When CIA operative Jenny Silkwell is murdered in rural Maine, government officials have immediate concerns over national security. Her laptop and phone were full of state secrets that, in the wrong hands, endanger the lives of countless operatives.
In need of someone who can solve the murder quickly and retrieve the missing information, the U.S. government knows just the chameleon they can call on.
Ex-Army Ranger Travis Devine … Devine must ingratiate himself with locals who have trusted each other their whole lives, and who distrust outsiders just as much.
I don’t recall reading any other books by Anne Perry, who died April 2023, aged 84. Heart attack.
Twenty-one Days (2018) is the first book in the Daniel Pitt series.
Not bad. Historical fiction.
Too slow for me. Mostly talk. Little action.
But the mystery of the murder kept me interested.
Almost literally yanked out of the courtroom where he’s defending dicey private inquiry agent Roman Blackwell on a charge of homicide, Daniel Pitt, who’s been a junior barrister for only a year, is tapped to assist his distinguished colleague Toby Kitteridge in the much higher-profile defense of Russell Graves, a tell-all biographer charged with bashing his wife, Ebony, to death in her bedroom and setting her head on fire.
The case is already winding down when Daniel steps into the Old Bailey, and his emotional last-minute questions aren’t enough to save Graves from a guilty verdict.
But Marcus fford Croft, Daniel’s head of chambers, doesn’t intend to let that verdict stand. He demands that Kitteridge and Daniel get it reversed …
In 1994, it became public knowledge that Perry had been convicted for murder as a teenager while living in Christchurch, New Zealand. In 1954, at the age of fifteen, she and her 16-year-old friend Pauline Parker murdered Parker’s mother, Honorah Rieper. After serving a five-year sentence for the murder, she changed her name and returned to the United Kingdom.
Duma Key (2008) by Stephen King is another scary story from the world’s best story teller.
The first 2/3rds of this one are entertaining. … (I should have quit after his art show.)
I laughed out loud. Often.
Wireman is one of the better characters in fiction, I can recall.
At my age, I appreciate King’s many pop culture references.
But it’s a horror — not my favourite genre.
As usual, there is a fair bit of the paranormal, as well.
And the book is too long. Like most King books.
Edgar Freemantle, a wealthy Minnesotan building contractor, barely survives a severe worksite accident wherein his truck is crushed by a crane. Edgar loses his right arm while suffering severe head injuries impairing his speech, vision, and memory. During his long recovery, he experiences suicidal thoughts and violent, abusive mood swings, spurring his wife to file for divorce.
On the advice of his psychologist, Dr. Kamen, Edgar relocates southward and rents a beach house on the island of Duma Key, off the Florida coast. …
King wrote this shortly after he was struck by a van and while he questioned his mortality.
Sequels, especially ones that follow a great series-starter, are always hit-or-miss. They often have a lot to live up to and I must say that Death Comes to Marlow was brilliant and just as fun to read as the first book in the series, The Marlow Murder Club …
Judith, Suzie, and Becks face a locked-room conundrum complete with lots of family drama on the side.
The mystery had lots of fun twists and turns, red herrings and even a second body later on in the story. …
Author Maurice Leblanc featured Lupin in 17 novels and 39 novellas.
The story follows professional thief Assane Diop, the only son of an immigrant from Senegal who had come to France to seek a better life for himself and his child.
Assane’s father is framed for the theft of an expensive diamond necklace by his employer, the wealthy and powerful Hubert Pellegrini, and dies in his prison cell, leaving the fourteen-year-old Assane to fend for himself on the streets of Paris.
Twenty-five years later, inspired by a book about gentleman thiefArsène Lupin his father had given him on his birthday, Assane sets out to get revenge on the Pellegrini family …
The hilariously bad voice over and subtitles in English didn’t bother me (for a change). In fact, it almost adds to the silliness of some of the plot lines. 😀
Though trying to quit the bleak Nordic Noir murder mystery genre, I make an exception for Kepler.
I DO want to find out what happens to Joona Linna and Saga Bauer.
Especially Joona. He is most admirable.
Spider (2022) is 9th in the series.
Saga Bauer received a postcard with a threating message about a gun with nine white bullets – one of them intended for Joona Linna – and Saga was the only one that could save him. …
A bag with an almost completely dissolved body is found strapped to a tree in Kapellskär. A milky-white cartridge is found at the murder scene. Through complex riddles, a bestial perpetrator appears to give the police the opportunity to stop the series of murders.
Joona Linna and Saga Bauer fight side by side to solve the puzzle and save the chosen victims before it’s too late. …
Lars Kepler is the pseudonym of husband and wife team Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril (born 1966) and Alexander Ahndoril. Best-selling author – Swedish or international – in Sweden, across all categories, genres and formats.
Sarah Cook, who was a gorgeous teenage blond vanished fifteen years back, which was the same night her parents were brutally killed in their Ohio home. Brad Stockton (who is black, from the wrong part of town, and Sarah’s boyfriend at the time) is on death row, after being convicted for the killings.
Despite this, he always maintained that he was innocent of the crime. His execution date is just weeks away, and his sister, devoted to him, insists that she spotted Sarah Cook at a gas station in the town. She hires private investigator Roxane Weary to look at the case one more time. …
Though there’s no sex, no profanity — right wing snowflakes in Florida managed to get him banned from some appearances. Good publicity, of course. 😀
Hiaasen is one of the funniest authors working today. But humour is less important in this one.
A longtime journalist with the Miami Herald, Hiaasen simply takes actual stories from the Florida news — and fictionalizes them.
He mocks American culture and Florida politics, in particular.
Released on September 26, 2023, Wrecker is set in Key West during the COVID-19 pandemic. Kirkus Reviews called it, “A batten-down-the-hatches thriller anchored by critical real-life themes“.
Fifteen-year-old Valdez Jones VIII calls himself Wrecker, after his ancestors who made a living salvaging shipwrecks. He is thriving thanks to the online schooling during lockdown that allows him the flexibility to be out on his boat. …
This thrilling story featuring wry, witty writing also explores the history of racism in Key West, the environmental impacts of cruise tourism, and the effects of Covid-19 on both people’s lives and criminal activities. Wrecker is a sympathetic character whose intelligence, savvy, and strong moral compass lead to a satisfying finish.
Intelligent — you won’t be surprised that he hates Trump.
Author James Patterson offered this praise: “Carl Hiaasen remains the undefeated, unscored-upon conscience of Florida, maybe the conscience of the whole country.
FBI Agent Peter Sutherland is thrown into a vast conspiracy about a mole at the highest levels of the United States government.
To save the nation, he plunges into a desperate hunt for the traitor, while protecting former tech CEO Rose Larkin from the people who murdered her aunt and uncle. …
A terrific 2002 standalone novel by the author of the Harry Bosch books.
Would you risk your life for a woman you’d never met?
Henry Pierce has a whole new life — new apartment, new telephone, new telephone number. But the first time he checks his messages, he discovers that someone had the number before him.
The messages on his line are for a woman named Lilly, and she is in some kind of serious trouble.
Pierce is inexorably drawn into Lilly’s world, and it’s unlike any world he’s ever known. It is a nighttime world of escort services, websites, sex, and secret identities. …
Pierce’s skills as a computer entrepreneur allow him to trace Lilly’s last days with some precision. But every step into Lilly’s past takes Pierce deeper into a web of inescapable intricacy — and a decision that could cost him everything he owns and holds dear.
Rick McCharles 