Carey Baldwin's Stolen a day of My Life

Stolen - Carey Baldwin

 

“For a moment, he just held her, his hand coasting up and down her back in time with the rhythm of her heart as it beat against his.” I don’t normally begin a book review with a quotation from the book… but this time I wanted you to know what kind of torture I put myself through to finish Stolen, an installment in the Carey Baldwin romance-mystery Cassidy and Spenser series. Let’s dissect that… stuff: first, “coasting” is a ridiculous verb in this setting. Second, is he really rubbing her back at something like 70 stokes per minute? And third, if her heart is beating against his, the two had better be conjoined twins! I won’t go so far as to say that all of Stolen is this poorly written, but way too much of it is. First, though, here’s the story:

Kill Game: definitive proof that quantity is not the same thing as quality

Kill Game: A Cold Poker Gang Mystery - Dean Wesley Smith

The blurbs for Dean Wesley Smith’s Kill Game: A Cold Poker Gang Mystery include one that describes it as an “exhilarating political poker thriller.” If you know who Harriett Klausner was you’re probably laughing at her grandiose description of yet another book she'd never read (she wrote dozens of book reviews a day). If you’ve read this particular book, well, you realize that not one word of her four is actually true.

Meet the Cold Poker Gang. Or perhaps not: supposedly a group of ex-Vegas cops who solve homicide cases while playing a weekly poker game, in reality only three appear in Kill Game (aren’t poker games usually among six or more players?). Two have strong connections to the cold case they’ve chosen to work on this time, however. Former Reno cop Julia Rogers is the widow of the man killed in Sin City twenty-two years ago; Stan Rocha was now-retired cop Bayard Lott’s first-ever homicide case. His murder remains unsolved all these years later.

Warshawski Takes One in the Ribs: Sara Paretsky's "Brushback"

Brushback - Sara Paretsky

As far as I know, no female detective in literature gets roughed up more often than V. I. Warshawski, and only Stephanie Plum is harder on cars. The indomitable Vic charges through concussions and multiple lacerations and contusions to complete the action in Brushback, but we could have told her it was a waste of her time…

What are the odds? Vic’s high-school boyfriend showed up on her doorstep to let her know that his mother was out of stir after a quarter of a century. Stella Guzzo had been sent up the river for killing her daughter Annie, and big brother Frank told Chicago’s gutsiest PI that mama was now claiming that she didn’t do it. Vic wasn’t interested, though, since the not-so-lovely Stella had often slandered the sainted Gabriella…

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.