Another kinda dumb, non-stop action, entertaining read.
19th Christmas is the nineteenth novel in the Women’s Murder Club novel series by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro.
Better than average, I’d say.
Christmas is coming …
Detective Sgt. Lindsay Boxer, her family, and her friends of the Women’s Murder Club have much to celebrate. Crime is down. The courts are slow and the medical examiner’s office is quiet.
Journalist Cindy Thomas is working on a story about the true meaning of Christmas in San Francisco.
Then a series of crimes and threats of horrific crimes to come put the entire police force into nonstop action.
At first, all they have is a name, “Loman,” behind the threats. It takes until Christmas before enough pieces come together to find enough to hope to pinpoint where Loman can be caught.
I liked the first 3 books in the series, but can’t recommend this one.
I can barely recall the plot, it seemed so random and disjointed. Coyotes, nuclear weapons, murders in a church, an angry ghost of Frank Sinatra.
Odd Thomas is a fictional character who first appeared in Dean Koontz‘s 2003 novel of the same name, Odd Thomas. He is a twenty-year-old man who lives in the fictional desert town of Pico Mundo, California, and is able to see the spirits of the dead. He is able to make himself heard to them but they cannot speak to him, although they may make signs or mouth words. This fact complicates much of the books. …
Meghan Michaels is trying to find balance between being a single mom and working full time as an ICU nurse, when a patient named Caitlin arrives in her ward with a traumatic brain injury. They say she jumped from a bridge and plunged over twenty feet to the train tracks below.
A shocking revelation.
When a witness comes forward with new details about Caitlin’s fall, it calls everything they know into question. Was a crime committed? Did someone actually push Caitlin, and if so, who… and why?
No one is safe.
Meghan lets herself get close to Caitlin until she’s deeply entangled in the mystery surrounding her. Only when it’s too late, does she realize that she and her daughter could be the next victims…
I noted again that the DRAMA in all these psychological thrillers with “Girl”, “Woman”, or “She” in the title are caused by lying. One lie leads to the next. And the next. Then the murder.
… centers upon people struggling to survive while a highly infectious virus decimates Massachusetts.
… hospitals are ill-equipped to deal with both virus victims and their regular capacity.
People are terrified and it is only a matter of time before the emergency protocols become inadequate.
The novel follows Natalie, a pregnant woman, and her friend Ramola “Rams” Sherman, a pediatrician, as they try to fight their way to the hospital to obtain the rabies vaccine.
Natalie has been bitten by an infected neighbor while unsuccessfully trying to defend her husband, who was (killed).
It was written before COVID-19. Published July 7, 2020.
I’m thinking the author did some late edits, reflecting what was going on with our real pandemic.
I’m surprised I got through this crime fiction, murder mystery as there are almost no likeable characters.
I won’t continue with the series.
Gemma is a good cop. A bad parent. A horrible human being.
The lead homicide investigator in a rural town, Detective Sergeant Gemma Woodstock is deeply unnerved when a high school classmate is found strangled, her body floating in a lake. And not just any classmate, but Rosalind Ryan, whose beauty and inscrutability exerted a magnetic pull on Smithson High School, first during Rosalind’s student years and then again when she returned to teach drama.
As much as Rosalind’s life was a mystery to Gemma when they were students together, her death presents even more of a puzzle. What made Rosalind quit her teaching job in Sydney and return to her hometown? Why did she live in a small, run-down apartment when her father was one of the town’s richest men? And despite her many admirers, did anyone in the town truly know her?
Rosalind’s enigmas frustrate and obsess Gemma, who has her own dangerous secrets–an affair with her colleague and past tragedies that may not stay in the past. …
The 7th book (2013) in the Virgil Flowers series ➙ Storm Front.
Very entertaining.
In Israel, a man clutching a backpack searches desperately for a boat.
In Minnesota, Virgil Flowers gets a message from Lucas Davenport: You’re about to get a visitor. It’s an Israeli cop, and she’s tailing a man who’s smuggled out an extraordinary relic—a copper scroll revealing startling details about the man known as King Solomon.
Wait a minute, laughs Virgil. Is this one of those Da Vinci Code deals? The secret scroll, the blockbuster revelation, the teams of murderous bad guys? Should I be boning up on my Bible verses?
