The second crime novel by internationally bestselling writer Eoin Colfer is a gritty and utterly compelling follow-up to the critically acclaimed Plugged. In Screwed, Colfer adds an entirely new chapter to the adventures and misadventures of Daniel McEvoy, the down-on-his-luck Irish bouncer at a seedy New Jersey bar who, with the help of a motley crew of unlikely characters, solved a bizarre string of murders–including the one of the girl he loved. But people around him continue to die mysteriously, and Daniel is called into action once again. Colfer, beloved by millions for his Artemis Fowl series, has written a riveting and relentlessly paced sequel that is sure to garner international praise. With wildly inventive imagination and head-spinning plot twists, Screwed is a tour de force that rivals Carl Hiaasen at his very best. Ridley Pearson called Plugged “a brilliant, madcap mystery” and “genius at work.” With Screwed, Colfer delivers that signature brilliance once again.

Graveland
Alan Glynn
May 2013
Amazon, Amazon UK

On a bright Saturday morning, a Wall Street investment banker is shot dead while jogging in Central Park. Later that same night, one of the savviest hedge-fund managers in the city is gunned down outside a restaurant. Are these killings a coordinated terrorist attack, or just a coincidence? Investigative journalist Ellen Dorsey has a hunch they’re neither, and her obsessive attention to detail leads her to an unexpected conclusion. Days later, when an attempt is made on the life of another CEO, the story blows wide open—and Ellen’s theory is confirmed. Racing to stay ahead of the curve, she soon encounters Frank Bishop, a recession-hit architect, whose daughter’s disappearance is tied to the murders.

Set deep in a shadow world of crooked business deals and radical politics, Alan Glynn’s Graveland is a mind-blowing thriller. He is also the author of Winterland and Bloodland.

A Serpent’s Tooth Walt Longmire #9
Craig Johnson
June 2013
Amazon, Kindle, Amazon UK

The inspiration for A&E’s Longmire finds himself in the crosshairs in the ninth book of the New York Times bestselling series

The success of Craig Johnson’s Walt Longmire series that began with The Cold Dish continues to grow after A&E’s hit show Longmire introduced new fans to the Wyoming sheriff. As the Crow Flies marked the series’ highest debut on the New York Times bestseller list. Now, in his ninth Western mystery, Longmire stares down his most dangerous foes yet.

It’s homecoming in Absaroka County, but the football and festivities are interrupted when a homeless boy wanders into town. A Mormon “lost boy,” Cord Lynear is searching for his missing mother but clues are scarce. Longmire and his companions, feisty deputy Victoria Moretti and longtime friend Henry Standing Bear, embark on a high plains scavenger hunt in hopes of reuniting mother and son. The trail leads them to an interstate polygamy group that’s presiding over a stockpile of weapons and harboring a vicious vendetta.

Spirit of Steamboat Walt Longmire
Craig Johnson
October 2013
Amazon, Kindle, Amazon UK

A holiday tale from the New York Times bestselling author of the Walt Longmire mystery series, the inspiration for A&E’s hit show Longmire

“It’s a question of what you have to do, what you have to live with if you don’t.”

Sheriff Walt Longmire is reading A Christmas Carol in his office on December 24th when he’s interrupted by the ghost of Christmas past: a young woman with a hairline scar across her forehead and more than a few questions about Walt’s predecessor, Lucian Connally. Walt doesn’t recognize the mystery woman, but she seems to know him and claims to have something she must return to Connally. With his daughter, Cady, and his undersheriff Vic Moretti in Philadelphia for the holidays, Walt is at loose ends, and despite the woman’s reticence to reveal her identity, he agrees to help her.

At the Durant Home for Assisted Living Lucian Connally is several tumblers into his Pappy Van Winkle’s and swears he’s never clapped eyes on the woman before. Disappointed, she whispers “Steamboat” and begins a story that takes them all back to Christmas Eve 1988, when three people died in a terrible crash and a young girl had the slimmest chance of survival . . . back to a record– breaking blizzard, to Walt’s first year as sheriff, with a young daughter at home and a wife praying for his safety . . . back to a whiskey-soaked World War II vet ready to fly a decommissioned plane and risk it all to save a life.

Back to the Spirit of Steamboat.

Killer Ambition Rachel Knight #3
Marcia Clark
June 2013
Amazon, Kindle, Amazon UK

Los Angeles D.A. Rachel Knight faces down the murderously ambitious side of Hollywood in Marcia Clark’s newest thriller in the follow-up to Guilt by Association and Guilt by Degrees.

When the daughter of a billionaire Hollywood director is found murdered after what appears to be a kidnapping gone wrong, Los Angeles Special Trials prosecutor Rachel Knight and Detective Bailey Keller find themselves at the epicenter of a combustible and high-profile court case. Then a prime suspect is revealed to be one of Hollywood’s most popular and powerful talent managers–and best friend to the victim’s father. With the director vouching for the manager’s innocence, the Hollywood media machine commences an all-out war designed to discredit both Rachel and her case. KILLER AMBITION is at once a thrilling ride through the darker side of Tinseltown and a stunning courtroom drama with the brilliant insider’s perspective that Marcia Clark is uniquely qualified to give.

Full Ratchet Silas Cade #2
Mike Cooper
July 2013
Amazon, Amazon UK

Silas Cade takes his atypical brand of “auditing” from Wall Street to Main Street. Cade, the tough-guy auditor antihero introduced in Clawback, employs a brand of financial reform that comes with plenty of firepower. Needing a respite from Wall Street, Cade jumps at a job opportunity in western Pennsylvania—but finds that Main Street is just as dirty.

The job seems easy enough—check out a Pittsburgh manufacturer and file a report—but Cade quickly discovers corruption at every level. His revelations catch the attentions of hair-trigger Russian mobsters and a blonde assassin named Harmony. Cade’s estranged brother is dragged into the fray as the tension builds to bullet-riddled showdowns across defunct steel mills, forests, and Appalachian fracking fields.

Cooper again delivers a timely plot involving Wall Street greed, financial corruption, and the plight of blue-collar workers.

Let It Burn Alex McKnight #10
Steve Hamilton
July 2013
Amazon, Kindle, Amazon UK

The newest novel in the acclaimed Alex McKnight series by two-time Edgar award-winner and New York Times bestselling author Steve Hamilton. Alex McKnight doesn’t leave Michigan’s Upper Peninsula if he can help it. He steers clear of Detroit in particular, where he once worked as a cop. The city will forever remind him of his partner’s death and of the bullet still lodged in his own chest. But a woman he can’t shake has drawn him back to finally see what’s there between them.

While he’s in the city, he can’t help but stop by his old precinct. It’s now closed, like the countless abandoned buildings that surround it. His visit has reminded him of a case he was working on during that last summer. After his partner was killed and Alex left the force, the case was solved, and a man was sentenced to life in prison for the crime. Alex remembers something, a seemingly small piece of the puzzle that he never got to share. But all these years later, when he looks up the now-retired lead detective, this new piece of information doesn’t exactly get a warm reception. The detective solved the case, after all, and justice was served.

Until Alex does a little more digging and finds out that the real culprit might have gotten away. And might still be out there, preying on more victims…

The Twelfth Department Alexei Korolev #3
William Ryan
July 2013
Amazon, Amazon UK

The third in William Ryan’s atmospheric historical series follows Police Captain Alexei Korolev as he fights for justice in a paranoid and uncertain Stalinist Soviet Union. Captain Alexei Korolev has nothing to complain about. He has his own room in an apartment shared with only one other tenant, a job in the police force that puts food on the table, and his good health. In Moscow in 1937, that’s a lot more than most people have to be grateful for. But for the first time in a long time, Korolev is about to be truly happy: his son Yuri is coming to visit for an entire week.

Shortly after Yuri’s arrival, however, Korolev receives an urgent call from his boss—it seems an important man has been murdered, and Korolev is the only detective they’re willing to assign to this sensitive case. In fact, Korolev realizes almost immediately that the layers of sensitivity and secrecy surrounding this case far exceed his paygrade. And the consequences of interfering with a case tied to State Security or the NKVD can be severe—you might lose your job, if you’re lucky. Your whole family might die if you’re not. Korolev is suddenly faced with much more than just discovering a murderer’s identity; he must decide how far he’ll go to see justice served . . . and what he’s willing to do to protect his family.

The Double Spero Lucas #2
George Pelecanos
October 2013
Amazon, Kindle, Amazon UK

Every man has his dark side…Spero Lucas confronts his own in the most explosive thriller yet from one of America’s best-loved crime writers.

The job seems simple enough: retrieve the valuable painting–”The Double”–Grace Kinkaid’s ex-boyfriend stole from her. It’s the sort of thing Spero Lucas specializes in: finding what’s missing, and doing it quietly. But Grace wants more. She wants Lucas to find the man who humiliated her–a violent career criminal with a small gang of brutal thugs at his beck and call.

Lucas is a man who knows how to get what he wants, whether it’s a thief on the run–or a married woman. In the midst of a steamy, passionate love affair that he knows can’t last, in pursuit of a dangerous man who will stop at nothing to get what he wants, Lucas is forced to decide what kind of man he is–and how far he’ll go to get what he wants.

Merrick
Ken Bruen
October 2013
Amazon, Amazon UK

For fans of Ken Bruen’s Jack Taylor and Inspector Brant series, L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy and Mystic River by Dennis Lehane, comes a noir crime story set in New York City about a rogue ex-cop from the Irish Gardai (police force) who manipulates a transfer to work for the NYPD in an exchange program. However, it turns out that the Irish cop is really a serial killer wanted for murder in Ireland and now NYC.

