Stephen King Channels H. P. Lovecraft for "Revival"

Revival - Stephen King

The first time Charlie Jacobs’ shadow fell across him, Jamie Morton was just a boy of six playing “army” in the dirt. That would not be the last time, though: the shadow of Charlie Jacobs would drift back and forth across his life for the remainder of his days. In 1962, though, Jacobs was a minister with the ink barely dry on his divinity degree, just arrived at the Mortons’ church. With Charlie's pretty wife and toddler son, the Jacobs family injected a little life into what had been a moribund congregation. 

They brought life that is, until they brought death. After that death came that memorable Sunday that Charlie preached the Terrible Sermon, and then he was gone. Charlie Jacobs dropped out of sight for four decades, during which our narrator grew to be a man, and became a minor rock god, and finally wound up a junkie. The second time that the shadow of Charlie Jacobs fell on him, Jamie Morton found himself at life’s low ebb. Jacobs fixed him up though, fixed him permanently with a special form of electricity that set him on the road to recovery.

Now flirting with the double-nickel, Jamie had never thought he’d see his old minister –and later savior – again, but when he learned that Jacobs was back in the religion biz, healing the lame and curing the sick in a classic tent show, he couldn’t resist. When the shadow fell upon him one last time, Jamie Morton discovered that the now-old man had a last project on his schedule: Revival.

It's Puller vs. Puller in David Baldacci's Latest: The Escape

The Escape - David Baldacci

As Bulwer-Lytton wrote, “It was a dark and stormy night”… The power went off, and the backup generators died, but when the lights came back on there was a single prisoner missing: disgraced former Colonel Robert Puller (USAF) had simply disappeared from what may well be the most secure prison in the world. So how did a convicted traitor in solitary confinement engineer The Escape of the century? There may well be just one investigator who could figure that out and track down Robert Puller: Chief Warrant Officer John Puller, Army CID. Notice those same last names? That’s because the two are brothers.

Puller begins his investigation by learning why his elder brother was serving a life-without-parole sentence in Leavenworth to begin with. It’s espionage, for which he was convicted based on testimony from two of his erstwhile coworkers. Partnered for the nonce with a spook from some three-letter agency or other (a long-legged, tasty redhead, naturally) Chief Puller soon concludes that his big brother had been the victim of a frame job – but by whom? and why? More importantly to we readers, how high will the body count be by the time he figures out how to clear the brother’s name (you can’t call that a spoiler, since you knew when you picked up a Baldacci book how it would come out, didn’t you).

Harry Bosch, King of the Cold Cases

The Burning Room - Michael Connelly

With retirement looming just over the horizon, you could probably forgive Harry Bosch for just coasting. That would only prove that you don’t know Harry Bosch! Though there’s less than a year left before he has to leave LAPD’s cold case files unit behind for the last time, Harry hasn’t slowed down a bit. Now partnered with a young hotshot, Lucia “Lucky Lucy” Soto, Bosch has just picked up a new hot-cold case: a murder that took place ten years ago, although the victim just died this week. Lead poisoning, you know…

Long thought to be the result of a gang-style drive-by, the bullet that finally led to the death of Orlando Merced turns out to have been fired from a rifle instead. That changes everything about the way the veteran cop conducts his investigation – and sure enough, a new angle yields a new theory. Bosch and Soto decide to run with it.

But Soto has solving a different cold case in mind, one with a personal connection. Once Bosch finds out her reason, he joins the young woman in her quest. It’s a quest that will ultimately have a different resolution than either one had expected.

Samantha Kofer (and John Grisham) Come to Coal Country: Gray Mountain

Gray Mountain - John Grisham

Think back to 2008… Lehman's just gone under, the Dow is falling like a rock, and those industries that control the flow of money are panicked. Samantha Kofer works for such an industry – the real estate department of the world’s largest law firm. Rather, she did work there – she’s just been “furloughed.” Informed that the firm would hold her position and pay her insurance for a year if she’d intern at a suitable charity (at no pay, of course), Samantha finds herself ripped from a cushy job in Manhattan and dropped in a legal aid clinic deep in western Virginia’s coal country. Talk about your culture shock…

Take one high-powered lawyer who hasn’t seen the inside of a courtroom since passing the bar and put her in a practice one step above small claims court, and she’s either going to go insane or fall in love with her job. In Samantha’s case, it’s apparently the latter: although only slowly, she comes to the realization that the reason she practices law is not to shuffle paper for millionaires, but to make a difference for little people. Out there in coal country, there sure seem to be a lot of little people.

Samantha finds herself under the wing of another lawyer, one who fights tooth and nail against the coal companies that run the region. But the companies fight back, and it's not always just in the courts: Samantha is going to learn that the hard way.

