15TH Affair – James Patterson and Maxine Paetro

I’m a big James Patterson fan, and I’ve become a fan of his teaming up with Maxine Paetro for this series. I must confess to only having read the first two books in The Women’s Murder Club series before reading this one, but I do plan to fix that by finding the rest of the series as soon as I can afford to.

My copy is a paperback – trade size – and the story is roughly 357 pages. There’s the usual About The Authors in the back as well as some other things in there the reader will like. This copy was published by Grand Central Publishing,a division of Hachette Book Group Inc., and has a copyright of 2016. The hardcover version was originally published by Little, Brown and Company in May 2016.

Now, this story centers around Detective Lindsay Boxer of the San Francisco Police Department. She’s married with a baby girl and a dog, as well as a wonderful neighbor/nanny and her murder club friends.

A murder and a disappearing woman threaten her marriage and, at one point, her life! The book is full of twists and turns as well as some strong feels as Lindsay works the case and tries to deal with her life crumbling around her. The action is fantastic and nothing is wasted as everything you learn leads to something else – sometimes unexpected things!

I really enjoyed the book, and I think you will too. Just don’t take my word for it – read it for yourself! 🙂

See you on the flipside and don’t forget your towel and sonic screwdriver. If you can’t have a Tardis, get a black 1969 Impala or, my personal fave, a cherry red 1969 Firebird!

Solitude Creek – Jeffrey Deaver

This book is a Kathryn Dancer novel, not a LIncoln Rhyme novel, but I liked it anyway. 🙂 My copy is a paperback published by Grand Central Publishing Copyright 2015. It’s roughtly 579 pages long plus a bit of a lead in to another book and the always present, Author page, every novel should have – if only so we have a picture of the author. 🙂

Agent Kathryn Dance works for the California Bureau of Investigation and lives in the area. She’s a widow with two children, boy and girl, and several dogs. She is friends of Lincoln Rhyme(might we see another pairing of this intelligent and determined duo?) and Amelia Sachs. She is also an expert in kinesics – the study of body language and how to read people. She uses it as one of her main interrogation techniques.

In this story, a man named Antioch March(he prefers Andy) is staging stampedes – for profit! Kathryn is sent as part of an undercover operation for another ongoing case dealing with gangs to the site of the initial stampede, and she decides she’s going to work this case too.

With two cases going and with two men she’s really into, you’d think her dance card would be full! Then, there’s the kids. Wes, her son, is hanging out with new friends and not quite telling her lies about what he’s doing with them. Maggie, her daughter and the younger of the two, is moody and a bit withdrawn – to the point of not wanting to since at her school’s talent show even though she’s a great singer!

Agent Dance manages all of this chaos in her life and doesn’t get shot once! A shocker to me too especially when her demotion means she can’t carry a weapon! Still, she does her job, on all fronts, superbly!

You have to read this book! I refuse to give away the ending or even tell you any of the really good parts – because I can! 🙂 As you all know, I’m a big advocate for doing things yourself: see the movie critics are panning, read the book everyone seems to hate, listen to the music everybody else scoffs at. Don’t be a lemming who just follows what everyone else is doing – you’ll miss out on a lot going over the cliff with the others.

So, see you on the flipside and don’t forget to bring your towel and sonic screwdriver! Who knows, we might run into some evil alien lemmings bent on throwing us off the cliff! 🙂

Secrets in Death – J.D. Robb

My copy of this book is a trade paperback meaning it’s small enough to fit in my purse. 🙂 It’s printed by St. Martin’s Press, the Paperback division. Copyright is 2017 and held by Nora Roberts aka J.D. Robb. It’s a cop driven whodoneit which I like when it’s written well.

Lieutenant Eve Dallas and Detective Peabody (aka Shebody to her beau, EDD Detective Ian McNab) are the main players from the police force, and there’s Raorke, the civilian consultant. He also happens to very rich and very married to Eve though she doesn’t use his last name when she’s working. Not sure what that means, but it’s in the book.

The story starts with Eve going to a swank bar to meet a colleague she really doesn’t like that much and during a somewhat testy exchange of why don’t you like me; I don’t like you because.. Eve sees a woman come staggering into the bar from the lower floor, bleeding. She literally catches the woman before she dies and goes to the floor with her even as she breathes her last.

So begins the mystery of who killed the woman, who turns out to be the gossip queen of a big television studio. Everyone has a reason to kill, more so than others, so motive is a no-brainer. The question is, amongst all the people this woman blackmailed and extorted, who actually ended her.

I enjoyed the book immensely. I’ve actually read most of the series from the very beginning, and the evolution of the Eve character is fun to watch. 🙂 Sex is in the book, but it’s not all that graphic (not compared to many so called “romance” books that are really just soft porn). It’s also between the loving couple of Eve and Dallas, and it’s part of the story – their story.

This story isn’t your run of the mill mystery. People really matter. How they feel, what they’ve been through and the secrets they’ve felt the need to protect despite what it led to – in this case extortion and blackmail. There’s a great deal of depth and emotion, and I really like that as it makes me care more, makes me relate better, to the characters.

I highly recommend reading this book, but as usual, I don’t advocate taking my advice blindly. Check out the book yourself. If it’s not what you like, no worries. I’m not here to judge, just to share a little bit of my world with you. 🙂

See you all on the flipside and don’t forget your towel and sonic screwdriver!

Crimson Shore – Preston & Child

This book is written by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. They have written 15 novels featuring Agent A.X.L. Pendergast. It is published by Grand Central Publishing Copyright 2016. My copy is a trade paperback with about 395 pages of story in it plus an About The Authors page that is almost a full page. They have a Facebook page and a website: PrestonChild.com

As I said in a previous post, I had read an earlier book by the pair featuring this FBI agent, and I wasn’t too thrilled with it. Now, years later however, I am actually liking the guy and his methods of doing things his way – helps when you’re seriously rich I guess.

Anyway, in this book, our erstwhile hero and his assistant/ward, Constance Greene, are asked to look into the theft of an entire collection of wine from the cellar of the former home of a lighthouse keeper – said lighthouse being under the care of the US Coast Guard – but the house not, in Exmouth, Massachusetts. They find all is not what it seems!

This story is full of lots of wonderful twists, turns and the general sneakiness of good mystery stories. Agent Pendergast is someone who reminds me of Hercule Poirot, without the accent or the moustache! He keeps his thoughts close to the vest, asks leading questions of Constance to get her quick mind to work and is quite the showman when he needs to be.

Constance is a shallow person to me so far. She’s a secondary character who is more sidekick than anything else. I have only caught glimpses of her backstory in the two books I’ve read so far. I am looking forward to going back to the beginning and starting this journey the right way.

I highly recommend this book! It’s lots of fun, and I actually read it in one sitting as I couldn’t set it down even to get some sleep! As always, don’t take my word for it – peruse the book yourself and decide whether it’s worth reading. Form your own opinion about it as well. After all, who am I to tell you what to think and what to feel? That’s your job.

See you on the flipside and don’t forget your towel and screwdriver!