Stacy Alesi's BookBitch.com™

Click to purchase

A Pike Logan Novella

Pike Logan and Jennifer Cahill are a couple whose usual occupations are participating in U.S. Government ordered military expeditions against terrorists residing overseas and planning threats against America. They work with a group of ex-military personnel that are highly qualified warriors whose origins are among the elite forces of the country. “Exit Fee” is a novella taking place in the United States and involving only Pike and Jennifer.

The couple are at home in Charleston S.C. with Amena, a young Syrian refugee that they have taken into their care. Amena is an orphan whose family was killed in Syria. She is having difficulty adjusting to life in the U.S. and is more than a little rebellious. After an argument with Pike, Amena uses a short walk away from him to attempt to assert her independence. She befriends a teen named Beth on her little trip. Beth is with her Serbian guardian who is, in reality, her captor and has forced her into a life of sexual slavery.

Beth’s minder likes Amena’s looks and decides to take her and force her into the horror of being a sex slave. In typical Pike Logan fashion, Amena, Beth, and other girls are rescued and justice is done. The short book is a feel good exercise with everything turning out well. No problem in reading a book and finishing it with the knowledge that good has triumphed over evil and all’s well that ends well.

10/19 Paul Lane

EXIT FEE by Brad Taylor. William Morrow Impulse (November 12, 2019). ISBN 978-0062984890. 160p.

Kindle available 10/29/19

Audible available 10/29/19

Click to purchase

Jack Reacher Series, Book 24

From the publisher:

In the next highly anticipated installment of Lee Child’s acclaimed suspense series, Jack Reacher comes to the aid of an elderly couple . . . and confronts his most dangerous opponents yet.
 
“Jack Reacher is today’s James Bond, a thriller hero we can’t get enough of.”—Ken Follett

“This is a random universe,” Reacher says. “Once in a blue moon things turn out just right.”

This isn’t one of those times.

Reacher is on a Greyhound bus, minding his own business, with no particular place to go, and all the time in the world to get there. Then he steps off the bus to help an old man who is obviously just a victim waiting to happen. But you know what they say about good deeds. Now Reacher wants to make it right.

An elderly couple have made a few well-meaning mistakes, and now they owe big money to some very bad people. One brazen move leads to another, and suddenly Reacher finds himself a wanted man in the middle of a brutal turf war between rival Ukrainian and Albanian gangs.

Reacher has to stay one step ahead of the loan sharks, the thugs, and the assassins. He teams up with a fed-up waitress who knows a little more than she’s letting on, and sets out to take down the powerful and make the greedy pay. It’s a long shot. The odds are against him. But Reacher believes in a certain kind of justice . . . the kind that comes along once in a blue moon.

---

It is hard to fathom reading twenty-four books featuring the same character, and loving all of them. Yet that is the case here; maybe some are better than others, but all are really good and that says a lot. Jack Reacher has become an iconic character (despite the diminutive Tom Cruise portrayal in the films.) I can’t wait for the Amazon Prime series, but not sure when it will air. It was announced this summer and is being produced by the same companies that are behind Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan series, which is excellent, so I’m hopeful.

One of the best things about this series is that each book can stand alone, so if you have resisted reading one, you can easily start now. You can always go back and read the rest, and I’m fairly confident you will want to. Reacher is a character that is larger than life. His logic is infallible. His morals and values are unshakeable. He is a modern-day hero, and we sure could use one, now more than ever.

This latest story revolves around an elderly couple with a very sick daughter. They are willing to do anything to help her, and that includes borrowing money from loan sharks. This small town where they live is divided into territories, one run by the Ukrainians, the other by the Albanians. Both are terrible, and that’s all Reacher needs to know before deciding to help them out. Of course, he meets an attractive woman and some others who can help. But it is Reacher who cleans up this town, killing so many bad guys that it doesn’t seem possible, yet somehow it is probable.  Somehow we buy it.

Kudos to Lee Child for making me believe every page, and read every page, before putting this book down. Not a word is wasted. Another excellent addition to a truly remarkable series.

10/19 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch

BLUE MOON by Lee Child. Delacorte Press (October 29, 2019). ISBN 978-0399593543. 368p.

Kindle

Audible

Click to purchase

In a departure from his regular series, Peter May gives his readers a monumental stand-alone novel dealing with events in Cambodia and Thailand during the period of the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s. It was a time of massive murder of the people of these countries by a group of homicidal maniacs that had taken power with unlimited self-awarded powers.

Two people are featured as central characters in order to tell two separate stories of those affected by the horrors of events in Cambodia and Thailand. First is Jack Elliot, a soldier of fortune who has been tasked with bringing out a wife and two children from the domain of the Khmer Rouge by their father who had deserted the family as they were taken away.  He now expresses regrets and is willing to pay Jack to mastermind their freedom and bring them to him.

The second is 18-year-old Lisa Robinson,vwho is actually Jack’s daughter and is looking for her father. Jack does not know he has a daughter. On the other hand, Lisa has caught a glimpse of her father at her mother’s funeral.

Lisa decides to look for her father, and learning from a friend of his that he has gone to Cambodia, decides to travel there to search for him. May is able to draw in the reader with his description of Lisa’s travels, and her loss of any innocence she may have come with when faced with the reality of what she encounters.

