Category: books

In the Morning I’ll be Gone by Adrian McKinty

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I’ve become a huge McKinty fan over the #COVID months.

This is book #3 in the Sean Duffy series.

In Belfast, September 1983, in the middle of The Troubles, Sergeant Sean Duffy, one of the few Catholics in the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), is drummed out of the RUC on trumped up charges.

At the same time, Dermot McCann, an IRA master bomber and ex-schoolmate of Duffy’s escapes from the Maze prison and becomes a prime target for British Intelligence.

MI5 drags Duffy out of his drunken retirement to track down McCann.

Wikipedia

Here’s a 2015 interview with the author. Quite a character. Roller coaster of a life.

He didn’t really get famous until his 2020 book The Chain.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Invasion of Privacy by Christopher Reich

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The first book I’ve read by this author, I downloaded because of the digital privacy theme.

Those details are fascinating. Reich does seem to understand technology.

We get to the DEF CON® Hacking Conference in Vegas.

But aside from that, the plot is stupid and lazy.

It kept me going, but I can’t recommend it.

The Fallen by David Baldacci

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The Fallen (2018) is book #4 in the Amos Decker Memory Man series by David Baldacci.

Star FBI detective Amos Decker and his colleague Alex Jamison must solve four increasingly bizarre murders in a dying rust belt town–and the closer they come to the truth, the deadlier it gets …

… It’s a bleak place: a former mill and mining town with a crumbling economy and rampant opioid addiction. Decker has only been there a few hours when he stumbles on a horrific double murder scene. …

davidbaldacci..com

There’s much to like about this book.

Decker is brilliant but socially awkward due to brain injury from an old football hit.

In this one he finally starts showing some empathy to other people, one 6-year-old girl in particular.

BUT … the plot is still 40% too long and complicated. Baldacci needs a more ruthless editor.

Peter Galloway #5 by Randy McCharles

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My brother Randy switched genres from Fantasy to Murder Mystery.

I just finished the 5th novel in his Peter Galloway, Private Investigator, series.

There are more to come.  Perhaps 5 more.

Murder on the Mall (short story)

  1. Murder in Wood Buffalo
  2. The Christmas Carol Murders
  3. Murder in Mazatlan
  4. The Bridal Veil Murders 

Deadliest Outdoor Show on Earth

Book 5 is set in our home town.

In fact, local heroes Nickelback are playing the Saddle Dome.  😀

AND in a nostalgic bit, The Stampeders play a wedding.

Peter Galloway’s pursuit of his mother’s killer brings him back to Calgary, where he determines the accidental death of a rodeo star at the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede is in actuality murder.

Enlisting the aid of RCMP Sergeant Angela Ford, his investigation into the workings of the international rodeo circuit leads to an attempt on his life as well as an answer to the 20-year-old mystery of who killed his mother.eye.

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz

On By Rick McIn books, TV1 Comment

Excellent.

Magpie Murders is a 2016 mystery novel by British author Anthony Horowitz and the first novel in the Susan Ryeland series.

The story focuses on the murder of a mystery author and utilizes a story within a story format.

Susan Ryeland is the editor of the mystery author Alan Conway, who is known for his well-received series of novels centering upon the detective Atticus Pünd and for being very difficult to work with.

Fans are eagerly awaiting Conway’s latest novel, rumored to be the last in the series, but when Susan reads through the manuscript she discovers that it is unfinished.

And that Alan Conway is dead.

Does the manuscript provide clues?

related – PBS Adapting MAGPIE MURDERS as Six-Part Mini-Series

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

A Time for Mercy by John Grisham

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A Time for Mercy is a 2020 legal drama by John Grisham, the sequel to A Time to Kill and Sycamore Row, which features Jake Brigance.

42nd published novel from one of our best story tellers.

Clanton, Mississippi. 1990. Jake Brigance finds himself embroiled in a deeply divisive trial when the court appoints him attorney for Drew Gamble, a timid sixteen-year-old boy accused of murdering a local deputy.

Many in Clanton want a swift trial and the death penalty, but Brigance digs in and discovers that there is more to the story than meets the eye.

Jake’s fierce commitment to saving Drew from the gas chamber puts his career, his financial security, and the safety of his family on the line.

jgrisham.com

Legal, ethical and moral issues. It makes you think.

Click PLAY or watch an excerpt on YouTube.

The Fix by David Baldacci

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3rd book in the Amos Decker series.

Again, very entertaining.

Our hero is 6′ 5″ and an obese 350 lbs.

Amos Decker witnesses a murder just outside FBI headquarters.

A man shoots a woman execution-style on a crowded sidewalk, then turns the gun on himself.

Even with Decker’s extraordinary powers of observation and deduction, the killing is baffling. Decker and his team can find absolutely no connection between the shooter — a family man with a successful consulting business — and his victim, a schoolteacher.

davidbaldacci.com

Drop Shot by Harlan Coben

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Book #2 in the Myron Bolitar series of novels.

Light reading. Funny.

Myron is a formerly renowned basketball player and is the owner of MB SportsReps (or simply MB Reps in later books), an agency representing sports stars and celebrities.

For reasons inexplicable, in each book he turns into some kind of murder mystery detective.

His best friend, Windsor Horne Lockwood III (better known as “Win”), is a billionaire psychopath — but, for some reason, joins Myron for the chase.

A former tennis protege is murdered at the US OPEN — and Myron’s client, who was playing at the time, is the main suspect…

HarlonCoben.com

Like the author, Myron is Jewish. In fact, Myron, in his early 30s, still lives in his parent’s basement.

Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller

On By Rick McIn books, ethics, government, science1 Comment

A Story of Loss, Love and the Hidden Order of Life

Great book.

One thread is the astonishing story of David Starr Jordan, Stanford University’s first president, a leading scientist of his day.

Did he murder Jane Stanford, wife of the University founder?

More interesting to me was the life story of the author, intertwined with her research into this obscure topic. Lulu Miller is hilarious.

One awful thread is the fact that the USA was the first nation to legislate eugenics. Forced sterilization was the law in 32 U.S. states, and actually inspired Hitler.

AND there’s the fact new to me that … Fish Don’t Exist.

Read the National Book Review.

The Last Mile by David Baldacci

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I kind of enjoyed Memory Man, the first book in the Amos Decker series.

Happily, I enjoyed Last Mile, 2nd in the series, more. Interesting and entertaining. Though it bogged down towards the end.

Decker is 6′ 5″ and an obese 350 lbs.

He has perfect memory.

Convicted murderer Melvin Mars is counting down the last hours before his execution–for the violent killing of his parents twenty years earlier–when he’s granted an unexpected reprieve. Another man has confessed to the crime.

Amos Decker, newly hired on an FBI special task force, takes an interest in Mars’s case after discovering the striking similarities to his own life: Both men were talented football players with promising careers cut short by tragedy. Both men’s families were brutally murdered. And in both cases, another suspect came forward, years after the killing, to confess to the crime. A suspect who may or may not have been telling the truth. …

Last Mile

The audio book has two narrators. That normally doesn’t work for me. And it didn’t work this time.

Click PLAY or watch an interview on YouTube. Baldacci writes more books / year than just about anyone.