Shoot the woman first Crissa Stone #3
Wallace Stroby
December 2013
Amazon, Amazon UK

In the third stunning Crissa Stone novel in Wallace Stroby’s acclaimed crime series, a professional thief desperately tries to help the family of her slain partner—even if it costs her her life. A half million dollars in drug proceeds, guarded by five men with automatic weapons. For Wallace Stroby’s determined heroine, professional thief Crissa Stone, and her team, stealing it was the easy part. But when the split goes awry in a blaze of gunfire, Crissa finds herself on the run with a duffel bag of stolen cash, bound by a promise to deliver part of the take to the needy family of one of her slain partners.

In pursuit are the drug kingpin’s lethal lieutenant, and a rogue Detroit cop with his own deadly agenda. They think the money’s there for the taking, for whoever finds her first. But Crissa doesn’t plan to give it up without a fight, even as her mission of mercy puts her and a young child in mortal danger, with forces on both sides of the law closing in. After all, a debt is a debt . . . even if it has to be paid in blood.

Wallace Stroby delivers another powerful, lyrical novel, his third featuring one of the most original female characters in hardboiled fiction.

The Ways of Evil Men Mario Silva #7
Leighton Gage
January 2014
Amazon

As Chief Inspector Mario Silva has learned, justice is hard to come by in Brazil, so when his niece tells him about a possible genocide deep in the jungle, he agrees to round up his team and charter a plane to Pará to check it out.

Thirty-nine natives have recently dropped dead of mysterious causes. Given the tense relationship between the Awana tribe and the white townsfolk nearby, Jade Calmon, Pará’s sole government-sponsored advocate for the native population, immediately suspects foul play and takes the two remaining Awana-a father and his eight-year-old son-into her custody. But when the father is discovered holding a bloody machete next to the body of a village big-shot just before Silva’s arrival, the plot thickens. Why would a peaceful man who doesn’t believe in alcohol turn into a drunken killer?

Chief Inspector Mario Silva is a good cop in a bad system-Brazil’s police force is rife with corruption, and constantly a beat behind criminal elements. But Silva and his team of colorful sidekicks-baby-faced Goncalves, who is irresistible to lady witnesses; chubby, crass Nunes; Mara Carta, the chief of intelligence with a soft spot for Mario-crack their difficult and sometimes ugly cases with pizazz.

Amazon, Amazon UK, Book Depository

Amazon, Amazon UK, Book Depository

Thought I would compare two books that I’ve recently finished if for no other reason than they are both the first books in their respective series, will be published in the USA soon, I borrowed them from the library on the same day and they are written by continental European authors which is not my usual stomping ground, in fact I can’t recall reading anything from France or Spain previously.

What other similarities do they have? Well, the lead detective in Alex is Camille Verhoeven who is a widower following the death of his pregnant wife in a kidnapping case that has sidelined him from serious cases. Inspector Hector Salgado, the main character in The Summer of Dead Toys, is a divorcee returning from a suspension imposed for assaulting a suspect. So they are both alone and struggling to maintain their chosen career in the police force. I found Alex more taut and entertaining to read though without ever developing any particular fondness for Monsieur Verhoeven. The author skilfully sets up the initial kidnapping of Alex, the girl from whom the book takes its title, and places her at the centre of the piece where you expect a Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs scenario to play out while simultaneously developing the backstory of Verhoeven who has suffered the loss of his wife in similar circumstances and who consequently identifies strongly with the victim and can also be a conduit for ensuring that the pace of the investigation never relents as he has personal experience of the consequences. To avoid giving away too much, there are some wonderful twists and turns en route to a superlative denouement that will encompass role reversal between victim and predator as well as giving consideration to one of the frequent questions posed in crime fiction – if justice and the law are at odds which one would you rather prevail? At the end you can marvel at how far ahead one of the characters was in their thinking and execution in order to achieve what they wanted.

Turning to The Summer of Dead Toys, what we get here is arguably a more literary style book that favours characters more than plot which is not to say that the plot is weak or anything like that but simply that a greater amount of time is spent exploring the relationships of both Salgado and his associates and while this can be savoured as the writing is at times quite beautiful it isn’t directly related to driving the story forward. For me this ultimately proved to be the crux of the matter as the things I enjoyed most – the characters, the words, the writing style – were the very things that impeded / intruded upon the progression of the story and probably explains why it took me much longer to finish this one even though it is a shorter book (at least in terms of pages, don’t know about word count). I actually probably preferred Salgado as a character to Verhoeven in that he feels more rounded and his relationships and concern for those around him feature strongly. Featuring two separate cases, one which Salgado is investigating and one in which he is the suspect as a result of his previous assault, it is a race against time to uncover whether an apparent suicide is indeed that before he himself is potentially arrested for his role in the disappearance of the man he assaulted. Before he can uncover the truth though he will have to venture into another case long since forgotten and identify who Iris was and how she is affecting events many years after her death.

So if you’re looking for something to help you meet one of your reading challenges which one should you choose? I’m going to award this one to Alex on a score of 9 to 7 (out of 10) as it was much more fun to read and was one of those books that you would seek out at the end of the day in order to find out a little bit more of what was going to happen. If you are of a more sensitive disposition though you might want to give consideration to bypassing both books.

Additional reviews of Alex can be found here, here, here and here while more for The Summer of Dead Toys can be found here and here.

Amazon, Kindle, Amazon UK, Book Depository

It’s been awhile both since I posted a review and since I read Gun Machine but it is a great book so better late than never. Just listen to a couple of minutes worth of the trailer to be found here and I’m pretty sure you’ll want to get this one. Now just beware some spoilers below and you’re good to go.

Sharing a comic book background with other Mulholland Books luminaries such as Greg Rucka and Duane Swierczynski, this book features Det John Tallow whose partner is killed on entering an apartment building by a tenant that is unhappy (to say the least!) about the eviction notice that he and the other residents have been served with to allow for the redevelopment of the site. He is a character you can’t help but like even though he is not so popular with his fellow cops. The depiction of his “morning Tourette’s” captures him perfectly early in the book. The Tourette’s is eminently understandable in light of the fact that as well a dead partner and a dead perpetrator, Tallow managed to uncover an apartment loaded with guns from floor to ceiling courtesy of a shotgun hole in the wall and when forensics tie every gun in their random sample to an unsolved homicide he becomes suddenly the detective responsible for 200+ unsolved homicides – way to make your superiors happy!

Having stumbled upon the lair of a serial killer all that remains is to track him down which should be easy when you’ve got all the weapons used but things don’t ever pan out that easy especially when one gun is discovered to be a notorious weapon associated with a previous serial killer and was supposed to be securely held in a police evidence room. So that leaves you with evidence pointing to an inside man especially when someone higher up the chain is trying to shut down the investigation. So you’ve got guns (actually lots of guns a la Keanu Reeves in The Matrix), a serial killer, an insider within the police and a potential conspiracy to unravel all before the serial killer comes looking for you but at least you have two CSU’s nicknamed Scarly and Bat that you can count on.

Well worth picking up. My rating is 10 out of 10.

From the back cover:
This morning Detective John Tallow was bored with his job. Then there was this naked guy with a shotgun and his partner getting killed and now Tallow has a real problem: an apartment full of guns. Old guns. Modified guns. Arranged in rows and spirals on the floor and walls. Hundreds of them. Each weapon is tied to a single unsolved murder. Which means that Tallow has uncovered two decades’ worth of homicides that no one knew to connect and a killer unlike anything that came before.

Coming in May we have The Innocence Game (Kindle, Amazon UK), a standalone novel that promises something different: a leap forward into a dark world where the lines between innocence and guilt disappear altogether.

They’re young, brilliant, beautiful . . . and naïve enough to believe they can make a difference. For three graduate students, the exclusive innocence seminar at the nation’s most esteemed journalism school is supposed to teach them how to free the falsely accused from prison. Little do they know the most important lesson they’ll learn is how to stay alive.

The first day of class for Ian Joyce and Sarah Gold starts like any other, until a fellow student, Jake Havens, pulls a wrinkled envelope from his backpack. Inside is a bloodstained scrap of shirt from a boy murdered fourteen years ago and an anonymous note taking credit for the killing. The only problem is the alleged murderer is already dead.

Suddenly, the class has a new assignment: find the real killer. As the case unfolds, the bodies and questions begin to pile up.

Why are innocent men being framed?

Who’s been getting away with murder?

Drawn into a web of deceit and corruption, the students realize they, too, are being hunted. Ian, Sarah, and Jake are smart . . . but are they smart enough to stay alive?

From Northwestern’s idyllic campus, to the grittiest corners of Chicago, to the frigid depths of Lake Michigan, The Innocence Game is irresistible, harrowing suspense from a writer at the top of his form.

And having mentioned brilliant people that provides us with the perfect segue to the latest from Marcus Sakey (he of The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes and a couple more personal favourites in the form of At the City’s Edge and The Blade Itself) which is due in July, Brilliance (Kindle, Amazon UK) crosses over into vaguely sci-fi territory in a book published by Amazon’s Thomas & Mercer imprint.

In Wyoming, a little girl reads people’s darkest secrets by the way they fold their arms. In New York, a man sensing patterns in the stock market racks up $300 billion. In Chicago, a woman can go invisible by being where no one is looking. They’re called “brilliants,” and since 1980, one percent of people have been born this way. Nick Cooper is among them; a federal agent, Cooper has gifts rendering him exceptional at hunting terrorists. His latest target may be the most dangerous man alive, a brilliant drenched in blood and intent on provoking civil war. But to catch him, Cooper will have to violate everything he believes in—and betray his own kind.

