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I’ve been a fan of Robert Crais’s Elvis Cole private eye series debuted in The Monkey’s Raincoat back in 1987. The thing that immediately caught my attention was the mirror sunglasses on the cover that showed the unmistakable image of Jiminy Cricket standing next to a double-edged razor blade. On Stalking The Angel, the second book in the series, it was the silhouette of Mickey Mouse holding a gun on the paperback edition.

Robert B. Parker and Raymond Chandler permanently warped my mind for the wicked retorts and one-liners Spenser and Philip Marlowe (the authors’ respective characters) were fond of. I can’t help myself. I love detectives who get caught between the bad guys and the cops to save a client who isn’t quite innocent but doesn’t deserve to be given up to the devil.

Elvis Cole, the self-proclaimed World’s Greatest Detective, is irreverent, witty, driven, and self-assured. More so in the beginning of the series than in recent books after tragedy has hit him again and again.

Every private eye from the 1980s onward, though, has to have a combative second, a darker side who will do things the private eye won’t do. Someone who will unflinchingly step over lines and rules the private eye has set for himself/herself.

Spenser has Hawk. Harlan Coben’s sports agent Myron Bolitar has Windsor Horne Lockwood III – “Win.” Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, Dennis Lehane’s detectives, have Bubba.

Elvis Cole has Joe Pike, his invisible partner who can be counted on to help Elvis pick up the pieces every time an investigation goes south or turns bloody.

For much of the thus far ten-book series, Joe Pike has largely been an enigma. We saw part of him step onto stage in L.A. Requiem and The Last Detective, but we’ve never really gotten a true look behind those mirror shades Pike wears even at night.

We know from the books that Pike, like Elvis, is a veteran of the Vietnam War. He’s an ex-cop from the Los Angeles Police Department that all the other cops hate. He’s a trained mercenary. He owns different business interests that no one knows about. He’s fastidious. He doesn’t let anyone into his life, and even Elvis only gets his friendship and not much of Pike’s history.

He wears sweatshirts with the sleeves hacked off. He has red arrows tattooed on his deltoids. The arrows point forward. Because Joe Pike never backs up.

I love Elvis Cole, but Joe Pike is the guy I really want to get to know. He’s quick and dangerous. He kills without hesitation or remorse. He fights for the underdog and leaves everything on the field, never holding back.

In L.A. Requiem readers discovered that Pike had an abusive father. It was that relationship that set the tone for Pike. He became autonomous and complete on his own. Unfortunately he also became an island, a no man’s land that people could visit but could never stay. Even Elvis Cole, the best friend that Pike ever had, can’t get in all the way.

But Crais is generous in his newest release, The Watchman. It’s labeled “A Joe Pike Novel,” and readers have to wonder if there will be more. Readers who pick it up and finish it – probably in a single sitting or two – will hope that it’s just the beginning of a new series, even though Elvis Cole features in the book as well.

Pike’s history interweaves with an assignment he takes because of a promise he made to a man named Jon Stone, an associate from Pike’s mercenary days. Stone calls Pike in, asking him to bodyguard a young woman named Larkin Connor Barkley, who was unlucky enough to have a traffic accident that involved a man she identifies as a top cocaine baron. The FBI wants her to testify against the man, but in order to do that, she has to stay alive.

Larkin’s father calls in Bud Flynn, the man who trained Pike while he was with the LAPD. The man who became, for a time, the father Pike never had. Flynn wants Pike to protect the girl after an attempt is made on her life.

Pike, though, has his own way of dealing with the would-be killers. After two more attempts are made on her life while she’s in his care, Pike knows that someone is leaking information on Larkin’s whereabouts. Unable to remain hidden forever, with no one outside of Elvis Cole to rely on, Pike resolves to handle the situation in a way that’s uniquely his own: he’s going to track down the killers and kill them all.

He just has to keep himself and the girl alive long enough to do it. And in the process, his own problems and secrets spill out over the ones Larkin is keeping hidden.

Crais is truly a phenomenal writer. His characters, even a superman like Joe Pike, are real and flawed in truly human ways. The prose in this novel crackles with energy, and the plot twists hammer the reader again and again as the author reveals the surprises he has in store. The dialogue is dead-on, funny and insightful, and so real it feels like you’re sitting in the room as the people have their conversations.

The Watchman is a great book. I finished it in two sittings and would have finished it in one, but my stamina just didn’t hold out. The pages turn with seductive ease, and I found myself fully engaged with the story at all times. Even knowing that Pike would doubtless survive, and probably Larkin as well – I hoped – Crais gave me plenty of other characters to worry about.

Even if you’ve never read an Elvis Cole book before, you can pick up The Watchman and rest assured that you’ll get the whole story. If you’ve read all the Elvis Cole books before, this is one you’ve been waiting on for years.

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Ghost Rider has been a Marvel Comics superhero since the seventies. The comics company brought out a lot of supernatural heroes in those days. Werewolf By Night, Dracula, The Monster of Frankenstein, Son of Satan, Man-Thing (although he wasn’t truly supernatural at first but the adventures tended toward that later), and others.

But there was something special about Johnny Blaze, the young motorcycle daredevil who sold his soul to save the life of another and was betrayed in that bargain. Ghost Rider became a supernatural force constantly at war, caught between the pull of good and evil inside himself. That was the part of the story that really caught my attention. A classic kind of Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde character but one that wore biker leathers and rode a flaming Harley. My little adolescent mind seized on that, and still hasn’t let go of it all these years later.