Mountaintop coal mine (source: GreenLaw)

Virgil Flowers Goes Back to School for Deadline (John Sandford)

Deadline (A Virgil Flowers Novel) - John Sandford

Virgil Flowers got the call, just as one might expect, in the wee hours of the morning. Never mind that to reach his phone he had to crawl over the warm, willing female flesh lying in bed next to him, there was  something more important afoot: a dognapper had snatched a pair of Labrador retrievers. Hey, I can relate – that’s damned important! Bright and early the next morning, Virgil found himself addressing a group of angry dog owners in the little Mississippi River town of Trippton. The locals were pretty sure who’d been snatching local dogs, but they needed help getting them back. Virgil reluctantly agreed to help – guess he’s not a dog person…

While investigating the missing pooches, Virgil and his local contact Johnson Johnson (brother of Mercury Johnson, though not of Evinrude Johnson) stumble over a meth-cooking operation. Great: now Virgil has an excuse to be in town! But wait, even while he waits for the DEA to raid the meth lab, a couple of kids stumble over the body of a local newspaper reporter. Something doesn’t add up, though – Virgil’s getting two entirely different stories about what was going on in Clancy Conley’s life, and that discrepancy is tickling his spidey sense. 

If something is rotten in Buchanan County that Fuckin’ Flowers just stepped in it – and with all the dogs in town snatched in the middle of the night, that’s definitely not what he stepped in…

And Here You Thought Rupert Murdoch Was a Nice Guy at Heart: Hack Attack (Nick Davies)

Hack Attack: The Inside Story of how the Truth Caught up with Rupert Murdoch - Nick Davies

About half a decade ago a reporter for one of the leading British Newspapers, The Guardian, thought he detected a discrepancy in the coverage of a minor crime. A London PI and a journalist for a London tabloid had been convicted for hacking the voicemails of the Royal family. Most Brits nodded sagely and then went on about the business of devouring football results and slobbering over page 3 girls (not unlike we Yanks after all, are they?) Not Nick Davies, though: Davies, the aforementioned Guardian reporter, smelled a rat. Thus began the five-year odyssey in which a handful of journalists and legal eagles took on the empire of one of the world’s most powerful men and fought it to a standstill.

For a few days.

Rupert Murdoch [source: David
Shankbone/wikimedia commons]

Davies lays out the history, often in excruciating detail, in his 2014 memoir Hack Attack: The Inside Story of how the Truth Caught up with Rupert Murdoch. Davies and his editor, Alan Rusbridger, began the laborious process of uncovering the seamy underbelly of Murdoch’s print empire in Britain with a single story in 2009. By the end, they had stripped the covers off not just the invasion of the privacy of just about anyone with any celebrity but also bribery of law enforcement. All this criminality was based on a single desire: for Murdoch’s journalism empire to become so powerful that they could dictate policy to the British government. They damned near succeeded.

Through 400-plus pages, Davies logs the small details of the crimes at News of the World, Murdoch’s flagship tabloid, and the involvement of officials of the company from James Murdoch to Rebekah Brooks. Over a period of three years, Davies and The Guardian worried at every piece of evidence, each inconsistency, every slip of the tongue by a participant. Names are named, including officials of the London Metropolitan Police and at Scotland Yard; likewise a series of residents of 10 Downing Street.

Reacher Reaches Nineteen, a Personal Milestone but Still Mediocre

Personal: A Jack Reacher Novel - Lee Childs

Considering the fact that I read dozens of novels every year, lots of them of the “no socially-redeeming qualities” variety, you might think that I had already devoured all eighteen of the Jack Reacher novels penned by Lee Childs. You’d be wrong: before Personal, the nineteenth in the series, my only exposure to Childs’ protagonist had been the Tom Cruise movie from 2012 which I’ve (accidentally) seen twice. Be that as it may, people have always sad that the novels in the series aren’t so interrelated that you have to read them in order, so I bit on Personal. I gotta say, the immense popularity of the series is a little puzzling to me…

Jack Reacher is, as usual, riding a bus somewhere when he spots the advertisement asking him to phone an old buddy. He makes the call, and within hours is whisked to a supersecret CIA billet on the opposite coast headed by an old acquaintance. There he learns that someone has hired a freelance sniper to put a bullet in the brain of one (or more) of the G-8 attendees, and the meeting in London is mere days away. Reacher’s needed because, at least in theory, he knows the mind of one of the four probably sniper candidates, having put him in jail fifteen years ago. John Kott is now free, and in the wind.

Reacher and his CIA minder, a tasty morsel named Casey Nice, head to Paris and then London in search of Kott. People die, Reacher does whatever it is that Reacher always does, and the evil plot underneath it all is exposed.

Par for the course for Reacher, I’m told.

The Son: Jo Nesbø Skillfully Transforms Revenge to Redemption

The Son - Jo Nesbø

Sixteen-year-old Sonny Loftus came home to find his father slumped over his desk, a pistol by his hand and a pool of blood by his head. A note suggested that he had been a mole in the Oslo police department who’d been tipping off organized crime for years.

Sonny did not take it well… twelve years later, the heroin-addicted young man is in Norway’s most escape-proof prison, convicted of serial murders dating back more than a decade. He’s also become a sort of father confessor, even a healer, to his fellow inmates; one of whom bares his conscience to Sonny one day: the boy’s father wasn’t really the mole, and was forced by a crime boss to kill himself in order to protect his wife and son. Within weeks, Sonny has kicked heroin cold turkey and arranged his own escape.

