Random Violence - a review

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.