Ghost Rider broke out of the pages of Marvel Spotlight and grabbed his own title magazine, which lasted for about ten years or so, with sporadic frequencies. Johnny Blaze’s character and the nature of Ghost Rider went through a lot of retconning. He tended toward the supernatural for a while, hit the superhero phase, then crossed back into the supernatural theme again. Later, during the second run of Ghost Rider (Volume 2), Danny Ketch took on the mantle of the Spirit of Vengeance. Soon, readers discovered that Ketch was Johnny Blaze’s brother.

All in all, Ghost Rider has been through a lot of changes and reinvention.

Greg Cox’s book Ghost Rider is a novelization of the movie coming out in February, and I was torn between waiting to be surprised with the film or reading the book. I passed the book by twice, then picked it up and read it in two sittings. Ghost Rider was one of my favorite characters because he looked so cool, and I rode a motorcycle for a while. The character has instant appeal for guys, and women seem to dig him too because Johnny Blaze is the quintessential bad boy.

The book/movie is basically a re-envisioning of Johnny Blaze/Ghost Rider’s origin, and it sets the stage for a franchise of films, ala Spider-Man, Hulk, Daredevil, Elektra, and Fantastic Four.

Ghost Rider follows some of the retconning done in comics, like Johnny’s relationship with his father, Barton Blaze, and progresses from that spin. Of course, there’s a girl in the movie version: Roxanne Simpson, who had been the daughter of the circus owner where the Blazes performed their death-defying motorcycle stunts. Johnny loved her and had plans to flee the circus with her.

The book/movie starts out with a prologue featuring the first Ghost Rider, a man named Carter Slade who was a Western hero in Marvel Comics (he got retconned into the mythos as well later, as well as being renamed Phantom Rider). This Western Ghost Rider in the book/movie worked for Mephistopheles and was sent to collect a contract worth 1000 souls. That Ghost Rider chose to hide the contract instead, and then he rode off into the sunset.

Fast forward to the tragedy that left Johnny Blaze’s soul exposed. Wish his father dying of cancer, seventeen-year-old Johnny Blaze contracts with Mephistopheles, trading his soul for his father’s health. Mephistopheles throws in fame and glory almost as an afterthought, making it apparent that those weren’t Johnny’s real goals.

Fifteen years later, Mephistopheles returns for Johnny’s soul and transforms him into the Ghost Rider to battle Blackheart. Blackheart is actually Mephistopheles’s son and intends to take over his dad’s rule because he thinks his dad is being too cautious.

The Ghost Rider in the book/movie is an interesting blend of Johnny Blaze and Danny Ketch, who was the second modern Ghost Rider. Ketch first had the spirit chain of fire used to flail bad guys, but it looked way too cool too pass up for the movie.

From the book, I can see there’s going to be a lot of action, fighting as well as motorcycle stunts (the trailer showing Ghost Rider racing up the side of the building on the Hellcycle is something I’m not going to forget any time soon). Cox does a really good job of bringing those stunts into sharp focus on the page, but it left my appetite really whetted for the upcoming big-screen release.

Greg Cox’s book is a great treatment of the script. Cox is an experienced tie-in writer (one of a special breed of writers that can walk into someone else’s world, tell an interesting story without leaving disturbing ripples, and step out again). I cruised through the pages and had a great time living the adventure. It’s narrative-heavy because it’s from a movie script, and there isn’t much dialogue occasionally, but overall it’s a solid read. I kept getting lost in the story even though I’ve been familiar with it for years. I got the feeling it was the same for the author. Ghost Rider was a shared love, and Cox delivered a bang-up read.

I may have lost the mystery of what’s going to happen in the film, but I’m still looking forward to all the special effects and seeing Johnny Blaze/Ghost Rider on the big screen.

  At Amazon

Tess Gerritsen brought back Boston Homicide Detective Jane Rizzoli for a second outing in The Apprentice, a follow-up to her bestselling The Surgeon. She also brought back serial killer Warren Hoyt and paired him with an equally sick killer the homicide squad labeled the Dominator due to his choice of victims and style of murder.

There’s an obvious homage about the book to Thomas Harris’s own Silence of the Lambs and the character of Hannibal Lecter. Gerritsen might have started with similar real estate, but she built an original experience out of it. Besides that, serial killers had been killing for years before Harris made reading about them all the rage.

I love the character of Jane Rizzoli. She’s a good cop, intelligent and insightful, who’s almost buried in a male-dominated hierarchy. Her need to impress her colleagues and earn the social distinction of “equal” is compelling. I’ve known women like Rizzoli who struggled to survive in those kinds of worlds, for exactly the same reasons.

I also love the way Rizzoli fits into her family. Everyone there seems to dismiss her job as a homicide detective, even after she was nearly killed bringing in Hoyt. Despite Rizzoli’s hard-as-nails exterior, Gerritsen shows how vulnerable her lead character is on the job, with her family, and when she’s by herself. Rizzoli is a fully realized personality, equipped with strengths, weaknesses, and the seeds for her own potential self-destruction.

