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Book Reviews...

Since I read approximately 3-4 novels a month I will update this list on a periodic basis. I am well read and have a variety of favorite authors and draw insight from most of their writings. Some of the bad authors teach you as much as the good ones...

Recent Reads:

Currently reading...

March 2009

Excelent adventure! Great action and story line...

On the horizon:

Starting on all of the books of Clive Cussler's Oregon Files:

March 09

A Secret Service agent is dead, an apparent suicide. A presidential candidate narrowly escapes an assassin's bullet. And Desk Three, a convert branch of the NSA, is searching for a chilling connection deep inside The Republic of Vietnam.

Once, Charlie Dean was a Marine sniper in Quang Nam Province. Today he's a Deep Black operator, returning to Vietnam to find the source of some threatening e-mails. Instead, he comes face to face with a man he had once hunted down...and thought he had killed.

Back in the U.S., Deep Black agent Lia DeFrancesca has uncovered the trail of a killer in Dean's path. Now, with every asset, weapon, bug and high-tech magic wand Desk Three can wave, the agents enter a terrifying global race against time. Because ghosts of the past have risen to life...to strike a death blow into the heart of the U.S.A.

Interesting book, but I found a lot of dialogue that is what we refer to as "the three way triangle" a lot of speechs that are put into the the mouth of the characters for the information of the reader. Normal people don't talk that way?

..."But sir, you know that the xpx 410-2357 missle is only designed for long range targets but if it hits a F-17x-456 stealth fighter/bomber with a Grummin x2345-78910 engine aboard that the x25-g tracking system will blow it sky high unless the pilot switches to covert secret black ops mode when he is above 25,000 feet..."

But who am I to criticize Dale Brown, sold a gazillion more books than me, but I found it redundant so didn't get past the first 10 pages...

Not related to Dan Brown?

I found him redundant also...

I've been on a John Grisham kick lately also...

Feb. 2009

In his final hours in the Oval Office, the outgoing President grants a controversial last-minute pardon to Joel Backman, a notorious Washington power broker who has spent the last six years hidden away in a federal prison. What no one knows is that the President issues the pardon only after receiving enormous pressure from the CIA. It seems Backman, in his power broker heyday, may have obtained secrets that compromise the world’s most sophisticated satellite surveillance system.

Backman is quietly smuggled out of the country in a military cargo plane, given a new name, a new identity, and a new home in Italy. Eventually, after he has settled into his new life, the CIA will leak his whereabouts to the Israelis, the Russians, the Chinese, and the Saudis. Then the CIA will do what it does best: sit back and watch. The question is not whether Backman will survive—there is no chance of that. The question the CIA needs answered is, who will kill him?

Just finished...

At the top of his class at Harvard Law, he had his choice of the best in America. He made a deadly mistake. When Mitch McDeere signed on with Bendini, Lambert & Locke of Memphis, he thought he and his beautiful wife, Abby, were on their way. The firm leased him a BMW, paid off his school loans, arranged a mortgage and hired him a decorator. Mitch McDeere should have remembered what his brother Ray — doing fifteen years in a Tennessee jail — already knew. You never get nothing for nothing. Now the FBI has the lowdown on Mitch’s firm and needs his help. Mitch is caught between a rock and a hard place, with no choice — if he wants to live.

Next...

John Grisham’s first work of nonfiction, an exploration of small town justice gone terribly awry, is his most extraordinary legal thriller yet.

In the major league draft of 1971, the first player chosen from the State of Oklahoma was Ron Williamson. When he signed with the Oakland A’s, he said goodbye to his hometown of Ada and left to pursue his dreams of big league glory.

Six years later he was back, his dreams broken by a bad arm and bad habits—drinking, drugs, and women. He began to show signs of mental illness. Unable to keep a job, he moved in with his mother and slept twenty hours a day on her sofa.

In 1982, a 21-year-old cocktail waitress in Ada named Debra Sue Carter was raped and murdered, and for five years the police could not solve the crime. For reasons that were never clear, they suspected Ron Williamson and his friend Dennis Fritz. The two were finally arrested in 1987 and charged with capital murder.

