“A Prisoner of Birth”   

                           By Jeffrey Archer

 

2011 Book Review #77

    Danny Cartwright proposes to his beloved Beth Wilson who accepts.  The pair and her brother Bernie, who is also his best friend, celebrate.  Four drunks (Spencer Craig, Lawrence Davenport, Gerald Payne, and Toby Mortimer), who call themselves the Musketeers,  insult the trio.  A fight occurs and one of the quartet stabs Bernie killing him.  

The four Musketeers swear they witnessed Danny kill the man though he claims otherwise.  Since they are elite Cambridge University graduates and successful professionals who speak and dress like aristocratic gentlemen, while he is an illiterate slum scum, he is charged with the homicide as “clothing” makes the man.  His attorney the best one he can obtain with little money is slaughtered by the prosecutor.  Danny is convicted to serve twenty-two years at maximum-security Belmarsh Prison.

In prison Danny shares a cell with Nicholas Moncrieff, who teaches him to read Dumas. When someone kills Moncrieff, look-alike, Danny pretends to be Nicholas and escapes his incarceration.  His goals are to destroy the Musketeers and prove his innocence.

The fun in this crime thriller is finding the numerous references to The Count of Monte Cristo as Jeffrey Archer pays homage to Alexander Dumas.  The story line is fast-paced from the moment of the first confrontation and never slows down as Danny works his revenge.  Although the key players including the hero are never fully developed beyond their link to the original novel, readers will enjoy this entertaining modernization of the Dumas classic.              Review by Harriet Klausner

My Thoughts:  I never read  “The Count of Monte Cristo” so….I didn’t make the connection!  But, I loved this book!  It is my favorite of Archer's books so far!   I couldn't put it down!  (Maybe I should have read the Dumas book???)

“Dr. Neal Barnard’s Program to

REVERSE DIABETES NOW: The Scientifically Proven System for Reversing Diabetes Without Drugs."

                 By Neal D. Barnard, MD

 

2011 Book Review #76

               

                  FROM THE

 BACK COVER OF THE BOOK:

If you have diabetes, you likely have been told that it’s a chronic, incurable condition.  As Dr. Neal Barnard shows in his groundbreaking book, this is simply not true.

Through a series of studies, Dr. Barnard has found that it is possible to repair insulin function and reverse type 2 diabetes.  By closely following his scientifically proven program, you will be able to control your blood sugar three times more effectively than with the standard dietary regimen for people with diabetes.  What’s more, you:

1.  Cut back on diabetes medications…if not eliminate them completely.

2.  Reduce your risk of diabetes complications

3.  Realize bonus health benefits as you take off unwanted pounds, lower your cholesterol and blood pressure, and boost your energy.

4.  Enjoy delicious foods in generous portions.

Diabetes need not slowly and inevitably get worse.  Now is the time to take control of the disease…and take back your life.

My Thoughts:  This is not my usual book review.  I bought this book many months ago and, at my daughter’s urging, I finally read it.  I became interested and decided to start the diet following Dr. Barnard’s instructions.  I gave it 3 weeks to either work or not.
So far it is working....I have gone from a fasting blood sugar count of 288 to 152...and a blood pressure reading of 138/74 to a reading of 110/63...in 11 days!  I think it is working so I wanted to share with you now!

“ICED”  By Carol Higgins Clark

       A Regan Reilly Mystery

2011  Book Review #75

      Booklist Review

Thirty-something private investigator Reilly is headed for the ski slopes of Aspen for the Christmas holidays, parents in tow. Mom and Dad are to be houseguests of television actress, Kendra Wood, while Regan visits with an old friend who's opening a new restaurant.

But the Reillys walk into more than just a cheery holiday ski party.  Kendra Wood's valuable art collection has been stolen, and her trusted housekeeper, Eben Bean, is missing. That's all Regan needs to know to send her off in pursuit of Eben and the sneaky thieves.

After assorted hi-jinks, adventures, false alarms, and--yes--plain old silliness, the plot finally gets all tied up in a nice, neat, mostly happy ending that will no doubt charm even the most Scrooge-like reader.

Solidly entertaining, mostly clever, occasionally funny, and always fun, this one is sure to please the author's growing audience. 

My Thoughts:  Clark’s books are always fun to read.  Regan Reilly is an intelligent and fun character.