Once outside the prison walls, Sonny sets about getting even – with everyone involved. Not only does the bloody path he carves though the Oslo underworld get the crime boss’s attention, the local would like very much to discuss his activities, especially a homicide cop by the name of Simon Kefas. Kefas isn’t just another wily old workhorse cop, he happens to have been the longtime partner of Loftus senior. To say he has mixed emotions about The Son of his old friend is an understatement. To say that Simon has some baggage of his own is also an understatement…

Brennan Gets Hot and Cold Cases This Time, but Bones Never Lie

Bones Never Lie - Kathy Reichs

The case started like cases often do for Temperance Brennan: a phone call asking her to consult on an old case, a file of autopsy results and an earnest cop from a distant jurisdiction. But in this case, the victim was known: so why call in one of the country’s leading forensic anthropologists? It was the DNA: trace evidence with a DNA match to a long-ago case Brennan had worked in Montreal, a case she’d worked with Ryan. Ryan, the man who had cracked the Anique Pomerlau case, the homicide lieutenant gone missing lo, these many months.

Emily Deschanel, TV's Temperance Brennan from"Bones"
[Gabe Skidmore, wikimedia commons]

They didn’t want Brennan, they wanted Ryan – and they figured she could find him and he could find Pomerlau. Brennan didn’t think she could, but a new case in her own back yard made matters more urgent: the MO fit Pomerlau’s style, and Brennan’s research suggested that it was not the first time the woman had plied her evil trade in Charlotte… and so she jumped on a plane to fetch her sometime partner, sometime lover.

The trail led them back to Montreal where they reopened the files on the Pomerlau case; and then to Vermont whence the earnest detective with the damning DNA match had come a-visiting. Brennan did what Brennan does: she puzzled through the mystery and, in the process, got herself in deep doo-doo. 

What: you expected different?

The Golden Hour Yields Insight into Strange Cultures, Both in Africa and Inside the Beltway

The Golden Hour - Todd Moss

Emergency medical personnel know from experience that if a patient receives treatment within an hour after a heart attack or stroke, his chances of survival increase exponentially. Judd Ryker knows this because he worked his way through undergrad as an EMT, but in a moment of idle curiosity the polysci prof wondered whether the same principle translates to other “incidents” as well, especially his own field. Once a corps of grad students had sifted through a mountain of data, Ryker’s study of the history of coups d’etat convinced him that The Golden Hour translates to affairs of state as well. The statistics suggest that there’s a critical period within which governmental overthrow can be reversed; a period of about 100 hours. Once his findings are published, Judd finds himself plucked out of academia and dropped into a position at the United States Department of State.

Ryker quickly discovers that even the bloodiest coup in a third-world nation is tame compared to the back-stabbing and interdepartmental infighting going on among the many government agencies. A year after his move, while on a beach vacation, Ryker gets a call: there has been an overnight change of government in the West African nation of Mali. The hundred-hour clock has started… Ryker knows the terrain and the principals in Mali, because he spent many months there as a grad student. He even met his wife out in the wild fringes of the Sahara. Mali is also the country where he found himself in the hospital eight months back, caught with the Ambassador by an IED as he toured the countries of the Dark Continent. Once a few task-force meetings convince him that the best test of his concept is for to be more hands-on, Ryker makes his way to the scene.

Kick Lannigan Gets a Little Revenge: One Kick (Chelsea Cain)

One Kick by Chelsea Cain

Kit Lannigan, just seven years old, left the door open and her puppy ran out through it. The nice man driving by offered to help her find Monster… Her family didn’t see Kit again for five years. When she came back to them her name had been changed to “Beth” – and Beth was one of the most popular child pornography actresses ever known.

credit: chelseacain.com

A decade later, Kick Lannigan (she doesn’t answer to Kit for fairly obvious reasons) is every bit as damaged as one might expect of someone with her history. She’s honed her self-defense skills to a razor's edge, can shoot the eyes (or testicles) out of a target almost with her eyes closed and carries more sharp-edged items on her person than might be found in your average surgical suite. She lives on her own, with her adoptive “brother” James and the now-ancient Monster. In her free time, she obsesses about missing children.

The man who called himself John Bishop appeared on her doorstep, bearing a satellite photo of a house somewhere, the face of the most recent missing boy peering through an attic window. Kit has trust issues aplenty, and the mysterious dead-eyed Bishop does not make her decision easy – but (still heavily-armed) she accompanies him on the search. It’s a search that will take her all the way back to her life as Beth; a journey only Kick Lannigan can undertake, and one she must undertake to save a missing child.

Meet Tony McLean, Edinburgh's Finest: James Oswald's Natural Causes

Natural Causes - James Oswald

As a newly-minted Detective Inspector, Tony McLean tends to get the leavings in the homicide department, a tendency made worse by a poor relationship with the department's top cop, "Dagwood." That's probably why he's been handed a case so cold it's glacial; the mummified, mutilated body of a young girl decades past its sell-by date. Edinburgh is in the middle of a crime spree, however, and Tony somehow keeps stumbling over the latest victims. They are of a type: elderly men, socially prominent and wealthy. That's the crowd his grandmother ran with in her youth. Poor Gran, in a coma after her stroke more than a year ago...

