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From the publisher:

From number-one best-selling author Lisa Scottoline comes a pulse-pounding new novel.

Your family has been attacked, never again to be the same.

Now you have to choose between law…and justice.

Jason Bennett is a suburban dad who owns a court-reporting business, but one night, his life takes a horrific turn. He is driving his family home after his daughter’s field hockey game when a pickup truck begins tailgating them, on a dark stretch of road. Suddenly two men jump from the pickup and pull guns on Jason, demanding the car. A horrific flash of violence changes his life forever.

Later that awful night, Jason and his family receive a visit from the FBI. The agents tell them that the carjackers were members of a dangerous drug-trafficking organization – and now Jason and his family are in their crosshairs. 

The agents advise the Bennetts to enter the witness protection program right away, and they have no choice but to agree. But WITSEC was designed to protect criminal informants, not law-abiding families. Taken from all they know, trapped in an unfamiliar life, the Bennetts begin to fall apart at the seams. Then Jason learns a shocking truth and realizes that he has to take matters into his own hands.

Sometimes justice is a one-man show. 

https://amzn.to/3r2noQF

So I made the mistake of starting this book at 10:00 at night. I very reluctantly went to bed two hours later, then dreamt about it! The Bennetts are a family that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time – or so it seems. When the truck that was tailgating them on the way home suddenly passes them, then turns and blocks the road, Jason realizes they may be in trouble. The men who stopped them are armed, and force them all out of the car. But then his daughter is shot, and while he is tending to her wound, another shot is fired. One of the bad guys killed the other, then takes off.

They manage to get their daughter to the hospital, but the wound is fatal. Then in the middle of the night, the FBI comes knocking on the door and convinces the family to go into hiding. There is more to this story than a simple carjacking gone bad. Shortly after they leave with the FBI, their home and businesses are destroyed by fire. And then things really escalate.

This book was unputdownable. The characters really come to life on the page, and their concerns became my concerns. There is a lot of action that really makes the story move, and enough twists and turns to keep me guessing until the very end. Another excellent read from one of my favorite writers – don’t miss it!

4/2022 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BENNETTS by Lisa Scottoline. G.P. Putnam’s Sons (March 29, 2022). ISBN: 978-0525539674. 400p.

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Escape Artist, A Zig & Nola Novel: Book 2

From the publisher:

Zig and Nola are back—in the hugely entertaining, highly anticipated follow-up to Brad Meltzer’s #1 New York Times bestselling thriller The Escape Artist.

What’s the one secret no one knows about you?

Archie Mint has a secret. He’s led a charmed life—he’s got a beautiful wife, two impressive kids, and a successful military career. But when he’s killed while trying to stop a robbery in his own home, his family is shattered—and then shocked when the other shoe drops. Mint’s been hiding criminal secrets none of them could have imagined.

While working on Mint’s body before his funeral, mortician “Zig” Zigarowski discovers something he was never meant to see. That telling detail leads him to Mint’s former top secret military unit and his connection to artist Nola Brown. Two years ago, Nola saved Zig’s life—so he knows better than most that she’s as volatile and dangerous as a bolt of lightning.

Following Nola’s trail, he uncovers one of the U.S. government’s most intensely guarded secrets—an undisclosed military facility that dates back to the Cold War and holds the key to something far more sinister: a hidden group willing to compromise the very safety and security of America itself.

Trouble always finds her…

She’s the lightning rod.

https://amzn.to/3wuzLc5

This is the sequel to The Escape Artist, which I read several years ago. That book made my Best Books of the Year for 2018 list. Bonus – I remember more than I usually do because these characters are not your typical run-of-the-mill private detectives or cops or Feds or whatever. Instead, Zig is a mortician at Dover Air Force base, working on the bodies of fallen American soldiers. Nola is the U.S. military’s Artist-in-Residence, which means she goes to locations of tragedy or war (she gets to pick) and draws and/or paints what she sees – a job I had never heard of. Leave it to Meltzer to ferret out these interesting positions and incorporate them into a thriller – now a series. These characters might be considered “amateurs” like the kind you find in many cozy mysteries, but trust me, there is nothing cozy about this book, it is a thriller started on page one. The good news is that you do not have to read the first book in the series to understand this one; it stands alone beautifully.

I love these characters and we learn more about them this time, especially the enigmatic Nola. All the characters are interesting, multi-dimensional, diverse, and fully realized. The situations they find themselves in are often not of their own doing, but their resolve, ingenuity, and tenacity gets them where they need to go. That said, the body count is high and this is not a book for the squeamish. There are an almost a dizzying number of twists and turns and the pages fly by in this unputdownable thriller. Yes, I stayed up late to finish it! This is a worthy sequel, and the second book of what is shaping up to be one of my must-read series.

If you are not familiar, Meltzer does a ton of research for his books. I know this because over the past several years, on occasion I have helped him access obscure articles or articles behind paywalls. So trust me when I tell you that even though you may never have heard of some of the things in his books, they are generally based on impeccable research, including personal interviews with various government officials, even including Presidents (many have been fans of his work!)