FUN & GAMES (reviewed here) and HELL & GONE (reviewed here) come full circle in the Hardie series’ astonishing conclusion.

Charlie Hardie finds himself in a steel box, tubes and wires attached to his body, trapped inside a satellite parked in orbit 500 miles above the Earth. He’s got a year’s supply of food, air, water, and no communication back to Earth, and must complete his 12 months’ duty or his wife and son will have an “accident.”

But when someone all-too-familiar docks on the satellite, informs Hardie he’s sitting in a veritable zero-G vault containing the world’s most dangerous secrets, and forces a crash-landing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, Hardie must decide whether he’s come face-to-face with the partner he needs to save his family–or with his nemesis. After years of exile, Hardie’s arming up….and heading home.

Amazon UK, Amazon US, Kindle

Peter Leonard has recently published a sequel to Voices of the Dead (Amazon UK, Amazon US, Kindle) which introduced us to Holocaust survivor Harry Levin and Nazi death angel Ernst Hess. Hands up, I haven’t read the first book so I may be at a disadvantage in assessing this but it is the third book in a year that I’ve read that has featured an ex-Nazi prominently but unfortunately it was the least satisfying. I gave high marks to both Ratlines by Stuart Neville and Don’t Ever Get Old by Daniel Friedman but after a promising start this one failed to hold my interest.

Interlocking storylines spanning Germany, USA & the Bahamas start with Hess resurfacing in the Bahamas and his erstwhile associates in Germany retaining a former Stasi agent, Zeller, to track down his whereabouts presumably to relieve him of his Nazi art haul. He quickly tracks Hess to the USA and ultimately drags Harry Levin back into the equation. While I initially found the writing appealing it wasn’t enough to overcome what I found to be strangely disjointed and unsatisfying. On the flip side, it did prove educational in relation to aspects of the Holocaust in particular the role of sonderkommando and the fact that Auschwitz was the only camp where prisoners were tattooed plus I did like the references to real-life individuals such as Albert Speer which help to lend an air of authenticity but this was outweighed by the inclusion of characters that were near irrelevant and distracting (Zeller’s redneck assistants Dink and Squirrel) while Zeller himself seemed to be eliminated far too easily for an ex-Stasi man while Harry’s sidekick Cordell’s sideshow with some Colombian drug dealers could have been excised completely.

My rating is 6 out of 10 but probably best suited to those who are looking to re-engage with these characters having read the previous book, otherwise there are probably more interesting books out there.

Amazon Description:
Bahamas, 1971. Ernst Hess, missing and presumed dead, regains consciousness to find himself stuck in a hospital bed on a strange ward in a foreign country. He must do what he needs to do to get his life back and to finish the job he has been doing for decades.

Harry believes he has already stopped Hess. When he finds out that the war criminal has somehow survived, Harry must do the only thing he can do – kill Hess again – even if it means crossing continents and putting his life and the lives of those that matter to him on the line.

Amazon US, Kindle, Amazon UK

One of my reading goals for last year was to read more UK authors and belatedly I’ve picked up one from Zoe Sharp which qualifies and more importantly is actually absolutely excellent. Maybe my perspective on it owes more to its setting in post-Katrina New Orleans than its author’s nationality but when you find yourself gripping the book tighter as the tension ramps up you know the author has gotten you hooked (even if doing this on a Kindle doesn’t have quite the same effect as with a real paper book!).

At one point I took a breath and said to myself “this is like Die Hard on a freaking boat!” Remember the first Die Hard film, the best one – the first time you saw it on the big screen. And then while getting ready to write my review I jumped over to the author’s website here where she describes this as being her personal version of “Die Hard” – well, Ms. Sharp you nailed it!

Being the 10th book in a series there is the potential to have to know the characters’ backstory in order to fully appreciate the current work but, while the backstory is alluded to, it is always in just sufficient detail to give you what you need to know in order to move the current story along and never seems to become intrusive.

There’s a great opening, dropping the reader straight into a shootout where our heroine is unarmed and vulnerable but given a little misdirection all is not as it first appears. My one minor gripe would be the use of foreshadowing in the text which is a literary device I’m not terribly fond of but even that faded into the background as I became more immersed into the overall pull of the narrative. Aside from that the tension of the book is excellent and the action scenes jump off the page and Charlie Fox as a lead character is certainly appealing while the complications of her relationship with Sean both professional and personal are well laid out.

My rating is 10 out of 10. The only question is do I start at the beginning or do I work backwards? There are more advantages than usual to working forwards apart from the usual chronology in that there are two ebook collections available. A TRIPLE SHOT of Charlie Fox is a special e-boxed set of the first three novels in the Charlie Fox series ―KILLER INSTINCT, RIOT ACT, and HARD KNOCKS (Kindle, Kindle UK). While ANOTHER ROUND of Charlie Fox is a special e-boxed set of the second three novels in the Charlie Fox series ―FIRST DROP, ROAD KILL, and SECOND SHOT (Kindle).

Amazon Description for Die Easy:
In the sweltering heat of New Orleans, former Special Forces soldier-turned-bodyguard Charlie Fox faces her toughest challenge yet.

Professionally, she’s at the top of her game, but her personal life is in ruins. Her lover, bodyguard Sean Meyer, has woken from a gunshot-induced coma with his memory in tatters. It seems that piercing back together the relationship they shared is proving harder for him than relearning the intricacies of the bodyguard business. Working with Sean again was never going to be easy for Charlie, but a celebrity fundraising event in aid of still-ravaged areas of New Orleans should have been the ideal opportunity for them both to take things nice and slow. Until, that is, they find themselves thrust into the middle of a war zone.

When an ambitious robbery explodes into a deadly hostage situation, the motive may be far more complex than simple greed. Somebody has a major score to settle, and Sean is part of the reason. Only trouble is, he doesn’t remember why. And when Charlie finds herself facing a nightmare from her own past, she realizes she can’t rely on Sean to watch her back. This time, she’s got to fight it out on her own.One thing is for certain, though—no matter how overwhelming the odds stacked against her, or however hopeless the situation may appear—Charlie is never going to die easy.

Back from the Dead by Peter Leonard
Pub Date Jan 22 2013
Amazon UK, Amazon US, Kindle
Description: Probably tired of being referred to as Elmore’s son but Peter Leonard has a follow-up to Voices of the Dead (Amazon UK, Amazon US, Kindle) which introduced us to two mortal enemies: Holocaust survivor Harry Levin and Nazi death angel Ernst Hess. Now, their struggle reaches its dramatic conclusion in Back from the Dead.

Bahamas, 1971. Ernst Hess, missing and presumed dead, regains consciousness to find himself stuck in a hospital bed on a strange ward in a foreign country. He must do what he needs to do to get his life back and to finish the job he has been doing for decades.

Harry believes he has already stopped Hess. When he finds out that the war criminal has somehow survived, Harry must do the only thing he can do – kill Hess again – even if it means crossing continents and putting his life and the lives of those that matter to him on the line.

Three Graves Full by Jamie Mason
Pub Date Feb 12 2013
Amazon UK, Amazon US, Kindle
Description:
“There is very little peace for a man with a body buried in his backyard.”

With this memorable first line, we meet Jason Getty, a regular guy in every mild sense of the word. But extraordinary circumstances push this ordinary man to do something he can’t undo…and now he must live with the undeniable reality of his actions. And just as Jason does finally learn to live with it, a landscaper discovers a body on his property—only it’s not the body Jason buried.

As Jason’s fragile peace begins to unravel, his life is hitched to the fortunes of several strangers: Leah, an abandoned woman looking for answers to her heartbreak; Tim, a small-town detective just doing his job; and Boyd, a fringe-dweller whose past is about to catch up to him—all of them in the wake and shadow of a dead man who had it coming.

Perfect Hatred by Leighton Gage
Pub Date Feb 19 2013
Amazon UK, Amazon US, Kindle
Description: Book 6 in the Mario Silva series set in Brazil. Chief Inspector Mario Silva has a big job. He’s a Brazilian Federal Cop. In his country there’s no FBI, no DEA, no Secret Service, no DHS, no CBP and most police corporations have no Internal Affairs Department. Mario and his colleagues have to do it all and more. And they do it while travelling a lot. The area of their responsibility is larger than the continental United States.

Chief Inspector Mario Silva and his team have a heavy work load with several high-profile cases. First, a suicide bombing that was apparently the work of a militant Islamist group. Then, a gubernatorial candidate is assassinated in broad daylight at a campaign rally. Could the cases be related? To complicate Silva’s investigation, a criminal with a very bad grudge against the Chief Inspector has been released from prison and is plotting ugly revenge.

Angel’s Gate by P.G. Sturges
Pub Date Feb 26 2013
Amazon UK, Amazon US, Kindle
Description: Our hero Dick Henry—aka the Shortcut Man—becomes involved in a case featuring an aging but still amorous Los Angeles movie mogul named Howard Hogue who keeps a stable of young starlets available for his highly ritualized attentions. Retained by the sister of a young woman who has gone missing, Henry becomes friendly with Connie Cielo, the “housemother” to the starlets. Despite Connie’s morally questionable responsibilities, she is willing to help (and enjoy the company of) the Shortcut Man.

After Hogue’s star director assaults one of these women in a drug-fueled romp, Henry is drawn into a deeper mystery from years past involving a mysterious death on a boat and a missing screenplay written by what appears to be a homeless man. As he peels back layer upon layer of sordid Hollywood history, Dick Henry must contend with crazed drug dealers, Hogue’s personal doctor, crooked cops, private security henchmen, and Hogue himself—who is so powerful and bunkered in his movie-biz millions that he is unfazed by the resourceful Henry.

