The Tower (season 1) … follows the aftermath of the deaths of a veteran Metropolitan Police officer and a young Libyan girl who fell together from the roof of a London tower block.
When Constable Lizzie Adama—one of the only witnesses—disappears soon afterwards, Sarah Collins‘ investigation becomes two-pronged: what happened on the roof, and finding Adama. …
It’s mockery of the cozy mystery genre. Makes fun of the authors.
And we readers don’t come off too well, either. 😀
All that bestselling author Eleanor Dash wants is to get through her book tour in Italy and kill off her main character, Connor Smith, in the next in her Vacation Mysteries series—is that too much to ask?
Clearly it is, because when an attempt is made to kill the real Connor—the handsome but infuriating con man she got mixed up with ten years ago and now can’t get out of her life—Eleanor’s enlisted to help solve the case.
Contending with literary competitors, rabid fans, a stalker—and even her ex, Oliver, who turns up unexpectedly—theories are bandied about, and rivalries, rifts, and broken hearts are revealed. But who’s really trying to get away with murder?
Catherine Mack is the pseudonym for thriller writer Catherine McKenzie. Her other books include Have You Seen Her, Hidden, Smoke andThe Good Liar. She is currently based in Montreal.
Twisted Prey (2018) is #28 in the Lucas Davenport series.
They are all good — but, for me, this one had too little action.
Lucas Davenport had crossed paths with her before.
A rich psychopath, Taryn Grant had run successfully for the U.S. Senate, where Lucas had predicted she’d fit right in. He was also convinced that she’d been responsible for three murders, though he’d never been able to prove it.
Once a psychopath had gotten that kind of rush, though, he or she often needed another fix, so he figured he might be seeing her again.
He was right. A federal marshal now, with a very wide scope of investigation, he’s heard rumors that Grant has found her seat on the Senate intelligence committee, and the contacts she’s made from it, to be very…useful.
John Sandford is the pseudonym for the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Camp. He is the author of twenty-eight Prey novels; four Kidd novels; ten Virgil Flowers novels; three YA novels co-authored with his wife, Michele Cook; and three other books.
This is only my 2nd Quirk book — but I’d call both silly non-stop action thrillers with very little else to recommend them. He’s not my kind of author.
Suspend your disbelief.
As a Secret Service agent, Nick Averose spent a decade protecting the most powerful men and women in America and developed a unique gift: the ability to think like an assassin.
Now, he uses that skill in a little-known but crucial job. As a “red teamer,” he poses as a threat, testing the security around our highest officials to find vulnerabilities—before our enemies can. He is a mock killer, capable of slipping past even the best defenses.
His latest assignment is to assess the security surrounding the former CIA director at his DC area home. But soon after he breaches the man’s study, the home’s inner sanctum, Nick finds himself entangled in a vicious crime that will shake Washington to its foundations—as all the evidence points to Nick.
He knows he’s the perfect scapegoat. But who is framing him, and why? To clear his name, he must find the truth—a search that leads to a dark conspiracy whose roots stretch back decades. The prize is the most powerful position in the world: the Oval Office.
If I was editing, I would have cut the length of the novel in half. Many threads did not contribute to the plot resolution.
I Am Pilgrim (2015) is the debut novel by former journalist and screenwriter Terry Hayes. …
“Pilgrim” is an American former intelligence agent known as the “Rider of the Blue” who later writes a book on forensic pathology. …
The “Saracen” is a Saudi who becomes radicalized by watching his father’s beheading. He later trains as a doctor and fights in the Soviet–Afghan War.
Pilgrim is recalled to the intelligence community who have detected a threat involving the Saracen, who has created a vaccine-resistant strain of the variola major virus. Smallpox.
Smallpox is estimated to have killed up to 300 million people in the 20th century and around 500 million people in the last 100 years of its existence.
Inoculation for smallpox appears to have started in China around the 1500s. In 1796, Edward Jenner introduced the modern smallpox vaccine.
unvaccinated and vaccinated twins
Officially, 2 live samples of variola major virus remain, one in the United States at the CDC in Atlanta, and one at the Vector Institute in Koltsovo, Russia.
Between 65 and 80% of survivors are marked with deep pitted scars (pockmarks), most prominent on the face.
An empathetic man of keen intelligence, Father Brown solves murder cases when members of his parish are involved, when circumstances are strange enough to gain his interest, or when he is directly asked for help. During his investigations, he occasionally neglects his more mundane parish duties.
Sister Boniface is a Catholicnun at St. Vincent’s Convent in the fictional town of Great Slaughter …
In addition to her religious duties at the convent, she makes wine and has a PhD in forensic science (although this is referred to as a MA (Cantab), in the “The Forensic Nun” episode of Father Brown) allowing her to serve as a scientific adviser to the local police on investigations
I watched one episode of each simply to know what folks are talking about.
Clayton Deese looks like a small-time criminal, muscle for hire when his loan shark boss needs to teach someone a lesson. Now, seven months after a job that went south and landed him in jail, Deese has skipped out on bail, and the U.S. Marshals come looking for him. They don’t much care about a low-level guy — it’s his boss they want — but Deese might be their best chance to bring down the whole operation.
Then, they step onto a dirt trail behind Deese’s rural Louisiana cabin and find a jungle full of graves.
Now Lucas Davenport is on the trail of a serial killer who has been operating for years without notice. His quarry is ruthless, and — as Davenport will come to find — full of surprises…
Bargatze’s stand-up special Hello World, filmed at the Celebrity Theater in Phoenix, Arizona, was released in 2023 on Amazon Prime Video.
Hilarious.
He has been called a clean comedian, generally avoiding profanity, sexual humor, and potentially controversial or politically incorrect material. His success among adult audiences has been noted as a departure from the provocative and surreal styles of humor that dominated the 2010s.
“We got married on Friday the 13th. Got a pretty sweet deal on that,” he quipped. “They were wide open. We were like, ‘What times are available?’ They go, ‘Every one of ‘em. All 24. You can call us that day if you want.’ ”
After a while his shtick does start to seem repetitive. Still … worth watching.
Rick McCharles 