With no physical evidence, the prosecution’s case was built on junk science and the testimony of jailhouse snitches and convicts. Dennis Fritz was found guilty and given a life sentence. Ron Williamson was sent to death row.

If you believe that in America you are innocent until proven guilty, this book will shock you. If you believe in the death penalty, this book will disturb you. If you believe the criminal justice system is fair, this book will infuriate you.

Just finished...Jan 2009

Every jury has a leader, and the verdict belongs to him. In Biloxi, Mississippi, a landmark tobacco trial with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake beginsroutinely, then swerves mysteriously off course. The jury is behaving strangely, and at least one juroris convinced he’s being watched. Soon they have to be sequestered. Then a tip from an anonymousyoung woman suggests she is able to predict the jurors’ increasingly odd behavior. Is the jury somehow being manipulated, or even controlled? If so, by whom? And, more important,why?

Read every Christmas several times during the season! I love it! Much better than the movie.

Imagine a year without Christmas. No crowded malls, no corny office parties, no fruitcakes, no unwanted presents. That’s just what Luther and Nora Krank have in mind when they decide that, just this once, they’ll skip the holiday altogether. Theirs will be the only house on Hemlock Street without a rooftop Frosty; they won’t be hosting their annual Christmas Eve bash; they aren’t even going to have a tree. They won’t need one, because come December 25 they’re setting sail on a Caribbean cruise. But, as this weary couple is about to discover, skipping Christmas brings enormous consequences–and isn’t half as easy as they’d imagined.

A classic tale for modern times, Skipping Christmas offers a hilarious look at the chaos and frenzy that have become part of our holiday tradition.

Others I have finished recently...

Michael was in a hurry. He was scrambling up the ladder at Drake & Sweeney, a giant D.C. law firm with eight hundred lawyers. The money was good and getting better; a partnership was three years away. He was a rising star with no time to waste, no time to stop, no time to toss a few coins into the cups of panhandlers. No time for a conscience.

But a violent encounter with a homeless man stopped him cold. Michael survived; his assailant did not. Who was this man? Michael did some digging, and learned that he was a mentally ill veteran who’d been in and out of shelters for many years. Then Michael dug a little deeper, and found a dirty secret, and the secret involved Drake & Sweeney.

The fast track derailed; the ladder collapsed. Michael bolted the firm and took a top-secret file with him. He landed in the streets, an advocate for the homeless, a street lawyer.

And a thief.

They watched Danilo Silva for days before they finally grabbed him. He was living alone, a quiet life on a shady street in Brazil; a simple life in a modest home, certainly not one of luxury. Certainly no evidence of the fortune they thought he had stolen. He was much thinner and his face had been altered. He spoke a different language, and spoke it very well.But Danilo had a past with many chapters. Four years earlier he had been Patrick Lanigan, a young partner in a prominent Biloxi law firm. He had a pretty wife, a new daughter, and a bright future. Then one cold winter night Patrick was trapped in a burning car and died a horrible death. When he was buried his casket held nothing more than his ashes.From a short distance away, Patrick watched his own burial. Then he fled. Six weeks later, a fortune was stolen from his ex-law firm’s offshore account. And Patrick fled some more.But they found him.

Ray Atlee is a professor of law at the University of Virginia. He’s forty-three, newly single, and still enduring the aftershocks of a surprise divorce. He has a younger brother, Forrest, who redefines the notion of a family’s black sheep.

And he has a father, a very sick old man who lives alone in the ancestral home in Clanton, Mississippi. He is known to all as Judge Atlee, a beloved and powerful official who has towered over local law and politics for forty years. No longer on the bench, the Judge has withdrawn to the Atlee mansion and become a recluse.

With the end in sight, Judge Atlee issues a summons for both sons to return home to Clanton, to discuss the details of his estate. It is typed by the Judge himself, on his handsome old stationery, and gives the date and time for Ray and Forrest to appear in his study.

Ray reluctantly heads south, to his hometown, to the place where he grew up, which he prefers now to avoid. But the family meeting does not take place. The Judge dies too soon, and in doing so leaves behind a shocking secret known only to Ray.

