Action packed.

Another great read in the Lucas Davenport series — this one featuring Virgil Flowers, as well.

Storm Prey (2010) is 20th in the series.

The bad guys in this one are really, really dumb.

Very early, 4:45 on a bitterly cold Minnesota morning, three big men burst through the door of a hospital pharmacy, duct-tape the hands, feet, mouth and eyes of two pharmacy workers, and clean the place out. But then things swiftly go bad, one of the workers dies, and the robbers hustle out to their truck — and find themselves for just one second face to face with a blond woman who’s driven into the garage.

Weather Karkinnen, surgeon, wife of an investigator named Lucas Davenport.

Did she see enough? Can she identify them? Gnawing it over later, it seems to them there is only one thing they can do: Find out who she is, and eliminate the only possible witness….

Surprisingly, this is only the 3rd book I’ve read by Jonathan Kellerman and/or his son Jesse Kellerman.

I enjoyed it. This is the 5th book in the Clay Edison series.

Crime Scene (2017)
A Measure of Darkness (2018)
Half Moon Bay (2020)
The Burning (2021)
The Lost Coast (2024)

I only downloaded because The Lost Coast is a terrific hike in California. 😀 … Unfortunately, there’s only one short day hike in the novel.

It’s been almost a year since Clay Edison was forced out of his job at the coroner’s bureau.

Now he’s on his own, working as a private eye.

When a client brings him a fraud case, Clay dives into a decades-old scheme targeting the vulnerable.

His investigation leads him to a bizarre town buried in the remote California wilderness. The residents don’t care much for outsiders. They certainly don’t like Clay asking questions. And they’ll do just about anything to shut him up.

I liked the missing person plot — it kept me guessing.

And I was charmed by the refreshingly simplistic writing style. Unpretentious.

The first half of the book was all good. The second half dragged a bit. Could have been shorter.

Mind Games is one of the 4 books published by Nora Roberts in 2024.

The woman is a writing machine.

This is one of her typically long books. Many characters. But Roberts is such a terrific story teller that it’s easy to follow.

It’s got a paranormal element, as some of her best books include.

You could still call this a Romance novel, but it’s much, much more. Her books are uplifting for me.

Told in three parts – Tragedy, Living, and The Gift – Roberts proves that her prolific creative mind (at age-79) is still as sharp as ever.

When the tragic murder of her parents ignites twelve-year-old Thea Fox’s psychic abilities, her grandmother Lucy is not surprised because she, too, has the Sight.

Along with those abilities awakened through the tragedy is a connection to Ray Riggs, the man who murdered her parents and who dreams of killing her, too. …

I recommend the audio book as January LaVoy is such a terrific reader.

A cute idea. In New York City, 3 intriguing, smart, and stylish private investigators open Holmes, Marple & Poe Investigations.

… Could they be related to Sherlock Holmes, Jane Marple, and / or Edgar Allan Poe? 😀

Holmes, Margaret & Poe: The Greatest Crime-Solving Team of the Twenty-First Century

by James Patterson (Author) , Brian Sitts (Author)

This book is popular, BUT I’d rank it far below the (very average) standard for a Patterson.

There are 3 or 4 … maybe 5 different plot threads. NONE of the detectives impressed.

It’s an easy read. Sometimes hard to follow.

Give it a miss.

Harlan Coben is a good writer — best known for his Myron Bolitar series.

I Will Find You (2023) is a stand alone novel. Excellent.

An innocent father serving life for the murder of his own son receives evidence that his child may still be alive, and must break out of prison to find out the truth.

I was hooked from the first line.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Quite good, as are all of the Virgil Flowers books.

Bloody Genius was published 2019.

At the local state university, two feuding departments have faced off on the battleground of PC culture. Each carries their views to extremes that may seem absurd, but highly educated people of sound mind and good intentions can reasonably disagree, right?

Then someone winds up dead, and Virgil Flowers is brought in to investigate… and he soon comes to realize he’s dealing with people who, on this one particular issue, are functionally crazy. Among this group of wildly impassioned, diametrically opposed zealots lurks a killer, and it will be up to Virgil to sort the murderer from the mere maniacs.