This is the first book I’ve read from Naomi Novik.

Novik’s first novel, His Majesty’s Dragon (Temeraire in the UK) is the first novel in the Temeraire series, an alternate history of the Napoleonic Wars in a “Flintlock Fantasy” world where dragons are abundant and are used in aerial combat. …

The dragons of the story are portrayed as sapient and intelligent, capable of logical thought and human speech. The series centers primarily on events involving Temeraire (the titular dragon) and his handler, Will Laurence. …

I found the story refreshingly different. Historical fiction with dragons that speak perfectly on hatching. They learn language through the shell.

It turns out that Temeraire was to be a gift from the Chinese to Napoleon, his personal mount. But the British captured the egg from a French ship.

Deaver books have more twists and turns than any other author.

And he outdoes himself in The Cold Moon, 7th in the Lincoln Rhyme series.

It also introduces CBI agent Kathryn Dance, who would later get her own series of books. She’s one of the nation’s leading experts in interrogation and kinesics—body language.

The brilliant bad guy in this book calls himself the Watchmaker.

This killer’s obsession with time drives him to plan the murders with the precision of fine timepieces, and the victims die prolonged deaths while an eerie clock ticks away their last minutes on earth.

Lincoln Rhyme, Amelia Sachs, and the rest of the crew are tapped to handle the case and stop the Watchmaker and his partner, Vincent Reynolds, a repulsive character with a special interest in the female victims of the killer. …

The Kill Room (2013) is 10th in the Lincoln Rhyme series by Jeffery Deaver.

Robert Moreno, an American citizen living in South America, is killed in the Bahamas by a … sniper (?).

It seems an impossible shot.

Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs are drafted to investigate. 

In fact, Lincoln flies to the Bahamas and tries to work with local authorities.

As always, the research and technology is excellent. Many twists and turns.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Anthony Horowitz is an English novelist and screenwriter.

Anthony, the narrator (a barely fictionalized version of the author), is a modern day Watson to a modern day Holmes called ex-Detective Inspector Hawthorne.

Hawthorne, who is in need of money, proposes that Anthony write a true crime novel about him. A bad idea. Horowitz somehow agrees to a 3 book contract. 

The first in the series was The Word Is Murder. Quite good.

This is the second. And I’d say it’s even better.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

An excellent empty room mystery.

It begins at a prestigious music school in New York City. A killer flees the scene of a homicide and locks himself in a classroom. Within minutes, the police have him surrounded. When a scream rings out, followed by a gunshot, they break down the door. The room is empty.

Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs are brought in to help with the high-profile investigation.  …

jefferydeaver.com

I have to wait a year for each new novel in the Joe Pickett series. 

#23 Storm Watch dropped Feb. 28th, 2023. 

It went to #1 on the NY Times list as well as Publishers Weekly.

All of these books are good. And Storm Watch is as good as the best. 

Fans like me love Joe and his family. Good people in the midst of rightwing, rural Wyoming. 

And we are intrigued by his buddy Nate Romanowski, a rogue falconer.

When a prominent University of Wyoming professor goes missing, authorities are stumped. That is, until Joe Pickett makes two surprising discoveries while hunting down a wounded elk on his district as an epic spring storm descends upon him. 

First, he finds the professor’s vehicle parked on a remote mountainside. Then Joe finds the professor’s frozen and mutilated body. 

When he attempts to learn more, his investigation is obstructed by federal agents, extremists, and Governor Colter Allen.

Nate Romanowski is rebuilding his falconry company—and financing this through crypto mining with the assistance of Geronimo Jones. 

He’s then approached by a shadowy group of local militant activists that is gaining in power and influence, and demanding that Wyoming join other western states and secede from the union—by force, if necessary. ..

It’s quite surprising that a TV series based on these books has happened yet. One recent attempt was quashed by Box. 

Cards on the Table by Agatha Christie has 4 detectives and 4 possible suspects playing bridge after dinner.

At the end of the evening, Mr Shaitana is discovered murdered. 

Who dunnit?

The victim had bragged to Hercule Poirot that he admired criminals who have evaded justice. Successful ones.

Had he deliberately invited killers to dinner?

If you like Jack Reacher, you’ll like war veteran Peter Ash.

This is the 7th book in the series. The best, I’d say. But the bloodiest.

In this one, Ash is driving through northern Nebraska when he encounters a young pregnant woman alone on a gravel road, her car dead.

Peter offers her a lift, but what begins as an act of kindness soon turns into a deadly cat-and-mouse chase across the lonely highways with the woman’s vicious ex-cop husband hot on their trail.

The pregnant woman has seen something she was never meant to see . . . but protecting her might prove to be more than Peter can handle. …

NickPetrie.com

Elly Griffiths’ third Harbinder Kaur mystery.

I like Hardbinder. A 38-year-old detective inspector who’s still living with her Sikh parents — and still hasn’t told them she’s a lesbian.

BUT in this book, Hardbinder finally moves out because she has accepted a new position in the Big Smoke, London.

Her first case is a murder at a school reunion: Garfield Rice, an eminent MP.

Sadly, I came away disappointed. I want to know more about Hardbinder — but chapters are told from the point of view of different suspects. Some unreliable. I didn’t care about any of them.

Agatha Christie would have been disappointed in the resolution of the murder mysteries, as well. It really isn’t very brilliant.

Hopefully book #4 will be better.

Amazon

The Empty Chair is a crime novel by Jeffery Deaver, published 2000.

It is the 3rd novel in a series featuring Lincoln Rhyme; the first of which was made into a movie, The Bone Collector.

Lincoln Rhyme is in North Carolina with his aide Thom and his companion and partner Amelia Sachs in order to receive experimental spine surgery, which may improve or further worsen his C4 quadriplegic disability. 

Whilst there they are approached by a local police sheriff and asked to help in a local case of kidnap and possible rape. They believe the kidnapper to be a local orphaned boy ‘Garret’, the ‘insect boy’.

I have to admire Deaver for being able to write a successful crime scene investigator who is confined to a chair. How does he come up with these plots?

It is well written, interesting, and well researched. Many plot twists as I’ve come to expect from Deaver.