Gerritsen’s writing has won me over, though. It’s tight and polished, and moves quickly. These early novels focus on the trials and tribulations that Rizzoli goes through, and – beginning with The Sinner — picks up on Dr. Maura Isles’s complicated life as well.

But The Apprentice starts off like a bullet with the murder scene where a man is found dead, tied up and obviously made to watch something. Further investigation reveals the man was married but his wife is now missing. Crime scene analysis reveals that a woman was there, and neighbors’ reports confirm that the couple was home together. So Rizzoli wants to know where the wife is.

Immediately Rizzoli believes they’re looking for a serial killer. Not only that, the violence reminds her of Warren Hoyt and her brush with death in The Surgeon. Even though she won’t admit it even to herself, Rizzoli hasn’t gotten over that. Nightmares plague her and her apartment has taken on a veneer of fear that just won’t go away.

Further complicating matter, FBI Agent Gabriel Dean arrives on the scene early as well. No one knows what’s drawn him there, and he’s not going to give any information. He’s quiet and taciturn, completely focused on the investigation. He also rapidly becomes Rizzoli’s nemesis, constantly questioning her, confronting her, and going behind her back to her superiors.

The way that Gerritsen plays these two off against each other is good, and it shows her roots in writing romantic fiction. But she brought her best game with her from those books when she took the plunge into the suspense market.

When the wife’s missing body is found, the puzzle turns even more dark and twisted. The area where the corpse was found turns out to be a familiar dump site for the serial killer. They find other bodies there, and gradually backtrack them to other abductions and murders.

Dr. Maura Isles, the other half of Gerritsen’s bestselling crime-fighting duo, gets introduced in this book. She’s a medical examiner and works the crime scenes, getting to know Rizzoli through the case. Isles is also learning forensic anthropology, and several scenes in the book are heavy with forensic information, how those people work and what they look for. Given Gerritsen’s familiarity with the medical field (the author was once a practicing internist), the scenes roll on exceedingly well without stopping the action or causing an information overload.

Gabriel Dean remains dogged in his pursuit of the truth, and when he finally reveals what he’s doing there to Rizzoli, the whole investigation takes an intriguing 180-degree spin that will catch most readers off balance but has clearly been in the works since page one.

Warren Hoyt’s escape from prison and eventual partnership with the Dominator seems a little forced and even anti-climatic in the end, but it satisfies readers of the first novel who weren’t happy about Hoyt’s situation.

The climax of the book, though, came almost too sudden. I was locked down to read through to the end, then – when it came – it was over too soon. It all makes sense and Gerritsen set it up to play out that way, but after all the build-up I just wanted a little more. But more would also have taken the story over the top too, I’m afraid. Rizzoli isn’t a superwoman. She’s just smart and crafty, and that ending fits perfectly.

If you enjoy a good thriller that will keep you tense and turning pages long into the night while keeping up with a sharp, competent investigator who’s definitely motivated, Tess Gerritsen is an author you should start picking up. But start at the beginning if you haven’t read her. The books stand alone, but they’re organic as well, bringing two strong women together and sharing their lives with the audience.

  At Amazon

I discovered this series through my 9-year-old. I pick up books for him to look at, ones that I hope will catch his eye. While we were stranding in the waiting room at the doctor’s office awaiting results of my wife’s x-rays, he read the book to me. I’d packed both of us books in case we were there for a while, as I feared we’d be. My son and I read the Charlie Bone series and the Alex Rider series currently, and I thought – given the amount of pictures throughout the Wiley And Grampa #4: Super Soccer Freak Show — that he’d find it an easy read while we waited.

We quietly read our books. But only for a short while. Then he started giggling, and finally cracked up and howled in glee. Before I knew it, he was insisting on reading the book to me. That hasn’t happened before.

So I folded my book and I listened. He read for an hour before he finished it, pointing out the wordplay and the comic visual images (Merle the cat was his favorite). I have to admit that I was cracking up too. Guys have a tendency to never outgrow that juvenile funny bone, much to the dismay of their moms and wives.

The book is told in first-person. Wiley relates the tale of the school team’s journey to Carpathia Elementary School for a soccer game. (The books are set in Texas, where the author illustrator Kirk Scroggs is from. I’ve been to Texas on several occasions, but I’ve never seen Carpathia County. From the pictures, I know that it looks a lot like Transylvania!)

While at the soccer game, Grampa gets into a fight with the other team’s mascot. As it turns out, that’s something he does every time, and he has restraining orders from other games. Part of the humor of these books is seeing how far Grampa will go to get into trouble despite Wiley and Gramma’s best efforts to keep him from it. But something goes horribly wrong this time.

The mascot bites Grampa and he turns into a werewolf the very next full moon. Wiley doesn’t know what to do. The dogcatcher can’t catch Grampa and the ladies’ sewing circle that Gramma takes him to turns out to be octogenarian Buffys. They whip out their crossbows and get ready to nail Grampa’s hide to the barn. Not exactly the kind of help Gramma and Wiley went there looking for.

My son and I were dying laughing as we looked at the sewing circle ladies all decked out and ready to go kick monster butt. (I really think Scroggs should things about doing a book about them. I know we’d read it.)

Finally, though, Wiley discovers that the only way to save Grampa is for the soccer team to return to Carpathian Elementary and beat them in a rematch. But that’s impossible! Isn’t it?