“THE RIVERS RUN DRY” 

          by Sibella Giorello

A Raleigh Harmon, Forensic Geologist Mystery

2011 Book Review # 74

         Booklist Review 

Raleigh Harmon, the Virginia forensic geologist and FBI special agent, is not having an easy time. Abruptly transferred to the Seattle office, she's finding that they do things differently here than in her native South and that her new boss seems hell-bent on seeing Raleigh fail.

But Raleigh doesn't have time to worry about personal squabbling: a woman is missing, and only Raleigh, with her unique investigative gifts, can find her before it's too late.

Giorello, a Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist, has made the transition from journalism to fiction writing smoothly: the novel reads as though it were written by a veteran of the genre. Raleigh is a strong, assertive series lead, and, if these first two novels are any indication, she should be around for quite a while.

My Thoughts:  This is my first time reading this author…it won’t be the last!  I loved the characters and the writing.  Even male readers will enjoy this one.  It has a fresh approach to the mystery genre and a more believable one. 

"SNAGGED"  

              By Carol Higgins Clark

A Regan Reilly Mystery

2011 Book Review #73

  Publishers Weekly Review

In Miami for a friend's wedding, PI Regan Reilly acquires a new friend in the bride's uncle, Richie Blossom, who has invented ``run-proof, snag-proof'' pantyhose. If Richie can sell his patent to a manufacturer, he'll have the funds to buy the retirement home where he and his friends live. 

A year earlier, the residents acquired an option on the home from Dolly Twiggs before she died under suspicious circumstances; now the option is about to expire, and if Richie's endeavor fails, the extremely valuable property goes on the open market. 

Meanwhile, Ruth Craddock of Calla-Lilly Hosiery, who has her hands on a pair of the prototype pantyhose, realizes that Richie's invention could put her out of business. 

When an aggressive driver nearly mows Richie down, Regan appoints herself his protector and determines to learn more about what happened to Dolly. Although Regan gets the job done and is generally pleasant company, her gripes about such trivial matters such as hotel-room hangers and health-food aficionados occasionally make her seem a whiny sort of lass. 

My Thoughts:  This is what I call a "fun" mystery!  This is Clark's second Regan Reilly novel, (she has written about 10 of them), and it is fun to read, but I think I prefer her later novels after Regan meets Det. Jack Reilly (no kin).  They become much more interesting!!! If you want a light mystery, this is one!

“The Confession”   By John Grisham

2011 Book Review #72

Summary from the Hardcover Edition of the Book

An innocent man is about to be executed. Only a guilty man can save him. For every innocent man sent to prison, there is a guilty one left on the outside. He doesn't understand how the police and prosecutors got the wrong man, and he certainly doesn't care. He just can't believe his good luck.

Time passes and he realizes that the mistake will not be corrected: the authorities believe in their case and are determined to get a conviction. He may even watch the trial of the person wrongly accused of his crime. He is relieved when the verdict is guilty. He laughs when the police and prosecutors congratulate themselves. He is content to allow an innocent person to go to prison, to serve hard time, even to be executed.

Travis Boyette is such a man. In 1998, in the small East Texas city of Sloan, he abducted, raped, and strangled a popular high school cheerleader. He buried her body so that it would never be found, then watched in amazement as police and prosecutors arrested and convicted Donte Drumm, a local football star, and marched him off to death row.

Now nine years have passed. Travis has just been paroled in Kansas for a different crime; Donte is four days away from his execution. Travis suffers from an inoperable brain tumor. For the first time in his miserable life, he decides to do what's right and confess. But how can a guilty man convince lawyers, judges, and politicians that they're about to execute an innocent man?

My Thoughts:  Not Grisham’s best book, but…an exciting action packed read anyway!

“MOBBED”  By Carol Higgins Clark

      A PI Regan Reilly Mystery

2011 Book Review #71

Publishers Weekly Review

In Clark's 14th mystery featuring New York City  PI Regan Reilly (after 2010's 'Wrecked'), Reilly's mother, "well-known suspense writer" Nora Regan Reilly, asks Regan to join her in Bay Head, N.J.

