Blue Heaven

Another book by C.J. Box--this one is also not part of his most well-known series with Joe Pickett (see earlier posts on The Highway and Open Season). Deep in the woods of "North Idaho" a young girl and her younger brother, mad at their mom, have taken themselves off with a fishing rod "borrowed" from their mom's newest boyfriend to do some fishing. Instead they run across the scene of an execution as 4 men simultaneously shoot another man. Annie and Willie run and hide, losing their pursuers in the woods. But these are no ordinary men, they are retired LAPD officers with years of skill and training and a huge investment in not getting caught. They simply cannot afford to let the children be found alive. So they hijack the search for the missing children from an inept local sheriff and now the children simply do not know who to trust. After hiding overnight in a barn, they are found by Jess Rawlins, a local rancher who is about to lose everything he and his family have worked to build over the decades. Jess is finally convinced to believe Annie's story and is determined to protect them, in part to make up for the betrayal by his wife and the loss of his son to schizophrenia.
Meanwhile, another retired police officer from southern California, Eduardo Villatoro, has arrived in this little town following leads on money stolen several years earlier from the Santa Anita racetrack. An armored car guard was killed in the robbery and Villatoro wants to close the case even though he is no longer officially working. He talks to the president of the local bank, Jim Hearne, who we come to find out, turned his head the other way when approached about accepting large cash deposits just under the legal reporting limit.
The two cases are tied together and it becomes a race against time, for the children and the bad guys. Author Box ratchets up the tension and keeps you wondering how and if Jess Rawlins can outwit four experienced policemen who will stop at nothing to stay free. Well written and compelling plot.

Iron Kissed

This is the 3rd installment in the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs, a series I discovered via the "New Releases" display at the library with Frost Burned. I immediately set out to read then in chronological order (see also Moon Called and Blood Bound) and I am well and truly hooked.  These books are so compelling that I really struggle to put them down and go to sleep! That hotbed of supernatural activity, the Tri-Cities in Washington state, is the setting for these books, and Mercy is a Native American shapeshifter--becoming a coyote at will--and also a "Walker." This gives her powers, e.g., to communicate with ghosts and detect magic, which even the other supernaturals in the area do not have. In this book, Mercy is called upon by mentor Zee to assist with solving a series of murders. Zee trained her as a car mechanic and then sold her his car repair business. He is one of the rare fae (fairies) who can handle iron, i.e., "iron kissed,"  and is hundreds of years old, although he doesn't look a day over 75. Mercy's extraordinary sense of smell when in coyote form means she might be able to detect who was at all the scenes of murder on the fae reservation, so she agrees to help.
The higher ups of the fae world, known as the Gray Lords, will do almost anything to keep non-fae from knowing about the extent of their magic, and are even willing to let Zee die as a scapegoat to keep public attention from themselves.  Mercy puts herself at real risk by going onto the reservation, where she encounters magical artifacts, other worlds, and very powerful fairies, who would just as soon eat her or kill her as look at her. She is not willing to let Zee die for something he did not do, however.
Mercy's other big problem in this book is making a decision about Sam vs. Adam, two dominant werewolves who both want to lay claim to Mercy as a mate, and both of whom Mercy loves in her own ways. Nevertheless, Adam's pack comes out in force to support Mercy when she is attacked by a voracious monster fairy. However, in the end, it is humans mis-using stolen fae artifacts who present the real danger to Mercy; although she makes it out of this encounter phyically alive, she is psychologically brutalized and struggles to regain her sense of self and safety in the world.

Brass Verdict

This is the 2nd installment in the Mickey Haller series by Michael Connelly and it continues to develop the character first met in The Lincoln Lawyer. After being shot in the first book, Mickey becomes addicted to pain medications and his law practice goes on hold. Following a stint in rehab, he is feeling ready to get back to work, but is surprised by inheriting the entire caseload of a fellow criminal defenses attorney who has just been murdered, Jerry Vincent. Apparently, these two lawyers occasionally covered cases for one another and wrote each other into their client contracts as 2nd counsel, but Mickey had no idea that Vincent left the entire practice to him. The team swings into high gear to get up to speed and find that two detectives, including Harry Bosch (Connelly's first and most developed series protagonist), are rummaging through Vincent's files in their pursuit of leads to find his killer. Although Mickey wants to help, he goes head to head with Bosch over client confidentiality.
One of the inherited clients is a high profile and very rich movie studio exec who is charged with a double homicide. Key information is missing in Vincent's stolen computer, calendar and some hard files, but Mickey puts Cisco to work and manages to put together what he considers to be a solid defense. Mickey tries to help the police with enough information, even making himself a target, to help track down Vincent's killer. But as Mickey reminds himself in the end, after discovering he has been played by cops, judges and clients, everyone lies. Mickey occasionally has crises of conscience about defending bad people, especially in trying to keep the good opinion of his daughter, and this particular client sends him in the direction of wanting to call it quits.
The really surprising revelation at the very end of the story is that Mickey figures out Bosch is an illegitimate half-brother, progeny of his famed father, Michael Haller, Sr., and a prostitute.