Although the grisly murder count of prominent octogenarians mounts, McLean is drawn to the mysterious young girl who died so horrible a death. There is something strangely… evil about the circumstances. Even as his caseload mounts and his calendar fills, his personal life spins out of control with the death of his grandmother - and his inheritance of her substantial estate. 

Undeterred by good fortune and his increasing unease about a crime spree that seems to spiral about him, McLean delves into the circumstances of the mystery girl's death. What he will learn could change his life…

The Bourne Ascendancy: Nothing Ascendant About this Tripe

The Bourne Ascendancy - Eric van Lustbader

“The King is dead. Long live the King!”

With those words, the crown passes in a monarchy. In the literary world, the passage of the crown is couched in hundreds of pages of legalese and minuscule print, but – as in a monarchy – there’s no guarantee that the successor to the throne will become a beloved figure. When Robert Ludlum passed in 2001, Eric van Lustbader ascended “the Bourne Throne”; picking up the mysterious former Treadstone agent and carrying him forward…

…into a world of increasing improbability. Ludlum published only three Bourne novels over a decade, van Lustbader has pumped out a new volume annually since 2007. The frantic pace, unfortunately, has not been kind to the series. A case in point is The Bourne Ascendancy.

Weary of the spy game, the polyglot, master of disguise, master of multiple martial arts, and master of every weapon known to mankind who calls himself “Jason Bourne” has taken up a new trade, blacksmith. No, he doesn’t forge iron items with a hammer and anvil and he isn’t a farrier, either: Bourne has become a double for hire. This contract ends in a hail of gunfire, Bourne captured, the sole survivor of a massacre at the hands of the terrorist El Ghadan.  The big guy has a job for Bourne; a job suitable to his skills: assassinate the President of the United States (hereafter referred to as POTUS – constantly) at a time and place of the terrorist's choosing. If he refuses or fails, his dearest friend Soraya Moore and her two-year-old daughter Sonya will suffer the consequences. With that charge, Bourne is set loose to devise a plan and do the deed – all in a single week.

Sakey's Brilliance Saga Slumps with A Better World

A Better World - Marcus Sakey

When we last saw Nick Cooper (“Just ‘Cooper,’ please”…) he’d tossed his job. To be more accurate, he tossed his boss – off the roof of a 12-story building. The guy deserved it, though, and so Cooper’s been rewarded with a new job: he’s a special advisor to the President. The country’s a mess, though, and the situation in the Oval Office isn’t a whole lot better.

Out in flyover-land, Cleveland to be exact, Ethan Park and his family had finally become accustomed to suburban life when “The Children of Darwin” cut that city (and two others) off from the rest of the country. First there were empty shelves in the groceries, and then the power went off. And finally, the mistake by the lake was quarantined by armed soldiers.  Cooper knew from analyzing the patterns – his special gift – that this was all part of a plan, a plan that he’d been tricked into setting in motion. Not only did he set it in motion, but by doing so he made the mastermind untouchable. Cooper could sense what was coming, and knew that it ain’t gonna be pretty. Can you say “civil war”? A war between “normal” and “abnormals”? Well, that’s what he saw coming…

Joanna Brady's Back, Dealing with the Sad Remains of Innocence

Remains of Innocence - J. A. Jance

Cochise County Sheriff Joanna Brady’s morning began with one of those phone calls she dreaded: a child was missing. This case was a little different, since that particular child was chronologically well into his fifties. Within hours, the developmentally-disabled man’s body had been found; the remains of small, tortured animals beside it.

Had the man everyone in Bisbee believed a gentle giant been keeping a dark secret? Or was the artsy former mining town home to an incipient serial killer? The first answers would have to wait until the coroner performed an autopsy. But there was a little problem: he, too, was dead - murdered, in fact. On the opposite side of the country, Liza Machett had her own problems: while cleaning out the family home her dying mother had turned into a hoarder’s dream, she made a fascinating discovery. Mama had been hoarding more than old magazines; she’d been hoarding old hundred-dollar bills. Hundreds of hundreds, in fact. But when that old money began circulating after its long rest, Liza’s life became complicated. In the extreme: people around her began dying.

So Liza ran west toward the only family member she had left, her half-brother Guy Machett, MD, the coroner of Cochise County, Arizona... uh-oh.

Roo Jones is the Dark-Skinned James Bond: Hurricane Fever

Hurricane Fever - Tobias Buckell

Prudence “Roo” Jones returned to his old stomping grounds after he retired, sinking a chunk of a tidy nest egg into a spiffy catamaran so he could tour the Caribbean at will. He took his only living kin, his nephew Delroy, under his wing and settled down. Roo figured that he could live out his days sailing from island to island, dodging the omnipresent hurricanes that batter the slowly drowning landscape, occasionally ducking into a harbor to tip a Red Stripe with friends and replenish his larder.

