This is only my 2nd Quirk book — but I’d call both silly non-stop action thrillers with very little else to recommend them. He’s not my kind of author.
Suspend your disbelief.
As a Secret Service agent, Nick Averose spent a decade protecting the most powerful men and women in America and developed a unique gift: the ability to think like an assassin.
Now, he uses that skill in a little-known but crucial job. As a “red teamer,” he poses as a threat, testing the security around our highest officials to find vulnerabilities—before our enemies can. He is a mock killer, capable of slipping past even the best defenses.
His latest assignment is to assess the security surrounding the former CIA director at his DC area home. But soon after he breaches the man’s study, the home’s inner sanctum, Nick finds himself entangled in a vicious crime that will shake Washington to its foundations—as all the evidence points to Nick.
He knows he’s the perfect scapegoat. But who is framing him, and why? To clear his name, he must find the truth—a search that leads to a dark conspiracy whose roots stretch back decades. The prize is the most powerful position in the world: the Oval Office.
If I was editing, I would have cut the length of the novel in half. Many threads did not contribute to the plot resolution.
I Am Pilgrim (2015) is the debut novel by former journalist and screenwriter Terry Hayes. …
“Pilgrim” is an American former intelligence agent known as the “Rider of the Blue” who later writes a book on forensic pathology. …
The “Saracen” is a Saudi who becomes radicalized by watching his father’s beheading. He later trains as a doctor and fights in the Soviet–Afghan War.
Pilgrim is recalled to the intelligence community who have detected a threat involving the Saracen, who has created a vaccine-resistant strain of the variola major virus. Smallpox.
Smallpox is estimated to have killed up to 300 million people in the 20th century and around 500 million people in the last 100 years of its existence.
Inoculation for smallpox appears to have started in China around the 1500s. In 1796, Edward Jenner introduced the modern smallpox vaccine.
unvaccinated and vaccinated twins
Officially, 2 live samples of variola major virus remain, one in the United States at the CDC in Atlanta, and one at the Vector Institute in Koltsovo, Russia.
Between 65 and 80% of survivors are marked with deep pitted scars (pockmarks), most prominent on the face.
Clayton Deese looks like a small-time criminal, muscle for hire when his loan shark boss needs to teach someone a lesson. Now, seven months after a job that went south and landed him in jail, Deese has skipped out on bail, and the U.S. Marshals come looking for him. They don’t much care about a low-level guy — it’s his boss they want — but Deese might be their best chance to bring down the whole operation.
Then, they step onto a dirt trail behind Deese’s rural Louisiana cabin and find a jungle full of graves.
Now Lucas Davenport is on the trail of a serial killer who has been operating for years without notice. His quarry is ruthless, and — as Davenport will come to find — full of surprises…
Detective Sgt. Lindsay Boxer, her family, and her friends of the Women’s Murder Club have much to celebrate. Crime is down. The courts are slow and the medical examiner’s office is quiet. Journalist Cindy Thomas is working on a story about the true meaning of Christmas in San Francisco.
Then a series of crimes and threats of horrific crimes to come put the entire police force into nonstop action. At first, all they have is a name, “Loman,” behind the threats. It takes until Christmas before enough pieces come together to find enough to hope to pinpoint where Loman can be caught.
The 20th Victim
Very good. One of my favourites.
Sergeant Lindsay Boxer tackles an ambitious case that spans San Francisco, L.A., and Chicago in this pulse-pounding thriller of “smart characters” and “shocking twists” (Lisa Gardner, #1 New York Times bestselling author).
Three victims, three bullets, three cities. The shooters’ aim is as fearsomely precise as their target selection. When Lindsay realizes that the fallen men and women excel in a lucrative, criminal activity, she leads the charge in the manhunt for the killers. As the casualty list expands, fear and fascination with this suspicious shooting gallery galvanizes the country. The victims were no angels, but are the shooters villains . . . or heroes?
21st Birthday
Also great.
Detective Lindsay Boxer takes a vow to protect a young woman from a serial killer long enough to see her twenty-first birthday.
When young wife and mother Tara Burke goes missing with her baby girl, all eyes are on her husband, Lucas. He paints her not as a missing person but a wayward wife—until a gruesome piece of evidence turns the investigation criminal.
While Chronicle reporter Cindy Thomas pursues the story and M.E. Claire Washburn harbors theories that run counter to the SFPD’s, ADA Yuki Castellano sizes Lucas up as a textbook domestic offender . . .who suddenly puts forward an unexpected suspect. If what Lucas tells law enforcement has even a grain of truth, there isn’t a woman in the state of California who’s safe from the reach of an unspeakable threat.
I couldn’t get into the nonstop pursuit. It seemed absurd to me that the villains didn’t simply start breaking vials of toxins throughout the chase.
Toxic Prey (2024) is John Sandford’s 33rd book in the Prey series.
Lucas Davenport and his daughter, Letty, team up to track down a dangerous scientist.
Climate change activists want to release a deadly virus to reduce the world’s population. They hope that fewer humans would result in the Earth rebalancing.