Nora is concerned about eccentric 78-year-old Edna Frawley, who's sold her house on the Jersey shore and is about to hold a big garage sale. The sale's prize items are personal possessions of movie actress, Cleo Paradise, who recently rented the house, then left suddenly with a note to Edna authorizing her to do whatever she wanted with whatever was left behind.

Life imitates art as a stalker begins leaving Cleo dead flowers, just as in her latest film, ‘You Don't Bring Me Flowers, Alive or Dead’. The action shifts perspectives to introduce a legion of people who wish the star dead. Cleo is so underdeveloped that few will be waiting with bated breath for the identification of the creep threatening her.

My Thoughts:  I’ve read most of Carol Clark’s books and this one was not as well developed as most of the others.  I listened to it on audio book and probably would not have finished it if I had been reading it.  I kept waiting for the action to pick up.

“The Sixth Man”   By David Baldacci

2011 Book Review #70

 Library Journal Review

  

Something is rotten in the state of U.S. intelligence.  Baldacci's fifth Sean King and Michelle Maxwell novel opens with the investigative duo headed to a federal prison for the criminally insane. Jailed there is Edgar Roy, an IRS employee, accused of killing six men and burying their bodies in his barn.

Called in by Ted Bergin, King's old professor and Roy's lawyer, the two find their case quickly becoming personal when they discover Bergin shot to death in his car. Was Bergin killed because he was defending Roy? Did Roy murder those six men? The more questions King and Maxwell ask, the more lethal obstacles they face. Their questions begin to lead them into the most deadly places of all-the highest echelons of U.S. intelligence organizations.

Baldacci builds a suspenseful story with appealing characters that will have the reader guessing their loyalties right to the very end.

Verdict:  Highly recommended for all fans of Baldacci and similar authors like James Patterson and John Grisham.

My Thoughts:  Just as I was becoming impatient with the author’s slow pace, the book started to move along much faster and I couldn't put it down.  Never for one moment did I suspect the surprise ending!

“Murder On Waverly Place” 

       By Victoria Thompson

 A Gaslight Mystery

 

2011 Book Review #69

Booklist Review

Sarah Brandt makes an intriguing sleuth, and her Gaslight series is a consistent winner. Daughter of a prominent family, she has become a midwife, helping those in need in late-nineteenth-century New York.

The reasons for some of her choices become crystal clear in this installment. Her sister (and her baby) died in childbirth after being disowned by her father for choosing the man she loved.  Sarah's mother, Mrs. Decker, has never forgiven herself for her part in this fiasco and longs for her dead daughter's forgiveness. When she has the opportunity to visit a spiritualist, Madame Serafina, Mrs. Decker feels she has found her way back to her daughter.

Then, during a séance, one of the participants is murdered, and both Sarah and Mrs. Decker, along with Sarah's good friend Detective Malloy, want to find out the whos and whys.

This is a well-put-together traditional mystery, one that isn't solved until the final pages. Strong characters, clever plotting, and the hint of the supernatural that comes with a story centered around spiritualism make this page-turner a must for both fans and readers new to the series.

My Thoughts:   I always enjoy the Gaslight Mysteries.  This one is no different.  It is set in the 1800’s, with the values of the 1800’s which makes the reading even more interesting. 

“Naked Heat”   by Richard Castle

2011 Book Review #68

Book List Review

‘Castle’ is the title of a television cop show in which a mystery novelist, Richard Castle, teams up with a female NYPD detective (under the pretense of conducting research).  In the show, Castle writes novels about a female New York cop, Nikki Heat, who reluctantly pairs up with a writer, Jameson Rook, who's a fictionalized version of Castle himself.

Got all that? Anyway, ‘Naked Heat’ is the second Nikki Heat novel, credited, like the first (Heat Wave, 2009) to Richard Castle.  Leaving aside the fiction-within-another-fiction concept, it's a pretty fair mystery.

Heat and Rook are written in the familiar contempt-breeds-familiarity style: they start out antagonists and wind up partners (and more). We've seen them before, with other names in other stories, and we like them because they're comfortable. The story, which begins with a pair of murders that appear to be connected only by their MO, is slick and enjoyable without being too taxing on the reader's imagination. The book is exactly what it's supposed to be: an entertaining but undemanding mystery that should draw attention to the TV series from which it's spun off.

HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The TV series Castle is a big hit, and many of its fans will be curious to read a real book by their favorite fictional mystery writer.