And perhaps someone else.

Rick Dockery was the third-string quarterback for the Cleveland Browns. In the AFC Championship game against Denver, to the surprise and dismay of virtually everyone, Rick actually got into the game. With a 17-point lead and just minutes to go, Rick provided what was arguably the worst single performance in the history of the NFL. Overnight, he became a national laughingstock and, of course, was immediately cut by the Browns and shunned by all other teams.

But all Rick knows is football, and he insists that his agent, Arnie, find a team that needs him. Against enormous odds Arnie finally locates just such a team and informs Rick that, miraculously, he can in fact now be a starting quarterback. Great, says Rick—for which team?

The mighty Panthers of Parma, Italy.

Yes, Italians do play American football, to one degree or another, and the Parma Panthers desperately want a former NFL player—any former NFL player—at their helm. So Rick reluctantly agrees to play for the Panthers—at least until a better offer comes along—and heads off to Italy. He knows nothing about Parma—not even where it is—has never been to Europe, and doesn’t speak or understand a word of Italian.

To say that Italy—the land of opera, fine wines, extremely small cars, romance, and Football Americano— holds a few surprises for Rick Dockery would be something of an understatement.

The office of the public defender is not known as a training ground for bright young litigators. Clay Carter has been there too long and, like most of his colleagues, dreams of a better job in a real firm. When he reluctantly takes the case of a young man charged with a random street killing, he assumes it is just another of the many senseless murders that hit D.C. every week.

As he digs into the background of his client, Clay stumbles on a conspiracy too horrible to believe. He suddenly finds himself in the middle of a complex case against one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, looking at the kind of enormous settlement that would totally change his life—that would make him, almost overnight, the legal profession’s newest king of torts…

Trumble is a minimum-security federal prison, a “camp,” home to the usual assortment of relatively harmless criminals–drug dealers, bank robbers, swindlers, embezzlers, tax evaders, two Wall Street crooks, one doctor, at least five lawyers.

And three former judges who call themselves the Brethren: one from Texas, one from California, and one from Mississippi. They meet each day in the law library, their turf at Trumble, where they write briefs, handle cases for other inmates, practice law without a license, and sometimes dispense jailhouse justice. And they spend hours writing letters. They are fine-tuning a mail scam, and it’s starting to really work. The money is pouring in.

Then their little scam goes awry. It ensnares the wrong victim, a powerful man on the outside, a man with dangerous friends, and the Brethren’s days of quietly marking time are over.

Not long ago... 2008

Edgar Freemantle is a millionaire building contractor from Minnesota who one day has the right side of his body crushed when a crane backs into his pickup. He loses his right arm (fortunately the is left handed), chunks of his memory, and soon after, his wife. Urged by his psychiatrist to get away and take up a hobby, Edgar finds himself on the west coat of Florida on a very small island called Duma Key.

The house he's leased, which he called Big Pink overlooked the Gulf of Mexico. Edgar begins to sketch and paint the sunsets and finds that he has a talent to show the ordinary in an extraordinary way.

When he shows some of his work to a local gallery, he is offered a show.

Down the beach from Edgar's house is the estate of Elizabeth Eastlake, owner of nearly the entire island of Duma Key. Elizabeth is an 80+-year-old woman on the verge of slipping into full-blown Alzheimer's. She's cared for by Jerome Wireman, ex-Omaha lawyer whose own story is probably even more tragic than Edgar's. The three form a bond over their love of the island and art.

As Edgar begins to expand his talent, he finds that the things he paints begin to come true; including his daughter's boyfriend, his wife's affair and a local girl's killer.

As the story unfolds, Edgar, Wireman and Edgar's assistant, Jack begin to explore the other side of the island with dire consequences.

Between the mystery ship, picnic basket, lawn jocky and upside down flying birds, Edgar and clan began to unfold a mystery that has literally laid dorment for 80 years.

A great read, I loved the characters and settings; and in King's classic style it held me spellbound for hours. The underlying theme wove its way through the story and as always Stephen King managed to bring it home in the end.