The Andalucian Friend by Alexander Soderberg
Pub Date Mar 4 2013
Amazon UK, Amazon US
Description: The first book in The Brinkmann Trilogy
Hector: Lover. Killer. Crime lord.
Lars: Stalker. Policeman. Addict
Jen: Ex lover. Arms dealer. Hero?
Sophie: Nurse. Mother. Victim?

Living a quiet life in the suburbs, Sophie Brinkmann is captivated by the handsome and sophisticated Hector Guzman. She has no idea that beneath Hector’s charm lies something far more dangerous. Hector is the head of an international crime syndicate. He is used to getting what he wants, and what he wants now is the total annihilation of his rivals.

Before she can fully grasp the extent of Hector’s world, Sophie is trapped within it. Her house is under surveillance, her family is at risk. Hector is at war – with Russian hit men, South American drug traffickers, German gangsters –and now Sophie is too.

But who can she trust when even the people who have sworn to uphold the law are as dangerous as those dedicated to breaking it? If Sophie is to get out alive, and with her integrity intact, she will have to summon everything within her to navigate this intricate web of moral ambiguity, deadly obsession and ruthless killers.

Follow Her Home by Stephen Cha
Pub Date Apr 16 2013
Amazon UK, Amazon US, Kindle
Description: Juniper Song knows secrets. How to keep them and how to search them out. As a girl, noir fiction was her favorite escape, and Philip Marlowe has always been her literary love. So when her friend Luke asks her to investigate a possible affair between his father and a young paralegal, Juniper (or “Song” as her friends call her) finds an opportunity to play detective. Driving through L.A.’s side streets, following leads, tailing suspects—it all appeals to Song’s romantic ideal of the noir hero. But when she’s knocked out while investigating a mysterious car and finds a body in her own trunk, Song lurches back to the real L.A., becoming embroiled in a crime that goes far beyond child’s play. What’s more, this isn’t the first time Song has stuck her nose in other people’s business. As she fights to discover the truth about her friend’s family, Song reveals one of her own deeply hidden secrets, something dark, damaging, and urging her to see the current mystery through, to rectify the mistakes of her past life.

The Famous and the Dead by T. Jefferson Parker
Pub Date Apr 18 2013
Amazon UK, Amazon US, Kindle
Description: The conclusion to T. Jefferson Parker’s New York Times bestselling Charlie Hood series.

Los Angeles County sheriff ’s deputy Charlie Hood is attached to the ATF, working undercover on the iron river that flows across the U.S.-Mexican border. The diamond fillings he wears in his left canine glimmer, distracting the men who sell the illegal firearms that enable the unspeakable violence on both sides of the map. Spotting the sparkle when “Charlie Diamonds” opens his mouth is often their first step toward life behind bars.

Meanwhile, Bradley Jones, sheriff ’s deputy and employee of the Baja Cartel, son of the love of Charlie’s life, the deceased L.A. outlaw Suzanne Jones, is expecting a son of his own. Suzanne was descended from famed Mexican desperado Joaquin Murrieta, whose embalmed head Bradley inherited from her and keeps nestled among piles of cash, proceeds from Bradley’s own life of crime.

Charlie knows all of Bradley’s secrets; the question is what he’ll do with the information. Until he decides, his obsession remains the inexplicable existence of Mike Finnegan, the diminutive devil who flits in and out of both men’s lives, knowing things he shouldn’t, seemingly immortal.

Three men: earnest law-enforcer, inveterate lawbreaker, and the man who pits them against each other—hurtle toward one another in the jaw-dropping conclusion to T. Jefferson Parker’s mesmerizing vision of the border. Their climactic showdown brings to a spectacular close a crime series that obliterated the boundaries of the genre.

When the Devil Drives by Christopher Brookmyre
Pub Date Apr 30 2013
Amazon UK, Amazon US
Description: The follow up to Where the Bodies are Buried.
Is the devil merely the name we give the worst in ourselves?

When private investigator Jasmine Sharp is hired to find Tessa Garrion, a young woman who has vanished without trace, it becomes increasingly clear that there are those who want her to stay that way. What begins as a simple search awakens a malevolence that has lain dormant for three decades, putting Jasmine in the crosshairs of those who would stop at nothing to keep their secrets buried.

Uncovering a hidden history of sex, drugs, ritualism and murder, Jasmine realises she may need a little help from dark places herself if she’s going to get to the truth.

But then needs must…

The Devil in Her Way by Bill Loehfelm
Pub Date Apr 30 2013
Amazon UK, Amazon US, Kindle
Description: When Maureen Coughlin first appeared in The Devil She Knows (Amazon UK, Amazon US, Kindle), the New Orleans Times-Picayune called her “unforgettable” and “the character of the year.” Booklist named The Devil She Knows one of 2011’s ten best thrillers and declared Maureen “as compelling a character as this reviewer expects to see this year.”

Now she’s back in Bill Loehfelm’s new thriller, The Devil in Her Way, and her life has changed in more ways than one: She’s starting over in New Orleans as a newly minted member of the police force.

Kicking off her final week of field training, Maureen takes a punch from a panicked suspect bursting out of an apartment. Her training officer laughs it off, and the incident even yields a small victory: the cops recover a stash of pot and guns. But out on the street, on the fringes of the action, Maureen sees something sinister transpire between two neighborhood boys that leaves her shaken, and she knows there’s more to the story than she’s seen. As we follow Maureen’s dangerous hunt for answers, Loehfelm leads us around New Orleans’s most hidden corners and into its darkest outposts.

The Night Detectives by Jon Talton
Pub Date May 7 2013
Amazon UK, Amazon US
Description: The private-detective business starts out badly for former Phoenix Deputy David Mapstone, who has teamed up with his old friend and boss, Sheriff Mike Peralta. Their first client is gunned down just after hiring them. The case: A suspicious death investigation involving a young Arizona woman who fell from a condo tower in San Diego. The police call Grace Hunter’s death a suicide, but the client doesn’t buy it. He’s her brother. Or is he? After his murder, police find multiple driver’s licenses and his real identity is a mystery. To complicate things further, an Arizona state senator who was instrumental in Peralta’s recent election defeat owns the condo.�In San Diego, David finds the woman’s boyfriend, who is trying to care for their baby and can’t believe Grace would kill herself. He, too, hires the pair to solve Grace’s death. But a darker story emerges. Grace was putting herself through college as a high-priced call girl, an escort for rich men who valued her looks and discretion. Before the day is out, the boyfriend is murdered and David barely escapes with his own life. Someone is killing their clients. And may be coming for them. Solving the case will take Mapstone and Peralta into the world of human trafficking, corrupt politics, and the white supremacist movement. Neither the lovely beaches of San Diego nor the enchanting desert of Arizona can conceal the brutal danger that lies beneath. They no longer have badges but they are still detectives. The night detectives.

The Rules of Wolfe by James Carlos Blake
Pub Date Jul 2 2013
Amazon UK, Amazon US
Description: Eddie Gato Wolfe is a young, impetuous member of the Wolfe clan of Texas outlaws, gun-runners and bootleggers which goes back generations. Increasingly unfulfilled by his minor role in the family’s operations and eager to strike out on his own, Eddie crosses the border to work security for a major Mexican drug cartel run by the ruthless La Navaja.

At a party thrown by La Navaja, Eddie falls for a beautiful woman named Miranda, whom he learns too late is the girlfriend of El Segundo, La Navaja’s only living brother. When El Segundo finds Eddie and Miranda together, Eddie is forced to kill El Segundo, forcing the two young lovers to escape the cartel in the hopes of crossing the border and reuniting with the Wolfe family.

However La Navaja’s reach is far and his lust for revenge insatiable, and he sends a horde of operatives on Eddie and Miranda’s tail, along with a notorious bounty hunter named El Martillo. As Eddie and Miranda try to evade capture, they realize that even if La Navaja’s men don’t kill them, a once-in-a-generation sandstorm very well may. Fighting their way through the brutal Mexican desert, Eddie and Miranda’s only hope may be the very Wolfe family that Eddie abandoned, who will cut through anything and anyone in their path to save one of their own.

Amazon UK, Amazon US, Kindle

Read an excerpt on the author’s website here.

Everywhere I look recently there appears to be a mention of Ratlines and to be honest it is no surprise – it is that good! A remarkable work that blends real historical figures into fictional events set against a backdrop of the oft overlooked Nazis that escaped to Ireland following World War II (or The Emergency in local parlance). I read and enjoyed Neville’s first book The Ghosts of Belfast aka The Twelve but haven’t kept up with his more recent output but this is definitely better for me.

There are a number of things that this book has going for it before we even get to the plot and the style with which it is delivered. Let’s start with the depiction of Charles J. Haughey as Minister for Justice, shall we? One of the real people included in the book and certainly a realistic but not flattering portrayal but then someone who managed to ascend to the pinnacle of the political world in Ireland while tainted by gun-running, illegal phone-tapping and corruption (as it so beautifully phrased herein “the minister does like to take full advantage of our credit service” – one has to know the full story of CJH to know what an understatement this is!). The other real person of central importance to the plot is Otto Skorzeny, an ex-Nazi now resident in Ireland. Check out this article from The Telegraph newspaper to get a brief insight into these events.