I met Meltzer when I was working at Borders Books. His parents (since deceased) lived in Boca Raton, where I worked, and one day he stopped in to see if we had his book – his first novel, The Tenth Justice. In a funny coincidence, I had just read it and loved it. We chatted a bit and that was that. Or so I thought. He told me that I was the first bookseller he ever met who had actually read his book, and honestly, I thought he was full of it. But then a few years later, he told that story to a few hundred people at a booksigning at Barnes & Noble, when I was in the crowd with my daughter. And he’s repeated it since. So we have had a fairly long relationship – I believe he just celebrated the 25th anniversary of that first published novel. Brad is a really good guy, down to earth, madly in love with his wife, and consumed by his children – he once did an event for me at the Palm Beach County Library that we had to schedule around his coaching his son’s baseball team. Or t-ball. Whatever. The guy is a mensch – buy his book!

Watch Brad discuss The Lightning Rod with Seth Meyers!

3/2022 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch

THE LIGHTNING ROD by Brad Meltzer. William Morrow (March 8, 2022). ISBN: 978-0062892409. 432p.

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Jack Reacher, Book 26

From the publisher:

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Jack Reacher is back in a brand-new page-turning thriller from acclaimed #1 bestselling authors Lee Child and Andrew Child.

Digging graves had not been part of my plans when I woke up that morning. 

Reacher goes where he wants, when he wants. That morning he was heading west, walking under the merciless desert sun—until he comes upon a curious scene. A Jeep has crashed into the only tree for miles around. A woman is slumped over the wheel.

Dead? No, nothing is what it seems. 

The woman is Michaela Fenton, an army veteran turned FBI agent trying to find her twin brother, who might be mixed up with some dangerous people. Most of them would rather die than betray their terrifying leader, who has burrowed his influence deep into the nearby border town, a backwater that has seen better days. The mysterious Dendoncker rules from the shadows, out of sight and under the radar, keeping his dealings in the dark.

He would know the fate of Fenton’s brother. 

Reacher is good at finding people who don’t want to be found, so he offers to help, despite feeling that Fenton is keeping secrets of her own. But a life hangs in the balance. Maybe more than one. But to bring Dendoncker down will be the riskiest job of Reacher’s life. Failure is not an option, because in this kind of game, the loser is always better off dead.

Twenty six books in a series is remarkable, but as Lee Child has handed off the writing of these books to his brother, Andrew Child, the series has taken a sharp turn for the worse. This was one of my favorite series. When I would get the review copy, I would literally put down whatever else I was reading and give the latest Reacher my undivided attention. I always read these books in one night, no matter how late I had to stay up to do it. Lee had threatened to kill off Reacher on numerous occasions over the past few years. I guess he grew tired of writing them. But the hysteria around the possibility of killing Reacher made him reconsider, I guess. Next thing I know his brother Andrew is writing the books.

Andrew started with the previous book, The Sentinel, and it was pretty good. Not as good as Lee’s books, but they weren’t all perfect either. I figured he was getting his sea legs and the next book would be great. I was wrong.

It took me about two weeks to finish this book. I was often tempted to just put it down and forget about it. I read on a Kindle, and every time I looked to see how far along I was, it was never nearly as far as I thought I should be. I thought I was halfway through at the 20% mark, so not good, and it continued like that. I thought surely it must be ending soon, and I was at 55%, and so on. I kept putting it down to read something else, something better, anything else – also not good. But I persevered and eventually finished.

This book has a sort of shocking beginning, except you know there would be no book at all if it were true. It was downhill from there. Reacher is here in all his fighting glory, chasing bad guys and beating the hell out of them in much the same way he has in every previous book. Even the guy that is way bigger than he is.

The woman this time is a former FBI agent looking for her twin brother. Reacher offers to help, of course, and there are the usual underground tunnels and deserted buildings for all the bad guys to hide out in. Reacher doesn’t have any sex in this book, and very few laughs can be found. And apparently, he has finally learned how cell phones work.

The writing again seems like a Lee Child imitation, with every sentence in the book short and choppy. It is written in the first person so that was new (I think? I don’t remember if all of them skipped that.) Weirdly, Reacher’s connections are eager to help and he, of course, saves the day. The book just seemed very repetitive and redundant. Knowing me, I will read the next Reacher book in hopes of it being better, but I’ll tell you this: if I dislike it as much as this one, I will not finish it (if I remember – it is a year off!)

So if you are a Reacher fan, go for it. Publisher’s Weekly gave it a starred review, but I’m more in line with the Library Journal review, other than the last line:

The writing is more seamless than in the Child brothers’ previous collaboration, but the action is often perfunctorily described, and the supporting cast is thinly written. There’s less humor than in previous entries, though Reacher’s notorious Luddism is played for a few laughs. Fans of the series will enjoy.

Reviewed by Liz French, Library Journal , Oct 02, 2021

11/2021 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch

BETTER OFF DEAD by Lee Child & Andrew Child. Delacorte Press (October 26, 2021). ISBN: 978-1984818508. 336 pages.

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