“U IS FOR UNDERTOW”    by Sue Grafton

Review #44 

Main character: Private Investigator Kinsey Millhone in 1988

A young man shows up at Kinsey's office one afternoon, claiming to have suddenly recalled details from his childhood concerning an unsolved kidnapping…20 years ago! Michael Sutton says he has recovered a childhood memory of men burying a suspicious bundle shortly after the unsolved disappearance of four-year-old Mary Claire Fitzhugh in 1967. He was 6 years old at the time. 

Kinsey is skeptical but agrees to work for one day on the cold case. Even though it becomes evident that Sutton has a track record of unreliability, Kinsey becomes intrigued with the cold case and continues to investigate on her own. And so it begins. The story unfolds as the narrative and point of view weaves between events and characters in the 1980s and the 1960s. Due to this, the reader comes to know the perpetrators before the end of the story, (not one of my favorite events) but, It is not until the final pages that everything connects.

A subplot involves Kinsey wrestling with conflicting information about her estranged family.

This was a very different looking Kinsey Millhone adventure. There was very little lightness in it…very little of Kinsey’s personal life and I missed Kinsey’s elderly friend and landlord, Henry and his family. There were only a couple of mentions of them and it was done as if not to leave them out all together. It is a good book but, not what I expected or looked forward to.

APPLE TURNOVER MURDER”                              by Joanne Fluke

Upon a Recounting…this is 
Review #43 
A Hannah Swensen Mystery with recipes!

It's June in Lake Eden, Minnesota, and for Hannah Swensen, that means bridal showers galore, plus a massive fundraising event in need of confections.

Early summer brings plenty of work for Hannah, even before Mayor Bascomb’s wife drops by The Cookie Jar to place an order ...for eleven-hundred cookies! Stephanie Bascomb is organizing an elaborate three-day event to support local charities, and though it's a worthy cause, Hannah almost flips when her business partner, Lisa, suggests setting up an apple turnover stand.

Hannah is working long hours at her bakery, the Cookie Jar, as well as dating two men, dentist Norman Rhodes and local Sheriff Mike Kingston. Her personal life gets more complicated with the reappearance of Bradford Ramsey, a college professor with whom Hannah had a brief fling when she was a naive graduate student. She’s hoping Bradford has forgotten the embarrassing episode. When Hannah winds up serving as a magician's assistant for a charity show, she has the misfortune to find Bradford, the show's host, backstage "stone cold dead" with a turnover in his hand.

Now, to protect her reputation and Michelle's, Hannah must get to the bottom of the professor's bitter end.

With her usual wit and flair, amateur sleuth Hannah narrows down the list of suspects in Bradford's murder, but can she catch the culprit before she becomes the next victim?

Another good book by Fluke plus scrumptious recipes including mocha nut butterballs and chocolate marshmallow cookie bars.

"JUST AS I AM"    By Virginia Smith

Review #41

I apologize for stealing some of other people’s words to describe this book because I can’t think of any better way to describe it.

“When purple-haired Mayla Strong struts down the center aisle of Salliesburg Independent Christian Church, the bug-eyed congregation strains to get a peek at her pierced nose and lip.” She has come to be baptized. “Determined to make her heavenly Father proud, Mayla's sincere and often hilarious attempts to let Him change her from the inside out takes her into some difficult and sometimes, painful places.”

While dealing with the older folks who disapprove of her hair color and piercings, her long time friends who can’t believe she has become ‘religious’ and a new friend who is in a hospital dying of AIDS, Mayla manages to grow in faith and wisdom and always in a way that is distinctly Mayla.

I…Love…This...Book! I…Love…Mayla! I laughed with and at her. I cried a river with her! I saw members of my family in this book and I couldn’t put it down!
AND…guess what…there is another Mayla book out (Sincerely Mayla) and another one on it’s way in May!

“THE 6TH TARGET”                                                                                              by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro

Review #40

A Women’s Murder Club Murder Novel with Lt./Sgt. Lindsay Boxer

During the random and vicious murder of 4 people on a San Francisco ferry, Boxer’s best friend, Claire, is shot and seriously injured. Lt. Lindsay Boxer is determined to find the deranged gunman who committed this atrocious act. As if this isn’t enough to do, she must also, investigate a series of kidnappings in which children of wealthy parents and their nannies are being abducted without ransom demands.