The English Girl

This book by Daniel Silva was again the discovery of a new author for me. I have certainly heard of Silva but not read any of his work, although that will change now.  Apparently there are several previous installments that involve protagonist Gabriel Allon, described on the dust jacket as "master assassin, art restorer and spy." Here he is called in by no less than the British Prime Minister, whose mistress has ostensibly been kidnapped from Corsica by French criminals and is being held for ransom. Allon agrees to help only because he owes a favor to his British Secret Service counterpart. This is an intriguing plot grounded in current events surrounding control of the the world's oil supplies. At first this appears to be just a grab for money, but it is quickly revealed by Allon to be a "false flag" operation being run by the current day equivalent of the Russian KGB in an attempt to blackmail Britain into selling North Sea oil rights. Layer after layer is revealed as Allon digs deeper and brings in the resources of Israel's Secret Service to carry out a complex sting operation that will both stop the Russians and find the victim. Allon may be rescuing her from more than just a kidnapping, however. Well written, fast-paced, good detailed settings all make this a compelling thriller and I will definitely go back for more, starting with the first in the Allon series.

Open Season

So I went back and ordered the first "Joe Picket" novel in the series from C.J. Box because I have heard good things about this author AND was so turned off by the other book I tried to read by him, The Highway. I have to say, this was a considerable improvement with more complex and interesting characters, at least some of whom I could identify with. Joe Pickett is a fairly new game ranger in Saddlestring, Wyoming. He has two young daughters and a 3rd child on the way. He knows his wife Marybeth has given up her career and the wealthy lifestyle she was accustomed to in order to follow him to various government-owned houses that leave a lot to be desired. Older daughter Sheridan also seems not to like the constant moving. Joe has taken the place of retiring warden Vern Dunnegan, who was a local legend, but has now gone to work as a consultant for a company wanting to run a pipeline through the Bighorn mountains. He is offering Joe the opportunity to work for this same company and make lots of money. But Joe loves his life of being outdoors and safeguarding the wildlife. When a hunting guide stumbles into Joe's backyard late one night mortally wounded and leaves behind a scarred plastic cooler that seems to have been carrying live animals, the real trouble begins. A series of murders is followed by threats to Joe's family, which come from the most unlikely direction. Joe begins to suspect that an endangered species may play a key role in what is happening. Then someone pulls strings to get Joe suspended for losing his weapon in a confrontation with a man he once tried to arrest. Joe is determined to get to the bottom of things while he still can, but the cost is higher than he ever imagined.

Standing in Another Man's Grave

Recent entry in the "John Rebus" (Edinburgh detective) series by Ian Rankin. I have read others in the series and find them generally well-written, well characterized, well plotted.  Rankin's website offers maps and lots of additional info on this series.
You begin to get an inkling that the impetus for the current investigation has something hinky about it fairly early on, but it is not until the very end that it is clear what the ulterior motive of Nina Hazlitt is for finding her long-missing daughter.
Rebus is currently retired from the police, but lending his expertise as a civilian consultant to the local cold cases team. He is getting bored with retirement, though, and, since the retirement age has been raised, he is considering re-applying for his old job. But a member of the Scottish equivalent of Internal Affairs has Rebus firmly in his sights because of Rebus' history of unconventional policing methods, which include consorting with criminals as a way to get information and make arrests. Rebus just happens to be the only one in the office when Nina walks in demanding to see someone. A new missing persons case has re-ignited her belief that her daughter is just one of a string of missing young women who were all taken at or near the A9 roadway. Rebus is the only one to take her seriously, but he finally manages to enlist the help of his former colleague at CID, Siobhan Clarke, who is working the current "mis per" case. As usual Rebus is up to his old bad habits and ruffles plenty of feathers on both sides of the law, but manages to come right in the end. The title of the book refers both to Rebus' mis-hearing of a song lyric, and to the tactic he uses to get a confession from the serial killer.  As with another UK detective character whose books were made into a TV series (Inspector Morse), there are lots of references to music, although of a very different kind. Reviews: The Guardian, Kirkus, The Washington Post and The New York Times.

