The love interest in this one is Pat Frank, a blond, slight and attractive young woman who is assigned to check whether he is ready to fly his new plane.
They fall into bed. All good — until her jealous former lover/partner shows up.
Two subplots unfold to move the story along.
The first is a search for Middle Eastern terrorists intent on launching a plot against the U.S. run by Holly and her enthusiastic young assistant, Millicent Martindale, with help from the FBI.
In Dead Aim, an unsuspecting man tries to help a young woman on the edge, and finds himself drawn into a lethal struggle with a deadly adversary–and then another, and another, and another.
The plot is driven by an ex-mercenary soldier who has set up a camp where he trains wealthy people (the only kind who can afford his fees) to hunt and kill other people. The body count is very high. The innocent hero becomes a target.
Translation of My Friends (2025) is excellent, so far as I can tell.
Always interesting and original, this time the author wrote mostly a philosophical look at friendship:
Ted and the painter(KimKim)
Louisa and Fish
Ted and Louisa
4 teenage friends (Ted, Joar, Ali, and KimKim)
It’s dark with far too many deaths. Poverty, abuse, hatred and ugliness of humanity. But very funny, as well.
Mouthy Louisa is an outrageous teenager. Very believable. I wonder if Backman modelled her on some young person he knows. 😀
A story that alternates between two timelines: the present-day journey of an 18-year-old named Louisa, who is grieving the loss of her best friend, and the past, 25 years earlier, when four teenage friends—Joar, Ted, Ali, and the artist C.J. Jat—spent a transformative summer together.
Their friendship and shared secrets lead to the creation of a world-famous painting, which Louisa discovers and becomes obsessed with. Louisa’s journey to learn the story behind the painting connects her own grief to the past lives of the four friends, exploring themes of friendship, loss, trauma, and the healing power of art and human connection.
A.I. summary
“This is Fredrik Backman at the height of his empathy and resonance. . . I frequently paused to marvel at the way Backman captured the rebellion of joy, the ferocity of devotion, and the cruelty of indifference. Every Backman book should come with the warning that your heart will be split in two, but also, more importantly, with the assurance that it will be repaired with restored faith in the small miracles of being human.” —NPR, Favorite Fiction Reads of 2025
Part 1 of an intriguing story. I’m looking forward to the sequel to be published 2026.
I’ve always considered Baldacci to be a lightweight pop fiction writer, cranking them out. BUT his recent books have been much more serious writing.
Walter Nash is a happy, wealthy, boring business executive.
However, following his estranged Vietnam-veteran father’s funeral, Nash is unexpectedly approached by the FBI in the middle of the night.
They have an important request: become their inside man to expose an enterprise that is laundering large sums of money ….
At the top of this illegal operation is Victoria Steers, an international criminal mastermind that the FBI has been trying to bring down for years.
Nash has little choice but to accept the FBI’s demands …
But when Steers discovers that Nash is working with the FBI, she turns the tables on him in a way he never could have contemplated. And that forces Nash to take the ultimate step both to survive and to take his revenge: He must become the exact opposite of who he has always been.
Dead Land (2020) is the first of her books I’ve read.
It’s an odd but entertaining book.
For some reason, V. I. Warshawski investigates this case without getting paid by anyone.
Not much happens plot-wise. BUT that doesn’t stop Vic.
The main reason to read it to follow the first-person narrative of the sarcastic, funny, and fiercely self-reliant character.
Chicago is the city of broad shoulders, but V.I. Warshawski knows its politics: “Pay to Play.” Money changes hands in the middle of the night; by morning, buildings and parks have been replaced by billion-dollar projects.
Private investigator V.I. gets pulled into one of these clandestine deals when her impetuous goddaughter Bernie tries to rescue a famous singer-songwriter, now living on the streets.
Thanks to Bernie, V.I. finds herself in the path of some developers whose negotiating strategy is simple: they bulldoze – or kill – any obstacle in their way.
Questions pile up almost as fast as the dead bodies. When she tries to answer them, the detective finds a terrifying conspiracy stretching from Chicago’s parks to a cover-up of the dark chapters in the American government’s interference in South American politics.
BEST was the ending — not always easy to do with novels.
Paul and Sylvie Turner are the bad guys. Hired to murder a woman who knows too much.
Six years ago, Jack Till helped Wendy Harper disappear. But now her ex-boyfriend and former business partner, Eric Fuller, is being framed for her presumed murder in an effort to smoke her out, and Till must find her before tango-dancing assassins Paul and Sylvie Turner do.
The Proving Ground (2025) is 8th in the Mickey Haller (Lincoln Lawyer) series. Possibly the best yet.
A courtroom procedural. Mikeywith a case against an AI company whose product may have been responsible for the murder of a teenage girl.
It’s set post-Covid. During fires in L.A.
Very contemporary.
… a chatbot told a sixteen-year-old boy that it was okay for him to kill his ex-girlfriend for her disloyalty.
Representing the victim’s family, Mickey’s case explores the mostly unregulated and exploding AI business and the lack of training guardrails.
Along the way he joins up with a journalist named Jack McEvoy (The Poet), who wants to be a fly on the wall during the trial in order to write a book about it.
But Mickey puts him to work going through the mountain of printed discovery materials in the case. McEvoy’s digging ultimately delivers the key witness, a whistleblower who has been too afraid to speak up. The case is fraught with danger because billions are at stake.
Rick McCharles 