I found it an interesting premise.concerning what happens to the brain when a major injury occurs. So much of our life is memory and remembering what words to use in certain situations. Of course Stephen King takes the ordinary and makes it extra-ordinary and puts that "not of this world" twist on things.

King fans will love it, as did I.

“Echo Park” capitolizes on the truism: "Whatever dog you feed, the black one or the white one, is the one that will come out on top"

Another great installment in the Harry Bosch series.

I love Michael Connelly's style and description. He allows the reader to experience L. A. ever if they have never stepped foot inside the city limits.

When a car belonging to a young woman named Marie Gesto turns up at a crime scene, the trail grows cold and goes unsolved for 13 years; but Harry Bosch never forgets it.

When a man with plastic bags containing body parts is stopped in Echo Park, it catipults Harry back onto the trail after being filed away for 13 years.

Raynard Waits is one of the most interesting killers since Hannibal Lecter and leads Bosch on a marry chase.

Michael Connelly's expert eye takes us to the Los Angeles terrain. Of this melting-pot neighborhood near Dodger Stadium, he writes: “By day a walk down the main drag of Sunset Boulevard might require skills in five or more languages to read all of the storefronts. By night it was the only place in the city where the air could be split by the sound of gang gunfire, the cheer for a home-run ball, and the baying of the hillside coyotes — all in the same hour.”

Now Harry Bosch has joined the night.

This follow up to 2006's "Echo Park" was an easy and exciting read. I enjoy the way that Michael Connelly weaves the backstory throughout the current venture with ease and style.

If someone had never thumbed the pages of a Harry Bosch novel, they would still be right at home.

This 13th installment of the Harry Bosch series finds Harry and and partner Iggy Ferras on the trail of a terrorist hit squad with radioactive consequenses.

We also see Bosch reunited with FBI agent Rachel Walling and the clash has not dampered.

As always, Connelly gives you a look into the character's lives that makes you realize, "I know people like this".

A great read.

Brother Odd

by: Dean Koontz

The third installment in the Odd Thomas series. I will have to say that I believe I loved it the best!

Great premise and Dean interweaves the spiritual truths within a great story of intrigue and murder.

We find Oddy cloistered away in a monastery with an interesting collection of monks and nuns. When one of the monks turns up missing (how can you turn up missing?) Oddy finds himself in a web of mystery chased by ice bone creatures and Death, literally. But Odd accompanied by his dog, the ghost of Elvis, a Russian mystery man and a monk named Brother Knuckles; manages to get himself into hot water. But will he get out this time? That's something that you will have to read about...

Tim Carrier, a bachelor and stone mason is a man that likes to keep to himself.

At a friend's bar, during a casual conversation with another patron, the man slides a manila envelope across the bar saying “half of it’s there…the rest when she’s gone.”

By the time the significance of the stranger’s words sunk in, it was too late, the strange man had disappeared. A few minutes pass and Krait, the real assassin shows up and assumes Tim is the client. Realizing the magnitude of what he has unwittingly become a part of, Tim removes the information from the envelope and gives the cash to the man, telling him he's had a change of heart.

Unfortunately, no harm, no foul doesn't work in this case.

Linda Paquette couldn’t imagine who would want to kill her or why. But for now, the reasons were irrelevant because Krait was hot on their trail and was determined to complete his assignment.

Relying on all their wits to stay a step ahead of Krait gets harder and harder, as he seems to anticipate their every move. It soon becomes clear this killer has much more than good instincts and good luck on his side…

Dean Koontz has always taken the usual, spiced it up as only he can and delivered an action packed, suspense filled ride that keeps his legions of fans lining up and clamouring for more.

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Another great installment in the Alex Cross series.

James Patterson burst on to the thriller scene with his first Alex Cross novel, Along Came A Spider. Patterson followed that book with 11 more novels.

His style, characters, and writing have won him millions of dedicated readers. But most of them have been waiting on this latest book, Cross, in which they learn who killed Maria Cross, Alex’s beloved wife.

Cross remains a dedicated family man, and his life revolves around his children and his grandmother, Nana Mama, the woman who raised him after he was orphaned.