That was before he got the mysterious phone call from his old running buddy Zee, a message that started by telling him, “…if you’re getting this message from me, it means I’m dead.” Yeah: dead. In another life he and Zee had done important work, and Roo knew without having to ask that his friend had died for something just as important. That’s why he did what the voice message asked; and that’s how the former Caribbean Intelligence Group operative’s once-quiet retirement turned upside down.

Not only was there a damned good reason, somebody made it personal…

1960s Noir or an Extended Male Sexual Fantasy? Much More the Latter...

Dark Blonde: A Mike Angel Mystery - David H. Fears

In the old days if a publisher wanted to sell a book by a new or unknown author, the company would send galley proofs to a newspaper’s book reviewer and lift complimentary lines from ensuing reviews for the dust jacket. They’d hope for a rave from the New York Times or the San Francisco Chronicle, but would settle for a positive mention from the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel or the Sacramento Bee, if that’s what they could get. Too few newspapers have their own reviewers now, so publishers began to prevail on established authors to pen a blurb for the cover, most of which turned out so generic as to be curiously uninformative. Now, they simply cite the number of five-star reviews at amazon.com. That’s how Dark Blonde (David H. Fears) came across my desk – that, and it was free.

Now I happen to think that Amazon’s reviewers have little or no taste, and it’s rather hard to trust reviewers like the infamous Harriet K, whose daily review output was often in double digits (one reason I have my own collection of reviews that pan books…). And, as usual, I was right: no matter how many five-star reviews (38) or the average star count (3.6 of 5), this book is definitely a stinker.

Steph Dodges a Bullet - and Other Stuff - for Top Secret Twenty-One

Top Secret Twenty-One - Janet Evanovich

She’s up to twenty-one now, and she’s still a ditz – but she’s a ditz who somehow manages to get results. She’s Trenton’s favorite bond recovery agent, the one and only Stephanie Plum. If she’s coming for you, you’d better watch out (and put your clothes back on…)

The skip of the week is sleazeball car dealer Jimmy Poletti, charged with “importing underage girls from Mexico” (no further details available – after all, this isn’t a courtroom drama). Poletti’s former bookkeeper (maybe I should say “bookcooker”?), little person Randy Briggs has attached himself to Steph for some reason, all three feet-zero of him. Poletti’s in the wind, but his poker-playing buddies keep turning up leaking blood from numerous holes and things around Briggs keep exploding. Weird, huh?

Meanwhile, Ranger’s business is on high alert as a one-eyed Russian mercenary, with whom Carlos Manoso has a messy history, is in town looking for revenge. Even as Steph and her crew forage through the wilds of Stark Street looking for Poletti and a few other FTAs, the cyclops is out there with a sharp knife and some deadly goodies. But never fear: Stephanie Plum always gets her man… whether it’s Ranger or Morelli!

Tribalism in 1970s Atlanta: Karin Slaughter's "Cop Town"

Cop Town - Karin Slaughter

Atlanta, Georgia, 1975: it's a city undergoing change, but not in every department. The cop shop may be the worst, awash with good ol' boys who still think the darkies should stay in their place and that a woman is only good for one thing - and that thing certainly ain't police work. As Cop Town opens, the fifth policeman in recent weeks lies bleeding to death, shot by the hand known only as The Shooter. 

Into this steaming morass steps newly-minted patrol officer Kate Murphy, a gorgeous and marvelously stacked woman with two big secrets: one, she's a widow and two, she's not Irish. She was born Kaitlyn Herschel, Dutch and - gasp - Jewish.  Murphy's new partner is the brother of the man whose patrol partner bled out on page one, and the niece of the goodest and oldest of those good old boys that run the station house. As Murphy struggles to bear up under the avalanche of harassment, she learns that even her sisters in arms won't be much help. Yet it's the novice investigator who discovers The Shooter's pattern - and it's the rookie who just might be his next victim.

"Irreparable Harm" - Lightweight Legal Fluff from Melissa F. Miller, Esq.

Irreparable Harm - Melissa F. Miller

Meet Sasha McCandless, Russo-Irish-American lawyer for what pretty much has to be the only white-shoe firm in Pittsburgh, PA. When one of the firm’s biggest clients, a hometown airline, suffers a major incident; Sasha’s on the case like white on rice. Little does she know that an evil tech guru brought down the company’s airliner with a bit of electronic wizardry and some good old-fashioned chicanery. As Sasha sashays from office to courtroom to suburban DC, along the way she picks up an Asian-American air marshal and a posse of Ukrainian hitters who’ve somehow figured out that she knows too much. Luckily for Sasha, the 5-foot-0 97-pound lawyer found time during all those 80-hour work weeks every lawyer (supposedly) works to become world-class in krav maga, capable of disarming and beating up not just big goons but also trained lawmen. Must be nice…