My Thoughts:  I agree with the reviewer.   I have read both Nikki Heat books and enjoyed both.  It’s not as complicated as the review would make it seem.  It’s a spin off of the TV show, ‘Castle’.  Just as simple as that!

“OBSESSION”  by  Jonathan Kellerman

  An Alex Delaware Novel

 

2011 Book Review #67

Publishers Weekly Review

The 21st Alex Delaware novel from bestseller, Jonathan Kellerman, contains fewer twists than usual for this contemporary thriller series. Once again, Delaware, an accomplished psychologist, teams with his friend Milo Sturgis, an LAPD detective, to probe a mystery, though this time there's considerable doubt as to the nature of the puzzle.

Teenager, Tanya Bigelow, whom Delaware treated as a child for obsessive-compulsive disorder, consults him because her aunt Patty, who raised her, conveyed a cryptic message just before she died, apparently confessing to a crime.

Shortly after Delaware and Sturgis start investigating, one of Patty's former neighbors turns up dead, the first in a series of corpses that appear, possibly as a result of the duo's turning over old rocks. Since the identity of the killer is revealed relatively early on, the final sections are short on suspense. 

My Thoughts:  Jonathan Kellerman is one of my favorite authors. This is not one of my favorite Kellerman books, but a good one anyway and worth reading!

“Prayers for the Dead”   

                   By Faye Kellerman

2011 Book Review #66

Book List Review

 The ninth Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus mystery, an investigation into the murder of a heart surgeon, is "powerful, assured and absorbing".

It begins when L.A. cop Pete Decker is called to the scene of a grisly crime where the mutilated body of renowned heart surgeon, Azor Sparks, has been found. The nonsmoking, churchgoing, family-man doctor, it turns out, wasn't nearly as perfect as he would have had his adoring public believe.

He had plenty of enemies, even among his own family members. The case gets personal when Decker finds, to his dismay, that his own wife has had a long and--to Decker--oddly unsettling association with the Sparks family that may impact the case.  With his usual painstaking persistence, Decker follows all the leads and finally arrives at the bizarre and shocking truth.

Skilled writing, an intriguing plot, and Kellerman's deft and oh-so-subtle exploration of family dynamics make this a winner all round. 

My Thoughts:  I agree with the reviewer.  I love the Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus characters in Faye Kellerman’s books!

“Teacher Man: A Memoir”

  By Frank McCourt

2011 Book Review #65

 Publishers Weekly Review

This final memoir in the trilogy that started with “Angela's Ashes” and continued in “ 'Tis”, focuses almost exclusively on McCourt's 30-year teaching career in New York City's public high schools, which began at McKee Vocational and Technical in 1958.

His first day in class, a fight broke out and a sandwich was hurled in anger.  McCourt immediately picked it up and ate it.  On the second day of class, McCourt's retort about the Irish and their sheep brought the wrath of the principal down on him. All McCourt wanted to do was teach, which wasn't easy in the jumbled bureaucracy of the New York City school system.

Pretty soon he realized the system wasn't run by teachers but by sterile functionaries. "I was uncomfortable with the bureaucrats, the higher-ups, who had escaped classrooms only to turn and bother the occupants of those classrooms… teachers and students. I never wanted to fill out their forms, follow their guidelines, administer their examinations, tolerate their snooping, and adjust myself to their programs and courses of study."

As McCourt matured in his job, he found ingenious ways to motivate the kids: have them write "excuse notes" from Adam and Eve to God; use parts of a pen to define parts of a sentence; use cookbook recipes to get the students to think creatively. A particularly warming and enlightening lesson concerns a class of black girls at Seward Park High School who felt slighted when they were not invited to see a performance of Hamlet, and how they taught McCourt never to have diminished expectations about any of his students.

McCourt throws down the gauntlet on education, asserting that teaching is more than achieving high test scores. It's about educating, about forming intellects, about getting people to think. McCourt's many fans will of course love this book, but it also should be mandatory reading for every teacher in America. And it wouldn't hurt some politicians to read it, too. 

My Thoughts:  I couldn’t wait to read this book!  Loved it!  

