Steel Trapp: The Challenge appears to be the first book in a brand-new young readers series by bestselling author Ridley Pearson. Although Pearson writes the Lou Boldt suspense novels for adults, and has written stand-alone novels for the same market, Pearson is no stranger to the 9-12 year old readers. In fact, he’s a bestselling writer among that age group as well. Together, he and author Dave Barry have written three new books that further enhances the legend of Peter Pan, creating a whole new backstory that explains a lot about the characters, the world, and the magic that’s so much a part of the Peter Pan experience.

However, Steven “Steel” Trapp appears to be a new action hero. In addition to being a science geek extraordinaire, Steel also possesses a photographic memory. Once he’s seen something, he can remember it in vivid detail and never forgets anything. He’s got a memory like, well, a steel trap, which is where he gets his nickname. Other than that, Steel is pretty much a normal kid with normal kid issues. Thankfully, Pearson’s book isn’t about normal things.

The book takes off at a full gallop with Steel competing in a Science Fair in Washington D. C. There are about a zillion things going on and the tension ratchets up quickly. I was intrigued by Pearson’s choice of jumping in without really introducing his character, but I went along with it and trusted him. By the time I’d quickly zipped through this short, introductory chapter, I had about a million questions. But of the good variety.

Mostly I wanted to know how Steel had gotten into the fix he was in, what was in the mysterious briefcase everyone seemed to be looking for, and what was going to happen next! As a writer, those are all questions you want your readers asking in the opening acts.

Ridley doesn’t answer all those questions at once. Instead, the book moves back in time, picks up a mysterious FBI agent who’s having trouble with a plane that’s going down, and with Steel’s journey by train to the nation’s capitol. While on the train, Steel gets onto the trail of a group of terrorists when a briefcase is left behind by a woman. He knows it’s hers because his photographic memory points this out to him. But when he tries to give the briefcase back to her, she tells him he’s mistaken.

Admittedly, I thought the intro to the puzzle was a little outlandish, but it served to move the story along so I went with it. There are a few illogical twists and turns to the plot, but Pearson runs with it and pulls it together – if not completely, then with at least a rapid-fire pacing and a few twists.

I did have one big problem with the book, and that was with Steel not knowing his father was an FBI agent. Those guys get lots of phone calls and messages, have lots of files with them at all times. All it would have taken is one glance and the subterfuge would have been up. Also, guys that work undercover for the FBI are usually gone a lot longer at a time than Mr. Trapp appears to have been.

One of the things I did like was Pearson’s use of U. S. Marshal Roland Larson from his previous adult novel, Cut and Run. It’s nice to see that all of Pearson’s characters live in the same world, and you have to wonder if a boy with a photographic memory will soon put in an appearance in one of Pearson’s adult novels.

I liked Steel’s partner-in-peril, Kaileigh Augustine, a lot. The idea of a poor little rich girl isn’t a new one, but it establishes Kaileigh’s character and independence almost immediately. Plus, it gives her and Steel financial freedom of a sort with further adventures. I just hope Kaileigh is in them because Steel needs someone to play off of in order to work well.

The plot got almost a little too twisted and complex. It was relatively simple in the long run, but setting it up and moving through multiple permutations got difficult to deal with while juggling a half-dozen characters. But it kept me from solving everything till right at the end – which is exactly the best place for a reader that’s been playing fairly with the mystery to figure everything out.

I was surprised at how much the adults played roles in the novel, but it didn’t bother me too much over all. I would have liked to see Steel handle more action, and I definitely want to see more science in the books as the series progresses. Pearson does mention in interviews that the book began as an adult novel and he rewrote it from Steel’s point of view. It’ll be interesting to see how the adult/teen ratio changes in the next book in the series.

But I want Steel’s family to stay close as well. I liked his mom and dad, and the parts they had to play in everything. Cairo, Steel’s dog, was a hoot and I was cheering him on at the end when he caught the bad guy’s scent and they went flying after him.

Steel Trapp: The Challenge isn’t on the same level as Anthony Horowitz’s Alex Rider series (which gets a nod in Pearson’s book!), but it’s a fun read. Since there’s only one teen spy book coming out a year from Horowitz, Pearson’s teen troubleshooter is a welcome addition to the adventure scene. You won’t find many writers that can provide the same kind of headlong pacing that Pearson does.

My new book is out in stores now.  I welcome reviews.

