This is the first book I’ve read from Naomi Novik.

Novik’s first novel, His Majesty’s Dragon (Temeraire in the UK) is the first novel in the Temeraire series, an alternate history of the Napoleonic Wars in a “Flintlock Fantasy” world where dragons are abundant and are used in aerial combat. …

The dragons of the story are portrayed as sapient and intelligent, capable of logical thought and human speech. The series centers primarily on events involving Temeraire (the titular dragon) and his handler, Will Laurence. …

I found the story refreshingly different. Historical fiction with dragons that speak perfectly on hatching. They learn language through the shell.

It turns out that Temeraire was to be a gift from the Chinese to Napoleon, his personal mount. But the British captured the egg from a French ship.

Deaver books have more twists and turns than any other author.

And he outdoes himself in The Cold Moon, 7th in the Lincoln Rhyme series.

It also introduces CBI agent Kathryn Dance, who would later get her own series of books. She’s one of the nation’s leading experts in interrogation and kinesics—body language.

The brilliant bad guy in this book calls himself the Watchmaker.

This killer’s obsession with time drives him to plan the murders with the precision of fine timepieces, and the victims die prolonged deaths while an eerie clock ticks away their last minutes on earth.

Lincoln Rhyme, Amelia Sachs, and the rest of the crew are tapped to handle the case and stop the Watchmaker and his partner, Vincent Reynolds, a repulsive character with a special interest in the female victims of the killer. …

The Kill Room (2013) is 10th in the Lincoln Rhyme series by Jeffery Deaver.

Robert Moreno, an American citizen living in South America, is killed in the Bahamas by a … sniper (?).

It seems an impossible shot.

Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs are drafted to investigate. 

In fact, Lincoln flies to the Bahamas and tries to work with local authorities.

As always, the research and technology is excellent. Many twists and turns.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Anthony Horowitz is an English novelist and screenwriter.

Anthony, the narrator (a barely fictionalized version of the author), is a modern day Watson to a modern day Holmes called ex-Detective Inspector Hawthorne.

Hawthorne, who is in need of money, proposes that Anthony write a true crime novel about him. A bad idea. Horowitz somehow agrees to a 3 book contract. 

The first in the series was The Word Is Murder. Quite good.

This is the second. And I’d say it’s even better.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.