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Thorp, the author of Nothing Lasts Forever, which was made into the movie “Die Hard” gives us a short novel filled with excitement and the fast moving action of that book.

Sam Merrill, a young Coast Guard Lt Commander comes upon a yacht filled with a fortune in gold, money, and contraband and becomes a national hero for his find.  As a reward for the discovery the US government sends him and his wife Amy on an all expense paid trip to the Bahamas.  Enjoying themselves and their 15 minutes of fame, Sam and Amy become turned on their heads when out of the blue, they are attacked by terrorists who succeed in kidnapping Amy.  From a dream situation Sam finds himself in the nightmare of finding and rescuing his wife.

The reasons for the attack on them while on vacation become apparent when his search takes him to Cartagena Columbia and into the lair of an international drug ring.  Action follows action as the reader is catapulted into the nightmare with the Merrills and caught up in a rapidly moving stay up all night book with back and forth action and reaction between all sides.

A definite must read and one which again stamps Thorp as a writer to welcome again and again as his books come out.

5/14 Paul Lane

HOT PURSUIT by Roderick Thorp. Premier Digital Publishing (May 13, 2014). ISBN 978-1624671869. 250p.

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BORDER WAR is also available as a audiobook read by Jeff Gurner. Listen to an excerpt !

Lou Dobbs, an eminent broadcast figure and author, and James O. Born, a major author who has been a member of the DEA and is currently an agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, have teamed up to present us with a novel set in the area of El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

The Mexican side is rife with crimes including high murder rates due to the presence of drug cartels shipping to the United States. It is also an area with a huge percent of undocumented Mexicans trying to cross the border to work in the U.S.

Tom Eriksen, an agent for the FBI, was involved with some violence when he worked in the Eastern US and has been transferred to El Paso as “punishment” for his screw up. He knows that he has to redeem himself if he is to remain in the bureau. When an investigation ends in a murde,r Tom is assigned to cover the case, and when his partner is also killed he knows that he must take charge of the cases or lose all credibility and possibly be fired.

Tom teams up with two beautiful women working for allied agencies and assigned to helping solve the killings. The investigation moves through corruption and possible betrayal by a member of Tom’s team bringing up a drug warlord and the work of a computer manufacturer using shady practices to grow itself against huge rivals.

The writing is crisp, very fast, jumping from one situation to the next. Tom’s relationship with the two women helping him moves towards an affair with one, and interest in the other. There is no doubt that this is the first book of others to come involving the same characters and bringing the authors’ knowledge of the problems on the border to life. Well done, and very well worth keeping on eye out for the next novel involving these characters and their interactions with each other, and the criminals they hunt.

5/14 Paul Lane

BORDER WAR by Lou Dobbs & James O. Born. Forge Books (May 6, 2014). ISBN 978-0765327710. 336p.

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Six friends at Pitt started a game their freshman year. By the time the year came to an end, only five of them remained. But the game didn’t end there. Over a decade later it’s time for the next round to begin and this time they’ll have to play to the finish.

Christopher J. Yates’s debut is full of suspense and charged atmosphere.

First there is the game: one of dares and humiliation – what could go wrong there, right? Of course the stakes have to get higher to ensure the game doesn’t lose momentum and the “friends” begin to wonder if they were ever friends at all.

But Yates also tells the tale in a dual storyline – one from the characters’ freshman year and one fourteen years later. The identity of narrator in the present day thread is quite cleverly hidden from the reader initially. And when that person is revealed the reader begins to realize just how unreliable he or she may be.

Both the elements of the game and the way Yates’s characters play out make Black Chalk a deliciously wicked read, one that leaves the reader on edge right until the very last page.

5/14 Becky Lejeune

BLACK CHALK by Christopher J. Yates. Random House UK (April 1, 2014). ISBN 978-1846557286. 352p.

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After a five year hiatus due to a horrific auto accident, Greg Iles returns with what is undoubtedly his masterpiece, a book that is announced as the first of a trilogy.

Iles uses the Cage family, featured in many of his novels, as the vehicle to tell a monumental story of the old south from the 1970s until about the Katrina hurricane. Penn Cage’s father, Tom has been a doctor ministering to both whites and blacks for many years. He had, in the past, a short lived affair with his Afro American nurse, Viola Turner, who rather than compromising Tom’s marriage left the area to move to Chicago. Viola was raped by men belonging to a secret group within the Ku Klux Klan before leaving Mississippi for Chicago. Many years later she was dying of cancer. She returned to tell Tom and others that she had had a child in Chicago.

The question later arises if the child is Tom’s or as a result of the group rape. Viola dies and examination indicates that she did not pass away as a result of the cancer. Enemies of Tom Cage accuse him of murder citing the possibility of a mercy killing to ease Viola’s pain.

