge. From the opening chapter Rozan has created a thriller at a frantic pace that builds to a crescendo that we ride on like a rollercoaster.

We are led on a whiplash tour of New York at the whim of a crazy man. Along the way we pick up a cast of nefarious characters, Asian pimps and their Chinese call-girls, Lydia’s kid cousin and his Italian girlfriend, ex-wives, dogs and time-worn drunken former cops.

By following the clues left in orange-colored plastic bags all over New York’s boroughs, and closely-timed secrets, provided by last-minute phone calls from the kidnapper we ride along like a passenger in the back seat, pouring over the bags contents, bent on solving the puzzle and playing the game.

An engrossing story that you won’t stop until you reach the electrifying finale.

‘Our Kind of Traitor’ – John le Carre NEW RELEASE

2010-09-25T11:18:00.000-07:00

When the Cold War ended one might have been forgiven to think the John le Carre’s career as a writer of the spy novel might have come crashing down along with the Berlin wall. Rest assured, in ‘Our Kind of Traitor’ le Carre shows us that the Russian spy novel is alive and well for the twenty-first century.

Born to the ranks of the British upper middle-class Perry Makepiece, an English literature tutor at Oxford College and his long-standing girlfriend, Gail, the “sparky young barrister on the rise” take a brief vacation in Antigua to consider their future and play a little tennis. Their holiday is rudely interrupted by Dima from Perm, and his accompanying Russian family, who leeches on to the Brits and take over their time and their tennis.

Dima makes Perry an offer he can’t refuse. He wants to rat out his fellow Russian crooks to the British government to get his family and since Perry, who is labeled Professor by this Russian money launderer, is “goddam fair-play English” Dima chooses him to pass on this information to the apparatchik’s of the British government.

Upon returning home, Perry, against Gail’s better judgment, passes on the message to the service. Before they know it the pair are recruited and caught up in the “cut and thrust of high-stakes intrigue” becoming pawns in the hands of everyone they become involved with, be it their British masters, or the sweet innocent kids caught up in their Russian parent’s need for moral endeavor.

Le Carre proves again to be the master of the understatement as his very British characters charge around Europe waiting, hiding their charges from the Russian gangsters that are trying to stop the traitor from passing on the secrets of the vory, and waiting on the government bureaucrats to cut through the red-tape so they can bring the goods home to spill his guts.

With the authorities closing in on the illegals hiding out in the Swiss countryside, the family and their handlers start to come unhinged in their hideout, and with time running out le Carre swings the momentum like the pendulum in a grandfather clock until the grand finale.

Murder in the Air - Bill Crider

2010-09-25T11:15:00.000-07:00

The air quality in Blacklin County has taken a turn for the worse since Lester Hamilton industrialized his chicken farm, and the neighbors in nearby Clearwater are none too happy.

Their complaints seem to fall on deaf ears until someone takes matters into their own hands and Hamilton is found floating in Murdock’s rock pit, the victim of foul play. By the time the second body is found you are whole-heartedly involved in piecing the pieces of the puzzle together.

Crider throws out enough red-herrings to keep you guessing in this light-hearted mystery that will often find you chortling as you scratch your head figuring out who dun it. Throw in a little romance, small town characters and one nosy newspaper reporter and this is a fun, fast read for one of those weekends when you just want to kick back and relax.

“No Place to Die” by James L. Thane:

2010-09-25T11:05:00.004-07:00

Art mimics life in this police thriller from James L Thane. He leads us through a series of home invasions in Phoenix, which actually is the city with the most registered home invasions in 2009.

Written from the point of view of Detective Sean Richardson of Phoenix’s homicide division, this police procedural is no murder mystery. We are there at the setting of each crime waiting for the detectives to pick up on the same clues that we have been given. To those of you who read this genre regularly you will be a little disappointed that the detectives don’t follow up on an early clue that could have saved many lives, but Richardson perhaps can be excused for being slow on the uptake; he is, after all, dealing with his wife’s hospice situation every night.

This fast action thriller places you right in the squad car racing to the crime scene as the serial killer strikes again and again. Hoping against hope to not only catch him before his diabolical list of potential victims is finished with, but to rescue attorney Beverly Thompson who the police suspect is imprisoned against her will, if they can just find her in time.