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From the publisher:

The explosive new thriller from the #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of James Patterson’s Michael Bennett series

When a Gulfstream jet goes down in the Bahamas carrying a fortune in cash and ill-gotten diamonds, expat diving instructor Michael Gannon is the only person on the scene. Assuming himself the beneficiary of a drug deal gone bad, Gannon thinks he’s home free with the sudden windfall until he realizes he forgot to ask one simple question.

Who were the six dead men on the plane?

Gannon soon learns the answer to that fateful question as he is thrust into an increasingly complex and deadly game of cat and mouse with a group of the world’s most powerful and dangerous men who will stop at nothing to catch him.

But as the walls close in, Gannon reveals a few secrets of his own. Before he retired to the islands, Gannon had another life, one with a lethal set of skills that he must now call back to the surface if he wants to make it out alive.

As a decade-long James Patterson writing partner, Michael Ledwidge is a pro at writing fast-paced, in-the-moment prose, tightly choreographed action set pieces and plot twists that drop at exactly the right moment. With this novel, he kicks off an unstoppable, gripping new thriller series.

Michael Gannon is an American ex-pat living in the Bahamas where he is a part-time diving instructor, sport fisherman and has his own boat. He is enjoying a relaxed life in the sun with no cares to weigh him down. The novel opens when Michael spots a corporate jet flying low over the ocean near where he is fishing. The plane splashes down and he heads over to see if he can render any assistance to passengers on board. Getting there he finds six dead men on the plane. Diving down to see if any passengers are still alive Michael finds a fortune in both cash and diamonds and thinking that he has come upon a drug deal gone bad takes the fortune and heads home.

A combined U.S. Navy and FBI investigation of the crash brings out what is a plot by certain leaders of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to squelch damning evidence on themselves which is scheduled to be broadcast by a man hiding in an embassy in London. These people find that Michael Gannon has taken the cash and diamonds and a search and kill hunt for him begins. But we quickly find that Gannon has a past which is very helpful in fending off his would-be killers.

Ledwidge is an experienced author with a background that includes collaboration with James Patterson and appears to be launching a series of his own featuring Michael Gannon. These future books may include action in the Caribbean working out of the Bahamas and should prove well worth the read.

3/2020 Paul Lane

STOP AT NOTHING by Michael Ledwidge. Hanover Square Press; Original edition (March 3, 2020). ISBN: 978-1335044952. 416p.

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From the publisher:

The first novel in an explosive new series inspired by Robert Ludlum’s Bourne universe, The Treadstone Resurrection introduces an unforgettable hero and the shadowy world that forged him…

Treadstone made Jason Bourne an unstoppable force, but he’s not the only one.

Operation Treadstone has nearly ruined Adam Hayes. The top-secret CIA Black Ops program trained him to be an all but invincible assassin, but it also cost him his family and any chance at a normal life. Which is why he was determined to get out. Working as a carpenter in rural Washington state, Adam thinks he has left Treadstone in the past, until he receives a mysterious email from a former colleague, and soon after is attacked by an unknown hit team at his job site.

Adam must regain the skills that Treadstone taught him–lightning reflexes and a cold conscience–in order to discover who the would-be killers are and why they have come after him now. Are his pursuers enemies from a long-ago mission? Rival intelligence agents? Or, perhaps, forces inside Treadstone? His search will unearth secrets in the highest levels of government and pull him back into the shadowy world he worked so hard to forget.

Joshua Hood is the author of several previous novels involving men and women at war. His books were action-packed with a great knowledge of weaponry and methods used in armed combat. He takes up a theme developed by the late Robert Ludlum and creates a scenario revolving around the actions of a group working for the CIA. They purportedly developed a method of creating a super warrior, naming that project Treadstone.

The soldiers created by the Treadstone group have superior reflexes, superb analytical skills and a personality that incorporates a no prisoners taken attitude towards any enemy they face. The character used by Hood is Adam Hayes and the Jason Bourne of Ludlum’s novels does not appear in the story.

Hayes has resigned from the CIA and is working as a carpenter in the state of Washington. He is married and has one son and while not satisfied with the tedium of everyday life has no plans to return to the active lifestyle of a CIA assassin. With no warning, Hayes is attacked by a hit squad at his job site but finds that he still has the skills to kill the would-be killers and escape with his life. His plan then becomes finding the people that attacked him, and in so doing, is pulled into a Venezuela that is completely destitute due to their government robbing the country blind with one man in particular singled out and destined for elimination. From Venezuela Hayes then travels into Colombia attempting to find and kill the members of the group that is after him.

Ludlum’s characters were always cast as regular people that could get hurt or even killed in the action they were subjected to in his novels. Adam Hayes, on the other hand, is presented as a superman moving at the speed of light from one dangerous situation to another. He gets beat up, almost killed and just keeps on trucking. The ending of the book has Hayes already looking for the next assignment and ready to jump into whatever awaits him. For those that like their novels action-packed and moving like an express train, Joshua Hood’s creation of Adam Hayes will be very satisfying.

