I’d already written off  David Baldacci as not nearly as good as Koryta, Rankin, Silva and Michael Connelly. 

So why bother?

He’s super popular but not all that good a writer.

For some reason I tried Baldacci’s 2019 book One Good Deed and was pleasantly impressed.

It’s surprisingly and refreshingly simple.  Slower.  Cleaner.

It’s 1949. When war veteran Aloysius Archer is released from Carderock Prison, he is sent to Poca City on parole with a short list of do‘s and a much longer list of don’ts: do report regularly to his parole officer, don’t go to bars, certainly don’t drink alcohol, do get a job — and don’t ever associate with loose women.

The small town quickly proves more complicated and dangerous than Archer’s years serving in the war or his time in jail. Within a single night, his search for gainful employment — and a stiff drink — leads him to a local bar, where he is hired for what seems like a simple job: to collect a debt owed to a powerful local businessman, Hank Pittleman.

Soon Archer discovers that recovering the debt won’t be so easy. …

The 4th and last book (2009) in the Lincoln Perry series is somewhat like the rest.

Great plot. Lincoln unlikeable as ever.

Alexandra Cantrell, daughter of a notorious Mafia don, and her husband, Joshua, set up a house for paroled murderers.

Only Koryta dreams up things like this.

Parker Harrison served fifteen years for murder but claims Alexandra’s intervention saved his life. Now he wants to find her–and he’s not the only one.

Lincoln Perry takes the job.

I’ve now read all 5 of St. John Mandel’s books.  All excellent.

As usual, Lola jumps forward and backward in time.  No author does this more skillfully.

• Last Night in Montreal (2009)
• The Singer’s Gun (2010)
• The Lola Quartet (2012)
• Station Eleven (2014)
• The Glass Hotel (2020)

“Emily St. John Mandel nails it with The Lola Quartet.

She had me from page one, when Anna, a 17 year old with a new baby and $120,000 in cash which clearly does not belong to her goes on the run.

I loved this tale about what not to do after high school.

It’s the story of four flawed members of a high school jazz band after they graduate, lose contact and disperse to follow their dreams,dreams which one by one melt away as they each struggle and falter in a world where doing the right thing is never as clear as it sounds.

Each is connected to Anna’s colossally bad decision whether they realize it or not, and it eventually forces them back together ten years later, to the story’s dramatic climax. …”

–Kris Kleindienst, Left Bank Books, MO

 

The 3rd book in his Lincoln Perry series.

Koryta certainly improved as a writer once he finished the LP series.

Lincoln Perry is a thoroughly unlikable character.

I did enjoy the plot. But not much else.

…a rising star on the Cleveland police force, Perry ended his career when he left one of the city’s prominent attorneys, Alex Jefferson, bleeding in the parking lot of his country club—retribution for his affair with Perry’s fiancée.

Now Jefferson is dead, the victim of a brutal murder, and his widow has called upon Perry for a favor he knows he shouldn’t accept but can’t turn down …

michaelkoryta.com

Dangerous Minds is the sequel to Curious Minds, introducing Emerson Knight and Riley Moon.

Emerson Knight is a rich, eccentric introvert with little-to-no sense of social etiquette. He is also brilliant and handsome. Riley Moon is a recent Harvard Law and Harvard Business graduate. …

I liked the first book, especially Knight who’s a weird Sherlock Holmes type eccentric.

Both are light weight, easy reads. Young adult.

The plot of Dangerous Minds looked promising: a monk mentor, a missing island, plenty of travel.

But ultimately I found it disappointing. I’ll read no more Janet Evanovich.

My first Coben book. And I enjoyed the funny banter. It’s entertaining.

Deal Breaker (1995) first in his Myron Bolitar series.

A former NBA basketball player, Myron is the owner of MB SportsReps, an agency representing sports stars and celebrities.

Two regular supporting characters in the Myron Bolitar series are his best friend, Windsor Horne Lockwood III (better known as “Win”), and his assistant at MB Reps, Esperanza Diaz.  …

Bolitar is depicted as being a good agent for his clients, taking care of their needs and wants while being careful to not exploit them like bigger agencies. He also helps out clients in times of personal need, which often puts him in the role of “accidental detective.”  …

Deal Breaker starts with Christian Steele, an NFL rookie quarterback, Myron’s prized client, getting a phone call from a former girlfriend, whom everyone, including the police, believes is dead.

Myron is plunged into a baffling mystery of sex and blackmail.

Harlan Coben went to High School with Chris Christie. To Amherst College with writer Dan Brown.

I read the original Odd Thomas in 2012. Really enjoyed it.

It took me 8 years to get around to the 2nd book in the series Forever Odd.

Odd Thomas is a twenty-year-old short-order cook.

Odd is silently approached by the ghost of a young girl brutally raped and murdered, and through his unique ability to understand the dead, is psychically led to her killer, a former schoolmate named Harlo Landerson.

Koontz discloses how Odd was named and begins, layer by layer, to show how Odd’s dysfunctional upbringing has shaped his life, and as those details are uncovered, his supernatural abilities begin to make more sense.

The ghost of Elvis hangs around Odd’s apartment, for example.

“I see dead people. But then, by God, I do something about it.” – Odd Thomas pg. 32

Though the book is simplistic and silly in some ways, I really enjoyed it.

Some of the characters are interesting.

Little Ozzie, for example, a philosopher and obese gourmet cook.

Chief Wyatt Porter is good. I do like the love interest, Stormy Llewellyn.

An Odd Thomas film was released in 2013. Mostly based on the original book

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube. But is only 34% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania is a 2015 New York Times non-fiction bestseller written by Erik Larson.

Though we’ve heard far more about the 2240 people who died on the Titanic, the story of the Lusitania sinking 3 years later is a more compelling story.

1198 died on the Lusitania.

On May 1, 1915, with WWI entering its tenth month, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants.

The passengers were surprisingly at ease, even though Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone. For months, German U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic.

But the Lusitania was one of the era’s great transatlantic “Greyhounds”—the fastest liner then in service—and her captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the gentlemanly strictures of warfare that for a century had kept civilian ships safe from attack.

eriklarsonbooks

Many questions were left unanswered from this disaster.

For example, was Churchill partly responsible?

Should he have provided naval protection for the American commercial ship?

Evidence seems against that conjecture.

Good book.

But his BEST is Devil in the White City.

Adrian McKinty is a Northern Irish writer of crime and mystery novels and young adult fiction, best known for his 2020 award winning thriller, The Chain.

McKinty quit writing in 2017 after being evicted from his rented house, citing a lack of income from his novels, and instead took work as an Uber driver and a bartender.

Upon hearing of his situation, fellow crime author Don Winslow passed some of his books to his agent, the screenwriter and producer Shane Salerno.

In a late-night phone call, Salerno persuaded McKinty to write what would become The Chain.  Salerno loaned the author (“advance on the advance”) $10,000 to help him survive financially during the process.

It’s a very intense book. As a parent, what would you do to get your child back?

“McKinty is one of the most striking and most memorable crime voices to emerge on the scene in years. His plots tempt you to read at top speed, but don’t give in: this writing — sharply observant, intelligent and shot through with black humor — should be savored.”— Tana French

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