Book One of Another "I Won't Read Book Two" Trilogy -- The Park Service

The Park Service - Ryan Winfield

Aubrey van Houten’s is your average post-apocalyptic world, one in which the last surviving humans live in a manmade cavern several kilometers below the surface. Space and resources are limited, so their society has made “adjustments.” The citizens come of age at fifteen, at which time an algorithm assigns them their careers based on a day-long test. But wait: they get to retire at thirty-five! Except that retirement means they’re sent to Eden… apparently some sort of “cloud storage” of their minds. All that and algae crisps at every meal…

With his father just weeks from retirement, Aubrey turns fifteen and receives his (yes, Aubrey’s a boy) assignment; the first person in memory sent up to level I. But on the way to his assignment, the maglev train crashes and Aubrey finds himself both miraculously alive and on the park-like surface of the world he’d always been told was a radioactive ruin. Lie #1… And there are other humans on the surface, too – but they live in hiding, in constant fear of “the Park Service.” As Aubrey learns when a Park Service drone murders an entire community, they’ve been hiding for good reason. But Aubrey will come to find that everything he learned as a child comprises lies #2 through about #1,000,000 – and the hits just keep on coming.

"The Intern's Handbook" by Shane Kuhn - Literary Lemonade?

The Intern's Handbook - Shane Kuhn

Ann Landers (or maybe it was Dear Abby – same difference) was fond of saying, “If life hands you lemons, make lemonade.” Shane Kuhn takes this advice to heart for The Intern’s Handbook. The particular lemon with which the screenwriter must deal for this, his first novel, is the lack of a plot – or more properly, the lack of a novel-length plot. The lemonade? Kuhn turns his extended short story into a comic farce by dressing it up as a combination employee handbook and memoir, which allows him to insert all the fun bits he’s thought up without needing to form a coherent narrative.

That lemonade thing? It works… kinda.

Rollins Rolls out his Series for Dog-Lovers: "Kill Switch"

Kill Switch - James Rollins (and Grant Blackwood)

Tucker Wayne left Afghanistan and the Army Rangers with mad skillz, a best friend and a wee touch of PTSD. Once the pair mustered out together, Tucker and his Belgian Malinois, Kane, became freelancers; although they were apparently on speed dial for Sigma Force. That’s how Tucker and Kane ended up with a “simple” job, helping a paranoid Russian scientist sneak out of his homeland. 

Of course, “simple jobs” never are… Tucker soon learned that the big-dome was being pursued by the most fearsome group in the Russian military, assisted by an elite mercenary team who somehow managed to immediately zero in on the ex-soldier and his trusty companion. And once he actually made contact with the eccentric gentlemen, his demands further complicated matters – “I cannot leave without my daughter!”


That’s how Tucker, Kane, and three Russian scientists found themselves sneaking across the country in planes, trains and submarines – all the while barely a step ahead of a ruthless enemy. But why? For LUCA – plant life that held the capability of being the scariest weapon or the greatest boon to mankind. And which it would be depended on who found it first; and whether or not there was a Kill Switch.

For Once it's not the Catholic Church: Steve Berry's Latest Potboiler Picks on the Mormons

The Lincoln Myth - Steve Berry

After three unsuccessful tries, struggling author Dan Brown cracked the NYT bestseller lists with The Da Vinci Code in 2003 – and by 2005 his previous novels had also gone viral, in the literary sense. Most critics of a literary bent considered tdVC to be little more than a potboiler, but there’s no denying that Brown managed to hit on the magical formula that sells books like hotcakes. And that’s why a bazillion other books have been written that attempt to follow the magic formula. 

The elements of Brown’s formula are: a mystical religious relic, a centuries-old conspiracy, a larger-than-life hero, a madman (preferably filthy rich), a beautiful woman, and skein of puzzles. 

Salt Lake Temple (credit: Entheta,
wikimedia commons)

So far, Steve Berry has written at least nine attempts to recapture Brown’s formula. He’s sold a lot of books in the process, but the sad truth is that while Brown’s efforts are at least pedestrian, Berry’s Cotton Malone series (The Alexandria Link, The Templar Legacy) can’t even reach that level. Neither can The Lincoln Myth, for that matter…

Cotton Malone may have retired, but his old boss still has the big guy on speed dial. That’s how he's gotten entangled in the web of intrigue involving a 160-year-old letter between Abraham Lincoln (that Lincoln, the 16th PoTUS) and Brigham Young (that Young, a prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints – the Mormons). Seems there’s a cabal of Mormon fundamentalists who want the letter, long hidden, and – more to the point – a secret addendum to the U. S. Constitution that will supposedly allow states to secede at will.

Rhyme and Company Tangle with Tattoos: Jeffery Deaver's "The Skin Collector"

The Skin Collector - Jeffery Deaver

Just when you thought it was safe to get some body art, Jeffery Deaver puts the fear of God in you. Could any other author dream up a killer so insidious, so calculating, so… evil as The Skin Collector? Probably not…

He prowls the tunnels and abandoned alleyways of New York’s underground, carrying with him the tools of his trade: Billy Haven, sometimes known as “The Underground Man,” does body modifications; although his recent clients neither requested a new tattoo nor survived their application. Perhaps that’s because Billy’s ink is pure poison – literally: hemlock, amanita, nicotine; all the “good” ones.