The illustrations are a riot, providing plenty of visual humor in every situation. As soon as my son finished reading the book to me, he sat down and read it again, analyzing the pictures and finding new things he’d missed the first time through. Scroggs really outdid himself on the art because it’s layered with shenanigans.

The writing is truly awesome too, filled with wordplay directed at kids and adults alike. There are several jokes that kids won’t get but parents will.

I really recommend these books to school libraries and public libraries. They come out in hardcover and paperback at the same time. Parents who have reluctant readers at home, especially boys, are encouraged to get one of these books and put it in that kid’s hands. Read a few pages with him or her and they’ll be hooked. You may find yourself hooked as well!

  At Amazon

Since giving up her medical career, Tess Gerritsen has gone on to a long and successful run as a suspense/thriller writer specializing in psychological/forensic novels. Many of them feature her crime-fighting duo, Detective Jane Rizzoli and Dr. Maura Isles.However, The Surgeon is definitely the first of the Jane Rizzoli thrillers, but it doesn’t feature Dr. Isles. Instead, Rizzoli almost has a second-banana role in the plot, giving up the limelight to Detective Thomas Moore, the most gifted and respected detective working in the Boston Police Department.The Rizzoli and Isles books don’t necessarily have to be read in order, but I would recommend it. The characters grow and change as they go along, and it’s better if that process is more organic. This is the first Rizzoli book.As always, though, Gerritsen delivers a reading experience that had me churning through the pages, putting the rest of my life on hold as I tracked the vicious and clever serial killer known as “The Surgeon.” The author hooked me at the beginning with the eerie and macabre tale of his first victim, then moving into the characters of the investigating detectives.

Thomas Moore is still recovering from the sudden death of his wife two years ago. A brain aneurysm took her right out of his life without warning. When we meet him, he’s packed and ready for a long overdue vacation. But the police department believe he’s the best at tracking the monsters that prey on people.

Rizzoli comes across as more bitter and more fragile than I remembered her being from later books. Normally Rizzoli is very much in command of herself and the situations she’s involved in. It’s her family that drives her crazy. Instead, in The Surgeon Rizzoli is the only woman working on the homicide squad and she’s the object of ridicule and scorn by some of the other detectives.

I love Rizzoli’s character, her harsh ways, her abrupt manner, and her bulldog tenaciousness when she has to hang onto a case to work it till the bitter end. Some of that is missing in this novel, but not Rizzoli’s cleverness. She’s the one that first starts putting the case together and finds the trail that gives the homicide team more to work with.

The murders are brutal, and the descriptions of them – even though they’re couched in medical terms – maybe be more than some readers want to read. Squeamish mystery voyeurs might want to skip over some of the descriptions of the Surgeon’s atrocities, and maybe even some of the medical emergencies Dr. Cordell handles in the emergency room.

I enjoyed the detail, though. As an amateur forensics person, probably prompted by CSI, I appreciated the depth that Gerritsen went to in order to tell her tale. She’s very clinical and caring, but it’s all there for better or worse.

The novel quickly turns into a cat-and-mouse pursuit that is the staple of all good suspense fiction. We get just enough glimpses of the killer’s thought processes to be thoroughly spooked – especially since it seems that the killer is someone who works at the hospital with Dr. Catherine Cordell, who is the Surgeon’s ultimate prey.

Two years before the story started, Dr. Cordell was attacked by an intern she’d flagged for failure. The young man had bound her with duct tape, then raped her and cut her up, intending to let her slowly die. Cordell had freed herself and ended up killing him. That should have ended the killing. But it didn’t.

Rizzoli has noticed the two recent murders, a year apart, are a lot like the attack on Dr. Cordell. Rizzoli suspects there’s more to the situation than what meets the eye. Of course, she’s right. But it was totally creepy to find out that the killer was giving the women he killed a piece of jewelry he stole from the woman he killed before them. That’s the kind of thing that Gerritsen does so well. She knows how to unnerve her readers.

Throughout the book, Gerritsen keeps the pacing at fever pitch, bouncing around between the primary characters. Moore, Rizzoli, and Cordell all get equal time and scenes that build their character while making them more real to the reader. I felt like I knew all of them. In some of her later books, Gerritsen doesn’t quite always pull that off, but in this one the characterizations are dead on.

The Surgeon presents a familiar chase, but Gerritsen throws in plenty of twists and turns that are uniquely her own. I totally bought into all the characters, and the pacing was staccato. I just couldn’t turn the pages fast enough, and even when I reached the end I wanted more.

The novel does carry a heavier romance subplot than is usually found in the Rizzoli novels. When Gerritsen first began writing, she started out writing romances. She was still clinging to some of that in this novel, later learning to push out of it pretty much entirely and hang onto the thriller side of fiction. But the love story works well in this book, raising the stakes yet again on an excellent suspense novel that will keep you – and your heart rate – up late.

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Techno-thrillers, since Tom Clancy penned Hunt For Red October seem to have an inherent element of science fiction in them. The authors break out information on emerging science when it comes to weapons and the military, and even offer some political overviews.

But few of those techno-thrillers working out there now carry as much experience as Richard A. Clarke, the author of Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War On Terror, The Scorpion’s Gate, and his newest novel, Breakpoint. Clarke has worked in government since 1973, in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and branching into service involving national security, counterterrorism, military, and emerging technology involving cyberspace. He hasn’t just read about those areas and formed an opinion. He’s been directly involved in fact-finding and policy-making.

