Extinction

This book by Douglas Preston takes place in an exclusive private enclave deep in the Colorado mountains, where scientists are working to bring back to life extinct species such as mammoths and sloths. Only the uber-rich can afford to vacation there and watch the animals come down to the lake at feeding time. Then a young couple of newlyweds is savagely killed on an overnight outing, but their bodies have disappeared. 

Booklist summarizes, saying that the book has "echoes of Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park. In a resort park, extinct animals are brought back to life using cutting-edge science, but in no way is this a retread. In fact, for quite a while, it's a murder mystery. A billionaire's son and wife are murdered inside the resort by ecoterrorists, or so it seems. But, as Colorado Bureau of Investigation agent Frances Cash and sheriff James Colcord will discover, there may be other, frighteningly nonhuman forces at work."

Kirkus concludes their review: "The action seldom lets up, and readers will feel the mounting tension and excitement. The setting itself is a scientific wonder, and it must tie into the murders somehow. Meanwhile, Hollywood is filming an action movie in the park, and the pièce de résistance will be the spectacular explosion of a train. But wouldn’t you know, Preston has other plans. Imagine Jurassic Park with the timeline brought forward to the Pleistocene, and you have the Erebus Resort. Science, imagination, storytelling, and action are all here. Fast-moving fun and a highly creative plot."

Publishers Weekly also weighs in with a favorable review: "Preston tweaks the “resurrected species go haywire” trope with a series of ingenious plot twists, and his well-rounded characters make this more than a knowing genre exercise. The results are as smart and spine-chilling as the best of Michael Crichton."

Dead Mountain

This co-written novel by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child is a fictionalized account of an actual event that took place in 1959--the disappearance and death of nine experienced winter hikers-- that has yet to be solved. Preston wrote an article about this story and it was later collected into his book, The Lost Tomb. The authors have moved the action from the Ural Mountains of Russia to the present day and the Manzano Mountains of New Mexico . This book is the 4th of a series by Preston and Child featuring archaeologist Nora Kelly and rookie FBI agent Corrie Swanson. 

Swanson and Kelly are called in after a pair of fraternity brothers on a drunken joy ride crashed their car and took shelter in a cave; there they discovered an ancient skeleton and petroglyphs. When the forensic team and the archaeologists arrive, they discover that in addition to the native American artifacts, there are two relatively recent skeletons in the back of the cave that turn out to be two of the nine the students who went missing back in 2008 while on a winter hiking trip. That leaves just one body, so the case records show, who is yet to be located. Multiple complications arise as Nora works with the nearby tribe to whom the relics should be returned for a sacred burial. And then Nora's brother Skip gets cross-wise with a vengeful local sheriff who is seeking re-election and cares only about the publicity this discovery will bring him. Moreover, as they get closer to figuring out where the last body--the trip's official journalist and photographer --might be, powerful people and institutions do everything to stop them, including killing them if necessary.

A Different Dawn

This is a sequel to the book I recently posted about, The Cipher, by Isabella Maldonado, which was the first in her "Nina Guerrera" series. The ad hoc team from the earlier book--comprised of 2 profilers, a techie and field agent Nina-- has now tentatively become a fixture at the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit. When two geographically distant triple murders get connected through the ViCAP system and their boss wants them to figure out if this is a serial killer at work.  What they discover is that someone has been committing murders, staging them to look like murder suicides, every Leap Day for the last 28 years. The murders always involve a family with a new baby girl, and always point to the mother as the murderer. The killer has been so successful, that many of the big city homicide units didn't realize that all three were victims. The team's task is to figure out what motivates the killer to try and narrow down the search. In the process, Nina will discover that was never the throw away baby she grew up thinking she was. But the discovery will put her directly in the cross-hairs of the killer. Publisher' Weekly calls this sequel "captivating." Kirkus describes the storyline as "A horrifying crime, cat-and-mouse detection, aha moments, and extended suspense, more or less in that order."

The Cipher

Author Isabella Maldonado had an extensive career in law enforcement that certainly adds credibility to her stories; she rose through the ranks to retire as a police captain after two decades and also graduated from the rigorous FBI Academy at Quantico. Her main character, FBI special agent Nina Guerrera, was abandoned as an infant and suffered the worst the foster care system had to offer before running away for good at the age of 16. She was subsequently kidnapped, tortured and raped but managed to escape, change her name, and finally become an FBI agent. Her abductor was never found. When she is captured on video defeating two would-be attackers during her morning run, it goes viral and her former nemesis finds her. He decides to use social media to bait and harass her while continuing to carry out a string of murders. She is brought into a team on the Behavioral Analysis Unit along with two profilers and a techy. Eventually she learns that she no longer has to fight her battles alone.  Short reviews from Kirkus and Publishers' Weekly.

