Quite good. Suspend your disbelief.

Cause of Death (1996) is a crime fiction novel by Patricia Cornwell. The 7th book in the entertaining Dr. Kay Scarpetta series.

Ted Eddings is a reporter, found dead in the Elizabeth River, tethered to a compressor which pumps surface breathing air down to him. He was killed by breathing in cyanide gas through the compressor.

Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta is called in to investigate.

An assistant to Kay, Danny Webster is later found dead in Kay’s car. Is his murder related?

Her sidekick, gruff, loveable Pete Marino – Police Captain in the Richmond Police Department, is the best character.

All good until the last 3rd of the book which explodes into a massive international conspiracy involving a domestic death cult, nuclear power plants, and Libyan terrorists. I could have skipped this. 😀

Well … A very interesting premise.

The Guest Room is a 2016 psychological thriller novel by Chris Bohjalian. 

• The Party: Richard Chapman agrees to host a bachelor party for his younger brother at his upscale Westchester home while his wife, Kristin, and daughter are away. 
• The Incident: The party turns violent when two young women, who were brought there by force as sex slaves, kill their Russian bodyguards and flee into the night.
• The Fallout: Richard’s home becomes a crime scene, he is placed on indefinite leave from his investment banking firm, and his marriage falls apart because of a brief, intimate encounter he shared with one of the women in his guest room. 
• The Escape: The story shifts between Richard trying to salvage his life and Alexandra (Anahit), a 19-year-old Armenian woman running from both the police and the deadly Russian mob. 

The book provides a look at the violence and degradation associated with modern global sex slavery.

I found the ending a surprise. And shocking.

I’ve read all of these book series. Looked forward to every new release.

My favourite favourites are closer to the top.

• Daniel Silva – Gabriel Allon series
• Michael Connelly – Harry Bosch series
• William Kent Krueger – Cork O’Connor series
• C.J. Box – Joe Pickett series
• Ken Follett – Kingsbridge series
• John Sandford – Lucas Davenport Prey series
• Lee Child – Reacher series
• Thomas Perry – Jane Whitefield series
• Adrian McKinty – Sean Duffy series
• John Connolly – Charlie Parker series
• Harlan Coben – Myron Bolitar series
• Peter Grainger – DC Smith / Kings Lake series

Jeffrey Archer wrote a number of my favourite series:

• Kane and Abel series
• Clifton Chronicles
• William Warwick series

YES ➙ I do see that zero female authors are featured. For the past 20 years I’ve made an effort to read as many or more female authors, yet none of their series have yet made my list.

I’m young. 😀 There’s still time for me to ADD more to this list.

Leave a comment if I’ve obviously missed one of the best.

ASSuME this is a novel mocking the current far-right tradwife political push. Part of Trump’s Project 2025, for example.

You’d be wrong as I was.

About half way through, I realized it was something like a Stephen King horror.

Trad Wife (2026) follows Jenny Kaplan, a disgraced journalist desperate to resurrect her career.

She travels to the isolated, 300-acre Black Swan Farm in Pennsylvania to write a scathing, undercover exposé on Mia Wright—the internet’s reigning “trad wife” queen who flaunts a flawless, curated life of pastoral bliss, from-scratch meals, and seven perfect children.

What starts as a standard journalistic takedown quickly descends into a surreal, modern gothic nightmare.

Jenny realizes there is a genuinely sinister, suffocating supernatural presence inside the farmhouse.

As the days blur together, Jenny begins suffering from severe memory lapses, unexplained hair loss, and terrifying nightmares of something slithering into her room …

Personally, I support a woman’s right to being a stay-at-home wife or a stay-at-home mother — if her finances and support system allow it. Increasingly difficult in 2026.

Many stay-at-home women are not white nor politically right wing, of course.