Macdonald’s writing built on the pithy style of his predecessors by adding psychological depth and insights into the motivations of his characters. …
Gradually he swapped the hard-boiled trappings for more subjective themes: personal identity, the family secret, the family scapegoat, the childhood trauma; how men and women need and battle each other, how the buried past rises like a skeleton to confront the present. …
In The Zebra-Striped Hearse (1962), Archer hunts a missing girl who may be dead, possibly murdered.
His path repeatedly crosses a group of young surfers who own a hearse painted in gay zebra stripes. To the youngsters, death is remote and funny. To the world-weary detective, it’s close and grim.
For a book written in the 60s, I found it surprisingly smart. The themes would be contemporary today.
In fact, I would not call it much dated — though women are an inferior species. 😀
Rebus retired at age-60 in book #17 — Exit Music. (2007)
But the man somehow carries on. 😀
In this book, John Rebus is in prison. Convicted of murdering his lifelong nemesis, Morris Gerald Cafferty
An interesting premise, but I wouldn’t call this one of the strongest in the long series.
JOHN REBUS SPENT HIS LIFE AS A DETECTIVE PUTTING EDINBURGH’S MOST DEADLY CRIMINALS BEHIND BARS. NOW, HE’S JOINED THEM. As new allies and old enemies circle, and the days and nights bleed into each other, even the legendary detective struggles to keep his head.
That is, until a murder at midnight in a locked cell presents a new mystery. They say old habits die hard…
However, this is a case where the prisoners and the guards are all suspects, and everyone has something to hide.
With no badge, no authority and no safety net, Rebus walks a tightrope – with his life on the line.
But how do you find a killer in a place full of them?
I’ve really gotten into the Women’s Murder Club novel series by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro.
When Maxine Paetro is co-author, Patterson books are better.
I’m not sure why.
That said, Detective Lindsay Boxer is annoying. It makes no sense that she’s such a good cop while simultaneously being an anxious human and terrible MOM.
I’d like to see more books written from the perspective of the other 3 in the Murder Club.
Just as bombs are starting to go off in her personal life, an explosive tragedy rocks San Francisco, plunging the city into chaos.
Pressed into duty to investigate a criminal plot that stretches around the globe, Detective Lindsay Boxer again finds herself following signs that lead to her own front door.
Thrown into a tailspin and fighting against powerful enemies trying to protect their operatives and conceal the truth at all costs, Lindsay turns to the Women’s Murder Club for help as she desperately searches for the elusive, and deadly, blonde …
Still recovering from her husband’s betrayal, Detective Lindsay Boxer faces a series of heart-stopping crimes and a deadly conspiracy that threatens to destroy San Francisco.
… a wave of mysterious and possibly unnatural heart attacks claims seemingly unrelated victims across San Francisco.
As if that weren’t enough, the bomber she and Joe captured is about to go on trial, and his defense raises damning questions about Lindsay and Joe’s investigation. Not knowing whom to trust, and struggling to accept the truth about the man she thought she knew, Lindsay must connect the dots of a deadly conspiracy before a brilliant criminal puts her on trial.
Write just 1 plotline, this is a self-contained novella that Patterson dubbed a Bookshot.
Bookshots were around 150 pages and were all-new original stories. James Patterson’s vision was that these would be sold on magazine racks and be marketed toward people who said they didn’t have enough time to read.
A (supposed) murder victim wakes up in Claire’s morgue dazed, confused, and obviously covering for someone. She claims she can’t recall the man she was sleeping with who was killed beside her in a hotel room be.
Medical Examiner Claire Washburn is the main character in this short story.
This one has an important story line ➙ a woman boss is accused of raping one of her male employees at gunpoint.
When a series of shootings exposes San Francisco to a mysterious killer, a reluctant woman decides to put her trust in Sergeant Lindsay Boxer. The confidential informant’s tip leads Lindsay to a disturbing conclusion: something has gone horribly wrong inside the police department.
The hunt for the killer lures Lindsay out of her jurisdiction and impacts her in dangerous ways. She suffers unsettling medical symptoms, and her friends in the Women’s Murder Club warn her against taking the crimes to heart. But with lives at stake, the detective can’t help but follow the case into terrifying terrain.
18th Abduction
This was the weakest of the four. Great premise for a book. But the action in San Francisco is simply stupid. Even for a Patterson book.
Detective Lindsay Boxer’s investigation into the disappearance of three teachers escalates from missing persons to murder …
For a trio of colleagues, an innocent night out after class ends in a deadly torture session. They vanish without a clue — until a body turns up.
As the chief of police and the press clamour for an arrest in the “school night” case, Lindsay turns to her best friend, investigative journalist Cindy Thomas. Together, Lindsay and Cindy take a new approach to the case, and unexpected facts about the victims leave them stunned.
While Lindsay is engrossed in her investigation, her husband Joe meets an Eastern European woman who claims to have seen a notorious war criminal — long presumed dead — from her home country. Before Lindsay can verify the woman’s statement, Joe’s mystery informant joins the ranks of the missing women.
Lindsay, Joe, and the entire Women’s Murder Club must pull together to protect their city and one another — not from a ghost, but from a true monster.
Rick McCharles 