On the day she arrests the ferry gunman, she is demoted! The police brass, aware that she prefers being a Sergeant working the city's mean streets to being a Lieutenant working a desk, decides to grant her request to return to her previous rank. When it actually happens, Lindsay has second thoughts, but not for long.

Her personal life is just as chaotic, as she breaks up with long time boyfriend, Joe, and is forced to make a tough choice about a potential romance with her partner, Rich Conklin.

There is a lot to like in this mystery: well-defined characters, a creepy villain, and crackling courtroom drama.

I, personally, have never read a bad James Patterson novel and this is no exception!

AGE BEFORE BEAUTY”                                        by Virginia Smith

Review #39 

Allie Harrod has always been an independent woman and insists on working to pay “her share” of the bills. She considers herself a career woman and she's determined not to let having a husband or a baby change that, no matter how much she wants to be at home with her 8-week old daughter. When Allie sees an opportunity to work at home, she takes it.

She signs on with a home party company and dives in, head first. But the pressures of launching a business (and the expense), her mother-in-law's unexpected extended visit, her husband's moodiness and personal attention to a coworker, and her inability to control her eating habits take their toll. Before long, things start falling apart and her marriage is in peril. If she’s not careful, she’ll lose the very things she's been trying to hold on to.

Although light and humorous in tone, the issues Allie faces are real and they are dealt with in a real way, as are the subplots in the novel.

This is the second book in Ginny’s “Sister to Sister” series.
I have already read and reviewed the first and third books of the trilogy.

I like this one too!

STEP ON A CRACK                                                                           by  James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge

Review #38 

Main Character: Michael Bennett, a senior NYPD Homicide Detective

NYPD detective Michael Bennett is concentrating on getting his family through a particularly difficult Christmas: he and his 10 adopted children are facing the loss to cancer of his brave wife, Maeve. But a major crisis calls him away.

The funeral of a former First Lady at St. Patrick's Cathedral goes horribly wrong when a group of men storm the church and take hundreds of attendees hostage. Michael is asked to try to reason with a sinister man named Jack.
Jack releases all but the most famous people, and makes his demands. He wants several million dollars from each celebrity hostage, including the mayor, a popular comedic actor, a beloved talk show host, a pop starlet and about 20 others. The total of his demands…$88 million dollars! Once Jack starts killing, Michael realizes he's up against a truly diabolical foe.

Patterson has a knack for creating genuinely likable heroes and Michael is one. You won’t be able to wait to turn the pages to learn how the tense hostage drama plays out and you will also be sympathizing with Michael and his 10 children as they face the agonizing loss of wife and mother.

Although, my favorite of Patterson’s heroes is Alex Cross, this book was totally gripping and downright hard to put down. And…it has a surprise ending!

SPARTAN GOLD                                                                                    by Clive Cussler with Grant Blackwood

Review #37

Main Characters: Sam and Remi Fargo, Treasure Hunters

While exploring the Great Pocomoke Swamp in Delaware, in search of hidden treasure, Sam Fargo and his wife, Remi, stumble across a World War II-era German mini-submarine. But how did it get there? Could the bottle of wine they find inside the sub really be part of a set of bottles, (a collection known as Napoleon's Lost Cellar) on which the emperor Napoleon fashioned a map showing the location of a pair of solid gold pillars, originally hidden in the Pennine Alps 2,500 years ago?

The Treasure Hunt leads the Fargos to other lost bottles hidden across Europe and eventually points the way to the treasure. The book's villain, Hadeon Bondaruk, who covets the columns and will do anything to get them, sends his henchmen after the Fargos. The clever duo manages to stay one small step ahead of the hired killers until everyone arrives at the inevitable end.

Cussler is an excellent writer but...I did not enjoy this book. I like to try to solve the mystery along with the characters. Since I have very little knowledge of ancient history, especially ancient Greece, Rome, or Europe in general, the convoluted treasure clues confounded me. (That means I seldom understood what was going on! ;) Readers with knowledge of ancient world people and places will like this book.

Dirk Pitt is my Cussler hero and he wasn’t in this one.