The 14th book in the Lucas Davenport series is a GOOD one.

12-year-old muskrat trapper Letty West is a wonderful character. The plot is intriguing and entertaining: a stolen car ring, an ex-nun who smuggles cancer drugs over the Canadian border, and the usual internecine wrangling between the FBI, the local cops, and Davenp

… in Naked Prey (2003), he puts Lucas Davenport through some changes.

His old boss, Rose Marie Roux, has moved up to the state level and taken Lucas with her, creating a special troubleshooter job for him for the cases that are too complicated or politically touchy for others to handle.

In addition, Lucas is married now, and a new father, all of which is fine with him: he doesn’t mind being a family man. But he is a little worried. For every bit of peace you get, you have to pay — and he’s waiting for the bill.

It comes in the form of two people found hanging from a tree in the woods of northern Minnesota.

What makes the situation particularly sensitive is that the bodies are of a black man and a white woman, and they’re naked.

“Lynching” is the word that everybody’s trying not to say — but, as Lucas begins to discover, in fact the murders are nothing like what they appear to be, and they are not the end of it. …

JohnSandford.org

Hot Mahogany (2008) is an unusual book in the Stone Barrington series.

One night at Elaine’s, Stone Barrington – back in Manhattan after chasing down the bad guys in the Caribbean – meets Barton Cabot, older brother of his sometime ally, CIA boss Lance Cabot.

Barton’s career in army intelligence is even more top secret than his brother’s, but he’s suffering from amnesia following a random act of violence.

Amnesia is a dangerous thing in a man whose memory is chockfull of state secrets, so Lance hires Stone to watch Barton’s back.

As Stone discovers, Barton is a spy with a rather unusual hobby: building and restoring antique furniture.

The genteel world of antiques and coin dealers at first seems a far cry from Stone’s usual underworld of mobsters, murderers, and spies. But Barton also is a man with a past, and one event in particular – in the jungles of Vietnam more than thirty years earlier – is coming back to haunt his present in ways he’d never expected.

Stone soon finds out that Barton, and some shady characters of his acquaintance, may be hiding a lot more than just a few forged antiques.

I’m certain author Stuart Woods had great fun writing these formulaic, entertaining, trashy novels. Especially the James-Bond-like sex scenes.

This is the first book I’ve read by Thomas Perry. I will be downloading more.

His prose is lean, clean and typically understated.

Eddie’s Boy (2020) is one of the Butcher’s Boy series.

… the third sequel to “The Butcher’s Boy,” after “Sleeping Dogs” and “The Informant,” and everything that happens in this book proceeds directly from the events of that first novel.

The title character is a man who calls himself Michael Schaeffer.

Orphaned in adolescence, he was raised by Eddie Mastrewski, a Pittsburgh butcher who was also an accomplished — and much sought after — hit man.

Trained from an early age in both professions, “Michael” became a perfect — and perfectly remorseless — killing machine, lending his peculiar talents to anyone willing to pay. …

The opening sentence of “Eddie’s Boy” sets the stage for what will follow: “Michael Schaeffer had not killed anyone in years, and he was enraged at the fact that he’d had to do it again tonight.” …

Washington Post review

The Waiting: A Ballard and Bosch Novel (2024) is 6th in the Renée Ballard series of books.

I’d say Harry Bosch has passed the torch.

Any author of a police procedural who reads this book knows they are looking upon the master. Nobody does it better than Michael Connelly.

In cold cases, it’s not the hope that kills you. It’s the waiting.

Renée Ballard and the LAPD’s Open-Unsolved Unit get a hot shot DNA connection between a recently arrested man and a serial rapist and murderer who went quiet twenty years ago.

The arrested man is only twenty-four, so the genetic link must be familial: His father was the Pillowcase Rapist, responsible for a five-year reign of terror in the city of angels. But when Ballard and her team move in on their suspect, they encounter a baffling web of secrets and legal hurdles.

Meanwhile, Ballard’s badge, gun, and ID are stolen—a theft she can’t report without giving her enemies in the department ammunition to end her career as a detective. She works the burglary alone, but her mission draws her into unexpected danger.

With no choice but to go outside the department for help, she knocks on the door of Harry Bosch.

At the same time, Ballard takes on a new volunteer to the cold case unit: Bosch’s daughter Maddie, now a patrol officer. But Maddie has an ulterior motive for getting access to the city’s library of lost souls—a case that may be the most iconic in the city’s history.

The Waiting

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Shoot Him If He Runs (2008) is … a guilty pleasure. 😀

Junk food reading.

And it’s not nearly the best of the Stone Barrington series.

Stone Barrington and Holly Barker pursue a master spy and murderer in a tropical paradise …

Rogue agent Teddy Fay has been considered dead for some time now. But President Will Lee thinks Teddy may still be alive. In a top-secret Oval Office meeting, Stone Barrington learns that he and his cohorts, Holly Barker and Dino Bacchetti, are being sent to the beautiful Caribbean island of St. Marks, courtesy of the CIA, to track down Teddy once and for all.