Penn Cage, the mayor of Natchez, takes on the task of proving that his father is not guilty of any crime, and in undertaking the investigation opens up a long history of criminal activity, including murder by the “Double Eagles,” the group within the KKK led by one of the richest and most powerful men in Mississippi. Iles takes us into an era when blacks were second class citizens and crimes against them were not considered in the same vein as against whites. Complete segregation was enforced by hate groups openly pursuing the practice and it appears that Penn’s task will involve opening the past in order to prove his father innocent of murder.

Natchez Burning is over 800 pages in length but proves to be completely engrossing, forcing the reader to continue reading far into the night. The book solves several problems, first of which is to prove Tom Cage innocent of murder but leaves many other details for the second and third book. This novel can be read as a stand alone, and is very satisfying as is, but does leave room for the other areas to be detailed in the following novels. Great book, extremely well done and certainly a return to normal for Iles.

4/14 Paul Lane

NATCHEZ BURNING by Greg Iles. William Morrow (April 29, 2014). ISBN 978-0062311078. 800p.

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Hilary Blum, a divorced mother of a boy with Asperger’s Syndrome, has just lost her job. Unable to force her ex-husband to pay her many expenses, she is at her wit’s end when she witnesses a freak accident in which a deer darts in front of the car in front of her, forcing the vehicle off the road. She runs down to the scene of the crash, finding the driver dead and next to him on the front seat, a satchel filled with money.

Suddenly caught between her inherent honesty and the need for money she throws the satchel out of the car into a dense group of trees to possibly come back for it. The amount of money in the bag could probably solve her financial problems immediately and also allow her to help her parents, who coincidentally have run into financial woes. Her decision to keep it plunges her into a maze of unforeseen consequences starting with a 20 year old murder, problems with the Russian Mafia, and into the company of a New York City detective that by coincidence has ties to the funds.

Gross ponders the subject of callous and unemotional kids which weighs heavily in the details of the novel. While he does not suggest that actions be taken to find these children and treat them, he does describe their abnormal reactions to people and situations in telling the story. The book is typical of Gross, well thought out, fleshed out characters and a plot that grabs and holds the reader. Well done, and awaiting his next novel with interest.

4/14 Paul Lane

EVERYTHING TO LOSE by Andrew Gross. William Morrow (April 22, 2014). ISBN 978-0061656002. 336p.

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Economic collapse led folks to place blame at the feet of the elderly and infirm. They’ve been deemed to be a burden on society, not contributing enough to benefit and—in the eyes of some—draining limited resources. And so the Island came to be. Life on the Island means almost certain death. With the satellites constantly watching there is no hope for escape and the factions that inhabit the Village and the Camp fight daily for scarce food and supplies. But the real danger comes when the fog rolls in, leaving the satellites temporarily out of order. On those nights, the people in the Village hide in fear, hoping beyond all hope that they can escape the inevitable attack coming from the Camp.

“Big Guy” Clancy was a heavy for the mob once upon a time but having outlived his usefulness he, along with many others, was sent to The Island to live out the rest of his days. He’s accepted his fate, essentially giving up all hope, but when Big Guy meets Lena all of that changes.

Peter Liney’s debut is an incredibly scary premise and one that’s honestly (or sadly) a bit too believable for comfort. The advances in technology are certainly possible—eyes in the sky on constant watch and responsible for law and order—and even the awful degeneration of society has been a common theme in futuristic storylines for decades. In fact, in some ways The Detainee reminded me of Escape From New York.

I quite enjoyed The Detainee, as disturbing as it was. Clancy is a unique hero and all of his cohorts have interesting backstories. This is the first in a projected trilogy, too. I don’t want to give anything away but I’m definitely looking forward to seeing what will come next in this world.

4/14 Becky Lejeune

THE DETAINEE by Peter Liney. Jo Fletcher Books (March 11, 2014). ISBN 978-1623651084. 352p.

Italian carabinieri Captain Valentina Morassi is back along with her romantic interest, ex-priest Tom Shaman (The Venice Conspiracy) as they try and solve a mysterious case that starts with a severed hand found in the famous carving of Bocca della Verita, the “Mouth of Truth,” in Rome.

A woman is found nearby, covered in blood and carrying an ancient sword, but she cannot help; she suffers from multiple personality disorder and the blood on her clothes does not match the bloody hand.

As Valentina and Tom try to find answers, they discover a secret cult of women held prisoner in catacombs underneath the Eternal City, eunuchs, ancient symbols, and dismembered bodies. Tom is able to shed some light on the religious aspects of the case, and Valentina has to deal with all this horror without support from her boss.

Brutality is rampant in this historical religious thriller, but the characters are not fully developed and the pacing is erratic, slow through the first half, faster towards the end. Recommended for readers who enjoy James Rollins, Steve Berry, and Dan Brown. Originally published in the UK under the pseudonym Jon Trace.

Copyright ©2014 Booklist, a division of the American Library Association.

4/14 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch

THE ROME PROPHECY by Sam Christer. Overlook Hardcover (January 9, 2014). ISBN 978-1468301090. 368p.