Not being much of a fan of thrillers, I have to admit this one is not bad.

1. Gideon’s Sword
2. Gideon’s Corpse
3. The Lost Island
4. Beyond the Ice Limit
5. The Pharaoh Key

The plot is insane, at times. But it’s certainly never boring.

Gideon is an art thief and nuclear researcher turned government agent — who only has 11 months to live.

Gideon’s Corpse (2012) is a thriller by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.

… a sequel to Gideon’s Sword.

The plot focuses on a nuclear scare, the federal reaction, and Gideon’s attempts to unravel the mystery.

This is only the 3rd novel by Julie Otsuka.

Short. In fact, I’d call it two novellas not particularly related to one another.

The 1st a very original and wonderful tale about the people who use a local community pool.

Swimmers.

Almost magic realism.

“In our ‘real lives,’” Otsuka writes, “we are overeaters, underachievers, dog walkers, cross-dressers, compulsive knitters (Just one more row), secret hoarders, minor poets, trailing spouses, twins, vegans, ‘Mom,’… .”

But once in the water, swimmers are only “one of three things: fast-lane people, medium-lane people or the slow.”

L.A. Times review

It reminded me of my days in the Brainsport Running Club.

Once having changed out of work clothes, people group into entirely new castes based on running ability.

The second half of the book — “Belavista” — finds Alice in a long-term memory residence by this name.

While very insightful into life (prison?) in a care facility, I did not enjoy Belavista as much as the first half.

Otsuka is obviously an excellent writer.

I’ll be reading her two earlier books, as well.

Bit of a silly novela. BUT very memorable.

It’s only available as an Audible original.

James Patterson leads you into the darkest recesses of the mind with this chilling, immersive audio thriller. We meet Brent Quill, a frustrated actor trying to take his game to the next level.

When he learns about the intensive Method acting process, he dives in deep—and immediately lands the lead role in a TV series about a brutal serial killer.

But when the Method’s controversial techniques start to take over Brent’s psyche, the lines between real life and acting begin to blur dangerously. How far will Brent go to “become” the character?

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Outrageous and entertaining.

Outlandish and silly.

And entertaining. 😀

Part of the Gideon Series:

1. Gideon’s Sword
2. Gideon’s Corpse
3. The Lost Island
4. Beyond the Ice Limit
5. The Pharaoh Key

Gideon’s Sword is a novel by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. (2011) …

… first installment in the Gideon Crew series.

The story introduces Gideon Crew, a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory who is also a former art thief and master-of-disguise.

He learns from his mother that his mathematician father—who had developed a flawed encryption—had actually warned his boss about the flaws, only to be murdered.

Gideon exacts revenge from his father’s murderer.

As a result of this, he is recruited to be a freelance operative by an ultra-private security and engineering firm working for the Department of Homeland Security.

His mission: to trace and retrieve plans for a mysterious super-weapon being brought to the United States of America by a Chinese scientist before the Chinese can recover them.

Many enjoyed this book. An easy read.

Personally, I found the characters cliche. The plot unsophisticated.

Perhaps the author intended it to be easily turned into a screenplay for a future movie.

On the other hand, it took me 70% of the book to guess the identity of the bad guys.

… a creepy and creative variation on Jurassic Park.

In the near future, advances in gene editing have led to breakthroughs in de-extinction, bringing prehistoric mammals back to life by rebuilding their genomes and muting genes for aggression.

The scientists behind the project have focused on reviving herbivorous megafauna, including mammoths and Irish elk, with the animals allowed to roam inside the spacious confines of Colorado’s Erebus Resort, a luxury attraction near the Rocky Mountains.

When honeymooners Mark and Olivia Gunnerson fall victim to a savage attack at Erebus—their tent is slashed open, pools of blood are left at the scene, and authorities find no signs of their remains—the incident brings Frankie Cash from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to the resort.

She initially believes the attack to be the work of eco-terrorists who object to Erebus’s mission, but as she investigates, more bodies pile up, and the evidence points toward a threat more terrifying than she could have imagined. …

Publisher’s Weekly review

23 1/2 Lies includes one of the Women’s Murder Club (novel series)

Quite good.

James Patterson is the only author. That’s unusual as Maxine Paetro is typically his co-author. And it’s a novella.

Set in San Francisco, the novels follow a group of women from different professions relating to investigating crime as they work together to solve murders. 

Sherlock Holmes and the Shadwell Shadows is a mystery novel by James Lovegrove.

This book is well written.

But WEIRD for Sherlock Holmes fans.

Instead of typical Baker Street consulting detectivry, this is some kind of supernatural horror story.

This one begins in 1880. Watson has returned from Afghanistan an invalid, but the cause of his injury was not as previously stated a Jezail bullet during the Battle of Maiwand, but rather as a result of his first brush with the occult.

It is not to be his last.

He is dragged by accident into one of Holmes’ cases, and from there their friendship grows.

Holmes has been investigating a series of bizarre deaths in the East End district of Shadwell; poor, unfortunate men and women are dying at the height of the new moon, their bodies aged and shrunken in an improbable manner. …

Crime Fiction Writer review

It’s not for me. I won’t be continuing with the series.

Clare Mackintosh is a British author and former police officer..

She became a  full-time writer in 2011. And in 2014 published I Let You Go, a best seller.

It’s intense.

Well written.

There are plot twists that surprised me.

Jenna Gray has rented a spare cottage in a small Welsh town on the coast.

She’s timid and doesn’t interact with many people, just her landlord and a woman at a local shop. She’s running away from the death of a child.

In parallel, Detective Inspector Ray Stevens and a female rookie are working on the case of a young boy killed in a hit-and-run right in front of his mother.

Inevitably, the story reveals itself.