EYES CLOSED TIGHT by Peter Leonard

March 4, 2014


Leonard delivers another book in which he shows his skill in bringing characters to life, as well as setting up an interesting plot. O’Clair is a retired Detroit Homicide detective that has moved to Florida, opened up a motel and developed a love interest in Virginia, a younger, stunning girl who can fix anything and works with him.

Life looks sweet for him when suddenly he discovers a young girl killed and left on a chair outside of his motel on the adjoining beach. The circumstances are very similar to those of a series of murders he worked on while still active in Detroit. At that point he caught the serial killer who was jailed in Michigan and the case marked closed.

Circumstances appear that the actual killer in Detroit was never caught and has followed O’Clair to Florida. The murder forces him to offer his help to the homicide detective in Florida, due to the similarity to those in Detroit. The case is worked at both areas, and includes a trip revisiting people and evidence gathered in Detroit. The reasons for the murders occurring in Florida constitute a major force in the novel and help with the solution.

In all probability, Peter Leonard has developed a character that will be used again in future novels and will be a welcome one.

3/14 Paul Lane

EYES CLOSED TIGHT by Peter Leonard. Story Plant, The (March 4, 2014). ISBN 978-1611881141. 300p.

Comments Off on EYES CLOSED TIGHT by Peter Leonard | Book Reviews, Crime Fiction, Fiction | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by Stacy Alesi

SEVEN GRAMS OF LEAD by Keith Thomson

February 25, 2014


Thomson won me over with ONCE A SPY followed by the sequel – TWICE A SPY. In SEVEN GRAMS OF LEAD, Thomson introduces all new character – journalist Russ Thornton. If you are even the slightest bit paranoid, you may not want to get into this one.

Ostensibly the plot revolves around the development and then theft of an e-bomb – which generates an electro-magnetic pulse which fries all semiconductor material in range. However, the real “makes you wonder and keeps you up at night” part comes from the massive and pervasive overt and covert surveillance by various government agencies and the lack of oversight and control of these activities.

In this regard the book reads right out of today’s headlines about NSA eavesdropping activities, and will definitely make you shudder. On the other hand, if you are not overly paranoid, it’s a great read with a delightfully twisted ending.

2/14 Jack Quick

SEVEN GRAMS OF LEAD by Keith Thomson. Anchor (February 25, 2014). ISBN 978-0307949905. 464p.

Comments Off on SEVEN GRAMS OF LEAD by Keith Thomson | Book Reviews, Crime Fiction, Fiction | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by Stacy Alesi

INFLUX by Daniel Suarez

February 20, 2014


A theme last seen in science fiction’s pulp era was that of “suppressed inventions”, i.e.; cars getting 1000 miles from a pint of alcohol, anti-gravity travel, pills and plants curing most major diseases for little or no cost. These discoveries were suppressed by people not wanting to lose high revenues from current methods and having the inventions take over the situation.

Suarez creates a U.S. government agency titled The Bureau of Technology Control. They are charged with ascertaining orderly progress in society by withholding or suppression of advanced findings in order to maintain social structure that does not rocket past what should be the ordinary rate of progress. The BTC has thrown off all U.S. government control and holds in secret technology that puts them at least 50 years beyond the rest of the world.

Jon Grady, a particle scientist, and his team come up with perfecting a device that will reflect gravity. This should bring him worldwide acclaim, but instead causes him to be swept up into the path of the Bureau of Technology Control that offers him a chance to work on his invention under their supervision and control. Jon refuses and is thrown into a high tech prison maintained by the BTC.

How he escapes and gets into contact with other prisoners that have refused to follow BTC dictates places the reader into one of the most imaginative and fascinating plots in science fiction to date. What happens to an agency set up to maintain orderly progression in society that places itself outside of the control of any other ordinary organization is certainly a study in Machiavellian cause and effect. Well done novel by Suarez, who has done several other books involving high technology and its consequences while not under control.

2/14 Paul Lane

INFLUX by Daniel Suarez. Dutton Adult (February 20, 2014). ISBN 978-0525953180. 416p

Comments Off on INFLUX by Daniel Suarez | Book Reviews, Crime Fiction, Fiction, Sci-Fi/Fantasy | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Stacy Alesi

HALF WORLD by Scott O’Connor

February 18, 2014


From about 1953 until 1973, the CIA clandestinely conducted methods of mind control on both U.S. and Canadian citizens without their consent. It wasn’t until project MKUltra, as it was termed, became public knowledge due to national headlines based on the release of thousands of declassified documents in 2001, that the public became aware of these activities.

Scott O’Connor has written a compelling book about characters caught up in the illegal operations and destroyed by the knowledge of what they were doing to the people that unwittingly became subjects of the experiments. Henry March is the first individual to head up a project in San Francisco selecting people and then drugging them in order to warp their minds.