With a killer who can be anywhere, anytime, and who seemingly selects his victims at random; NYPD does what they always do: they call in Lincoln Rhyme. Unsub 11-5 proves a worthy adversary, however, perhaps because he has studied in detail the team assembled by the paraplegic forensic criminologist and their methodology. Or perhaps it’s because he has a plan; carefully constructed, highly detailed and chock full of surprises. Nasty surprises, not the least of which is… well, you’ll just have to find out, won’t you!

Veronica Mars Goes Literary - Sort of - For "The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line"

The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line - Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham

Unless you've been hiding under a rock, you know that Veronica Mars lives, thanks to a Kickstarter campaign to fund Kristen Bell’s return as a slightly older version of the sassy high schooler whose hobby is being a private eye. The diminutive blonde made it back to Neptune, California, for the movie – and stayed for the book. According to the cover blurb, The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line is “the first book in a thrilling new mystery series”!

Kristen Bell at San Diego Comicon, by Gage Skidmore

Your reviewer begs to differ: first in a series, yes; mystery, maybe; thrilling, decidedly an overstatement. Read on…

It’s March, and hordes of spring-breaking college students have descended on seaside Neptune, filling the motel rooms, jamming the bars and leaving the village streets littered with dead soldiers and pools of vomit. You know the drill… When one party girl disappears, however, national attention is focused on the annual three weeks of hedonism. Everyone in Neptune knows their elected sheriff is a corrupt buffoon, so the local Chamber of Commerce quietly turn to Mars Investigations – and right now, that’s Veronica.

Anna Pigeon Channels Ford, Butler and Willis to Become a "Destroyer Angel"

Destroyer Angel - Nevada Barr

Four years have mellowed Heath Jarrod, onetime ice climber turned paraplegic by a tragic fall. Some of that mellowing is definitely due to the influence of her adopted daughter, Elizabeth, whose presence in her life is a gift from Anna Pigeon. So it’s not unexpected that those two women and the fifteen-year-old would take a week for a long canoe trip off the grid in Minnesota. They’re joined by wealthy wunderkind engineer Leah Hendricks and her adolescent daughter, Katie. The first night in camp Anna heads for the river for some private time with her canoe, but when she returns, her companions are not alone: four men have invaded the campsite, and mayhem is on the menu. 

The four thugs are there to kidnap Leah and her daughter, intending to deliver them to an airstrip some ten miles away through the North Woods. The belief that Heath and Elizabeth can command a handsome ransom too means that they will come along; the trek complicated by the thugs’ lack of wilderness savvy and Heath’s condition… not to mention Anna. Informed that the fifth camper backed out at the last minute, the four men remain unaware that one small, middle-aged female Park Ranger is plotting their demise.

Laukkanen Dances with the One What Brung Him: Reviewing "Kill Fee"

Kill Fee - Owen Laukkanen

Kirk Stevens of Minnesota's BCA and Carla Windermere of the FBI had figured they’d just share a cuppa and catch up on each other’s cases, but their coffee break went out the window when the two watched in horror as a sniper murdered a white-haired old man before their very eyes. Bad luck for the killer, though – Windermere got a good look at the blank-eyed young man and his getaway ride. The trail seemed to die there, though – the man who suposedly rented the little blue car in Minneapolis looked nothing like the killer and he swore he’d been driving a red SUV. So much for police work…

When the dead man’s cousin turned up dead a few days later in Duluth, Stevens caught the case – and that’s where he first ran across the cryptic word “Killswitch.” Stevens being a pretty bright guy figured out he was on the trail of a contract killer. That brought the Feds – and therefore Windermere – into the game. Yay.

Harlan Coben Goes Fishing for Red Herrings and Catfish: "Missing You"

Missing You - Harlan Coben

Kat Donovan is third-generation NYPD, having followed in the footsteps (and bar stool) of her father and her father's father. Nearing forty, Kat's still single and not looking very hard. When her best friend gives her a free membership at an on-line dating service, Kat’s underwhelmed at first; underwhelmed by the long roster of shallow, needy men with digital versions of bad singles-bar come-ons. But that’s before she stumbles over Jeff’s profile…

Eighteen years ago Kat’s life had changed forever the moment her father’s partner appeared at her door: Dad was dead, murdered. Weeks later, her fiancé had dumped her and left, never to be seen again – until tonight, when his all-too familiar face appears on her laptop screen as she scrolls through JustMyType.com profiles. After one too many shots of Jack, she reaches out to him…

Failed Fusion of SciFi and Romance: "Archetype," M. D. Waters

Archetype - M. D. Waters

A couple of generations ago the concept of “fusion” was pretty much reserved for hydrogen bombs and hopes for cheap, clean electric power. Then came “fusion cuisine,” sometimes interesting but too often hapless mashups of different cooking styles in a single dish. And finally somewhere along the line fusion struck the world of literature. Once upon a time librarians and bookstore clerks only had to look at the cover art to know where to shelve a new release, but genre fusion has made that dicey. Think cozy murder mysteries (Perri O’Shaughnessy, for instance) or VampRom and almost anything Mercedes Lackey ever wrote. Well, the next step in fusion is here, and it’s an uneasy marriage of bodice-ripper and speculative fiction: Archetype, from the pen of M. D. Waters.