3/2020 Paul Lane

ROBERT LUDLUM’S THE TREADSTONE RESURRECTION by Joshua Hood. G.P. Putnam’s Sons (February 25, 2020). ISBN: 978-0525542551. 384p.

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From the publisher:

One of Newsweek‘s Most Anticipated Books of 2020
One of SheReads Most Anticipated Books of 2020
One of PopSugar’s Most Anticipated Books of 2020
One of HelloGiggles’ Most Anticipated Books of 2020
One of Marie Claire’s Best Fiction by Women in 2020
One of Woman’s Day’s Best Fiction Books Coming Out in 2020

The electrifying #1 New York Times bestselling authors of THE WIFE BETWEEN US and AN ANONYMOUS GIRL return with a brand new novel of psychological suspense.

Shay Miller wants to find love, but it eludes her. She wants to be fulfilled, but her job is a dead end. She wants to belong, but her life is increasingly lonely.

Until Shay meets the Moore sisters. Cassandra and Jane live a life of glamorous perfection, and always get what they desire. When they invite Shay into their circle, everything seems to get better.

Shay would die for them to like her.
She may have to.

This is the third novel the two authors are publishing together and they get better and better. Will they reach a plateau and top out? Hope not because what they are doing is causing a lot of sleepless nights among an ever-increasing group of grateful readers.

This book tells a tale of a group of women caught up in a delusion of omnipotence and acting on a psychopathic fixation of righting wrongs that they alone decide are wrongs, and that their remedies are the best for those caught up in the schemes.

Shay Miller has come to New York City with a dream of finding love and a fulfilling career path. By a quirk of fate, she is getting ready to ride the New York subway system and while awaiting the arrival of the next train is witness to a suicide, with a woman throwing herself in the path of the train. Traumatized by the experience, Shay begins looking into the life of the woman that killed herself. In so doing, she meets the woman’s group of friends, is befriended by them, and helped in many ways to better her circumstances. The gist of the novel concerns the reasons behind the group going overboard to help her. This includes a remake of Shay and changing her look for their own reasons.

Why two brilliant and very successful sisters who are the guiding persons behind that group go to extremes to help Shay forms the basis of the story. That the reader will not be able to put the book down until finished is an absolute fact. That the end results in reading the novel will be to begin to look forward to the authors’ next book is a given. Without any doubt a five-star novel by the writing team.

3/2020 Paul Lane

YOU ARE NOT ALONE by Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen. St. Martin’s Press (March 3, 2020). ISBN: 978-1250202031. 352p.

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Malcolm Kershaw, Book 1

From the publisher:

From the hugely talented author of Before She Knew Him comes a chilling tale of psychological suspense and an homage to the thriller genre tailor-made for fans: the story of a bookseller who finds himself at the center of an FBI investigation because a very clever killer has started using his list of fiction’s most ingenious murders.

Years ago, bookseller and mystery aficionado Malcolm Kershaw compiled a list of the genre’s most unsolvable murders, those that are almost impossible to crack—which he titled “Eight Perfect Murders”—chosen from among the best of the best including Agatha Christie’s A. B. C. Murders, Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train, Ira Levin’s Death Trap, A. A. Milne’s Red House Mystery, Anthony Berkeley Cox’s Malice Aforethought, James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity, John D. Macdonald’s The Drowner, and Donna Tartt’s A Secret History.

But no one is more surprised than Mal, now the owner of the Old Devils Bookstore in Boston, when an FBI agent comes knocking on his door one snowy day in February. She’s looking for information about a series of unsolved murders that look eerily similar to the killings on Mal’s old list. And the FBI agent isn’t the only one interested in this bookseller who spends almost every night at home reading. There is killer is out there, watching his every move—a diabolical threat who knows way too much about Mal’s personal history, especially the secrets he’s never told anyone, even his recently deceased wife.

To protect himself, Mal begins looking into possible suspects . . . and sees a killer in everyone around him. But Mal doesn’t count on the investigation leaving a trail of death in its wake. Suddenly, a series of shocking twists leaves more victims dead—and the noose around Mal’s neck grows so tight he might never escape.

The book is introspective of many of the great murder mystery novels of the past 80 to 90 years. Peter Swanson is obviously a fan of the genre and exhibits a deep knowledge of those books that have been accepted as classics in the field.

Malcolm Kershaw, the principal protagonist and the first-person narrator of the events, has grown up with a deep love of mystery stories and over his life has read most of those considered classics. He has worked in the bookstore trade since he started working and currently is the working partner in a two-owner book store called the “Old Devil.” The store has a reputation and makes a living in a field that has narrowed over the years with the advent of competition like Amazon. One of Malcolm’s projects was to compile a list of eight fictional murders, which he termed “Eight Perfect Murders,” as they all were not solvable with the list developing interest in the store.