This is the kind of guy you want telling you like it is when it comes to how the United States fits into the world picture with all the changes that are coming socially and scientifically. Those areas are not as separated as most people think, or would like to think, these days. He has an opinion, and he has a lot of hard data to share.

Against All Enemies: Inside the War on Terror was a national nonfiction bestseller that discussed the current war on terror and identified who Clarke believed the true enemies were. It also states that the US acted too hastily in setting their sights on Iraq and Saddam Hussein.

The Scorpion’s Gate elucidated on the precepts set forth in the previous nonfiction book, but moved everything into a fictional world set in 2010. That book dealt with the fallout from the war on terrorism.

However, Clarke takes a new tack in Breakpoint: discussing the ramifications of the new power science has given us as human beings to create and upgrade human beings. Research into the genome and reverse engineering the human brain to create a basically sentient computer program that will integrate with the global grid that’s taking shape out there now are presented throughout the novel.

Set in 2012, Breakpoint ultimately seems to be about the fears and concerns we should have over these powerful technologies, and how we should wield them. I was thoroughly fascinated and engrossed, and truly hadn’t known we’d come this far. I’d suspected it, of course, but Clarke lays out the material in such a factual manner that you just know he’s seen it in action.

I absolutely loved the discussion of the military exoskeletons, the Living Software artificial intelligence, and the biologically and nanobot enhanced concepts of future people. The narrative was peppered with references to science fiction novels by Robert A. Heinlein and Isaac Asimov (like the Asimov robotic dogs/PDAs the corporate executives used) and pop culture science fiction movies like Star Wars and the Star Trek television series. That alone told me that Clarke and I were treading through and thinking about the same world. But it made me wish I could see and know about the things he’s privy to.

Breakpoint at first seems like a thriller based on the impending failure of diplomacy between China and the US, which – given events out in the world these days – I found all too easy to believe. Several key nodes involving internet communications get destroyed in a well-coordinated attack.

Two agents, Susan Connor and James Foley, of the special projects arm of the Intelligence Analysis Center get assigned to the investigation. Both characters are superficially interesting. Susan Connor has been part of IAC, brought along by her boss, Director Rusty McEntyre, but Foley is an NYPD cop and ex-Marine. Unfortunately, neither of the characters – or any of the others in the book – truly come to life. They exist primarily to frame and move the story that Clarke wants to tell.

This is my first Richard Clarke novel, and if I’d been reading it strictly for entertainment value I might have been somewhat disappointed. The text reads easily enough, even during long sections when he’s laying out the science and technology involved, but it fails to engage enough character-wise. The scenes are all over the place, and they jump constantly so that it’s hard to follow any one thread coherently. In truth, the threads all lead to one place, but it’s really hard to keep that in mind as you’re reading.

However, the upside to the novel is that I don’t believe anyone could write as informed or convincingly as Clarke does about the various issues covered in the novel. I got the definite feeling that everything he wrote about he’d seen on one level or another. And he has a real gift for taking these scientific issues and showing both sides of the coin instead of merely slanting everything.

The science, the good and the bad, are coming. As of the writing of this review, I just read an article about a Texas company that has just started selling designer embryos that were created in the lab from paid donors who met certain criteria. And those embryos are selling. On one hand, they’re cheaper than giving a lab donor materials, but on the other, the buyers are getting a pre-selected child bred for certain qualities. This is exactly the kind of thing that Clarke was writing about in Breakpoint.

Clarke is now a writer I’m going to follow. Not necessarily because of his storytelling abilities, though I truly suspect those will become smoother and more certain, but because of his thinking. Asimov wasn’t a graceful writer either, and most fans loved him for his thinking. I think that’s the same class Richard Clarke falls into at this point.

I can’t wait to see what his next book is going to be about. Whatever it is, wherever it goes, I’m sure I’m going to get a lot of food for thought.

  At Amazon

Greg Iles is the master of the multi-layered plot set in small Mississippi towns. Incredibly enough, though, he got started as a writer with two World War II novels, then launched into those small town mysteries with deep social commentary. He’s even ventured into emerging technology with The Footprints of God.

Penn Cage, hero of The Quiet Game, makes a successful return in Turning Angel. Penn (as narrated by the gifted Dick Hill in this audio book presentation) is a middle-aged attorney with a young daughter. He’s a widower of several years now, and his relationship with Caitlin, the daughter of a newspaper magnate who loves reporting as much as she loves Penn and his daughter, isn’t faring well.

Drew Elliott is a medical doctor in Natchez, Mississippi, and he’s one of Penn’s best friends. When they were kids, Drew saved Penn from drowning, risking his own life to get Penn out of the water.

The book opens up with Drew and Penn in a school board meeting when the body of seventeen-year-old Kate Townsend is discovered. She’s been raped and murdered, and her half-clad body lies on the bank of the local river.

Penn soon finds out that Drew was romantically involved with Kate, who was once a caregiver for Drew while he was recuperating from an injury. Still reeling from that, Penn also discovers that Drew’s marriage is a sham and that his wife has a severe drug problem. Digging into the investigation to save his friend, Penn quickly finds out that Kate Townsend, valedictorian, wasn’t as squeaky clean as everyone in town thought. As soon as the potential of a sex scandal spreads throughout the community, Drew – and Penn’s – friends quickly turn on them. Getting booted off the school board is the least of their worries.

