Over My Dead Body by Jeffrey Archer (2021)

Archer is age-82 as I post.

His most recent series features detective William Warwick.

Over My Dead Body is book #4. Quite good, as usual.

Archer considers himself a story teller, not a writer.

He’s proud that his books have little profanity, violence or sex — yet are entertaining.

In London, the Metropolitan Police have set up a new Unsolved Murders Unit – a cold case squad – to catch the criminals nobody else can. Four victims. Four cases. All killers poised to strike again.

In Geneva, millionaire art collector Miles Faulkner – convicted of forgery and theft – was pronounced dead two months ago. So why is his unscrupulous lawyer still representing a dead client? And who is the mysterious man his widow is planning to marry?

On board luxury cruise liner The Alden, a wealthy clientele have signed up the for opulence and glamour of a trans-Atlantic voyage. But the battle for power at the heart of a wealthy dynasty is about to turn to murder.

And at the heart of all three investigations lies Detective Chief Inspector William Warwick, rising star of the Met. …

jeffreyarcher.com

Heaven’s Keep by William Kent Krueger

Intrepid hero Cork O’Connor faces the most harrowing mission of his life when a charter plane carrying his wife, Jo, goes missing in a snowstorm over the Wyoming Rockies. 

Months after the tragedy, two women show up on Cork’s doorstep with evidence that the pilot of Jo’s plane was not the man he claimed to be.

… Agreeing to investigate, Cork travels to Wyoming, where he battles the interference of local law enforcement who may be on the take, the open hostility of the Northern Arapaho, who have much to lose if the truth is known, and the continuing attempts on his life by assassins who shadow his every move.

At the center of all the danger and deception lies the possibility that Jo’s disappearance was not the end of her, that somewhere along the labyrinthine path of his search, maybe even in the broad shadow of Heaven’s Keep itself, Cork will find her alive and waiting for him.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

The Lincoln Lawyer – season 1

The Lincoln Lawyer is attorney Mickey Haller, half-brother of Michael Connelly’s mainstay character Detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch.

I like the Mickey Haller character, but not as much as Bosch himself.

They appear together in some novels.

Matthew McConaughey played Haller in the excellent 2011 movie adaptation.

Manuel Garcia-Rulfo is Mickey in the 2022 TV adaptation. MUCH different than McConaughey.

My favourite in the TV show is Becki Newton as Lorna Crain, Haller’s 2nd wife and office manager.

I also like Krista Warner as Hayley, Mickey’s teenage daughter. She’s very natural and believable.

Though reviews have been mixed, I quite enjoyed the acting and the plot lines.

The ending is strong. I’m confident season 2 will get the green light.

I’ve never been much of a fan of courtroom procedurals. BUT both this series and the book I was reading — Full Disclosure by Beverley McLachlin — both have cases with tunnel vision. The police assumed from the beginning that husband killed wife.

Full Disclosure by Beverley McLachlin

Beverley McLachlin was the longest-serving Chief Justice of Canada.

Now, after mandatory retirement, she’s a novelist.

Her first book is a legal procedural/mystery/thriller all rolled into one.

One of the strongest elements of this novel is the procedural authenticity, which is to be expected.

It’s not bad. Not great.

There’s nothing Jilly Truitt likes more than winning a case, especially against her former mentor, prosecutor Cy Kenge. Jilly has baggage, the residue of a dark time in a series of foster homes, but that’s in the past. Now she’s building her own criminal defense firm and making a name for herself as a tough-as-nails lawyer willing to take risks in the courtroom.

When the affluent and enigmatic Vincent Trussardi is accused of his wife Laura’s murder, Jilly agrees to defend him, despite predictions that the case is a sure loser and warnings from those close to her to stay away from the Trussardi family. 

CBC review

Endangered by C.J. Box

An early Joe Pickett novel featured an endangered species in Wyoming.

#15 — Endangered — does, as well.

It’s a good book.

Joe Pickett had good reason to dislike Dallas Cates, even if he was a rodeo champion, and now he has even more—Joe’s eighteen-year-old daughter, April, has run off with him.

And then comes even worse news: The body of a girl has been found in a ditch along the highway—alive, but just barely, the victim of blunt force trauma. It is April, and the doctors aren’t sure if she’ll recover.

Cates denies having anything to do with it—says she ran away from him, too—and there’s evidence that points to another man. But Joe knows in his gut who’s responsible. What he doesn’t know is the kind of danger he’s about to encounter. Cates is bad enough, but Cates’s family is like none Joe has ever met before.

Joe’s going to find out the truth, even if it kills him. But this time, it just might.

CJBox.net

Copper River by William Kent Krueger

This 6th book in the series is quite different. Many new and engaging characters.

I like it.

Desperately avoiding the professional hit men who have already put a bullet in his leg, Cork finds sanctuary outside the small Michigan town of Bodine. But while he’s hiding out in an old resort owned by his cousin Jewell DuBois, a bitter widow with a fourteen-year-old son named Ren, the body of a young girl surfaces along the banks of the Copper River.

And then, soon after, another teenager vanishes.

Instead of thwarting his assassins, Cork focuses on tracking a ring of killers who prey on innocent children—desperate to catch them before anyone else falls victim. But as his deadly followers close in, Cork realizes he’s made an error any good man might make—and it may be his last.

williamkentkrueger.com

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926).

Hercule Poirot retires to a village near the home of a friend, Roger Ackroyd, to pursue a project to perfect vegetable marrows. Soon after, Ackroyd is murdered and Poirot must come out of retirement to solve the case.

It is one of Christie’s best known and most controversial novels. There are MANY suspects.

The ending…

I dunno.

There have been many adaptations.

Thunder Bay by William Kent Krueger

Easily the best book in the Cork O’Connor series. So far.

Happy and content in his hometown of Aurora, Minnesota, Cork O’Connor has left his badge behind and is ready for a life of relative peace, setting up shop as a private investigator. But his newfound state of calm is soon interrupted when Henry Meloux, an Ojibwe medicine man and Cork’s spiritual adviser, makes a request: Will Cork find the son that Henry fathered long ago?

With little to go on, Cork uses his investigative skills to locate Henry Wellington, a wealthy and reclusive industrialist living in Thunder Bay, Ontario. When a murder attempt is made on old Meloux’s life, all clues point north across the border. But why would Wellington want his father dead? …

williamkentkrueger.com

Stone Cold by C.J. Box

#14 in the series. It’s a good one.

Everything about the man is a mystery: the massive ranch in the remote Black Hills of Wyoming that nobody ever visits, the women who live with him, the secret philanthropies, the private airstrip, the sudden disappearances.

And especially the persistent rumors that the man’s wealth comes from killing people.

… There are two other men living up at that ranch. One is a stone-cold killer who takes an instant dislike to Joe.

The other is new—but Joe knows him all too well.

The first man doesn’t frighten Joe. The second is another story entirely.

CJBox.net