Malcolm did get married but his luck did not carry outside of the bookstore where he worked. He found that his wife was cheating on him but did not know how to handle the situation. Fate intervened when his wife left a pot party drunk and was killed in a one-car accident while driving home. Malcolm, in thinking about the accident, placed the blame on the man that was her escort and possibly her lover. The problem was, of course, that if her escort was murdered as Malcolm dreamed of, the police would automatically put the blame on him. His solution was one that was written about by Patricia Highsmith in her 1951 book, Strangers on a Train. The novel postulated two men meeting accidentally on a train they were both on. Each had a person that he wanted to kill but not to take any blame for it. The solution arrived at was that each, at different times, would kill the person the other man wanted dead while the first one set up an alibi completely away from the murder location.

Entranced with the idea, Malcolm went on a web site and broached the idea for anyone needing help and familiar with the novel. The query was answered by someone and the murder pact agreed to. On the date that his wife’s lover was killed, Malcolm was away from the area with an iron-clad alibi. Then, in doing his part, he found that the act was far from disagreeable. Consumed with curiosity Malcolm began trying to locate and talk to the man that had killed his wife’s lover.

While the action involving Malcolm was playing out, a series of murders started to occur which seemed to follow the crimes committed in the books shown on the “Eight Perfect Murders” list. Malcolm was made aware of this when an agent with the FBI visited him, claiming she had noted the similarity to those described in the books and asked Malcolm if he would help her. He jumped in and became fascinated with the situation.

The novel is a draw with the added attraction that it produces an education into the leading books written within the “Murder Crime” genre and for those readers wanting to take their interest in that direction, a superb guide. If the lists of books are not important, Peter Swanson has presented an excellent trip into another world with a glance into twisted minds, and a definite all-nighter.

3/2020 Paul Lane

EIGHT PERFECT MURDERS by Peter Swanson. William Morrow (March 3, 2020). ISBN: 978-0062838209. 288p.

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Cotton Malone, Book 15

From the publisher:

In New York Times bestseller Steve Berry’s latest Cotton Malone adventure, one by one the seven precious relics of the Arma Christi, the weapons of Christ, are disappearing from sanctuaries across the world.

After former Justice Department agent Cotton Malone witnesses the theft of one of them, he learns from his old boss, Stephanie Nelle, that a private auction is about to be held where incriminating information on the president of Poland will be offered to the highest bidder―blackmail that both the United States and Russia want, but for vastly different reasons.

The price of admission to that auction is one of the relics, so Malone is first sent to a castle in Poland to steal the Holy Lance, a thousand-year-old spear sacred to not only Christians but to the Polish people, and then on to the auction itself. But nothing goes as planned and Malone is thrust into a bloody battle between three nations over information that, if exposed, could change the balance of power in Europe.

From the tranquil canals of Bruges, to the elegant rooms of Wawel Castle, to deep beneath the earth into an ancient Polish salt mine, Malone is caught in the middle of a deadly war―the outcome of which turns on a secret known as the Warsaw Protocol.

This is the 15th book by Steve Berry featuring Cotton Malone. The formula utilized is the same winning format that has made these novels attractive to a large group of readers. Cotton is a former employee of a division of the CIA called the Magellan Billet. He is retired and lives in Copenhagen where he owns a successful book store. He has a girlfriend that lives elsewhere in the world and the two get together whenever possible. How he has time for her and his bookstore are a miracle of time. But that is our gain.

The novel opens as Cotton is on a trip to buy several rare books to fill a customer’s request. His trip is interrupted as is the norm by his ex-supervisor, Stephanie Nelle, who needs him to help the Magellan Billet out by entering into a case. The circumstances involve the present President of Poland being blackmailed by the U.S. in order to force him to allow a missile installation to be set up in Poland. The President is very much against the idea since it will put Poland at odds with Russia.

A situation has developed in which holy relics – Arma Christi – the weapons of Christ are being stolen from their repositories around the world. Stephanie Nelle learns that the relics will be used as admission to a private auction in which incriminating evidence about the Polish President will be given to the highest bidder in attendance. One relic is still in its original place – the Holy Lance – and Malone is sent to a castle in Poland in order to steal it and use it to get into the auction. The events faced by Cotton include traveling into an enormous salt mine that has been in use for centuries. It has proven an excellent source of income for the country over time and is a much sought after tourist attraction for many foreigners.

The auction, its results and a lot of action provides the reader with another great read by Steve Berry, and continued interest in picking up the next novel by the author.

2/2020 Paul Lane

THE WARSAW PROTOCOL by Steve Berry. Minotaur Books (February 25, 2020). ISBN: 978-1250140302. 384p.

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