May paints pictures of both individuals to tell the story.  First Jack, assembling a small crew of himself and two others, and their trip into the interior of the area ruled by the Khmer Rouge.  The author’s graphic description of the horrors inflicted on the people is probably the best I’ve read delineating the monumental excesses of a group that was admittedly more maniacal than any other such savages down through history. The reader is there looking on and in all probability, will not be able to stop following the descriptions. The period was followed by reporters of all media, but nothing they ever wrote can bring out what Peter May does.

The novel is an excellent one and even if alone as the author’s product does inscribe him into a select group of writers.

10/19 Paul Lane

THE NOBLE PATH by Peter May. Quercus; Reprint edition (October 29, 2019). ISBN 978-1787477957. 544p.

Kindle

Click to purchase

A Renée Ballard and Harry Bosch Novel, Book 2

From the publisher:

PEOPLE Best Books of Fall 2019

“A darkly thrilling tale of survival and obsession. Lisa Unger never disappoints.” —Riley Sager, bestselling author of Lock Every Door

Even good people are drawn to do evil things…

Twelve-year-old Rain Winter narrowly escaped an abduction while walking to a friend’s house. Her two best friends, Tess and Hank, were not as lucky. Tess never came home, and Hank was held in captivity before managing to escape. Their abductor was sent to prison but years later was released. Then someone delivered real justice—and killed him in cold blood.

Now Rain is living the perfect suburban life, her dark childhood buried deep. She spends her days as a stay-at-home mom, having put aside her career as a hard-hitting journalist to care for her infant daughter. But when another brutal murderer who escaped justice is found dead, Rain is unexpectedly drawn into the case. Eerie similarities to the murder of her friends’ abductor force Rain to revisit memories she’s worked hard to leave behind. Is there a vigilante at work? Who is the next target? Why can’t Rain just let it go?

Introducing one of the most compelling and original killers in crime fiction today, Lisa Unger takes readers deep inside the minds of both perpetrator and victim, blurring the lines between right and wrong, crime and justice, and showing that sometimes people deserve what comes to them.

 

---

Connelly keeps cranking out these exceedingly well-written police procedurals. When the publicity comes out introducing a new series, inevitably he manages to tie his characters together. Renée Ballard was supposed to have her own series, as was Mickey Haller, the “Lincoln Lawyer.” All three are tied together in this new book.

Ballard and Bosch have an interesting dynamic. He’s old school, retired LAPD; she’s LAPD but on the late show, the graveyard shift, where she works alone, and that’s how she likes it. Ballard has a terrific back story, and while Connelly includes enough here to keep a first-time reader up to date, these books are best read in order. No, you don’t have to start with the first Bosch book, but maybe with a couple of those, then the Lincoln Lawyer, then The Late Show, Dark Sacred Night, then this one.  I don’t feel the least bit guilty telling anyone to read at least half a dozen Connelly books because they are that good. I would read them all over again if I could. I love his characters, his writing style, and his stories. Just read them and say thank you. And if you haven’t watched Bosch on Amazon Prime, do yourself a favor and do so immediately! Start with Season 1.

This time out, Bosch is helping Mickey Haller get his murder defendant acquitted, which pisses off Ballard. See, all together now. It also pisses off the detectives who were on the case. But of course, Bosch is on to something. Hooking up with Ballard to work another cold case may actually help with the new murder investigation. Lots of personalities clashing, political shenanigans within the police force, some good, some bad. Somehow different murders in different states and timelines are solved, and I bought all of it. Even the cliffhanger ending, or maybe especially the ending; I can’t wait for the next Ballard & Bosch book. The master proves his worth once again.

10/19 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch

THE NIGHT FIRE by Michael Connelly. Little, Brown and Company (October 22, 2019). ISBN 978-0316485616. 416p.

Kindle

Audible

Click to purchase

Isaacs presents her latest published novel, and it is certainly one that continues her practice of giving her readers an engrossing book, which instantly draws them into the action.

A native New Yorker, the author does center the action in that area of the U.S. Corie Geler is a woman who, at the beginning of her working life, became a member of the FBI. She had studied the Arabic language while in college, and became a very valuable agent due to that expertise.

Corie retired shortly before the novel begins, with the aim of having a personal life. She did meet a man that had lost his wife due to illness, fell in love, and the pair married. She adopted Josh Geller’s 14-year-old daughter a year after they married, and her current life is supervising the girl and tending to running her house. She also does an occasional job as a contractor for the FBI using her Arabic skills. And at the same time, she acts as an agent for several publishers of Arabic literature looking to have their books translated and sold in English into the English speaking world.

Corie has gotten into the custom of going for lunch with a group of people living in her hometown of Shorehaven, on Long Island, and who also have the advantage of being able to work a business from home. They meet, exchange ideas making the shared luncheons a social event. But Corie’s FBI instincts kick in when she begins to feel that one of the group is more than a little strange, and begins to examine him.

Pete Delaney indicates that he is a package designer doing a bit of traveling to customers in order to present his products to them. But his habits do cause alarm in Corie’s FBI trained mind, and this is reinforced by what she does uncover.

Isaac’s style is somewhat tongue in cheek and quite engaging to the reader. The book becomes one that cannot be put down, and when finished, makes her readers quite ready for her next novel. Well done and a good read.

10/19 Paul Lane

TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE by Susan Isaacs. Atlantic Monthly Press (October 1, 2019). ISBN 978-0802147554. 288p.

Kindle