Wow.

Very intriguing plot. Very original format.

The mystery concerns a long-ago triple — or was it quadruple? — suicide in a London cult, involving a leader self-styled as the Angel Gabriel.

The cult was called the Apperton Angels.

Leader Gabriel survived but is in prison for life for another murder.

Amanda Bailey, a terrier-like true-crime author, decides to write a retrospective book focused on the baby in the incident who will soon be turning age-18.

The Angels had believed that baby was the Antichrist. They had planned to sacrifice the child to save the world. Happily, the mother ran off with it.

The story is told using something called the “Dossier Method”.  

It’s simple: background information is revealed about a principal character via two or more side characters looking over written text—tweet, Facebook post, Instagram post, DM, etc. —about said principal character and discussing it.

The book feels more like the outline of a planned book.

It gets even more complicated when a second journalist decides to write a retrospective on the Atherton Angels at the same time.

In any case — it’s recommended.

The dumbest of the Alex Cross series I’ve read, so far.

The novel has received a mostly negative response, and maintains a 2.5 rating (out of a possible five) on Amazon.com.^[2] Several critics have attacked the story’s graphic scenes of violence and torture …

Seems Patterson REALLY wanted to draw attention to atrocities in Africa — so devised a plot to get Alex over there unofficially.

Cross Country (2008) is the 14th novel in the Alex Cross series by James Patterson. 

The bad guy is really BAD. An African warlord known as the Tiger. He trains young boys from refugee camps to become killers.

Why? WHY when the Tiger has plenty of money and access to private jets?

It one of dozens of plot holes.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Win is a 2021 mystery/thriller novel by Harlan Coben.

Win is the most interesting character in the Myron Bolitar series. An anti-hero.

I was quite keen to learn his backstory.

Following eleven novels in Coben’s series featuring sports agent-turned-crime solver Myron Bolitar, this is the first novel to completely feature Myron’s best friend and sidekick, the wealthy and mysterious Windsor “Win” Horne Lockwood III. …

An elderly man who appears to be a recluse and hoarder is found murdered in his luxury Manhattan apartment.

The FBI contacts Win when two items connected to the Lockwood family – an original Johannes Vermeer painting that was stolen 20 years ago and a suitcase bearing Win’s initials – are found in the apartment.

The FBI’s interest becomes clear when the victim is revealed to be Ry Strauss, one-time member of the underground group known as the Jane Street Six, who were responsible for a fire bomb attack that killed seven people in the early 1970s.

Win runs his own concurrent investigation, as he “has three things the FBI doesn’t; a personal connection to the case; an ungodly fortune; and his own unique brand of justice. …

Win’s investigation has him searching for the four remaining members of the Jane Street Six, with two known to be deceased, while he also digs into family secrets over his father’s objections.

Along the way, a vigilante act Win carried out against a basketball coach and abuser leads to repercussions, nearly costing Win his life.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

The 8th book (2014) in the Virgil Flowers series ➙ Deadline.

This is the one many people remember vividly.

Investigating kidnapped dogs. And a murdering School Board.

Very entertaining.

In Southeast Minnesota, down on the Mississippi, a school board meeting is coming to an end. The board chairman announces that the rest of the meeting will be closed, due to personnel issues.

“Issues” is correct. The proposal up for a vote before them is whether to authorize the killing of a local reporter. The vote is four to one in favor.

Meanwhile, not far away, Virgil Flowers is helping out a friend by looking into a dognapping, which seems to be turning into something much bigger and uglier—a team of dognappers supplying medical labs—when he gets a call from Lucas Davenport. A murdered body has been found—and the victim is a local reporter. . . .

I read the 1st book in this series —Murder on the Oxford Canal (2004) — and got pissed off with Faith Martin, the author.

I was turned off by the barrage of (mostly negative) comments about the looks of the female characters.

Trying again, I jumped to more recent books:

• Murder Never Retires (2012)
• Murder of a Lover (2013) … a sequel

The super star of the book series is Detective Inspector (DI) Hillary Greene.

Though she’s the best investigator by far anywhere near Oxford, England — I’m irked by Hillary’s ego.

Just like the author.

There’s still far too much criticism of the looks and weight of characters in the book, both women and men now.

This is a 2016 — audio first — novella which fits into the lengthy list of Alex Cross books.

Free for Audible subscribers, I believe.

Surprisingly good.

Along Came a Spider killer Gary Soneji has been dead for over ten years. Alex Cross watched him die. But today, Cross saw him gun down his partner.

Is Soneji alive? A ghost? Or something even more sinister?

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One of those dumb, entertaining adventure romps.

The Codex (2003) is a thriller novel by Douglas Preston …

It takes place in the Southwestern United States and Central America. …

Maxwell Broadbent, an eccentric rich man with terminal cancer, has spent his entire life collecting valuable art and treasures from around the world.

One day, he writes a letter to his three sons telling them to … find his tomb, promising that the son that finds his tomb will receive all his treasures—worth approximately $300 million. …

Tom is the only one who is not interested in the treasure at all, until he is approached by a beautiful ethnopharmacologist named Sally Colorado, who informs … that his father tried to present an ancient Mayan Codex to a museum for translation years back, only to be rejected since no one knew ancient Mayan at the time.

Years later, after ancient Mayan has been deciphered, Sally and her fiancé, Yale professor Julian Clyve, have deduced from a single surviving photograph that the Codex may contain many ancient Mayan herbal remedies that, if studied and reproduced in present times, could revolutionize medicine and cure many diseases.

Tom reluctantly agrees to help her, and they eventually recruit a witty tribal elder named Don Alfonso, accompanied by the brother trackers Pingo and Chori.