St. Marks is a vacationers’ paradise, but its luxurious beach clubs and secluded mountain villas are home to corrupt local politicians and more than a few American expats with murky personal histories. Stone and Holly soon discover that in St. Marks, everyone is hiding something—and that Teddy Fay may just be hiding in plain sight.

Not nearly one of the best Lucas Davenport mysteries.

It had potential ➙ a multiple personality villain. But I’d agree with this review:

Clunky and Unrealistic

A widow comes home to her large house in a wealthy, exclusive suburb to find blood on the walls, no body — and her college-age daughter missing. She’s always known that her daughter ran with a bad bunch. What did she call them — Goths? Freaks is more like it, running around with all that makeup and black clothing, listening to that awful music, so attracted to death. …

But the police can’t find the girl, alive or dead, and the widow truly panics. There’s someone she knows, a surgeon named Weather Davenport, whose husband is a big deal with the police, and she implores Weather to get her husband directly involved.

Lucas gets in only reluctantly — but then when a second Goth is slashed to death in Minneapolis, he starts working it hard. The clues don’t seem to add up, though. And then there’s the young Goth who keeps appearing and disappearing: Who is she? Where does she come from and, more important, where does she vanish to? …

JohnSandford.org

Like nearly everyone, I was charmed by “Molly Maid” in the 1st book of this series — The Maid (2022).

She’s literally the best maid in the world. 😀

Somewhere on the autism spectrum. 

The Maid’s Secret (2025) is excellent, as well.

Molly has been promoted to Head Maid and Special Events Manager of the Regency Grand Hotel.

She’s in love and looking forward to getting married.

But Molly’s entire existence is upended when a film crew descends upon the hotel to shoot the hit reality TV show Hidden Treasures, starring popular art appraisers Brown and Beagle.

On a whim, Molly brings in a shoebox containing a few of her gran’s old things for appraisal, and much to everyone’s surprise, one item turns out to be a rare and priceless treasure.

Instantly, Molly is both a multi-millionaire and a media sensation—the world’s rags-to-riches darling—until the priceless piece vanishes from the hotel in the boldest, brashest antiquities heist in recent memory.

The key to the mystery lies in the past, in a long-forgotten diary written by Molly’s gran. …

NitaProse.com

Patrick Lee came to prominence with his first novel, The Breach (2009).

I don’t like thrillers and can’t recommend this one, though it is popular.

Actually, the premise and start of the book are excellent. Ambitious and inventive.

If you like Michael Crichton, you’ll probably like this book. And the 2 sequels.

Thirty years ago, in a facility buried beneath a vast Wyoming emptiness, an experiment gone awry accidentally opened a door.

It is the world’s best-kept secret—and its most terrifying.

Trying to regain his life in the Alaskan wilds, ex-con/ex-cop Travis Chase stumbles upon an impossible scene: a crashed 747 passenger jet filled with the murdered dead, including the wife of the President of the United States. Though a nightmare of monumental proportions, it pales before the terror to come, as Chase is dragged into a battle for the future that revolves around an amazing artifact.

Once the characters left Alaska, I started to lose interest. The twists and turns didn’t do anything for me.

Jeffery Deaver is probably my favourite author, overall.

South Of Nowhere (2025) is 5th in the Colter Shaw series.

BUT … this book is not nearly one of my favourites. I found it too slow.

BUT I quite appreciate the mantras that run through Colter’s head, which he picked up from his survivalist father.

In the TV adaptation — Tracker — Justin Hartley plays Colter Shaw. A good pick.

When a levee collapses in Hinowah, a small town in Northern California, Colter Shaw is brought on by his sister, Dorion, a disaster response specialist, to help locate a family swept away by the raging water, with mere hours to survive.

But after a surprise attack along the river obstructs Colter’s urgent search, the siblings are forced to consider a new reality: Is the levee at risk of failing from natural causes, or is someone sabotaging it? Colter and Dorion must race against a ticking clock to uncover the truth and save the citizens before the village washes out completely, destroying everything and everyone in its path.

NOT recommended.

I’ve read all the Inspector Gamache books by Louise Penny.

But I’ve been disappointed with most — and even more disappointed with The Grey Wolf (2024), 19th in the series.

Best are the people of Three Pines — and there is very little of that in this book.

The plot is too complicated and utterly unconvincing. It’s a bad thriller.

Even worse, the clues are nearly non-existent. There’s no way Gamache would have reacted as he did in this one.

Sadly, the next book is likely to be part 2 of this nonsense.

A missing coat, an intruder alarm, a note for Gamache reading “this might interest you”, a puzzling scrap of paper with a mysterious list―and then a murder. All propel Chief Inspector Gamache and his team toward a terrible realization.

Something much more sinister than any one murder or any one case is fast approaching.

Armand Gamache, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, his son-in-law and second in command, and Inspector Isabelle Lacoste can only trust each other, as old friends begin to act like enemies, and long-time enemies appear to be friends.

Determined to track down the threat before it becomes a reality, their pursuit takes them across Québec and across borders. …