Ratlines refer to the escape routes setup to ferry Nazis out of Europe to more welcoming countries where their past misdeeds would be overlooked either due to financial inducements or a particular expertise being sought after. Otto Skorzeny is at the centre of a number of these routes and has access to extensive funds to grease the wheels if necessary and to establish his former colleagues in their new identities and locations. Unfortunately a number of his associates in Ireland have been murdered and through his friendship with the Minister for Justice prevails upon on Albert Ryan of the Directorate of Intelligence to investigate. Ryan is in a more fortunate position that many like him that joined the British Army to fight against Hitler as he is not subject to the same active discrimination on behalf of the State that they were though he and his family are still on the receiving end of those prejudices from neighbours. Ryan has fought against the Germans through Europe and to be placed in the invidious position of however indirectly protecting one of their number is never going to sit easily with him and certainly not when directed to investigate Ireland’s small Jewish community. But that is just the beginning of an intricate tale that will encompass murder, torture, double-crosses, extortion, ex-SAS commandos and Mossad.

Set in early 1960s Ireland and replete with the social mores of that time, Ratlines has also featured at Crime Always Pays, Crime Fiction Lover, Shelf Awareness and Ms. Wordopolis.

My rating is 10 out of 10.

Amazon Description:
‘Right at the end of the war, some Nazis saw it coming. They knew that even if they escaped, hundreds of others wouldn’t. They needed to set up routes, channels, ways out for their friends. Ratlines.’

Ireland, 1963. As the Irish people prepare to welcome President John F. Kennedy to the land of his ancestors, a German is murdered in a seaside guesthouse. He is the third foreign national to die within a few days, and Minister for Justice Charles Haughey is desperate to protect a shameful secret: the dead men were all former Nazis granted asylum by the Irish government.

A note from the killers is found on the corpse, addressed to Colonel Otto Skorzeny, Hitler’s favourite WWII commando, once called the most dangerous man in Europe. It says simply: ‘We are coming for you. Await our call.’

Lieutenant Albert Ryan, Directorate of Intelligence, is ordered to investigate the crimes. But as he infiltrates Ireland’s secret network of former Nazis and collaborators, Ryan must choose between country and conscience. Why must he protect the very people he fought against twenty years before? And who are the killers seeking revenge for the horrors of the Second World War?

The Revisionists by Thomas Mullen (2011) – Reviewed here
Amazon UK, Amazon, Kindle

Misery Bay by Steve Hamilton (2011) – Not Reviewed Yet
Amazon UK, Amazon, Kindle

Resurrection Express by Stephen Romano (2012) – Reviewed here
Amazon, Kindle, Amazon UK

Triple Crossing by Sebastian Rotella (2011) – Reviewed here
Amazon, Amazon UK

Don’t Ever Get Old by Daniel Friedman (2012) – Reviewed here
Amazon UK, Amazon, Kindle

The Prophet by Michael Koryta (2012) – Reviewed here
Amazon, Kindle, Amazon UK

Lake Country by Sean Doolittle (2012) – Reviewed here
Amazon, Amazon UK

Alpha by Greg Rucka (2012) – Reviewed here
Amazon, Kindle, Amazon UK

Clawback by Mike Cooper (2012) – Reviewed here
Amazon, Kindle, Amazon UK

A Detailed Man by David Swinson (2011) – Reviewed here
Amazon, Amazon UK

The Dispatcher by Ryan David Jahn (2011) – Reviewed here
Amazon, Amazon UK, Book Depository UK

Phantom by Jo Nesbo (2012) – Reviewed here
Amazon, Amazon UK, Book Depository UK

What It Was by George Pelecanos (2012) – Reviewed here
Amazon, Amazon UK, Book Depository UK

Honourable Mentions to:

Crashed by Timothy Hallinan (2012) – Not Reviewed Yet
Amazon UK, Amazon, Kindle

Disappeared by Anthony Quinn (2012) – Not Reviewed Yet
Amazon UK, Amazon, Kindle

Harbor Nocturne by Joseph Wambaugh (2012) – Reviewed here
Amazon, Amazon UK, Book Depository UK

The fundamental premise of this appealed to me when I first received this book a couple of months back recalling films such as Timecop and The Butterfly Effect or any number of other works which have also explored the same conundrum – if you could change history, would you? More importantly, should you and what would be the outcome if you tried? Labelled as a dystopian novel which would normally be a no-no for me but, unlike the other dystopian novel that I tried this year, one that I thoroughly enjoyed and never at any stage became laborious.

We have Troy Jones aka Zed who is from the “perfect” post-apocalyptic future and who is tasked with ensuring certain events happen in their preordained order and eliminate those that may try to interfere with them thereby risking their “perfect” present. We have Leo – an ex-CIA operative now operating in the private sector following an ignominious exit involving rendition. Mullen creates delicious intricate linkages between Zed, Leo and what they are both currently doing in DC. Tasha, a lawyer that is mourning the death of her brother with the US military overseas, originally seems to be introduced to act as a focus for our conscience but initially impedes the momentum generated by the inexorable interaction of Zed and Leo but she ultimately proves pivotal. Of course, everything gets turned on its head and you have to re-evaluate everything that has preceded it when one of the characters asserts that Troy Jones is actually a paranoid schizophrenic and just maybe you shouldn’t be accepting everything he says as being true. Perhaps that also explains why his much vaunted technology from the future isn’t working. There is a lot more to this novel and this just barely scratches the surface.

My rating is 10 out of 10. You can expect to see this in my top books for 2012 when I get around to posting that in the next few days.

Check out this extract on Mulholland Books website.
Description: Zed is an agent from the future. A time when the world’s problems have been solved. No hunger. No war. No despair. His mission is to keep it that way. Even if it means ensuring every cataclysm throughout history runs its course – especially The Great Conflagration, an imminent disaster in our own time that Zed has been ordered to protect at all costs. But what will happen when Zed’s present begins to take precedence over a perfect future? One that may have more cracks than he realizes?

Midway through, this was looking like it was going to another run-of-the-mill thriller with a hero straight out of the Bourne/Bond school where he fashions ever more fanciful escapes from the jaws of death with each passing moment. Even the bad guy’s identity was easily predictable despite being referred to by his code name “Snow Wolf”. The suspense wasn’t intended to be part of the attraction in reading this though as his identity was revealed by the author shortly afterwards anyway.

Austin Clay is presented as a tool or a weapon and that is why the first half of the novel suffers because it is hard to care about a thing rather than a person. What works well then is the introduction not of the girl he’s trying to rescue Marika Csontas but actually Michael Adams a senior CIA director because he’s presented with something to lose and conversely someone who you would expect at his level of seniority to be untouchable.

From here the story gets elevated out of the ordinary and the conclusion makes it all worthwhile.

The author is probably best known for his television and movie work including Wanted and Chicago Fire. It is not surprising that it has been optioned for a movie in fact it wouldn’t be surprising to see it converted into one of those aforementioned Bourne/Bond type vehicles. The Mulholland Books website has a nice background piece by the author on the origination of the story.

My final rating is 8 out of 10.

Amazon Description:
Meet Austin Clay, the CIA’s best-kept secret.

There has always been a need in the spy game for operations outside the realm of legality-covert missions so black no one in the American government, and almost no one in intelligence itself, is aware of their existence. The left hand can’t know what the right hand is doing.

Austin Clay is that right hand, executing missions that would be disavowed by his own government were he ever to be compromised. His team consists of only his trusted handler and himself. His missions are among the most important and dangerous in U.S. history.

Clay is sent to track down a missing American operative, a man who was captured outside of Moscow, in the Russian countryside. Soon he discovers the missing officer is only the beginning of the mission, and finds himself protecting a desperate woman who believes a mole has penetrated the top levels of the U.S. government, throwing the international balance of power into jeopardy.

With blistering pace, international intrigue, and a high-stakes plot that spans continents, THE RIGHT HAND introduces a new hero, from the novelist whose work the New York Times Book Review has proclaimed “devastatingly cool.”

- still predominantly male authors with just Marcia Clark, Tess Gerritsen, Lisa Brackman & Casey Hill (sort of) making inroads so predicting somewhere around 10% for the year

- country breakdown looks as follows: 6 European authors of which 1 Norwegian (Jo Nesbo of course but 3 books if I count the children’s book of his I read to my son), no UK yet somehow, 5 Irish. I also read 1 from Australia (but I failed to finish that one). The other 33 authors were from the US including multiple entries from Don Winslow and Marcia Clark.

- “New To Me” Authors: for the last couple of years this has hovered around 6 – 8, I wanted to get this up to 10 for 2012 but currently just short of 30 so this is one area that I have really managed to deliver on!

Excerpt

Everyone knows Michael Connelly and Harry Bosch by now, they’re both well established at the top of the tree and coming as it does at this time of year you’re all set for that Christmas gift as The Black Box doesn’t disappoint. Of course if you are lucky enough to be new to them you’re not going to start here you will have to begin at the beginning with The Black Echo but at least you know you’re in for a treat because as Harry states repeatedly its all about momentum and you can look forward to reading 18 high quality books in a row which is sort of how I had my introduction in the early 2000′s when I began with a couple of omnibus editions. I’m going to try to minimise spoilers but there may be a few ahead so take care.

The Black Box opens in flashback mode during the 1992 Los Angeles riots that followed the acquittal of the policemen charged with the Rodney King beating. Harry and his then partner, Jerry Edgar, are tasked with performing the preliminaries in relation to a woman’s body that has been found by the National Guard but are prevented from following through on the crime at the time as its outside their catchment area and the investigation is handed over to the riot crimes taskforce established in the aftermath.

This contravenes one of Bosch’s cardinal rules – the first 48 hours of an investigation are critical and he must take advantage of any break in the case to maintain momentum, one of his other rules being everybody counts or nobody counts. These are both called into question twenty years later when as part of the cold case unit Harry is reassigned the case but his forward momentum doesn’t necessarily please his superiors who are concerned about possible racial overtones leaving him in the familiar position of conflict with the chain of command and an impending internal affairs investigation which could jeopardise his position with the force.

