An AJ Docker and Banshee Thriller.

Faulty Bloodline (2024) is 2nd in the series of books where former police dog, Banshee, is our favourite character.

Author Gary Gerlacher was a pediatric emergency physician. The emergency room situations in these books are based on real life

AJ Docker (Doc) and his guard dog, Banshee, move to a small town in the mountains for a slower-paced lifestyle.

Doc settles into the idyllic setting with a rewarding job and enriching colleagues, as well as with a romantic interest who leads him to contemplate marriage.

His new life seems perfect until he begins to uncover the town’s dirty secrets. A serial killer hunts in the woods, and dirty money flows throughout the town.

Read the AJ Docker and Banshee Thrillers in any order, or follow the series from the beginning:

1. Last Patient of the Night
2. Faulty Bloodline
3. Sin City Treachery
4. Deadly Equation
5. Terminal Exchanges – coming
6. The Phantom Files – coming March 2026

The second V. I. Warshawski book I’ve read bySara Paretsky.

Again, weird. Original.

First-person narrative from V.I.’s perspective, giving readers direct access to her thoughts and observations. Right or wrong.

I was interested enough to Google and come up with:

A Conversation With Sara Paretsky on the Writing Process (Killer Writers)

like a dog wrestling with a sprinkler, and the sprinkler is always winning

 I was lucky to be friends with P.D. James, who told me she outlined in so much detail that she would write the chapter she wanted to work on a given day. I wish I could do that. I would write so much faster and have so many more books out. I’d be like the Stephen King of private eye novels. …

I have an idea for a crime and characters who can set the story in motion. Then, the story ends up going down a dead-end alley, so I have to back up. Sometimes, the characters change roles. They become more or less prominent or even change whether they’re good or bad …

That makes sense now.

Overboard (2022) has no conventional plot that I could discern.

V.I. is — as usual — protecting Chicago’s weak and vulnerable without getting paid.

There are astonishingly well organized bad guys chasing V.I. — as usual — for reasons unclear.

I do like how they push issues of social and political justice. Paretsky makes clear that she hates Trump.

The Chicago setting is excellent. I love that city.

It’s unapologetically set during the pandemic lockdown.

I might keep reading these books. They are strangely compelling, even without a clear storyline.

WAY too long. It would have been excellent at half the length.

Intriguing plot.

Some good twists.

Ruth Ware has written many popular novels. Often often compared to that of Agatha Christie.

The Woman in Suite 11 (2025) is a direct sequel to The Woman in Cabin 10 which I haven’t read.

When the invitation to attend the press opening of a luxury Swiss hotel—owned by reclusive billionaire Marcus Leidmann—arrives, it’s like the answer to a prayer.

Three years after the birth of her youngest child, Lo Blacklock is ready to reestablish her journalism career, but post-pandemic travel journalism is a very different landscape from the one she left ten years ago.

The chateau on the shores of Lake Geneva is everything Lo’s ever dreamed of, and she hopes she can snag an interview with Marcus.

Unfortunately, he proves to be even more difficult to pin down than his reputation suggests.

When Lo gets a late-night call asking her to come to Marcus’s hotel room, she agrees despite her own misgivings. She’s greeted, however, by a woman claiming to be Marcus’s mistress, and in life-or-death jeopardy.

What follows is a thrilling cat-and-mouse pursuit across Europe, forcing Lo to ask herself just how much she’s willing to sacrifice to save this woman…and if she can even trust her?

An entertaining novel with a lot of humour. Easy read.

Emergency physician AJ “Doc” Docker works in busiest hospital in Houston.

AJ Docker is no stranger of violence, but the brutal torture of murder of an innocent, young patient demands a response.

Together with his policeman friend and Banshee, a loyal police dog, he sets out on a quest for justice for his lost patient.

Doc’s investigation leads him into the dark world of organized crime, and when the killers come after him, it becomes a fight for survival.

Will he survive to find justice for his patient or will he be the next victim of the Dyyavola, the Devil?

Last Patient of the Night

I’ve mixed feelings about Freida McFadden books.

But this one (2022) kept me going.

A woman wakes up every morning starting over again — something like a Groundhog Day experience.

She’s a practicing physician specializing in brain injury so knows what of she speaks.

Tess who suffers from a traumatic brain injury and severe short-term memory loss, not recognizing her own home or the man who claims to be her husband. 

After receiving a cryptic text message warning her not to trust the man calling himself her husband, the unreliable narrator, Tess, must piece together the truth of her life amidst a web of confusion and manipulation.  

Amazon

30th book in the Lucas Davenport series. Always entertaining.

The daughter of a U.S. Senator is monitoring her social media presence when she finds a picture of herself on a strange blog. And there are other pictures… of the children of other influential Washington politicians, walking or standing outside their schools, each identified by name. Surrounding the photos are texts of vicious political rants from a motley variety of radical groups.

It’s obviously alarming — is there an unstable extremist tracking the loved ones of powerful politicians with deadly intent?

But when the FBI is called in, there isn’t much the feds can do. The anonymous photographer can’t be pinned down to one location or IP address, and more importantly, at least to the paper-processing bureaucrats, no crime has actually been committed.

With nowhere else to turn, influential Senators decide to call in someone who can operate outside the FBI’s constraints: Lucas Davenport.

Masked Prey

I’ve been a big fan of the William Warwick books since the beginning.

Seem’s Archer is wrapping up with the 8th and final.

It’s good — but perhaps not as good as the early novels.

Detective William Warwick Books

Nothing Ventured	(2019)	Description / Buy at Amazon
Hidden in Plain Sight	(2020)	Description / Buy at Amazon
Turn a Blind Eye	(2021)	Description / Buy at Amazon
Over My Dead Body	(2021)	Description / Buy at Amazon
Next in Line	(2022)	Description / Buy at Amazon
Traitors Gate	(2023)	Description / Buy at Amazon
An Eye for An Eye	(2024)	Description / Buy at Amazon
End Game	(2025)	Description / Buy at Amazon

London, 2012. The eyes of the world are on Britain as the country prepares to host the Olympic Games.​

But the glare of the spotlight makes London a target for some of the most dangerous people on earth. And the moment the bid is won, an international conspiracy is set in motion to unleash a devastating attack that will leave the world in chaos.​

One man stands between triumph and disaster: Commander William Warwick, heading up Scotland Yard’s elite team.

But as he pursues the shadowy organisation, he sets off a deadly game of cat and mouse which will take him from the bustling streets of London to the hidden corridors of power.

Can Warwick stop the assassin before the greatest show on earth becomes a catastrophe … ​

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.