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

This disturbing non-fiction account by David Gann of the systematic murders of members of the Osage tribe in Oklahoma is a book I have been wanting to read for a long time, and my book group selected it for our April 2021 read.  Interesting coincidence is that I am currently editing a book about the Covid pandemic that also touches on many of the issues raised in this book, such as the cancel culture of Native Americans traditions embodied in the Dawes Act. The Osage, like many other tribes were forcibly removed from their homeland and put on a piece of land in Oklahoma that the U.S. government figured wasn't of interest to settlers. What a surprise when that piece of land turned out to sit atop a significant source of oil. So many things were done to the Osage to rob them of the benefits that should have accrued from that discovery...declaring them incompetent to handle the money that came from their mineral rights, assigning them guardians who controlled how they spent the money (and usually embezzling much of it in the process). A series of murders of Osage individuals in the early 1900's were investigated but were never resolved; "more than two dozen people — not just Osage Indians but also white investigators sent to look into the crimes — killed between 1920 and 1924. It became known as the Osage Reign of Terror" (New York Times). Finally, Hoover sent in an agent to figure out why so many people were dying and no one was being held accountable. 

"Grann ...centers this true-crime mystery on Mollie Burkhart, an Osage woman who lost several family members as the death tally grew, and Tom White, the former Texas Ranger whom J. Edgar Hoover sent to solve the slippery, attention-grabbing case once and for all. A secondary tale of Hoover's single-minded rise to power as the director of what would become the FBI, his reshaping of the bureau's practices, and his goal to gain prestige for federal investigators provides invaluable historical context. Grann employs you-are-there narrative effects to set readers right in the action, and he relays the humanity, evil, and heroism of the people involved. His riveting reckoning of a devastating episode in American history deservedly captivates." (A. Bostrom, 2017, Booklist).

Library Journal calls it "A spellbinding book about the largest serial murder investigation you've never heard of." The New York Times concludes their detailed review by saying, "...Grann has proved himself a master of spinning delicious, many-layered mysteries that also happen to be true. As a reporter he is dogged and exacting, with a singular ability to uncover and incorporate obscure journals, depositions and ledgers without ever letting the plot sag. As a writer he is generous of spirit, willing to give even the most scurrilous of characters the benefit of the doubt.

Thus, when Tom White and his men solve the crime, and the mastermind behind the murders is revealed, you will not see it coming. You will feel that familiar thrill at having been successfully misdirected, but then there are about 70 pages left in the book. And in these last pages, Grann takes what was already a fascinating and disciplined recording of a forgotten chapter in American history, and with the help of contemporary Osage tribe members, he illuminates a sickening conspiracy that goes far deeper than those four years of horror. It will sear your soul. Among the towering thefts and crimes visited upon the native peoples of the continent, what was done to the Osage must rank among the most depraved and ignoble. 'This land is saturated with blood,' says Mary Jo Webb, an Osage Indian alive today and still trying to understand the crimes of the past. 'History,' Grann writes in this shattering book, 'is a merciless judge.'"

The Silent Corner

OK I admit I have NEVER read a Dean Koontz novel before, because I always associated him with the horror genre and that is something I stay away from. But I kept reading about his "Jane Hawk" series and decided to start from the beginning with this one, published in 2017. Jane was an FBI agent, happily married to a smart and loving man who was the father of their adorable young son. Then her husband apparently kills himself, leaving a note that says "I very much need to be dead." Jane knows her husband did not kill himself and in trying to find out who could have made him do this, she uncovers an anomaly in the U.S. suicide statistics. More people than usual are committing suicide and, when Jane investigates further, she finds a number of them were similarly well adjusted,  highly productive people with no signs of depression or mental illness. But then someone breaks into her house and makes it clear that if she persists in her inquiries, her son will be abducted and sold into sexual slavery outside the U.S.
She quickly buys a junker car, sells her house at a fire sale price, closes out her bank accounts, and drives cross country to hide her son with people she believes will not be connected to her. Then she goes on the road to interview the people left behind by the anomalous suicides. She is technically on leave from the FBI but goes completely off grid since she realizes that the conspiracy behind the deaths is probably very high up in the food chain and wide-spread. She trusts no one. She figures out that a brilliant but power hungry scientist has created a way to inject people with nano-technology that gives him control over their minds. This man, Bertold Shenneck, is her target.
The pace is relentless, the plotting intricate and scary, and the prose is excellent. You will root for Jane all the way as she battles people who are determined to kill her and who can enlist her most trusted colleagues as well as strangers to hunt her down. Can't wait to read the next installment, The Whispering Room. Kirkus calls this Koontz's "leanest, meanest thriller." And there is also a glowing review from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and good words from Booklist.