Shad Johnson, the local district attorney, is black and motivated to run for mayor of the city. The current mayor has been diagnosed with cancer and is about to step down. Johnson makes a deal with Sheriff Billy Bird to make Drew Elliott’s murder trial his steppingstone into office.

Despite the overwhelming evidence against Drew, Penn believes in his friend’s innocence. At least in the innocence Drew has in Kate Townsend’s murder. The relationship the two had still catches Penn off-stride and he struggles with it.

Before Penn knows it, he’s moving into danger and risking everything he has – including his family. When Sheriff’s Deputy Cross tells about the surveillance he’s had on the local drug trade and that Kate Townsend was involved, Penn’s investigation takes on a whole new slant. But Cross’s death also makes it plain that danger is all around, waiting to strike out of the shadows.

Iles paints an accurate and detailed picture of small town life, including the racial tensions between blacks and whites, between the slow death of small towns and the lure of big towns that leach the young college graduates away to brighter horizons. Iles doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to the sexual nature of the novel either. The sexual aggressiveness is natural, though, and never feels gratuitous or slipped in for shock value. The things he’s writing about in Turning Angel fill newspaper headlines and Court TV episodes these days.

Dick Hill reads the novel with a Southern flavored accent that sounds legitimate, but Hill is an awesome reader and can do anything he puts his mind to. His reading of this material is especially touching because it’s in first-person narrative and sounds like Penn has just dropped in to bring you up to date on what’s going on in his life.

Penn’s journey through the seamier side of his hometown rips away his innocence. He also gets sucked into the political jockeying that goes on inside the town and threatens to tear it to pieces. It’s intriguing to see how Iles piles each pressure point onto the last, shoving the whole situation to the point of no return.

The action sequences explode during the audio presentation, and the suspense ratchets up. But it’s the moral complexity that Iles presents that tends to stay with the reader/listener. Not just over the black and white issues, or the quick way fair weather friends abandon someone who isn’t as bulletproof as they would like, but the distinction of the roles between the adults and emerging adults moving out of high school into the main world. Iles handles that transition period in Turning Angel in a manner that isn’t just there for shock value, but also to make his audience think and consider.

But even for readers/listeners not looking for the social commentary that’s so well blended into the story, the mystery is solid and will keep the audience guessing till the last revelation drops into place. Turning Angel is a great novel and mystery with a character that audiences can and will cheer on.

  At Amazon

Jonathan Kellerman is an internationally bestselling thriller writer chiefly known for his novels about Alex Delaware, a child psychologist who routinely helps out Los Angeles homicide detective Milo Sturgis. When The Bough Breaks, Kellerman’s first novel, introduced Alex Delaware. At the time, the author was still a working psychologist, specializing in child psychology, which was also Delaware’s chosen field.

However, Kellerman sometimes breaks free of his primary series character for a run through new territory.  Petra Connor has seen action on her own in Billy Straight and then with Alex Delaware in A Cold Heart.

In Twisted, Petra Connor works as a homicide detective in Hollywood. She’s recently fallen in love Eric Stahl, her partner, and is still fumbling her way through that, trying to figure out how much it’s going to impact her life and whether or not she should even let it. Eric lost his wife and child to a drunk driver and has been emotionally dead for years. Petra’s love has brought him back to life somewhat, but neither of them knows if it’s going to be enough to bring him all the way.

Petra doesn’t work within conventional boundaries. She’s abrasive and dogged in her approach. Once she’s dedicated herself to tracking down a murderer, Petra will do whatever she has to do to get the job done. That hardnosed approach has brought her trouble in the past, and it adds up quickly in this book.

As the novel opens up, Eric has been drawn back into military special forces and intelligence operations, which was where he’d come from before signing on with the LAPD. After the 9/11 bombing, with all the new openings at Homeland Security, Eric got moved back into military intelligence and is currently in the Middle East.

Petra struggles with being alone and trying to figure out where she’s going. Working the night shift, Petra gets called into a mass shooting that leaves several teenagers dead. Kellerman’s ear for dialogue and people’s actions and reactions in this scene is dead on. The imagery is stark and moving, and propels the reader (listener, in this case) to start wondering why something like this would happen and who would do it.

In addition to the multiple murders, Petra also gets pulled into a chase for a serial killer by Isaac Gomez, the brilliant prodigy currently studying for his doctorate at USC. Isaac has an interest in solving crimes. His thesis has uncovered a potential murderer that’s been striking every June 28th for the last several years.

At first, Petra doesn’t want to take on any other work. Between the multiple slayings, which quickly draws political and intradepartmental attention she hadn’t counted on, and finding a middle ground for the problems with her relationship with Eric, she’s totally stressed. However, once she becomes just as convinced as Isaac that a serial killer is out there, she can’t help but go after that person as well.

The story, even in this abridged audio version, remains multi-layered and complex. The chain of events is logical and the author stays one step ahead of the armchair detectives chasing the killers with Petra and Isaac.

Kellerman always provides something of an education in his novels. Usually, in the Alex Delaware novels, that education centers on psychology, which is Kellerman’s forte. In addition to homicide work and murder in Twisted, the audience also receives a smattering of information about gypsies and statistic crunching.