“ 'Tis: A Memoir”  

  By Frank McCourt

2011 Book Review #64

Booklist Review

The second installment in McCourt's fluent and bewitchingly candid memoir will be eagerly embraced by a reading public madly in love with the first, the award-winning and best-selling Angela's Ashes (1996).

Here McCourt, still simultaneously voluble and precise, chronicles his return to New York, the city of his birth. A high-school dropout with a thick brogue, terrible teeth and skin, and red and infected eyes, he is easy pickings for a priest who helps him get settled, then attempts to molest him.

This distressing introduction to the perversity of life in America kicks off an almost unbelievable series of humiliations and hardships as McCourt works soul-crushingly menial jobs for pittance and is confronted both with vicious anti-Irish prejudice and tedious Irish pride…nearly everyone he meets recounts their Irish genealogy and tells him to stick to his own kind.

 McCourt stubbornly dreams of becoming a teacher and writer but often retreats from the demands of college and work into the comforting haze of alcohol, the bane of his family. Finally, after a stint in the army and years of being mocked for his bookish ways, he succeeds in becoming a teacher, and his riveting accounts of his crazy classroom experiences in a Staten Island vocational high school at the height of McCarthyism are not to be missed.

His family is present, too, of course. His mother, Angela, remains depressed even under her sons' solicitous care. His father is impossible right up to the day he dies, and McCourt's brothers, Malachy (who has also written a memoir) and Mike, live "bright carefree" lives, while he does everything the hard way, the only way he knows how, and, frankly, the only approach to life he fully respects.

My Thoughts:  Again, I read this book last year and somehow did not review it.

I loved this book!  McCourt’s writing style makes this book easy to read and the story of his life enthralls!  

“Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir”  

     By Frank McCourt

2011 Book Review #63

Booklist Review

It is a wonder that McCourt survived his childhood in the slums of Depression-era Limerick, Ireland: three of his siblings did not, dying of minor illnesses complicated by near starvation.

Even more astonishing is how generous of spirit he became and remains. His family lived…barely…in a flat so miserable that every year they had to cram themselves into an upstairs room when winter floods made the place only half-habitable. That upstairs room was "Italy"…warm and dry.  Downstairs was Ireland…wet and cold.

Father sat up there drinking tea, while mother Angela often could not rise from bed, so depressed was she. Or mother sat by the fire, waiting for father to return; when he did, frequently drunk on their little money, he would line up the boys and extract promises that they would die for Ireland. Dying was what everyone seemed to do best: the little sister, the twins, the girl with whom Frank first had sex, the old man Frank read to, too many boys from school, too many neighbors, too many relatives.

McCourt spares us no details: the stench of the one toilet shared by an entire street, the insults of the charity officers, the marauding rats, the street fights, the infected eyes, the fleas in the mattress . . . Yet he found a way to love in that miserable Limerick, and it is love one remembers as the dominant flavor in this Irish stew. 

My Thoughts:  I loved this book!  It is a beautifully written life story of a very sensitive nature.  Please don’t miss it!  Actually, I read this book last year and just discovered I hadn’t reviewed it.

"Without Fail"   By Lee Child
A Jack Reacher Adventure

2011 Book Review #62
Booklist Review

Jack Reacher, former military police, is in Atlantic City running a little pro bono interference for an elderly husband-wife lounge act worried they might be cheated by the local Mob.

Then he's contacted by M. E. Froelich, a Secret Service agent in charge of protecting vice-president-elect Brook Armstrong, the one-time amour of Reacher's late brother, Joe. Froelich hires an initially reluctant Reacher to test the security coverage around Armstrong, and Jack compromises the system with ease, prompting Froelich to hire him to develop a better system.

Armstrong, it turns out, has been threatened, and it may be an inside job. Reacher and an old military police crony run up one blind alley after another until Jack finds a single clue in the vice president's background that leads him to believe the threat may be personal rather than political.

This sixth Reacher novel is a stunner, packed with extraordinary detail regarding executive protection and overlaid with a genuine mystery that will baffle even the most astute armchair crime buffs. The suspense becomes nearly unbearable as Reacher closes in on his prey, leading to a brutal conclusion.

Mix in a touching romance between Reacher and Froelich, based mostly on their shared affection for the late Joe Reacher, and one has a thriller of unequaled emotional depth.

My Thoughts:  I love Jack Reacher mysteries!  No exception here!