“Bad Blood”  by John Sandford

Review #193

A Virgil Flowers Mystery

 

Nineteen year-old Bob Tripp hits farmer Jacob Flood in the head with a T-ball bat at the   grainery.  Tripp's subsequent attempt to make murder look like an accident fails.

The morning after Tripp's arrest, he's found hanging in his cell. Warren County sheriff Lee Coakley seeks Flowers' help to investigate what role, if any, deputy Jim Crocker, the officer on duty at the jail at the time, played in Tripp's death.

A link to the earlier murder of a young woman leads Flowers and Coakley to members of a small church with strange ways. As the pair become aware of the magnitude of the unspeakable crimes (rape, child abuse, incest) behind the deaths, they search desperately for a lever to pry open what turns out to be Flowers' biggest case to date.

Warning: This book contains references to specific  words used when sex acts are involved.

John Sandford is an excellent mystery writer and he hasn’t failed this time either.

I have to say, though, I still prefer his Lucas Davenport books. (Davenport is Flowers’ boss.)

 “The Rembrandt Affair”  

      by Daniel Silva

Review #192

Publishers Weekly Review

Silva's spy, assassin, and art-restoring protagonist, Gabriel Allon, returns in a fresh-and thrilling-international adventure. 

When an art restorer friend is killed and the Rembrandt painting he was working on stolen, Allon is lured out of a self-imposed retirement to investigate the crime. As the complex plot flips and twists from one country to the next, Phil Gigante keeps the plot moving forward with a calm, thoughtful reading that coils around the reader. His characters are perfectly drawn; the suspense, taut; and each individual is rendered distinctly: his reading of a Holocaust survivor's remembrance of being a little girl hiding from the Nazis is particularly effective and moving.

It was a first read of the author for me and I liked the book.

“Don’t Blink” 

by James Patterson & Howard Roughan

Review #191

 

Summary:

When an assassin successfully hits a notorious mob lawyer at Lombardo's Steak House, the other patrons in the restaurant are left stunned. Among them is reporter Nick Daniels, whose dream interview with a baseball legend is ruined. 

As a key witness to the murder, Nick finds himself wanted by most of New York's major political players. However, when he attempts to investigate the case himself, Nick discovers that he might have stumbled upon an international Mafia war.  

 This is a James Patterson book...what else can I say.   I Love James Patterson!

"Mossy Creek"  

by Deborah Smith, Sandra Chastain, Donna Ball, Debra Dixon, Nancy Knight and Virginia Ellis 

Review #190

Mossy Creek is the first book in series of Mossy Creek books.  I reviewed A Day in Mossy Creek in November.  All the Mossy Creek books are written in the same style. Each chapter features a different character and is written by a different author.  

Surprisingly, all of these individual units come together to form an overall look at this small town and its people.  This unique style of writing actually makes the stories more realistic, as readers seem to go from house to house collecting tantalizing tidbits of gossip.

I love the characters in these books and have new to say about them.  If you need to, you may go back and read the review of A Day in Mossy Creek.

http://carolynnsbookshelf.blogspot.com/2010/11/day-in-mossy-creek-by-deborah-smith.html

“Lost Empire”   

   by  Clive Cussler w/ Grant Blackwood

Review #189

A Sam and Remi Fargo Mystery

 When Sam and Remi find a huge ship's bell, covered in cryptic carvings, on a dive off the Tanzanian coast, they must work to find a way to recover it without running afoul of the Tanzanian government.

Meanwhile, Mexican president Quauhtli Garza, a staunch nationalist, knows that this bell comes from a former Confederate ship that sank off the east African coast after the Civil War. Garza fears the discovery of a missing piece of a Quetzalcoatl statuette, which was aboard the ship, will undermine his grip on power. Once Garza dispatches his henchman to Tanzania to deal with the Fargos, the novel devolves into a standard chase thriller.

In his inimitable way, Cussler throws everything into the pot: Confederate warships, the Aztecs, the Krakatoa explosion of 1883, pirates, and, in the tradition of Alfred Hitchcock, Cussler himself in a cameo appearance.

This was an excellent adventure but, the Dirk Pitt series is still my favorite of Cussler’s books. 

“Where There’s a Will” 
    by Rex Stout

Review #188
This is the eighth novel in Rex Stout's long-running Nero Wolfe series, published in 1940.


In it, we meet the famous Hawthorne sisters, three women who have wealth and power in the fields of politics, academia and acting respectively. They have just buried their brother and are outraged to find that in his will, he left symbolic fruit to the sisters, a pittance to his wife (disfigured by him in a bow-and-arrow accident, she always wears a veil to conceal her face) and the remaining $7 million to his mistress. It's not the money, it's the scandal that has them so upset, and they want Nero Wolfe to find a way to persuade Naomi, the mistress, to give up at least half of that bequest.


Despite the dire state of his bank account, Wolfe is not interested, until it turns out that the brother was murdered. He had not, accidentally, shot himself as originally thought. Suddenly the will's provisions take second place. Now Nero Wolfe is requested to find a murderer.


In this novel, the unexpected happens. Nero Wolfe leaves his home and office! Even his secretary/right hand man, Archie Goodwin, is surprised. Wolfe meets a family that is as eccentric as he is and he has to sift through the different stories, denials, and confessions to discover the truth.


I adore all the Nero Wolfe books (those I've read so far, anyway) and this is no exception, with the added twist that solving the crime rests on Wolfe's knowledge of botany, a nice convergence of two of his main interests.