"The Circle" (Dave Eggers) A Cautionary Tale About Social Media, Transparency and Gullibility

The Circle - Dave Eggers

The job Mae Holland landed was one that millions worldwide would have readily called their dream job. Just 24, Mae departed the stodgy every-day business world forever and started a new career on the Silicon Valley campus occupied by The Circle. Everyone knew The Circle: it was the company that had invented TruYou, and with one keystroke stripped the final vestiges of anonymity from the Internet. 

Apparently the old cartoon was wrong:  on the Internet, people do know you're a dog.

Mae’s started on the corporate ladder’s bottom rung, in Customer Experience. Her job was to answer questions for Circle clients all over the world. After every client interaction, she sent a survey; if the rating didn't hit 100, she sent a follow-up requesting clarification and a re-rate (then another follow-up if the first didn't raise her to perfect). As she became ever more deeply embedded in Circle society, the screen count on her workstation increased: one for work, another for responding to queries by her trainees, a third for the ongoing social interaction with in- and out-Circle Friends, then another to answer surveys to guide Circle clients' marketing strategies; finally nine screens in total. What a multitasker Mae became! 

Sparkling Debut Novel from Drew Chapman: "The Ascendant"

The Ascendant - Drew Chapman

Meet Garrett Reilly, happa twenty-something from Long Beach. Garrett possesses a rare talent; the ability to see patterns in wildly disparate data. Combined with a near-eidetic memory, that talent makes him a powerful force in his current job of Wall Street market analyst. He’s also an arrogant sonuvabitch with a chip on his shoulder the size of Nevada.

Wiley Cash is Back: Reviewing "This Dark Road to Mercy"

This Dark Road to Mercy - Wiley Cash

Easter Quillby and her little sister Ruby are orphans – sort of. Mom Corinne Quillby ODed a while back and Dad, pitcher (L) Wade Chesterfield, relinquished his parental rights long ago, so the sisters live in foster care. But Wade is back and wants his girls. He wants them because he’s just come into money, lots of it, and can finally take care of them. The problem with that is that it isn’t Wade’s money, and in fact doesn’t even belong to the guy he stole it from. That’s why Pruitt is on their trail.

Brady Weller’s on their trail, too, but unlike Pruitt, Brady’s not bad through-and-through. He’s just sort of situationally bad. Brady, an ex-cop drummed off the force for a little accident a while back, is the girls’ guardian ad litem, and he takes the “quardian” part pretty seriously. Once he figures out the score, Brady can really turn it on.

He’d better: these girls definitely need a guardian…

The Harry Potter Generation Grows Up - Reading Midnight Riot (Ben Aaronovich)

Midnight Riot - Ben Aaronovich

Meet Peter Grant, Constable (Probationary) in London’s Metro Police Department. There are two things he wants out of life: to be a detective and to get in the uniform trousers of fellow Constable (Probationary) Leslie Mays. Unfortunately, it looks like neither will happen. The detective part has been stymied by his assignment to a desk job in the department of paper shuffling, while Leslie apparently intends to remain just chums.

That’s before he meets his first ghost… and becomes apprenticed to the head wizard in MPD’s equivalent of the X-Files. Inspector Nightingale is also the only wizard in “The Folly,” but fortunately he’s a jolly good one.

Peter’s laden with hidden talents: Nightingale knows because Peter can sense the vestigium; and that’s how you tell magic is afoot. And so begins his training; a remarkably Hogwartian affair with those Vulgar Latin words uttered while casting spells and the unpredictable results of beginner’s magic gone awry. In the meantime, Peter and Nightingale spend their time tracking down the evil… whatever... that is, for reasons unknown, wreaking havoc on Central London in the form of messy magical murders – very messy.

Fox and O'Hare Get Artsy: "The Chase" by Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg

The Chase - Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg

The team of Nick Fox and Kate O’Hare are back at it: O’Hare, the FBI agent and Fox, the world-class thief and con man, find themselves reunited in their unlikely (and probably highly criminal) partnership. For The Chase, the agent (O’Hare) and her quarry slash partner-in-crime (Fox) set up operations in the world of high-end art thieves, complete with international intrigue and political shenanigans.

Elvis and the Funny Money: "Indigo Slam" by Robert Crais

Indigo Slam - Robert Crais

When your office is invaded by three kids in the middle of the day, you begin to suspect you have a problem. The oldest of the three, 15-year-old Teri Haines, contracted with Elvis Cole to find her father Clark. Daddy had disappeared eleven days earlier, and his children hadn't heard a peep out of him. Elvis Cole, World's Greatest Softy, quote a $200 price for the search. Teri peeled a couple of Benjamins off the fat roll in her purse and handed 'em over.