He looks at the cop. She’s not laughing. As it turns out, there are very bad men chasing the relic, and they don’t care who’s in the way or what they have to do to get it. Maybe Virgil should start praying.
Some might find it a little slow and too painstaking.
Upgrade is a 2022 novel by Blake Crouch. It is his tenth stand-alone novel …
The novel explores the ethical and existential ramifications of genetic engineering, set in a near-future world where humanity grapples with the consequences of advanced human genetic enhancement. …
In the late 2060s, Logan Ramsay is a law enforcement official working for the Gene Protection Agency (GPA), an organization established in the aftermath of a global famine known as the “Great Starvation”, which resulted from an attempt to genetically enhance crops.
This catastrophe, which caused the death of 200 million people, was led by Logan’s mother, geneticist Miriam Ramsay. …
It was thought that Mom died — BUT was secretly working on a genetic “upgrade” to improve our species, hopefully helping us last longer on earth.
The plot has as much to do with genetics as it does the relationship between Logan, his sister, and their Mom.
I did like the end of the book. Nice touch, Blake.
Sam’s day takes an unexpected turn after she picks up the wrong bag in the changing room of her local gym. The bag, a genuine Marc Jacobs unlike Sam’s designer knock-off, belongs to Nisha, an American in London and pampered second wife of billionaire businessman Carl. Sam, who works for a printing firm and who is the sole breadwinner in her family, has meetings straight after her gym visit and so has no choice but to wear Nisha’s red crocodile-skin Christian Louboutin heels. The shoes seem to have a hypnotising effect on clients and lead her to land a series of new contracts.
Nisha, meanwhile, declines to wear the tatty flats she finds in Sam’s bag, and leaves the gym in flip-flops and a robe. When she arrives at her hotel for a lunch date with her husband, she finds two men at the door of her room who inform her she is not welcome. Carl, it transpires, has called time on their marriage, cancelled her bank cards and begun a romantic relationship with his assistant. –
Adrian McKinty is one of the best novelists working today.
Though winning awards and getting great reviews, he couldn’t make a living as an author. Award winning books were selling 2-3 thousand copies a year.
After getting evicted, Adrian started driving Uber to try to pay overdue bills.
Author Don Winslow heard about it — and asked his agent to contact McKinty to see if there was anything they could do to keep him writing. Shane Salerno offered him $10,000 to keep trying.
At around three in the morning, McKinty gave it a go, writing the first 30 pages of what would become The Chain, sent it to the agent — and went to bed. His phone rang again at 4.15am.
“Forget bartending. Forget driving a bloody Uber,” Salerno said. “You’re writing this book.”
The Chain (2019) became a huge hit.
The Detective Up Late (2023) is 7th in his series of his Sean Duffy novels.
Slamming the door on the hellscape of 1980s Belfast, Detective Inspector Sean Duffy hopes that the 1990s are going to be better for him and the people of Northern Ireland.
As a Catholic cop in the mainly Protestant RUC he still has a target on his back, and with a steady girlfriend and a child the stakes couldn’t be higher.
After handling a mercurial triple agent and surviving the riots and bombings and assassination attempts, all Duffy wants to do now is live.
But in his final days in charge of Carrickfergus CID, a missing persons report captures his attention.
A fifteen-year-old traveler girl has disappeared and no one seems to give a damn about it.
Duffy begins to dig and uncovers a disturbing underground of men who seem to know her very well.
The deeper he digs the more sinister it all gets. Is finding out the truth worth it if DI Duffy is going to get himself and his colleagues killed?
Can he survive one last case before getting himself and his family out over the water?
It’s Vera Wong herself that makes this book. The plot and other characters simply support her.
Funny.
Vera Wong is a lonely little old lady—ah, lady of a certain age—who lives above her forgotten tea shop in the middle of San Francisco’s Chinatown. …
… one morning, Vera trudges downstairs to find a curious thing—a dead man in the middle of her tea shop.
In his outstretched hand, a flash drive. Vera doesn’t know what comes over her, but after calling the cops like any good citizen would, she sort of . . . swipes the flash drive from the body and tucks it safely into the pocket of her apron.
Why? Because Vera is sure she would do a better job than the police possibly could, because nobody sniffs out a wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands.
Vera knows the killer will be back for the flash drive; all she has to do is watch the increasing number of customers at her shop and figure out which one among them is the killer. …
Rick McCharles 