Robert B. Parker's Damned If You Do

I guess this is the thing to do after a famous author dies--you farm out his/her name to other authors who can carry on the series and the book titles are always prefaced by the deceased author's name. OK. This is a reasonably good continuation of Parker's  "Jesse Stone" series by Michael Brandman, who was apparently involved in the making of both the Spenser and Jesse Stone TV series. He has written several other books in this continuation of Parker's work.
Jesse is called out to a local run-down motel where a young prostitute has been murdered. She has no ID, but for some reason looks familiar to Stone. The motel owner claims to know nothing about her, which turns out to be a big lie. Stone turns to Boston mob contact, Gino Fish, as a way to find out who the victim is and gets directed to two of the major pimps in the area, who, Fish advises, are serious competitors. Thomas Walker has been running prostitutes for some time, using coercion, drug addiction, and imprisonment as his MO. Fat Boy Nelly, a gay pimp, prefers a more collegial model of doing business and, obviously, does not require that the females prostitutes have sex with him. The victim, as Jesse learns, was Janice Becquer, a local girl he had counseled many years back. Stone feels some responsibility for her death as a result, and continues to pursue finding the killer, even after he has sufficiently pissed off one of the pimps, Walker, to the point that Walker is threatening to kill him.
In a parallel story line, Jesse's former accountant and friend, Donnie Jacobs, has wandered off from his nursing home and when Jesse finds him, Donnie says he is being treated badly by the staff of the home. Stone's investigation turns up a pattern of drugging and "parking" troublesome patients and even restraining them to their beds. Because this national syndicate has skated on similar charges in other locations, Jesse takes the novel approach of sending the health, fire and building safety departments after them.  Jesse makes  powerful new enemies--and some friends as well-- in the process of trying to find justice for those who cannot defend themselves.
If you have liked this series (in book or TV form) you will not be disappointed with this story.

The Highway

This novel by C.J. Box never got off the ground for me, even though friends and critical reviews have Open Season and Blue Heaven). I read 80+ page and then the final chapter (something I only do if I feel like I might not continue reading the book) and I stopped reading. Not only was it clear that very bad things were going to happen to women at the hands of a psychopathic long-haul truck driver, but he gets away with it in the end. I did not meet any characters in the first 80+ pages that I liked or even remotely identified with. That being said, I will go back and try a couple of the award winning books to see if these change my mind about this author.

been favorable and he has won several prestigious mystery awards for other novels (e.g.,

Blood Bound

This is the 2nd book in the "Mercy Thompson" series by Patricia Briggs and I stayed up til 4 am to finish it--yikes! I chanced upon the newest in the series, Frost Burned, and was so captured by the characters and storyline that I immediately tracked down the first one, Moon Called, and started the series from the beginning. Mercy knows most of the preternaturals in her home of the Tri-Cities in Washington state--fae (faeiries), vampires, and werewolves. She herself is a Native American shapeshifter (Coyote) and a "walker" which gives her unique powers beyond becoming four-footed at will. She is less subject to the entrancement of vampires, can talk to ghosts, and can sense magic. When vampire friend Stefan comes to ask a favor, Mercy has to agree because she owes him. She will accompany him, in her coyote form, to a meeting with a vampire who has come into the seethe's territory without notifying the vampire queen. The situation goes terribly awry when the vampire in question turns out to be demon-possessed and incapacitates Stefan, brutally murders an innocent victim in front of Mercy, and then beats but does not kill her. Moreover, he alters Stefan's memory so he thinks he committed the murder. Mercy has to testify at a vampire trial as to what really happened and Stefan is sent to bring the demon-vampire to justice. He is being assisted by two of the local werewolf pack's best soldiers because none of the local preternaturals want the kind of attention this is going to bring. The murderer is wreaking havoc in the Tri-Cities area and all sorts of violent crimes, including murders, have increased in frequency. Mercy is trying to keep the police from finding out about the existence of the vampires while assuring them that action is being taken to find the responsible party. Then the entire posse disappears, two more were's go after them and also disappear, and Mercy knows they are running out of time. The vampire queen tasks her with finding the demon-vampire and Mercy gets a little help from fae friend, Zee, in the form of vampire killing tools, and from a local ghost who tells her, inadvertently, where the demon-vampire is hiding out. Mercy uses her brains as well as her courage to sort the puzzle of where the demon-vampire came from and why now. Absolutely compelling reading with fascinating characters and good local color.