Lindsay Crouse reads the story with authority, working the pacing and dramatic tension for all it’s worth. Her tonal variation works well, providing different voices for the different characters. She’s a pleasure to listen to.

Twisted ends up being as much Isaac’s story as Petra’s ultimately. Kellerman takes the reader/listener into the private lives of each character, delineating their similarities, differences, strengths, and weaknesses. The investigation follows predictable paths, but there are twists and turns that will catch most mystery buffs off guard.

  At Amazon

The Softwire: Virus On Orbis 1 is P. J. Haarsma’s first novel, and the first in a new science fiction series for young adults. There is also an on-line game available that is set in the universe established in the book.

The central character is Johnny Turnbull, called JT by his friends. He’s thirteen years old when the reader meets him, and has spent his whole life on a “seed”-ship called the Renaissance. Due to a mishap during the voyage, all the adults are killed. Mother, the ship’s computer, cycles the embryos of children through, birthing them, then nurturing them to the best of its ability. None of the children have ever known their parents.

JT’s best friend is Maxine Bennett, called Max by everyone. She’s the brainy sort and is good with computer systems. Ketheria, JT’s eight-year-old sister, doesn’t speak and hasn’t since she was born. No one knows why.

Of the two hundred children of various ages on the seed-ship, JT is the only one that can directly talk to Mother, a fact that only Max believes. Mother won’t reveal that connection either, and JT doesn’t know why. He’s also learned there are files that Mother keeps hidden even from him.

When Renaissance originally set out, the parents had signed contracts with a world called Orbis. According to the agreement, they were going to work for a year on each ring, then be able to apply for full citizenship. Orbis circles a wormhole, a physical “hole” in space that reaches from one area of space to another.

But with the parents dead, JT and the others don’t know what kind of reception to expect on Orbis. As soon as they arrive, something goes wrong with the central computer that controls the rings. They also learn that they’re going to be expected to honor their parents’ contracts with the Orbis natives or be ejected out into the wormhole and presumably their deaths. It’s not much of a decision.

Even worse, their parents broke the contract with the Orbis Guarantors by having children on the ship. According to the agreements, no children were to be involved. JT and the others have no clue as to why that clause in the contract was broken.

Faced with their limited choices, JT and the other seed ship children quickly agree to the indentured servitude and get injected with hardware that accesses their brains and immediately teaches them all the languages used on Orbis. Furthermore, they’re able to go to school and directly download files they need to learn into their brains.

During the hardware upgrade, JT learns that he’s a “softwire,” a being capable of interfacing directly with computers simply by willing it, without having a physical connection. The ability quickly upsets many of the Orbis natives because it makes him more powerful than any of them are comfortable with. At first, many of the natives talk about killing him outright. In fact, Madame Lee, one of the Council members, kills a man as they’re discussing the fate of the seed-ship children. Two factions on Orbis’s rings fight for control.

After a while, he’s assigned to Weegin, a junk dealer. JT makes Weegin take Ketheria, too. The life sorting through the junk Weegin buys and separates into scrap and salvageable components is hard and without hope.

While in his sleep pod, using the dream enhancement hardware, JT begins having strange dreams about a girl living within a forest somewhere in Orbis. At first he thinks the girl is Ketheria, but he quickly determines that she isn’t. He also learns that she’s in grave danger, under attack by creatures all the time.

Only a short time after that, JT discovers the shattered remains of the Renaissance while processing junk. Weegin has bought salvage rights to the seed-ship and junked it out. Now JT knows for certain there’s no way off Orbis.

And that’s just the beginning of the mysteries and adventures posed by The Softwire: Virus On Orbis 1. There are many more to come, and all of them fleshed out by the detailed mythos Haarsma has created for his world and his characters.

Reading the novel feels a lot like opening up vintage Robert A. Heinlein and Andre Norton. The whiz-bang cutting-edge tech, like the sleepers and dream enhancement gear, as well as the idea of the softwire is pure Heinleinesque, only moved into the 21st century. But the worldbuilding feels more like classic Andre Norton, with touches like the immortal Space Jumpers and the way the Orbis rings and Council are established. Haarsma seems to have grown up on the best kind of science fiction and is determined to delivery it back into the hands of young adults where such fancies take flight so easily.

The length is another plus. Compared to the tree-killing deluge of so many of today’s popular young adult book, The Softwire: Virus On Orbis 1 hits a comfortable 262 pages that reads incredibly fast. The pacing of the story is quick, too, even though a new, well-thought out world is being rendered for the first time.

The novel works great as a stand-alone tale. By the time the end is reached, all the threats and most of the questions have been answered. But it leaves the reader wanting more. Hopefully Haarsma won’t make his readers wait long before he delivers a second volume in this intriguing interstellar series.

  At Amazon

James Patterson burst onto the thriller scene with his first Alex Cross novel, Along Came A Spider.  Patterson followed that book with eleven more novels.  Each has born his signature imprint of incredibly fast pacing, broad, easy to grasp characters, and death or disaster turns of the plot.  His style, characters, and writing have won him millions of dedicated readers throughout his various series.  But most of them have been waiting on this latest book, Cross, in which they learn who killed Maria Cross, Alex’s beloved wife. 

And what Alex Cross is going to do about it.  That question alone made me turn anxiously through the pages. 