The title refers to the single piece of evidence that will prove critical to unlocking the entire case with the initial impetus coming from a ballistics match to an incarcerated gang member and from there Connelly crafts another gripping page turner which sees Bosch putting together a case piece by piece from seemingly nothing while placing himself in peril both in terms of his career and his life as he gets closer to identifying those at the centre of the conspiracy with strands of the case reaching overseas and back as far as Desert Storm. Harry’s other interests are firmly on display throughout with jazz featuring prominently as well as his daughter Maddie with even an appearance from FBI agent Rachel Walling for those familiar with her from previous books. He relies heavily on assistance from his partner, David Chu, without ever fully involving him or sharing with him what is happening in the case but that is typical of his actions throughout his career but while he is more appreciative than normal it does leave him more vulnerable than ever.

My rating is 9 out of 10.

Amazon Description:
May 1992, and after four LAPD officers were acquitted after the savage beating of Rodney King, Los Angeles is ablaze. As looting and burning take over the city, law and order are swept away in a tidal wave of violence. But under threat of their lives, homicide detectives like Harry Bosch are still stubbornly trying to do their job. With no effective police presence on the streets, murder just got a whole lot easier – and investigating them got a whole lot harder.

Escorted by national guard soldiers from murder scene to murder scene, Harry and his colleagues are only able to do the bare minimum in terms of collecting evidence. And for Harry that’s not enough.

When he finds the body of a female journalist executed in an alley, he cannot accept that he will never be able to bring her killer to justice, and her tragedy starts to eat into his soul. But then, twenty years later, Harry finds himself working in the Open Unsolved Unit, and suddenly the past comes back to haunt him once again, in a way he could never have imagined.

Anyway I was thinking with a year-end wrap-up coming soon I should write up some of the books I’ve read but not discussed yet so here goes……this was my first Tess Gerritsen and while I would hesitate to say it would be my last I would need some convincing given that I thought this was only average. My gut feeling though is that long term fans will be satisfied. Any series that makes it this far usually has plenty of devoted fans. Personally I found it hard to shake images from the Rizzoli and Isles tv series even though I only watched a couple of episodes of that before disengaging from it completely.

There were a couple of items that troubled me while reading this. Firstly, Maura Isles seems to display quite an unwarranted jump in logic in identifying the Evensong school as being members of the Mephisto society which for those unfamiliar with it “believes that evil is real. (They) believe that humanity itself is under attack and (their) mission is to defend it.” And to go from wanting to withdraw Julian from the school to suggesting it as a haven for Teddy Clock in a matter of hours stretches credibility. Outlandish happenings in crime fiction are a given and as a rule don’t bother me but this did. The frequency with which the Icarus flashbacks are inserted also grates but they do make sense eventually.

The slaughter of the children’s families and subsequent foster families identifies them as being linked in some way beyond their evident misfortune and while the ultimate conclusion does contain a nice twist, my interest had waned earlier in proceedings. My rating is 6 out of 10.

Amazon Description:
For the second time in his short life, Teddy Clock has survived a massacre. Two years ago, he barely escaped when his entire family was slaughtered. Now, at fourteen, in a hideous echo of the past, Teddy is the lone survivor of his foster family’s mass murder. Orphaned once more, the traumatized teenager has nowhere to turn—until the Boston PD puts detective Jane Rizzoli on the case. Determined to protect this young man, Jane discovers that what seemed like a coincidence is instead just one horrifying part of a relentless killer’s merciless mission.

Jane spirits Teddy to the exclusive Evensong boarding school, a sanctuary where young victims of violent crime learn the secrets and skills of survival in a dangerous world. But even behind locked gates, and surrounded by acres of sheltering Maine wilderness, Jane fears that Evensong’s mysterious benefactors aren’t the only ones watching. When strange blood-splattered dolls are found dangling from a tree, Jane knows that her instincts are dead on. And when she meets Will Yablonski and Claire Ward, students whose tragic pasts bear a shocking resemblance to Teddy’s, it becomes chillingly clear that a circling predator has more than one victim in mind.

Joining forces with her trusted partner, medical examiner Maura Isles, Jane is determined to keep these orphans safe from harm. But an unspeakable secret dooms the children’s fate—unless Jane and Maura can finally put an end to an obsessed killer’s twisted quest.

Onion Street (Moe Prager #8) by Reed Farrel Coleman (May 2013)
Amazon, Amazon UK
It’s 1967 and Moe Prager is wandering aimlessly through his college career and his life. All that changes when his girlfriend Mindy is viciously beaten into a coma and left to die on the snow-covered streets of Brooklyn. Suddenly, Moe has purpose. He is determined to find out who’s done this to Mindy and why. But Mindy is not the only person in Moe’s life who’s in danger. Someone is also trying to kill his best and oldest friend, Bobby Friedman.

Things get really strange when Moe enlists the aid of Lids, a half-cracked, genius drug pusher from the old neighborhood. Lids hooks Moe up with his first solid information. Problem is the info seems to take Moe in five directions at once and leads to more questions than answers. How is a bitter old camp survivor connected to the dead man in the apartment above his fixit shop or to the OD-ed junkie found on the boardwalk in Coney Island? What could an underground radical group have to do with the local Mafioso capo? And where do Mindy and Bobby fit into any of this?

Moe will risk everything to find the answers. He will travel from the pot-holed pavement of Brighton Beach to the Pocono Mountains to the runways at Kennedy Airport. But no matter how far he goes or how fast he gets there, all roads lead to Onion Street.

The Innocence Game by Michael Harvey (May 2013)
Amazon, Amazon UK
Best known for the Michael Kelly P.I. series, The Innocence Game, begins in an ordinary classroom at Northwestern’s renowned journalism school but quickly spirals into the grittiest reaches of Chicago crime. Along with only two classmates — beautiful, strong-willed Sarah Gold, and enigmatically brilliant Jake Havens — Ian Joyce is part of the Innocence Seminar, an exclusive class for top-ranking students taught by a woman who goes simply by Z. The seminar investigates wrongful convictions and cold cases; the idealistic J-school students are tasked with trying to exonerate the falsely accused. But on the first day of class, Jake introduces a case of his own, the long-ago murder of a young boy, ten-year-old Skylar Wingate, last seen walking home from his house on Chicago’s west side. Three days later, his body was found by a hiker in a forest preserve a mile away. The man convicted of killing Skylar was murdered decades ago in jail. But two chilling clues delivered to Jake’s house, a piece of blood-stained fabric and a blunt hand-written confession, suggest that the real killer is still very much alive, and, indeed, in their midst, forcing them to confront what they know about themselves and each other. As the evidence mounts, the three classmates find themselves drawn into a web of deceit, corruption, and murder that will leave each of them fighting for their lives. From the archived depths of storage warehouses to the dense woods and moldering caves of the local preserve to the shores of Lake Michigan, The Innocence Game is an irresistible, harrowing mystery from a writer at the top of his form.

Gun Machine by Warren Ellis (January 2013)
Amazon, Amazon UK
After a shootout claims the life of his partner in a condemned tenement building on Pearl Street, Detective John Tallow unwittingly stumbles across an apartment stacked high with guns. When examined, each weapon leads to a different, previously unsolved murder. Someone has been killing people for twenty years or more and storing the weapons together for some inexplicable purpose.

Confronted with the sudden emergence of hundreds of unsolved homicides, Tallow soon discovers that he’s walked into a veritable deal with the devil. An unholy bargain that has made possible the rise of some of Manhattan’s most prominent captains of industry. A hunter who performs his deadly acts as a sacrifice to the old gods of Manhattan, who may, quite simply, be the most prolific murderer in New York City’s history.

Warren Ellis’s body of work has been championed by Wired for its “merciless action” and “incorruptible bravery,” and steadily amassed legions of diehard fans. His newest novel builds on his accomplishments like never before, announcing Ellis as one of today’s most daring thriller writers. This is twenty-first century suspense writ large. This is GUN MACHINE.

Hit Me by Lawrence Block (February 2013)
Amazon, Amazon UK
A man named Nicholas Edwards lives in New Orleans renovating houses, doing honest work and making decent money at it. Between his family and his stamp collection, all his spare time is happily accounted for. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that he used to kill people for a living.

But when the nation’s economy tanks, taking the construction business with it, all it takes is one phone call to drag him back into the game. It may say Nicholas Edwards on his driver’s license and credit cards, but he’s back to being the man he always was: Keller.

Keller’s work takes him to New York, the former home he hasn’t dared revisit, where his target is the abbot of a midtown monastery. Another call puts him on a West Indies cruise, with several interesting fellow passengers—the government witness, the incandescent young woman keeping the witness company, and, sharing Keller’s cabin, his wife, Julia. But the high drama comes in Cheyenne, where a recent widow is looking to sell her husband’s stamp collection…

In HIT ME, legendary Edgar Grandmaster and New York Times bestselling author Lawrence Block returns to one of his most beloved characters. Welcome back, Keller. You’ve been missed.

Skinner by Charlie Huston (July 2013)
Amazon, Amazon UK
Skinner founded his career in “asset protection” on fear. To touch anyone under his protection was to invite destruction. A savagely effective methodology, until Skinner’s CIA handlers began to fear him as much as his enemies did and banished him to the hinterlands of the intelligence community.

Now, an ornate and evolving cyber-terrorist attack is about to end that long exile. His asset is Jae, a roboticist with a gift for seeing the underlying systems violently shaping a new era of global guerrilla warfare.