Two generations later Dickie Ashby, a young CIA agent, is sent to Los Angeles to try and infiltrate a group of bank robbers that claim they have all been abused in a government brainwashing operaton. O’Connor is excellent in setting the mood of the events, and describing the damage done to the individuals that are put in charge of the experiments. First Henry March is shown trying to come to grips with the horror of what he is forced to do and unable to do so and then Ashby facing the results of the experiments two decades later both with the subjects as well as with the families of the planners and their lives.

This is compelling reading and an indictment of a government agency going beyond the pale to prove a point. O’Connor is very good at creating the moods and atmosphere of the events depicted in addition to outlining what are most likely to be the facts of the occurrences during the experiments. Knowing that these experiments were actually carried out makes the book a more fascinating read.

2/14 Paul Lane

HALF WORLD by Scott O’Connor. Simon & Schuster (February 18, 2014). ISBN 978-1476716596. 432p

Comments Off on HALF WORLD by Scott O’Connor | Book Reviews, Crime Fiction, Fiction | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Stacy Alesi

BAPTISM by Max Kinnings

February 17, 2014


The only thing that may be more terrifying than a subway train taken over by terrorists  is a subway train taken over by religious zealots, especially when they want to die and take everyone with them, and that is the premise here.

Tommy and his sister have big plans to kill everyone on board the train by flooding the tunnel, the titular “baptism.” Ed is the lead negotiator with a unique skill set; he is blind, and can hear more in the timbre of voice than most people, and what he hears is truly frightening.

Tommy claims the train is wired with explosives, and he kills anyone entering the tunnel, causing the body count to soar and MI5 to pull back. Ed is convinced that Tommy’s religious beliefs are stronger than anything he has to offer, so he grasps at straws, contacting an engineer and a criminal to try to save the trainload of passengers when MI5 can’t.

Lots of violence and a high body count lead up to an exciting ending in this fast paced adrenaline read. James Patterson fans will find a lot to like here.

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

2/14 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch

BAPTISM by Max Kinnings. Quercus; First Edition (February 4, 2014). ISBN 978-1623651022. 448p.

1 Comment | Book Reviews, Crime Fiction, Fiction | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Stacy Alesi

WENDELL BLACK, MD by Gerald Imber

February 11, 2014


Dr. Gerald Umber is a Plastic Surgeon and an honorary police surgeon for many years. This is his first novel.

Not surprisingly, the central character is a doctor working for the New York City Police Department as well as having a second job as a doctor at a regional hospital. On a flight back to New York from a trip to London he is called upon to minister to a woman suffering from cardiac arrest. She does not survive and Dr. Black is drawn in by the death and later exam of the body in the morgue to what may be an international drug smuggling ring using “mules” (people that carry drugs in cavities in their bodies.)

Black’s girlfriend Alice, a Brit, introduces him to a friend of hers who believes that the death is connected to an international ring based in England. When Alice’s friend is killed and she disappears, it leads to the probability that the smuggling is much more than drugs and may be a plot by international terrorists as part of a plan to attack the United States.

Various departments such as the FBI, the DEA and Homeland Security are brought into the action and Dr. Black is kept on as an expert in getting to the bottom of what the plot may entail.

Dr. Umber’s medical expertise and his skill in creating plot and events make this a riveting book as fact after fact is brought out in the action. The ending is a direct result of the facts brought out in the book, but does not, in any way, spoil the pleasure. I would expect that based on the creation of Wendell Black the author plans to use his position and expertise in future novels.

2/14 Paul Lane

WENDELL BLACK, MD by Gerald Imber. Bourbon Street Books (February 11, 2014). ISBN 978-0062246851. 416p

Comments Off on WENDELL BLACK, MD by Gerald Imber | Book Reviews, Crime Fiction, Fiction | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Stacy Alesi

HOUSE OF JAGUAR by Mike Bond

January 29, 2014

Mike Bond has an adventure filled background as a reporter, novelist, and international energy expert working in many dangerous and remote war-torn parts of the world.

House of Jaguar is set in the jungles of Guatemala amidst fighting between natives, the Guatemalan army, and the  unpublicized  presence of the CIA.  Joe Murphy a veteran of Vietnam is smuggling a planeload of Marijuana into Guatemala when he witnesses an attack and massacre of a native village by the army and it’s CIA advisors. He is badly wounded in the fighting, but escapes and treks through the jungle.

Joe ends up in the care of Dona Villalobos, a guerilla doctor ministering to her people. They fall in love surrounded by the horrors of the civil war and attempt to get out the truth out about what is really happening in the country.