Accused

Another (12th I think) in the series about the all-woman law firm of Rosato and Associates by Lisa Scottoline. Mary DiNunzio has just been made a partner in the firm, although it still doesn't feel real. In the midst of celebrations, a 13-year-old girl walks into the office asking to interview Mary and Judy to see if she wants to hire them. She has just come into money from a trust and can now use the money to find out who really killed her older sister, Fiona, six years ago. Allegra Gardner is genius level IQ which means she is a bit of a social outcast--she loves beekeeping, not the most usual or social of hobbies. Her parents, especially her father, are dead set against re-opening the investigation since a man was already convicted and sent to prison. Allegra claims he was falsely imprisoned, that in fact her sister was secretly dating Lonnie, the convicted man. Things spiral out of control when the parents stonewall Mary and Judy and put Allegra in a psychiatric facility. Mary is determined to continue, but Judy backs off, so Mary is left to her own devices to figure out who really murdered Fiona. She is convinced it is the ex-boyfriend but finds out differently when the killer comes after her. There is the usual cast of supporting characters--Mary's family and the Tony's, as well as her live-in boyfriend who has just proposed--all colorfully depicted with their south Philly quirks. Nothing terribly compelling here, but a satisfying read and a good book if one likes strong, imperfect, and engaging women characters.

Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Retribution

This book by Eric Lustbader will get only a passing mention for a couple of reasons. First is that this book seems to have taken a sensationalistic side road from the way Ludlum's books were written, bringing in lots of truly gratuitous sexual action/description. Secondly, it is just badly written: inconsistent and contradictory plotting, the most godawful metaphors I have ever encoutered, clunky and jarring. If this book is any indication of the general tone and quality of Lustbader's continuation of the series--and there are a lot--then the trustees of the Ludlum estate should be ashamed for giving this series into Lustbader's hands. They must care only about the money. Bah!

The Lincoln Lawyer

For those of you who, like me, saw the movie first and read the Lincoln Lawyer series books by Michael Connelly afterwards, it is hard to picture criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller as anyone other than Matthew McConaughey. But that's OK with me :-) I just read the 6th book in this series, The Gods of Guilt, and it made me want to go back and read the whole series, which I am doing in order.  Mickey's "office" is a Lincoln Town Car, which allows him to be available to his clients at the widely dispersed prisons and court houses in the LosAngeles area. Mickey's father was a famous attorney, and although he died when Mickey was young, he left a powerful impression and an admonition that the most dangerous client was an innocent person. Mickey does not usually deal in these abstract concepts of innocence and guilt, focusing rather on manipulating the "system" to the benefit of his clients, and occasionally justice is served. But now he is confronted with a truly evil person, a manipulator as skilled as Mickey, and who will stop at nothing to stay free, including threatening Mickey's daughter. At first this rich young man looked like a golden ticket--a full-paying client--and Mickey is thrilled, if somewhat puzzled about being asked to take the case to defend him against a charge of attempted homicide. In the course of things, Mickey finds that this client may also have committed a brutal murder several years ago, a murder for which an earlier client of Mickey's was sent to jail for life.

The Quest

I have read a few other books by Nelson DeMille including Charm School, Gold Coast, Lion's Game, General's Daughter, and Night Fall, but I found this book much less satisfying. Two journalists and a photographer are in the middle of the bloody revolution Ethiopia underwent in the mid-70's. They encounter a dying priest who was held prisoner for 40 years because, he says, he saw the real Grail and and was healed by it in the Black Monastery. The three are captured and only the whim of a psychopathic Marxist general decides whether they live or die a slow and painful death. Unbelievably, after they are let go, they decide to return in search of the Grail. Two of them, the older veteran war journalist Frank Mercado, and the young female photographer Vivian Smith, his on-again-off-again lover, are true believers. Frank Purcell, the younger journalist, is skeptical, but decides to go along and help them. They are aided in eventually finding the Black Monastery by Colonel Gann, an English military adviser to the now former ruling family of Ethiopia descended from Haile Selassie. This was a rewrite of an earlier book by DeMille, and it lacks the narrative pull of later books, IMO.  However, it was, for me, an eye-opening look at the beginnings of the Civil War in Ethiopia, and also of its historical significance as a possible home of both the Ark of the Covenant and the Grail.  This was all new information for me and so satisfying on that level.