At the root of it all is a young boy, the innocent seed of a plot grown in the slums of Mumbai. Brought to flower, that plot will tip the balance of world power in a perilous new direction.

A combination of Le Carre spycraft with Stephenson techno-philosophy from the novelist hailed by the Washington Post as “the voice of twenty-first century crime fiction,” SKINNER is Charlie Huston’s masterpiece–a new kind of thriller for a new kind of world.

Point & Shoot by Duane Swierczynski (April 2013)
Amazon, Amazon UK
Charlie Hardie finds himself in a steel box, tubes and wires attached to his body, trapped inside a satellite parked in orbit 500 miles above the Earth. He’s got a year’s supply of food, air, water, and no communication back to Earth, and must complete his 12 months’ duty or his wife and son will have an “accident.”

But when someone all-too-familiar docks on the satellite, informs Hardie he’s sitting in a veritable zero-G vault containing the world’s most dangerous secrets, and forces a crash-landing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, Hardie must decide whether he’s come face-to-face with the partner he needs to save his family–or with his nemesis. After years of exile, Hardie’s arming up….and heading home.

Suspect by Robert Crais (January 2013)
Amazon, Amazon UK
LAPD cop Scott James is not doing so well. Eight months ago, a shocking nighttime assault by unidentified men killed his partner Stephanie, nearly killed him, and left him enraged, ashamed, and ready to explode. He is unfit for duty—until he meets his new partner.

Maggie is not doing so well, either. A German shepherd who survived three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan sniffing explosives before losing her handler to an IED, her PTSD is as bad as Scott’s.

They are each other’s last chance. Shunned and shunted to the side, they set out to investigate the one case that no one wants them to touch: the identity of the men who murdered Stephanie. What they begin to find is nothing like what Scott has been told, and the journey will take them both through the darkest moments of their own personal hells. Whether they will make it out again, no one can say.

The Revisionists
Thomas Mullen
Amazon UK, Amazon, Kindle

I caught a few minutes of Timecop recently and it sprung to mind again immediately on receiving this book though I could equally call on The Butterfly Effect or similar and probably none of those comparisons would be welcomed. Anyway a new to me author so I cannot comment on his previous works but this one is a bit of stretch for me as the time travel sci-fi element takes me out of my usual hunting grounds.

Description: Zed is an agent from the future. A time when the world’s problems have been solved. No hunger. No war. No despair. His mission is to keep it that way. Even if it means ensuring every cataclysm throughout history runs its course – especially The Great Conflagration, an imminent disaster in our own time that Zed has been ordered to protect at all costs. But what will happen when Zed’s present begins to take precedence over a perfect future? One that may have more cracks than he realizes?

The Right Hand
Derek Haas
Amazon UK, Amazon, Kindle

Another new to me author albeit one that just about qualifies as I have a trilogy sitting in the TBR pile. Not always sure that I favour CIA / MI5 etc type novels as the James Bond type characteristics can sometimes leave me cold but here’s hoping for the best.

Description: Meet Austin Clay, the CIA’s best-kept secret. There has always been a need in the spy game for operations outside the realm of legality-covert missions so black no one in the American government, and almost no one in intelligence itself, is aware of their existence. The left hand can’t know what the right hand is doing. Austin Clay is that right hand, executing missions that would be disavowed by his own government were he ever to be compromised. His team consists of only his trusted handler and himself. His missions are among the most important and dangerous in U.S. history. Clay is sent to track down a missing American operative, a man who was captured outside of Moscow, in the Russian countryside. Soon he discovers the missing officer is only the beginning of the mission, and finds himself protecting a desperate woman who believes a mole has penetrated the top levels of the U.S. government, throwing the international balance of power into jeopardy. With blistering pace, international intrigue, and a high-stakes plot that spans continents, THE RIGHT HAND introduces a new hero, from the novelist whose work the New York Times Book Review has proclaimed “devastatingly cool.”

The Devil Doesn’t Want Me
Eric Beetner
Kindle

One that I chose based on the title alone and one that apart from the description reproduced below I know absolutely nothing.

Description: A hit man with a crisis of conscience faces his biggest challenge yet: protecting an innocent victim against deadly forces during a desperate run for the coast in Eric Beetner’s thrilling novel. For the last seventeen years, Lars has been on a job for a prominent East Coast crime family. His task: kill Mitch the Snitch. Mitch is living in witness protection and has eluded Lars for almost two decades. But changes are afoot in the family back east, and a young gun named Trent has been sent to replace the aging gun for hire. With his old boss gone, Lars realizes he has lost the desire to kill his long-time target. When things come to a head with Trent, Lars must go on the run with Mitch’s teenage daughter Shaine, trying to stay one step ahead of angry and vengeful mobsters as well as his own dark past. With Trent, FBI agents, and even more hired muscle on their trail, Lars and his new sidekick must stay one step ahead of their pursuers by any means necessary, creating a cross country trail of wreckage and mayhem from Albuquerque to L.A.

Perfect Hatred
Leighton Gage
Amazon UK, Amazon, Kindle

A well know author and series that I wanted to sample but given that I cannot always indulge my preference to start from the beginning of a series given the number of worthwhile series out there it just makes more sense to jump in here. Here’s to a change of location.

Description: Chief Inspector Mario Silva and his team have a heavy work load with several high-profile cases. First, a suicide bombing that was apparently the work of a militant Islamist group. Then, a gubernatorial candidate is assassinated in broad daylight at a campaign rally. Could the cases be related? To complicate Silva’s investigation, a criminal with a very bad grudge against the Chief Inspector has been released from prison and is plotting ugly revenge.

Crashed
Timothy Hallinan
Amazon UK, Amazon, Kindle

Another Netgalley selection where the cover just sort of jumped out at me but I like the outline below.

Description: Meet Junior Bender, quick talking burglar turned ad-hoc private eye for Hollywood crooks. Junior Bender is a Los Angeles burglar with a magic touch. Since he first started breaking into houses when he was fourteen years old, he’s never once been caught. But now, after twenty-two years of an exemplary career, Junior has been blackmailed by Trey Annunziato, one of the most powerful crime bosses in LA, into acting as a private investigator on the set of Trey’s porn movie venture, which someone keeps sabotaging. The star Trey has lined up to do all that’s unwholesome on camera is Thistle Downing, America’s beloved child star, who now lives alone in a drug-induced stupor, destitute and uninsurable. Her starring role will be the scandalous fall-from-grace gossip of rubber-neckers across the country. No wonder Trey needs help keeping the production on track. Junior knows what that he should do—get Thistle out and find her help—but doing the right thing will land him on the wrong side of LA’s scariest mob boss. With the help of his precocious twelve-year-old daughter, Rina, and his criminal sidekick, Louie the Lost (an ex-getaway driver), Junior has to figure out a miracle solution.

The Prophet
Ethan Cross
Amazon UK, Amazon, Kindle

I chose this because I really enjoyed Michael Koryta’s The Prophet earlier this year and found the coincidence in the title appealing. Book 2 of a series, I gather.

Description:

Old Enemies…
Francis Ackerman Jr. is one of America’s most prolific serial killers. Having kept a low profile for the past year, he is ready to return to work – and he’s more brutal, cunning, and dangerous than ever.

New Threats…
Scarred from their past battles, Special Agent Marcus Williams cannot shake Ackerman from his mind. But now Marcus must focus on catching the Anarchist, a new killer who drugs and kidnaps women before burning them alive.

Hidden Terrors…
Marcus knows the Anarchist will strike again soon. And Ackerman is still free. But worse than this is a mysterious figure, unknown to the authorities, who controls the actions of the Anarchist and many like him. He is the Prophet – and his plans are more terrible than even his own disciples can imagine.

With attacks coming from every side, Marcus faces a race against time to save the lives of a group of innocent people chosen as sacrifices in the Prophet’s final dark ritual.

Ratlines
Stuart Neville
Amazon UK, Amazon, Kindle

I’ve had mixed feelings about the Irish books I’ve read this year but I enjoyed Neville’s first, alternatively known as “The Ghosts of Belfast” and “The Twelve” but have missed out on the intervening ones so about time I gave him another try and of course the fact that he’s Irish and the book is set in Ireland doesn’t hurt either.

Description: Ireland, 1963. In the weeks leading up to a visit from President John F. Kennedy, Lieutenant Albert Ryan hunts for a serial killer targeting German nationals. His boss wants the killing to end quickly and quietly lest a shameful secret be exposed: the dead men are former Nazis granted asylum by the Irish government after World War II. As Ryan travels deeper into a complex network of former Nazis and collaborators, it becomes clear that Hitler’s favorite commando, the colonel once called “the most dangerous man in Europe,” is next on the hit list. With time running out, Ryan’s loyalty is torn between country and conscience as he is forced to protect the men he fought against twenty years before.

Amazon, Kindle, Amazon UK

Resurrection Express Excerpt

“Resurrection Express” opens with our erstwhile hero imprisoned and embroiled in a fight in the prison yard where he quickly puts down his opponent to secure his place in the pecking order but this picture of him is very different to the character that emerges through the rest of the novel. One thing’s for sure you don’t expect your typical hacker to be as comfortable with violence as Elroy Coffin is but then he has been brought up in the life by his father which is where he first came into contact with David Hartman – the man who Elroy wants to wreak vengeance on. He uses his contacts on the outside to ensure that none of the prison fights he has been involved in appear on his record as making parole at the first opportunity is very important to him. You see Elroy may be the supreme hacker who also happens to be adept at various martial arts but one thing he is missing is just a little piece of his brain from where he was shot in the head, courtesy of David Hartman who also happened to abduct Elroy’s wife. His priorities therefore lie in getting out of jail, getting his wife back and killing David Hartman, anything else is incidental.