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.  But his thoughts are constantly of Maria, his wife who died in his arms.  Cross has spent years tracking down murderers and serial killers.  He started out as a Washington D. C. policeman, rose to detective, then joined the ranks of the FBI as a profiler who specialized in psychology.  He became known as the Dragon Slayer, the man who could be called on to take down monsters. 

Throughout this time, Cross has been driven to keep those monsters off the streets and prevent other people suffering the loss he’s had to endure.  He’s been at turns brilliant and insightful, as well as sympathetic and unrelenting and brutal as we’ve followed his adventures.  Serial killers and murderers have learned to fear and respect him during the course of the novels, and I’ve looked forward to each new book.  This one is one we’ve been waiting for. 

But in Cross, Alex has to lay old ghosts to rest and resurrect the guilt he’s carried over his wife’s death for all these years in order to move ahead with his life.  It’s not an easy task.  For Patterson’s millions of fans, it’s a dark and exciting journey.  I’m sure they’ll be kept reading late into the night just as I was.  Once you start this book, it’s hard to put down because everything happens so quickly.  You tell yourself you’re only going to read one more chapter.  Then you’re ten chapters farther along and the end doesn’t look so far away. 

The book begins in true Patterson fashion, with a snippet of the story dangled before the readers’ eyes that hints at things that have happened already, with Cross virtually at death’s door.  Then the story segues back to 1993, when Alex Cross was a younger man, married to and in love with Maria Cross.  This step back into Cross’s life interested me a lot, but it’s over almost as soon as it started, leaving me wishing I’d gotten to know Maria a little better. 

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 because of the bloodthirsty way he kills his victims with blades.  The portrayal of these two characters is juxtaposed nicely.  The differences jarred me, as I’m sure other readers will be jarred.  Patterson has the ability to quickly and concisely describe characters and plot.  That’s why I reach for his book when I want something that will hook my attention immediately. 

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 with Sullivan, though, I admit I was tempted to root the Butcher on.  With panache and flourish, Sullivan strides into an organized crime meeting and backs the room full of dangerous men down, then kills one of them in front of the others for not respecting him.  Jimmy “Hats”
Galati, his best friend and perpetual backup, covers him.  That’s the kind of action a hero normally performs.  And Patterson fooled me, which is another of the reasons I enjoy him as a writer. 

Sullivan’s darkness becomes immediately apparent in the next few chapters as he lures a college girl into his clutches and rapes her.  He shows her pictures of people he’s killed and dismembered, telling her it will happen to her if she tells anyone. 

Almost immediately, Cross’s path intersects that of the Butcher’s for the first time when he and John Sampson, a friend of Alex’s and a constant in the series, attempt to retrieve a witness.  For the first time, Cross stares across a dead body at Michael Sullivan.  Following a mob boss’s orders, the Butcher has killed the witness only seconds before he ended up in the hands of the police.  You can almost sense the impending doom at work, and it’s this dread that kept me turning pages as well. 

Later, Sullivan shows up at Cross’s house, but makes no attempt to kill Cross because his children are there.  But Maria’s path also intersects that of the Butcher.  Working at the hospital, Maria treats the young woman Sullivan raped, and she becomes a target because of what she knows. 

Shortly after that, Maria dies in Cross’s arms, and Cross is set onto the path that has taken him through his life’s work. 

Patterson moves into the present in the next section, bringing his readers up to day on what’s going on in Cross’s life as well as that of Michael Sullivan.  While buying a new family car, Cross gets called into a hostage situation involving a group of bad D. C. SWAT policemen who were in the process of robbing a drug lab for the money.  The FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team is on the scene, trying to get the SWAT guys to surrender.  So far, they’re at a stand-off.  The hope is that Cross will figure out what to do.  This are the kinds of problems we love to see Cross have to deal with.  We’re given enough time to try to work out solutions for ourselves, then Patterson throws everything into fast-forward again.  You have to love the sense of irony.  And this is just a throwaway subplot! 

Meanwhile, Michael Sullivan has grown older, gotten married, and had children.  He’s still killing for profit and pleasure, though.  He notices the story on television and sees Cross there, remembering how things had gone when they’d faced each other all those years ago.  Patterson digs more deeply into Sullivan’s past at this point, and readers get a better view of how someone like the Butcher could have come into being.  The scenes are almost enough to evoke sympathy.  But Sullivan immediately goes out to kill again, destroying that feeling at once and forever. 

After the hostage rescue goes south and Cross is injured, he returns home to find Nana Mama waiting on him.  She becomes upset and storms out of the house, leaving Cross wondering what he’s supposed to do.  And it’s there that Cross ultimately decides to retire and open up a private practice with patients instead of tracking murderers. 

Only fate, and this talented author, presents a new twist and Cross finds himself taking up the chase once again.  This time he’s after his wife’s murderer, and it’s a pursuit that he can’t walk away from. 

In addition to the Alex Cross series, Patterson has also created the Women’s Murder Club series, the Maximum Ride series of young adult novels about genetic experiments, and several stand-along thrillers, including the International Thriller of 2005, Honeymoon.  He’s always been one of those authors I pick up for light, frantic, and fun reading. 

Patterson is one of those pitch-perfect authors who write terrific beach novels.  The pages and chapters fly by as Patterson propels the reader through the story to a frenetic climax, that may have a nifty twist or two at the end.  Cross is a perfect example of the author working at the height of his game.