“Body Work”    by Sara Paretsky

Review #187

A P.I.  V.I. Warshawski Mystery

This time Warshawski delves into Chicago's avant-garde art scene.  When Vic's young cousin begins working at the edgy Club Gouge, she attends a performance there by the Body Artist, who allows audience members to paint her naked body like a canvas.

When tormented young Nadia Guaman starts showing up at every performance and painting the same image over and over, her artwork enrages Iraqi war vet Chad Vishneski.  When Nadia is murdered outside the club, the cops arrest Chad for murder. His parents hire Vic to clear their son's name, but the investigation proves to be difficult because no one wants to tell Vic what she needs to know…not the brassy club owner, who seems to be in bed with the Ukrainian Mob…not the Body Artist, who, despite her exhibitionist tendencies, is close-mouthed about her past…and not the murder victim's family, who have already lost a daughter to the war and a son to a motorcycle accident.  

V. I., however, proves as persistent as ever in a case that ranges from the edgy urban nightclub scene to the corporate interests making a fortune from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And, as always, the city of Chicago, from its gentrified lofts to its working-class bars, is given a starring role.

I love V.I. Warshawski!

“And thereby hangs a tale”  

          by Jeffrey Archer

Review #186

This book is one of Archer’s  collection of short fiction features…stories based (sometimes rather loosely) on true incidents or people. Of the 15 stories in this book, 10 are supposed to be based on known incidents, which means, for example, that something similar to the very clever method of stealing jewelry described in “Stuck on You”, might actually have been tried...or that someone like Benny, the too-clever-for-his-own-good prison stoolie, might really have sentenced himself to a life of looking over his shoulder.

Aside from the fact that they're marked with an asterisk, it's hard to tell the true stories from the outright fictional ones.  In all of them, Archer creates engaging characters and puts them into situations that range from tragic to comic to . . . a little strange.

Doesn’t really matter because I enjoyed all of them!

“The Postcard Killers”  

By James Patterson & Liza Marklund

Review #185

Jacob Kanon has taken a leave of absence from his NYPD job to track down the "Postcard Killers" who have been leaving a trail of bodies throughout Europe, including Jacob’s own daughter, Kimmy and her boyfriend.  The killers, known to the reader, select couples in love and get close enough to drug and kill them before leaving their bodies in a pose reminiscent of the country's most famous artwork. They advertise their presence in a country by sending a postcard to someone in the media before the killing and follow it with a Polaroid of the dead bodies.

Dessie Larsson, a journalist for Aftonposten in Stockholm, has just received such a postcard and so, Jacob tracks her down and enlists her help in his investigation. Unwashed and smelling, she doesn't trust him at first but eventually they become a team (both personal and professional).  By researching all the murders, Dessie is able to identify the artwork theme, long before the police. An unexpected twist in the actions of the killers sets the story in a different direction and in the final section, one of the iconic IKEA stores plays an important role in the final confrontation between the good and bad guys.

There are some surprises in this book as should be expected from Patterson.

“In a Heartbeat”   

by Leigh Anne & Sean Tuohy  

with Sally Jenkins

Review # 183

Those familiar with the film or Michael Lewis's best-selling book, “The Blind Side”, will already know the inspiring story of how the Tuohys took future, NFL star Michael Oher, into their home and adopted him. So, what more is there to say about it, the answer is… plenty!

In “In a Heartbeat” the Tuohys attempt to explain their philosophy of “cheerful giving” and what it was that made them reach out to the homeless African-American boy they saw walking down the street in a t-shirt and shorts on a winter's day.  Leigh Anne and Sean have known tough times themselves and, as a result,  have put themselves on the lookout for troubled kids and others in need of help all around them. They may be millionaires now, but, they have not always been and they have never forgotten the help that came their way when they needed it.

This book is an in-depth look at the Tuohy family and the dynamics of their lives.  With Jenkins's help they write with humor about their quirks and the joy that Michael brought to their family, finally arriving at the belief that "we can all change people's lives by investing time in individuals."

I found this book inspiring and fun…couldn’t put it down!

“Chasing the Night”   

          by  Iris Johannsen

Review #184

Forensic sculptor Eve Duncan is preparing for her latest reconstruction --- a murdered young girl. With memories of her dead daughter, Bonnie, swirling in her head, she knows it will be a rough case emotionally but believes she can help the child and her family find peace. At the start of the case, she gets a call from a CIA operative she has worked with in the past, Venable, who wants her to do him a favor. She declines but soon after, finds herself playing host to Catherine Ling.

Catherine is an agent of Venable’s and a woman tormented by the loss of her son… 9 years ago.  Catherine believes Luke is alive but knows that the madman who kidnapped him when he was only two years old may have killed him. For years, he has been tormenting her with the threat to kill Luke if she tries to rescue him.  Catherine’s unwavering belief that he may still be living is what convinces Eve to help her.  What Catherine needs is an age progression picture of her son.  She is going after him and she plans to kill the man who kidnapped him.  The CIA wants her to stay away from him because they are getting ready to bring him down.  They have been dealing with this man for years in order to protect Luke but, things have changed.

What looks like a few days of trying and emotional work turns out to be much more complicated when the kidnapper gets Eve involved. Without knowing what horrors await them, Catherine and Eve leave for Russia, and with a little help from Eve’s friend and lover, Joe Quinn, and some CIA assistance, they set out to find Luke.

This is a VERY good book!