The bullet in the head has led to a case of partial amnesia where he can’t remember what his wife looks like (remember that, it’ll be important later) and for a career criminal that has deliberately spent his whole life avoiding photographs that means there is no hard evidence that can help with his predicament. Presented with an offer he can’t refuse but he doesn’t fully understand either within weeks the right palms have been greased and he’s out on the streets on the promise of one last job that will help get his wife back and get his revenge on Hartman. With shootouts that reduce luxury hotels to near rubble and are littered with bodies like a scene out of The Matrix and more twists and turns than a certain famous street in San Francisco this is a strange amalgam of a novel, just when you think you’ve got a handle on it along comes another twist to send Elroy Coffin just a little deeper down the rabbit hole. Who do you trust when you can’t even trust your own memories? What if the people that you’re working for may just be even greater megalomaniacs than your target?

Interestingly the author’s website states that a sequel is “already in the works”. Buckle up for one hell of a ride, my rating is 9 out of 10.

Amazon Book Description:
There is no code Elroy Coffin can’t break, nothing he can’t hack, no safe he can’t get into. But for the past two years, he’s been incarcerated in a maximum-security hellhole after a job gone bad, driven to near-madness by the revelation of his beloved wife’s murder.

Now a powerful and mysterious visitor who calls herself a “concerned citizen” offers Elroy his freedom if he’ll do another job, and sweetens the deal with proof that his wife might still be alive. All Elroy has to do is hack into one of the most complicated and deadliest security grids in the world—clear and simple instructions for the best in the business. Or so he thinks.

Quickly drawn into the epicenter of a secret, brutal war between criminal masterminds, Elroy is forced to run for his life through a rapid-fire labyrinth of deception, betrayal, and intrigue— where no one is to be trusted and every fight could be his last . . . and the real truth hidden beneath the myriad levels of treachery may be too shocking to comprehend. . . .

I’ve recently read the latest books from two of my favourite authors – Don Winslow and John Connolly. I’ve been a long time fan of both going back over 10 years in each case with my initial introductions being The Death and Life of Bobby Z and Every Dead Thing respectively. Why is this relevant? Well, John Connolly’s The Wrath of Angels (Amazon UK) is obviously the latest in the Charlie Parker series and although it is not published in the States until January it was published in the UK and Ireland in August. The Kings of Cool (Amazon UK) is a prequel to Savages (Amazon UK). Ten years later and they are both among the superstars of the mystery / thriller writing community and for good reason because even when they’re not necessarily on top of their game they can still deliver a well crafted story that’s exceedingly well written.

The Wrath of Angels opens with the story alternating between Charlie Parker sitting in a bar listening to the story being recounted of a plane containing $200000 being found in the woods and in flashback style bringing you back directly to the incident in question.

If you read the Charlie Parker series then you’ll be familiar with the supernatural element of the novels and the accompanying angels that occasionally surface and from there it is just a small jump to resurrection but if good can rise again then so too can evil and in that way Charlie may have to face demons again that he has encountered and vanquished previously. If you don’t enjoy this element of the series then this book won’t be for you as here Connolly embraces the supernatural wholeheartedly. We have the usual cast of characters covering Parker himself, his in equal parts menacing and amusing accomplices Louis & Angel as well as Rabbi Epstein and The Collector. The Collector is an intriguing character as although he seems to side with the forces of good he is basically a serial killer even if those he kills are irredeemably evil and naturally is it very difficult to reconcile those opposing traits. A plane wreck deep in the heart of the woods that contains a list of names attracts those on both sides but no-one is quite sure about the nature of the list – does it contain the names of the damned or those of interest to them? As Parker’s name is on the list he needs to find the wreck and the rest of the list, of course first he has to survive the attentions of Epstein and his companions as well as The Collector.

It is well written and enjoyable without ever quite hitting the highs of some of the other books in the series, just missing the tension or suspense to set it apart. My rating is 8 out of 10 – maybe a point or two less if you’re not already a fan of Connolly’s work like me.

Amazon Description: In the depths of the Maine woods, the wreckage of an aeroplane is discovered. There are no bodies, and no such plane has ever been reported missing, but men both good and evil have been seeking it for a long, long time. What the wreckage conceals is more important than money: it is power. Hidden in the plane is a list of names, a record of those who have struck a deal with the Devil. Now a battle is about to commence between those who want the list to remain secret and those who believe that it represents a crucial weapon in the struggle against the forces of darkness.

The race to secure the prize draws in private detective Charlie Parker, a man who knows more than most about the nature of the terrible evil that seeks to impose itself on the world, and who fears that his own name may be on the list. It lures others too: a beautiful, scarred woman with a taste for killing; a silent child who remembers his own death; and the serial killer known as the Collector, who sees in the list new lambs for his slaughter.

But as the rival forces descend upon this northern state, the woods prepare to meet them, for the forest depths hide other secrets.

Someone has survived the crash.
Some thing has survived the crash.
And it is waiting . . .

The Kings of Cool
With the same sparse writing style that sparked life into Savages in The Kings of Cool we step back in time to when Ben and Chon first got involved with the drugs trade and even further to their predecessors. It also contains references to a number of other characters from Winslow’s previous work including Bobby Z and Frank Machianno aka Frankie Machine from The Winter of Frankie Machine (Amazon UK) (funnily enough spellcheck tried changing that to “macho ammo” which does convey the right general impression!). A nice interweaving of characters from his other works with a few unexpected surprises but the overall impression conveyed is rather low key. For a fan like me you’ll appreciate this one but newcomers may be best served starting into Winslow’s body of work elsewhere. Like the aforementioned Connolly, my rating is also 8 out of 10 (and again I should include a disclaimer that I may as a fan be inclined to be more generous than usual).

Amazon Description: In Savages, Don Winslow introduced Ben and Chon, twentysomething best friends who risk everything to save the girl they both love, O. Among the most celebrated literary thrillers in recent memory, Savages was a Top 10 Book of 2010 selection in the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly and in publications around the world.

Now, in his high-octane prequel, Winslow reaches back in time to tell the story of how Ben, Chon and O became the people they are. Spanning fifty years, from 1960s Southern California to the recent past, it is a tale of family in all its forms – fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, friends and lovers. As the younger generation does battle with a cabal of drug dealers and crooked cops, they come to learn that their future is inextricably linked with their parents’ history. A series of breakneck twists and turns puts the two generations on a collision course, culminating in a stunning showdown that will ultimately force Ben, Chon and O to choose between their real families, and their love for each other.

Links: Amazon, Amazon UK

I had read one of Sean Doolittle’s books previously, The Cleanup, for which he won a Barry award in 2007 so I was a little familiar with his work (and had purchased another which may be in e-reader heaven along with my Sony 505). I’ll have to hold my hands up here and say I’ve been very neglectful in posting my review of Lake Country which I actually read back in June and I’ve been meaning to post a review ever since. Problem was that I was enjoying the book so much as I was reading it that I failed to take any notes whatsoever on general impressions, characters etc so that I was lacking the essential details to write a review but I’ll endeavour to put that right now.

The story opens with Darryl Potter and Mike Barlowe both ex-marines watching tv coverage on the death of a sophomore student killed five years previously in a road accident when the driver of the other car fell asleep at the wheel. With the driver of the car, Wade Benson, having attracted a lenient sentence, Darryl feels plenty aggrieved on behalf of Evan Morse, his former marine squad mate and brother to the dead girl who fell victim to an IED on the same day she died. Potter decides to exact some retribution on behalf of his fallen comrade which kinda leaves his good pal Barlowe in the shit the next day when Darryl’s erstwhile employer Toby Lunden kicks in his door looking for him and his missing money somewhere north of ten grand. As Toby is brains rather than muscle he’s retained the services of Bryce to do the heavy lifting for him. This will unfortunately add to the problems as Bryce himself says later when seeking to extract information from one of Darryl’s acquaintances -
“Now, I can sense you’re a man with some principles. I respect that. Problem is, me, not so much.“

We’re subsequently introduced to Maya Lamb the tv reporter covering the story who will fill a pivotal role in resolving things but for the moment she’s one of the last people to have seen the daughter of Wade Benson who is now missing. Soon the police will be looking for Darryl even more earnestly than Toby and Bryce. This leaves Mike in a big hole and the only guy that can save Darryl from himself and just maybe free the girl provided he can escape the attentions of the police and Bryce just long enough to stay alive.

Written in the third person so the reader is always one step ahead of the characters. The author does a great job of presenting the emotional pull of marines defending each other’s backs in a combat zone and totally convinces in what they mean to each other. Doolittle excels in crafting characters that you care about even Darryl Potter, the dumb schmuck that causes all the problems!

This is one well worth reading, my rating is 9 out of 10. Also reviewed at The Rap Sheet.

Synopsis:
Five years ago, successful architect Wade Benson killed a young woman when he fell asleep at the wheel. His punishment: two days in jail for every year of his probation. But for one friend of the victim’s family—an ex-marine named Darryl Potter—this punishment isn’t enough. Potter sets out to even the score by kidnapping Benson’s twenty-year-old daughter. It’s a bad, bad plan, and only Mike Barlowe, Potter’s former combat buddy, knows how to stop it. With a beautiful news reporter, the cops, and a bounty hunter on Potter’s tail, Barlowe races to head off his troubled friend before innocent people get hurt. The hunters and the hunted plunge north into Minnesota’s Lake Country, each with their own ambitions and demons, each headed for a violent collision—and for one horrifying moment of life or death.