Bond shows his readers the reality of the war, and paints the truth about unpublicized intervention by the U.S. in Central America.  Mike in real life is only one of more than 100 correspondents left alive during the action. Tightly woven and a truly engrossing story of an unpublicized conflict in a land very close to the U.S.
1/14 Paul Lane

HOUSE OF JAGUAR by Mike Bond. Mandevilla Press (November 25, 2013). ISBN 978-1627040105. 387p

Comments Off on HOUSE OF JAGUAR by Mike Bond | Book Reviews, Crime Fiction, Fiction | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Stacy Alesi

THE TRIGGER by L J Sellers

January 20, 2014

Ms. Sellers became one of my go-to authors of crime fiction with her highly successful Detective Jackson series. Now she had broken new ground with Jamie Dallas, a young single female FBI agent who thrives on undercover assignments.

In this outing, Dallas is sent into a “preppers” compound run by two brothers near Redding, California. The wife and infant son of one of the brothers have gone missing and Dallas is sent in to see if she can either find them or clues regarding what might have happened to them.

What the FBI doesn’t know and Dallas soon finds out is these are no ordinary preppers. Instead of waiting for the global economic collapse touted by most preppers, they are, in fact, actively engaged in a program to bring on the apocalypse by creating “bank runs” and disrupting the internet.

All is well that ends well but getting to the conclusion can be quite scary. Recommended.

1/14 Jack Quick

THE TRIGGER by L J Sellers. Spellbinder Press (August 23, 2013). ISBN 978-0984008650. 280p.

Comments Off on THE TRIGGER by L J Sellers | Book Reviews, Crime Fiction | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by Stacy Alesi

AN OFFICER AND A SPY by Robert Harris

January 20, 2014

Robert Harris takes us to France during the late 19th century and as he does in his other historically centered novels, brings the era to life as background for this novel.  The French army has suffered a major defeat in just six weeks against the Germans during the war of 1870.  The country has lost the twin provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, seized by Germany as war reparations and the country is smarting from the defeat.

Alfred Dreyfus is a captain of artillery in the French army, Jewish, and originating in Alsace. In 1894,  after the discovery of a traitor in the ranks of the army selling secrets to Germany, a group of officers in the army convicted Dreyfus of the crime. This was based on very flimsy evidence not revealed to his lawyer, and had him sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island, a French possession off the coast of South America.

Among the officers convicting him is Georges Picquart, an intellectual and a soldier loyal to France. After the trial  Picquart is promoted to head up the newly formed French counter-intelligence agency and, among other duties, is to maintain the ongoing file on Dreyfus.  While Picquart was originally convinced of Dreyfus’s guilt, some evidence surfaces which points in another direction.
In order to bring emotions to the story, it is told in first person using Picquart as the narrator. When he discovers evidence conflicting with that presented by Dreyfus’s prosecutor, his honor demands that he systematically begin to investigate it, although his career begins to suffer along the way when superior officers demand that he drop the matter.

Harris incorporates real people involved in the affair, including several Generals that apparently colluded to prevent the truth coming out.  The author Emile Zola is mentioned, and it was his article “I Accuse,” printed in the newspaper that helped to finally pardon, and later exonerate Dreyfus in real life. The period was rife with antisemitism, and Harris accuses this factor as being an important feature in the original finding Dreyfus guilty and subsequent attempts to free him.

A must read, and a commanding one.

1/14 Paul Lane

AN OFFICER AND A SPY by Robert Harris. Knopf (January 28, 2014). ISBN 978-0385349581. 448p

Comments Off on AN OFFICER AND A SPY by Robert Harris | Book Reviews, Crime Fiction, Fiction | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Stacy Alesi

PURGATORY by Ken Bruen

January 19, 2014

Former cop Jack Taylor has finally managed to kick the myriad substances that have had a stranglehold over his painful life. However, this fragile existence is threatened when a vigilante killer begins targeting the scum of Galway, signing mysterious notes with the moniker ‘C 33’.

The killer addresses these cryptic letters to Jack, trying to goad him into joining the murderous spree. While Jack tries to unravel the mystery and motives of this demented killer, he is also brought into the fold of an enigmatic tech billionaire who has been buying up massive amounts of property in Galway. If Jack has learned one thing living in Ireland, it’s that people who outwardly claim to be on the side of righteousness are likely harboring far more nefarious motives beneath the surface.

With the help of his friends, former drug dealer-turned-zen master Stewart and dogged police sergeant Ridge, Jack is determined to track down C 33, even if it jeopardizes his livelihood, his friends, and the remaining shreds of his sanity.

Purgatory is Bruen at his best: lyrical, brutal, and ceaselessly suspenseful.

1/14 Jack Quick

PURGATORY by Ken Bruen. Mysterious Press (November 4, 2013). ISBN 978-0802126078. 272p

Comments Off on PURGATORY by Ken Bruen | Book Reviews, Crime Fiction, Fiction | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Stacy Alesi

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »