​Genre: Thriller

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I am a Harlan Coben fan and have loved all of his books, so I was happy to find one that I had missed along the way. The Woods, like most of Coben’s thrillers, introduces us to a protagonist with a hidden past that is soon to be revealed. Paul Copeland is a New Jersey county prosecutor who is seeking justice for a sixteen year old rape victim. The victim is a stripper/prostitute and the accused are two wealthy fraternity boys, so Copeland is not having an easy time of it. When the prosecutor refuses to take a bribe from the father of one of the alleged rapists, the father threatens to spend his money digging up the skeletons in Paul Copeland’s life.

Copeland is also dealing with memories of the night, decades earlier, when a nighttime camp adventure ended in the disappearance of several campers, including his sister. Two bodies were found and attributed to the “Summer Slasher,” and two others ( including his sister) were never found but assumed murdered. A recent corpse causes Copeland to rethink all that he remembers, and he begins searching for a truth that seems to elude him.

The supporting characters in this well written novel, a long lost summer love, an ace investigator and an eccentric witness, help to enrich the story and the courtroom scenes definitely kept me involved. I did find the story a bit more predictable than his other thrillers. Coben’s twist endings are often the high point of his books, and this book lacked that wow factor. Of course it was written over a decade ago, and most writers improve as they continue in their career.

I will say that Harlan Coben in less-than-top form is still better than most thriller writers on their best days, so I can easily recommend this book as an addition to your library.

​-Beverly


Publisher - Dutton/Penguin
Date of Publication - ​​​​2007

Genre: Children's Book

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One of the biggest mysteries of childhood is what our parents get to do after we are put to bed. My own children pictured us dancing, laughing, partying and never going to sleep. Jeff Mack does a wonderful job of bringing children’s fantasies to life in Duck on a Disco Ball (A Duck in the Fridge Book).

Mack’s small hero fights going to sleep because he fears that he is missing something. Then one morning he finds a disco ball in his kitchen with his toy duck draped over it. His imagination goes for a wild jaunt and takes us along for the ride. He narrates his story as he shows us his parents doing all of the wild things that he would love to do. The illustrations are bright and each page is packed with points of interest that will keep children fascinated as they turn the pages.

Although it is primarily a children’s book, the puns and double entendres make it a joy for grown ups as well. With the holiday season around the corner, this is a perfect gift for the young ones in your house.

​-Beverly


Publisher - Two Lions
Date of Publication - ​​​​November 1, 2018

Genre: Legal Thriller

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Victor Methos, a lawyer himself, writes about what he knows. His protagonist in Shotgun Lawyer, Peter Game, has a good heart that is buried under a pile of insecurities. Although he comes off as cynical and a bit ethically challenged, we quickly find out that he will go to great lengths for a cause in which he believes. Melissa presents him with just such a cause.

Her seven year old son is gunned down by a semi-automatic during a school shooting at a Salt Lake City elementary school, and she wants the gun manufacturer to pay. Peter is well aware that no one beats the gun lobby and tries to tell her that it is a losing cause. Eventually she convinces him to help her, and the David and Goliath battle begins.

When he realizes his opponent is Brennen Garvin, a brilliant lawyer with a total lack of scruples, his one man office seems laughable and his case impossible. A former fiancé, and a satanist intern/clerk join his team, and the fun begins.

Methos does his usually good job in featuring the “down on his luck” attorney as a credible hero, and the book moves along quickly to a satisfying conclusion. He definitely paints a picture of the horrors of a school shooting, but he does not bury us in more details than is necessary. While I would have enjoyed a bit more character development, this plot driven legal thriller never took the easy way out. This was never going to be an easy win, and the author made it more about the importance of the fight than the big money payout.

Peter Game seems to find himself in this challenge, and I hope Methos brings him back in a future novel.

-Beverly


Publisher - Thomas & Mercer
Date of Publication - ​​​​October 23, 2018

Genre: Legal Thriller

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Deborah Hawkins made me love her characters early on in Keeping Secrets, and I continued to be invested in a positive outcome until I turned the last page. There are several protagonists, and Hawkins gives them each their moments in the sun as she features different ones in each chapter.

The story centers around the life and imminent death of Professor Edward Wynne Carter, III, who has spent over thirty years on Virginia’s death row for the murder of his pregnant wife, Anne. Ed insists his love for Anne would have never allowed him to kill her, and Attorney Brendon Murphy has kept him alive until now, but an execution date looms ahead.

Ed’s son, Wynne, is an Attorney and his father’s biggest champion, and is doing everything in his power to save his father as well. Wynne's fiancé, Claire, is willing to give up her big wedding and concentrate on helping the Carters prove Ed’s innocence, but complications arise.

McKenzie Fitzgerald, just out of law school when Anne was murdered, interviewed a key alibi witness, forgot to turn on the tape recorder, and covers up her mistake at Ed’s expense. Now she is fighting for a seat on the Supreme Court and realizes if she brings out the truth to save Ed, she will lose the nomination.

The story, with so many roads to follow, is an easy one to get involved in, and I never felt lost. Hawkins style pulls us into the mind and heart of each of her characters, and the story itself, loosely based on the truth, is a fascinating read. Although the end felt a wee bit too contrived for my taste, I enjoyed the book enough to overlook that small issue.

-Beverly


Publisher - Amazon Digital Services LLC
Date of Publication - ​​​August 30,2018

​​​​Genre: Mystery

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Don Carrigan, a homeless veteran, is attacked in the middle of the night in this latest Andy Carpenter novel by David Rosenfelt. Deck the Hounds has Andy at his best because naturally, there is a dog involved. When Carrigan is attacked, Zoey, his dog, comes to his defense.   In true Carpenter fashion, Andy and Laurie offer the dog and his “person” a place to stay in the apartment over their garage.

Unfortunately, while giving an interview, Andy mentions Carrigan’s name, which opens a whole new can of worms for the unfortunate veteran. He is quickly arrested for a murder that happened two years before, and Andy just as quickly has another case. Carrigan claims that he is innocent and never knew he was a wanted man.

Andy brings the gang together, and the fun begins...for us at least. I found that this book was a little more substantial than the others as the team tracks down clues in their quest to free a man they believe in. Unfortunately, with his DNA at the crime scene and a witness claiming that he confessed, Andy’s house-guest is in a great deal of trouble.

The reader should quickly figure out that there is some sort of set-up going on and then have fun watching Andy come to the same conclusion. The excitement builds and never disappoints as the humorous interchange between characters keeps the reader entertained. I enjoyed watching Andy grow emotionally, as a father and husband, and hope that there are several more Carpenter books in Rosenfelt’s future.

- Beverly


Publisher - Minotaur Books
Date of Publication - October 16, 2018

​​Genre: Fiction/Historical

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There are few authors who draw me in as completely as Ronald Balson. I anxiously await his latest novels and feel sad when the last page is finished. His main characters, attorney Catherine Lockhart and investigator Liam Taggart are interesting enough to hold our attention through the series, but his secondary protagonists in each book are the ones that bring out emotions I didn’t know I had.

Three of his previous books took place in and around the holocaust, and The Girl From Berlin is no exception. Catherine and Liam are hired to try to prevent the eviction of their friend’s aunt Gabi from her small farm/vineyard in the Tuscan hills. A powerful corporation claims that they own the deeds even though she has her own set of deeds for the land.

Gabi sends Catherine a translated copy of a journal written by Ada Baumgarten, who was born in Berlin in 1918. Ada was the daughter of an accomplished first-chair violinist in the prestigious Berlin Philharmonic, and she herself became a prodigy. Flashbacks begin during her years enjoying Berlin’s rich culture as a small child, and go on through the years of Hitler’s Germany. We follow her escape to Italy and subsequent dealings with the Nazi’s there. We follow her career, her family and friends, and her forbidden romance, as everything is taken from the Jewish people during those years.

I often have trouble reading stories centering around this time period, but Balson’s books are different. He doesn’t try to hide the horrors, but he concentrates more on the bravery of his characters and the lives that they live. The actual concentration camp scenes are scarce and less graphic then many others I have read, but the message is no less powerful. 

When the readers’ emotions reach a breaking point dealing with Ada, Balson brings us back to 2018 and the legal case that our protagonists are fighting to win in Italy.  I spent a good deal of the book trying to figure out how Gabi came to be in possession of Ada’s manuscript, and the answer didn’t disappoint me.

Balson’s descriptions of a collapsing Germany and the beautiful hillsides of Tuscany add a depth to the book and lead me to highly recommend it for your collection.

-Beverly


Publisher - St. Martin’s Press
Date of Publication - ​​​October 9, 2018

​​​​Genre: Fiction

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There are a slew of mother-in-law jokes written each year, yet no one seems to get tired of them. Mothers of men are particularly picked upon, but often it is with good reason. Sandie Jones gives us a peek into just how nightmarish a life can be when a mother fights to be number one in her son’s life in the novel The Other Woman.

Emily isn’t necessarily looking for a husband when she meets Adam, but he seemed like the real deal. Almost perfect...and then there was Pammie. Pammie raised Adam and his brother after becoming widowed, and the two boys adore her. Early on the reader (and Emily) see just how manipulative Pammie can be. Her need to be everything to her sons is pathological, and we watch her try to destroy Emily and the relationship that is blossoming.

The book builds around this premise, and Jones draws the reader in as the story progresses. I love the way the author paints a picture with her words. “His breath had smelled of last night’s curry,” certainly allows us to feel her disgust. When Emily disagreed with her own mother’s advice about judging a man by his teeth, she explained, “ I put more importance on whether someone’s smile reaches their eyes.”  Those words helped build a picture of Emily as well as the person she was meeting.

Pammie was far from endearing, and I wasn’t overly fond of Adam, but they were both fascinating characters. It was frustrating watching Emily fight an uphill better as Adam turned a blind eye to his mother’s manipulation. It was hard to imagine that this bright young man was missing all the in-your-face clues, but it is often difficult to come between a boy and his mother. Jones’ exploration of this relationship added to the story and made it more than just another quick summer read, and the twist and turns kept me going until the very end.

-Beverly

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Publisher - Minotaur Books
Date of Publication - ​​​​August 21, 2018

​​​Genre: Legal Thriller

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Phillip Margolin’s legal thriller, Violent Crimes: An Amanda Jaffe Novel, kept me up a good part of the night as I tried to put all of the pieces together. Margolin gives us several murders, questionable business practices, a son who admits to killing his father...but probably didn’t, and an innocent ex-military man being set up to take the fall for several murders.

The protagonist in this series, attorney Amanda Jaffe, fights every battle with a quest for the truth and fights enemies on several fronts in order to defend her client. In Violent Crimes she works with her investigator to defend two men whom she believes to be innocent and finds possible conflicts of interests along the way. 

This book is relevant to today’s politics and makes one wonder how far people will go to accrue immense wealth. I found it a bit overly convoluted at times, but the author did a good job bringing it all together as the book progressed. Although he threw in little glimpses of Amanda’s private life, I would like to have seen a bit more. It would have served to soften the book a bit and given the reader a break from all of the murder and mayhem.

That being said, Margolin is a master of murder and mayhem, and this novel does showcase what he does best. As always, villains are frightening, his heroes are fearless and his book fulfills the promise of an exciting few days of page turning.

- Beverly
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Publisher - Harper
Date of Publication - ​​​​February 9, 2016

​​​Genre: Thriller

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Stephen Frey’s novels often encompass the military world and/or the financial world, and Ultimate Power does both. On the day that Andrew Falcon Jr. becomes the youngest hedge fund manager to become partner at his Wall Street investment bank, his niece is kidnapped. The price to get her back is information about his firm, and what he finds out horrifies him.

Meanwhile we meet the President, Katrina Hilton, and are privy to her liberal-leaning plans for the country. Several high ranking military leaders will do anything to thwart those plans, and a rogue faction forms to manipulate the American people. Throw in a mob boss on the run and presidential protection that goes beyond the Secret Service, and you have one of Stephen Frey’s non-stop thrillers.

The story-line got a little nerve wracking as it seemed to hit home with today’s political climate. In fact, Frey added an author’s note at the end explaining his need to change a locale in the book because, although it was written before an event that shocked our nation, it was too similar and would perhaps make a sensitive situation even worse.

Although many of the characters were a bit shallow and unappealing, I did like Andrew and enjoyed watching him fight his way through this untenable situation.  Frey’s thrillers tend to be a bit convoluted, and there were times I had to look back and check out who was who, but on the whole I can recommend this as a book worth reading.

- Beverly
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Publisher - Thomas & Mercer
Date of Publication - ​​​February 13, 2018

​​​Genre: Mystery

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This was my first Chris Patchell book, but it won’t be my last. Vow of Silence was one of those books that I couldn’t put down. It was a bit confusing at first because each chapter is told through the eyes of different characters, but once I became familiar with the main ones, and their individual stories, I became totally invested in the book.

I liked the fact that, as in real life, no character was all good or all bad. Jill Shannon has a tragic backstory (unfortunately I didn’t read the first book in this series), and her dark secrets might just be the end of her. Conner Manning, her fiancé, is caught up in his father’s political ambitions, and that could have repercussions for them all.

Detective David Shaw is trying to find out who murdered reporter Joe Gaines and somehow ends up on Jill’s doorstep. Joe might have been working on a secret exposé that got him killed, or it could have been his drug involvement or a jealous husband. Detective Shaw is determined to solve this murder, even while he is skipping over a major problem in his own home.

The story is a good one and most of the characters are strong. Though there were a few loose ends, it kept my interest until the last page, and I look forward to the next in Patchell’s series.

- Beverly


Publisher - CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 2 edition
Date of Publication - January 17, 2018