Cross has spent years tracking down murderers and serial killers beginning in Washington D.C. as a policeman, rose to detective, then joined the ranks of the FBI as a profiler who specialized in psychology.

In rapid-fire succession, Patterson introduces his readers all over again to Alex and Maria, to the children and to Nana Mama. But he also introduces them to Michael Sullivan, the Irish hit man who becomes known in organized crime circles as the Butcher of Sligo.

Just a few chapters into the book, which for Patterson with his 2- and 3-page chapter pacing isn’t very far at all, readers are given insight into Alex Cross’s marriage and life, and into the perpetual hell on wheels that is Michael Sullivan.

From the opening scene we know Sullivan is a dangerous man and in great character development, we find ourselves understanding Sullivan and almost feeling sorry for him.

Another thrill ride with James Patterson at the throttle.

With Michael Connelly's style and L.A. descriptions, we are in the backseat of defence attorney's chauffeured Lincoln Town Car for a thrill ride.

At times we find Mickey taking cases simply for the nice payday; but in the process, we identify with Mickey and his ethics.

When he's hired to defend a spoiled playboy against a charge of attempted murder of an escort, Mickey takes it knowing the rich kid will pay handsomely. He ultimately believes, though, that his client is guilty and everything becomes more complicated when Mickey becomes a murder suspect and his family is threatened.

Michael Connelly takes a break from his Harry Bosch series to create a new character in this legal thriller.

USA Today says: "The Lincoln Lawyer is Connelly's first legal thriller and is one of the best novels he has written, if not the best."

More on these coming up...

This one coming up. I have requested it from the library, unabridged on CD. They told me it is 32 CD's!!!!

I'll let you know...

Stephen King - Carrie, From a Buick 8, Bag of Bones, Dreamcatcher, The Langoliers, Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, The Dark Tower, The Gunslinger, Cell, Hearts in Alantis, Currently reading From a Buick 8 for about the 7th time!Lisie's Story, Duma Key.

Dan Brown - The DaVinci Code

W.E.B. Griffin -The Hostage, Final Justice, By Order of the President

Michael Connelly - Lost Light, Chasing the Dime, City of Bones, A Darkness More Than Night, Blood Work, The Poet, The Overlook, Echo Park, The Lincoln Lawyer

Sue Grafton - F is for Fugitive, M is for Malice,

O is for Outlaw, Q is for Quarry, S is for Silence, T is for Trespass

James Patterson - Along Came a Spider, Kiss The Girls, The Big Bad Wolf, Four Blind Mice, Violets Are Blue, Roses Are Red, 1st to Die,Cross

2nd Chance, 3rd Degree

Patricia Cornwell - Cause of Death, Unatural Exposure

Ken Follett - White Out, Hornet Flight

Dean Koontz - The Bad Place, Midnight, Odd Thomas, Forever Odd, Brother Odd,Life Expectancy, The Good Guy

Stephen Coonts - Liberty

Clive Cussler - Sacred Stone

Nora Roberts - Northern Lights

Nicholas Sparks - The Guardian, The Notebook

Tom Clancy - Debt of Honor, Rainbow Six, Red Rabbit, The Cardinal of the Kremlin, The Bear and the Dragon,

The Teeth of the Tiger

Nevada Barr - High Country

James Walker - Murder on the Titanic

John Grisham - The Brethern, King of Torts, The Broker, Skipping Christmas, The Last Juror

Michael Crichton - Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Prey, Sphere

Jack Higgins - Bad Company, Midnight Runner

Robert Ludlum - The Borne Identity

Greg Iles - The Footprints of God

Fanny Flagg - Fried Green Tomatos at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Earnest Heminway - The Old Man and the Sea

Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol, A Tale of Two Cities

I enjoy Sue Grafton's writing and characters and I've read quite a few of The Alphabet Murder series...

This on was a toughy...

I have set it aside after the 5th cd of 32.

Wasn't holding my attention as much.

I found the characters interesting but with close to 1000 pages, Ken Follett goes into a great deal of explanations about architecture and the monasterial hierarchy.

I thoroughly enjoy his suspense and military series but this one I may have to save for later...

Brother Odd

by: Dean Koontz