The first book (2018) in the Atlee Pine series.
I picked this book from dozens of similarly popular current fictions because the lead character is based close to the Grand Canyon.
The premise is interesting. The tale less engaging than I anticipated.
I could take it or leave it.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
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.
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 (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.
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)
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.
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 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.
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
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.
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.