Paradox

Prolific author Catherine Coulter has written over 80 novels ( a complete list here), from historical romances to contemporary FBI thrillers. This book is the 23rd in the FBI series. Married FBI agents Lacey Sherlock and Dillon Savich are awakened by a monitor failure alarm and find a man in their 5-year-old son's room. They effectively thwart the kidnap attempt but fail to catch the would-be kidnapper. Two days later, the police chief of tiny Willicott, MD, Ty Christie, is standing on her deck overlooking the foggy lake when she sees a man in a rowboat strike the other passenger of the boat in the head and dump the body overboard. The killer disappears into the fog, but when the body is recovered, it turns out to be a federal prosecutor. The FBI, specifically Special Agents Sherlock and Savich, are quickly on the case and discover another FBI agent tied up and left for dead in an old derelict house on the lake shore. Forensic evidence strongly suggests the perpetrators of the two crimes are the same person, Victor Nesser, recently escaped from a mental institution. The woman dumped from the rowboat was the prosecutor who got Nesser put in the mental hospital, which saved his life as he was on trial for murder. Apparently he wasn't grateful. Meanwhile, Chief Christie is dealing with the fact that the initial search for a body in the lake has turned up dozens of skeletons, and the only conclusion is that a serial killer has been operating in the area and using the lake for a dumping ground.  Well plotted with decent characterization and setting. No doubt much of the character development for Sherlock and Savich has occurred in preceding installments of this series.  Here's a brief review from Publishers Weekly.

The Middleman

This novel by Olen Steinhauer, author of numerous other political thrillers and the author behind the TV series "Berlin Station," presents us with a protest movement against the wealthy elite and the government (remember the Occupy movement?) called The Massive Brigade. Or are they more than that? FBI Rachel Proulx has been following terrorist groups and alarms go off for her when 400 + young adults just walk out of their lives on the same day, all over the country, leaving behind family, friends, jobs, cell phones, money and identities...and disappear without a word. Rachel has been tracking Martin Bishop, the leader of the group, for years, but can she convince her colleagues that there is a serious threat here before it's too late. Told alternately from her perspective as well as that from Kevin Moore, one of those who walked away. It gets hard to tell the good guys from the bad, probably an accurate depiction of our times. Interesting, but some of his other books have received stronger reviews and I might check them out. I'm already on the lookout for "Berlin Station."
Reviews from The New York Times, the Washington Post, Kirkus, and Publishers Weekly.

The Job

This is another installment in the "Fox and O'Hare" series by Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg.  Master thief Nicolas Fox, having finally been caught by FBI special agent Kate O'Hare, is now more or less working with the FBI to stop other bad guys. When a series of museums thefts seem to lead right back to Fox, Kate is brought in to track him down--again. But she doesn't think he would be so careless as to leave fingerprints or let his face be caught on a security monitor and he, in fact, denies being the thief. Clearly someone wants his attention, however, and when Kate catches the actual thief, a former accomplice of Fox's, they decide to go after the man she was trying to trap, the man who murdered her brother. Menendez is also the head of a major global drug ring; the problem is, no one knows what he looks like since he had extensive plastic surgery, so an elaborate trap is laid, targeted to his known weaknesses. An elaborate scam is conceived and carried out to make Menendez think a couple of clever but resource poor archaeologists have discovered the sunken wreck of the Santa Isabela, which carried hundreds of millions of dollars worth of gold. Kate gets to spend time as a hostage with Menendez' sadistic bodyguard girlfriend while Fox and crew take Menendez on a make-believe ride to the site of the wreck--all accomplished with virtual reality and special effects. Light and entertaining reading when you just want something fun--there is a fair amount of sexual banter between Fox and O'Hare. Evanovich is a very competent writer and the characters are engaging. O'Hare is a strong female protagonist.