The 5th book in the excellent Jane Whitefield series is the best yet, I’d say.

Blood Money (2002)

Jane Whitefield, the fearless “guide” who helps people in trouble disappear, make victims vanish, has just begun her quiet new life as Mrs. Carey McKinnon, when she is called upon again, to face her toughest opponents yet.  

Jane must try to save a young girl fleeing a deadly mafioso.   Yet the deceptively simple task of hiding a girl propels Jane into the center of horrific events, and pairs her with Bernie the Elephant, the mafia’s man with the money.  

Bernie has a photographic memory, and in order to undo an evil that has been growing for half a century,he and Jane engineer the biggest theft of all time, stealing billions from hidden mafia accounts and donating the money to charity.  

Heart-stopping pace, fine writing, and mesmerizing characters combine in Blood Money to make it the best novel yet by the writer called “one of America’s finest storytellers,”

Scott Carson is the pen name of Michael Koryta, one of my favourite authors.

“Where They Wait (2021) is so readable, you’ll be a couple of hundred pages in before you realize you’re terrified…and then you can’t put it down. Mesmerizing.”

—Stephen King

I notice that Stephen King is always generous with each author setting a book similar to his style … in Maine. 😀

This book is very readable. It’s a bit slow getting going. But I still recommend it — unless you hate horror.

Recently laid-off from his newspaper and desperate for work, war correspondent Nick Bishop takes a humbling job: writing a profile of a new mindfulness app called Clarity. 

It’s easy money, and a chance to return to his hometown for the first time in years.

The app itself seems like a retread of old ideas—relaxing white noise and guided meditations. But then there are the “Sleep Songs.” A woman’s hauntingly beautiful voice sings a ballad that is anything but soothing—it’s disturbing, and more of a warning than a relaxation—but it works. Deep, refreshing sleep follows.

So do the nightmares.

Linwood Barclay is an excellent author.

Whistle is his 2025 book.

… a supernatural chiller in which a woman and her young son move to a small town looking for a fresh start, only to be haunted by disturbing events and strange visions when they find a mysterious train set in a storage shed.

“Terrific.”— Stephen King on Whistle

It did remind me of a King novel.

The first book in this series — Mindful of Murder — is excellent.

Book 2 not nearly as good.

And book 3 — Contemplation of a Crime (2025) — I could almost call BAD.

Sketchy and unlikely plot. Not much happens.

I won’t continue with these books.

Buddhist butler and reluctant investigator Helen Thorpe bands together with her fellow butler-school graduates to rescue her very wealthy employer and his son …

Butler Helen Thorpe is not one to judge, but the participants in Close Encounters for Global Healing are astonishingly unpleasant.

The five-day program brings together people from across the political spectrum with the goal of helping them bridge their ideological and personal differences. …

The motley assortment of participants includes a burned-out environmental activist, an internet troll, a clued-out consumerist, an alleged white nationalist, and a man who was arrested at the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa. …

No rapprochement between the warring—or at least endlessly bickering—parties seems possible. But when something deadly happens, they must learn to work together. …

This novel — Danger in Numbers — didn’t work for me.

It’s 1st in the Amy Larson & Hunter Forrest FBI book series — but I won’t be continuing.

Amy and Hunter are super likeable protagonists. Graham is a romance author. The romance is compelling.

But the plot is dumb.

Pacing too slow.

A ritualistic murder on the side of a remote road brings in the Florida state police. Special Agent Amy Larson has never seen worse, and there are indications that this killing could be just the beginning.

The crime draws the attention of the FBI in the form of Special Agent Hunter Forrest, a man with insider knowledge of how violent cults operate, who might never be able to escape his own past.

The rural community is devastated by the death in their midst, but people know more than they are saying.

As Amy and Hunter join forces, every lead takes them further into the twisted beliefs of a dangerous group that will stop at nothing to see their will done.

Entertaining escapism. East to read page turners.

Our fantasy hero, Stone Barrington, is back in the sunshine ➙ Key West. Hired to locate the missing son of a very wealthy man.

He walks into a bar. And the guy is there!

Lucky, right?

Nope. The guy’s girlfriend hits Stone on the head in the parking lot. And the chase is on.

As always, beautiful women jump into bed with Stone right after he meets them. Many soon dump him … or are murdered.

This one is slightly more elaborately crafted. Twists and turns.

At least half of the books I read are too slow.

Run (2014) may be the fastest paced thriller I can recall. 😀

I really enjoyed it.

Marc Bowman, a highly successful computer consultant and software designer, walks into his job at a major tech company one morning only to find himself fired on the spot, stonewalled by his boss, and ushered out of the building.

Then things get worse: An explosive argument drives his wife away and a robbery threatens to yank a million-dollar idea—and his whole future—out from under him.

In a matter of hours, Marc has gone from having it all to being sucker-punched by fate. But it’s only Monday, and before the week is over, he’ll be stalked, ambushed, wiretapped, arrested, duped, double- and triple-crossed—until he can’t tell enemies from allies.
 
Suddenly, the only thing standing between him and the wrath of everyone from the FBI to Homeland Security to his desperate ex-bosses is a flash drive full of data that might just be the holy grail of high-tech secrets—and a holy terror in the wrong hands.

Now, as the gloves come off and the guns come out, turning back is hopeless and giving up is madness. The only person left for Marc to trust is himself. And the only thing left to do is keep running—or end up a dead man walking.

Andrew Grant (born 1968) is an English writer and the younger brother of bestselling thriller writer Lee Child.

Grant is in the process of taking over the writing of Child’s Jack Reacher series of thrillers, writing under the new pseudonym Andrew Child.

Silly escapist fantasy. I enjoyed the 2011 book in the Stone Barrington series. 😀

All the books with Herbie Fisher are entertaining.

It’s tough luck for Jim Hackett, founder and owner of Strategic Services, that he got shot to death while he was in Stone’s company, but making his acquaintance has paid big dividends for Stone. In token of Woodman & Weld’s appreciation for landing Strategic Services’ business, managing partner Bill Eggers presents Stone with a $1 million check and dangles a promise of a full partnership before him.

Given Stone’s current lifestyle, however, his settling down with the firm where he’s long been of counsel sounds about as likely as his settling down with just one woman.

When his perennial-nuisance client Herbie Fisher summons Stone to his wedding reception to Christine Gunn, it looks as if Stone may be in for a serious romance with Christine’s sister Adele Lansdown, who recently widowed herself by shooting her abusive husband. Alas, after a brief interlude between the sheets, Adele’s shot to death herself.

Will Stone, so grief-stricken that he doesn’t have sex for nearly a week, be able to focus on catching her killer? Not unless he turns down an offer to accompany Mike Freeman, Hackett’s successor at Strategic Services, on a clandestine flight to extract non-extraditable arms dealer Erwin Gebhardt, aka Pablo Estancia, for Lance Cabot at the CIA.

The mission goes belly-up when Pablo escapes just before the plane lands in the United States …

Kirkus review