The Book of Life

This conclusion to Deborah Harkness' "All Souls Trilogy" is totally satisfying, although the complex cast of characters and plot machinations did make me want to go back and re-read the first two books, A Discovery of Witches and Shadow of Night. Now fully empowered, witch and weaver Diana Bishop and her vampire scientist husband, Matthew Clairmont, are back in the present and seeking to dodge the wrath of the Covenant for having married across species and, worse yet, conceiving twins. Vampires are not supposed to be able to conceive and Matthew's "son," Benjamin, crazy with the Blood Rage that Matthew keeps under tight control, is determined to find out why this has happened. He has been capturing, impregnating, and torturing witches in his single-minded quest, and Diana is next on his list. Add to that, the scion of the Clairmont clan, Baldwin, seems determined to put a stop to his "sire's" acknowledgement of Diana as a Clairmont. Facing opposition and outright danger on multiple fronts, Diana and Matthew head back to America, where an unlikely alliance with Diana's geneticist colleague may provide the answers they are so desperately seeking regarding the genetic inheritance of witches, vampires and daemons. Diana continues to seek the missing pages of The Book of Life, racing against those who would use it for ill, and when she finally finds it, the outcome is totally unexpected. If you love the paranormal, a bit of science, a great mystery, and historical fiction, this is the series for you.

Missing You

I have read and enjoyed several of Harlan Coben's books, including some of his Myron Bolitar series. The protagonist of this book is Kat Donovan, a NYPD detective who has lived a solitary life ever since her dad was murdered and her fiancé at the time subsequently left her--nearly 20 years ago. Best friend Stacy takes matters into her own hands and puts Kat's profile on a singles dating web site. Kat is stunned to find a picture of her former fiancé, Jeff, on the website, indicating that he is widowed with one child. When she tries to contact him, sharing the video to a song that was uniquely theirs, he seems strangely unaware of its significance, and cuts off their contact, saying he needs to move on. In the meantime, Kat is contacted by a young man who says his mother is missing after having gone off for special vacation with a man she met on line--the same man Kat saw as her former fiancé--only using a different name. The young man, Brandon, is a computer programmer and hacked the website to track down Kat and ask for her help in finding his mother. What reveals is, of course, an elaborate plot to lure unsuspecting and financially well-off singles into a trap where they are held prisoner in underground boxes and psychologically, or sometimes physically, coerced into turning over all their financial information to their captors. Kat is thrown into a race to find the perpetrators before Brandon's mother joins the pile of corpses at a remote Pennsylvania farm. In the process, she finds Jeff, who has indeed changed his name, and learns why he really left after her father's death.  A fairly surprising twist in that part of the plot.

Inferno

Good action packed book by Dan Brown that involves many of his trademark elements of art history, religious iconography, and following the clues to find the danger. Continues with the protagonist Robert Langdon of DaVinci Code fame. Langdon wakes up, apparently having brought himself to the emergency room of a hospital after being grazed by a bullet aimed at his head. While he is still trying to figure out why he is in Florence, Italy, a woman with a gun shoots his doctor, and the English speaking doctor who was assisting helps Langdon to escape. They embark on a day-long chase through the galleries and parks of Florence seeking to find out why Langdon is here, and why he is carrying a small projector in a secret pocket of his coat, which shows an altered version of a painting showing Dante's levels of Hell. In fact, the entire plot revolves around Dante's Inferno, and of course Langdon is in a uniquely qualified position to interpret the clues. A brilliant geneticist, who recently killed himself in a dramatic jump from a high tower in Florence, has created some kind of biological pathogen set to be released on the morrow. Langdon and his "doctor" companion, Sienna, are trying to find the weapon before it releases the pathogen, which they believe may be a version of the Black Death. The geneticist is a disciple of the "Malthusian equation" which shows that humans will populate the world to the point of species extermination within just a few years, and that a drastic solution is required to stop that from happening. A provocative idea and a fast-paced read with lots of wonderful details about Italian art and architecture thrown in.