Mixed feelings about his book published 2022.

The whodunnit kept me going. But the resolution was too unlikely for me to believe.

Sara Ewes, Travis Devine’s coworker and former girlfriend, has been found hanging in a storage room of his office building—presumably a suicide, at least for now—prompting the NYPD to come calling on him.

If that wasn’t enough, before the day is out, Devine receives another ominous visit, a confrontation that threatens to dredge up grim secrets from his past in the army unless he participates in a clandestine investigation into his firm.

This treacherous role will take him from the impossibly glittering lives he once saw only through a train window, to the darkest corners of the country’s economic halls of power . . . where something rotten lurks. And apart from this high-stakes conspiracy, there’s a killer out there with their own agenda, and Devine is the bull’s-eye.

DavidBaldacci.com

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Long Shadows is the 7th Amos Decker murder mastery.

Amos Decker is a BIG former professional football player who was violently hit on his first NFL play, resulting in severe injuries and changes to his brain.

He’s called the “memory man” because he’s unable to forget anything.

In this book Amos is sent to Florida with a brand-new partner, FBI Special Agent Frederica White, to investigate the murder of a federal judge. Both partners are pissed at their last-minute pairing, and they immediately see themselves as a bad fit. 

Later they discover they are being set up to fail and possibly dismissed for failure.

But Amos Decker never fails. His success rate in finding the murder is 100%.

A good tale.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Elly Griffiths is the pen name of Domenica de Rosa^, a British crime novelist.

Her Ruth Galloway book series is super popular.

Ruth is a forensic archaeologist who lives in a remote seaside cottage near King’s Lynn in Norfolk and teaches at the University of North Norfolk.

She had a daughter, Kate, with on-again, off-again love interest DCI Harry Nelson.

I tried the most recent — The Locked Room #14 (2022) — mainly because it was set just at the start of the pandemic. And that was interesting.

The murder mysteries were complicated by Covid lockdown rules.

It is a good book. But I’m not sure I’ll ready more Ruth Galloway. I’m keener on her Harbinder Kaur book series.

Jeffery Deaver is a great writer.

This is the first book of his I’ve read.

Colter Shaw is an itinerate “reward-seeker,” traveling the country to help police solve crimes and private citizens locate missing persons.

When he learns of a reward for a missing college student in Silicon Valley, he takes the job. The investigation quickly thrusts him into the dark heart of Silicon Valley and the cutthroat billion-dollar video gaming industry–and then a second kidnapping happens…and this victim turns up dead.

The clues soon point to one video game, The Never Game, in which the player has to survive after being left abandoned.

Is a madman bringing that game to life? If so, Shaw has to stop him before he strikes again…and before he figures out that Shaw is on his trail.

jefferydeaver.com

I’ll be reading more Jeffery Deaver, for sure.

Deaver was chosen to write a new James Bond novel: Carte Blanche set in 2011 and was published on May 25, 2011.  So he’s definitely got credibility as an author.