In addition to being a bestselling novelist and a noted award-winning short story writer, Joe Hill also happens to be the son of novelist Stephen King. I lead with that and I feel guilty about it at the same time. Hill created his own name in order to create his own identity, and as soon as we found out, we start telling each other. As I said, I feel guilty, but I also know that letting the cat out of the bag, again, will draw more people to this review and hopefully pump up Hill’s sales. He deserves to be read. He has an intriguing mind and a unique way of looking at the dark corners in life.

Despite his paternity, Hill has crafted an existence for himself that’s just starting to take off. His novel, Heart-Shaped Box, leapt onto bestseller lists and latched hold of horror fans’ psyches in wild, delicious ways. His collection of short stories, 20th Century Ghosts, has won the Bram Stoker Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the International Horror Guild Award.

Now, along with artist Gabriel Rodriguez, Hill has staked out the comics medium with a new series called Locke & Key. The launch is a page-turning suspense story full of surprises. According to information that’s been released by IDW Publishing, this is going to be at least a six-issue monthly series. Hill has plans for at 68 issues of Keyhouse.

I really like the idea behind the house and the series. It focuses on kids, and the house has doors they can pass through that will change them. The power of the doors can change their age, their race, and their sex, and has a tendency to push people toward the evil we all carry around inside us.

The first issue is stunning. When I saw the blood-red cover with the old key so prominent, I didn’t at first see the house in the background. Then when I saw the house I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I just sat there for a moment, frozen, thinking about all the possibilities of that key and that house and all those doors. I think that’s what still consumes me about the story.

The story begins quietly, almost innocently, but it quickly turns mean and hard-edged, which is one of the qualities of Hill’s writing. The story picks up with Sam Lesser and Al Grubb, two high school students that were counseled by Tyler Locke’s father, turning up at the Locke house. A single page of simple conversation with Mrs. Locke turns chilling when we see the weapons they’re packing.

On the next page, we get a full-page shot of a man and a woman lying dead in the back of a pickup truck. A bloody tarp barely covers them.

Hill plays with time in this first comic. He leaves us hanging, wanting desperately to turn the pages, but afraid of what we’re going to see at the same time. In four quick panels, we’re introduced to Tyler, Kinsey, and Bode Locke, who are evidently going to be our main characters throughout the comics.

Tyler is the brooding high school teen who resents his dad’s manipulation to get them out to help him paint the summerhouse. Kinsey is a pre-teen girl who seems to be the responsible one. Bode is the ever-curious and ever-daring kid who’s always getting into trouble and exploring. Rodriguez’s art is fantastic and really brings the characters and the environment around them to life while looking simple at the same time.

The panel of Mr. Locke coming home and surprising the teen killers is chilling. Then Hill cuts away to the funeral and we don’t know who’s dead. Afterwards, Tyler sits through unbearable visits from friends who are so disconnected from reality I wanted to scream at them. One guy can only talk about himself. Another can only talk about how famous Tyler is going to be. Writing about real people is one of Hill’s gifts. Apparently illustrating them is one of Rodriguez’s.

While sitting with his Uncle Duncan, Tyler remembers how his father planned for them to go live at Keyhouse if anything ever happened to him. Hill’s script is an economy of language. Every panel moves the story along and provides information as well as emotion. Rodriguez makes them all beautiful to look at.

Then the story plunges back to the day of the murders, when the teen killers were inside the Locke summer home. The next few pages are full of tension, suspense, and thrill-a-second pacing that had me flipping pages like a madman. The story turns chilling, then cuts off again, leaving me hanging once more. You know that Tyler survives, but you don’t know if anyone else does.

The next sequence introduces Keyhouse, and the layout of the grounds, the fact that it’s on a peninsula cut off from civilization, is at once intriguing. I know that the distance away from a populated area is going to be trouble.

Once the exploration of the house begins, which I was dying to see, Hill moves us back to the past again. The graphic panels Rodriguez presents had me once more hanging on as what happened that day of the killings is finally played out. It’s brutal and vicious, but that’s the only way it could have happened.

The true weirdness descends on the story in the next few pages. Bode is off exploring the weird house all on his own when he has an out-of-body-experience. And we learn that Sam Lesser, one of the teen killers, is still alive in juvenile lockup. Not only that, but he’s talking to a mysterious entity he can see in a sink full of water.

I’m totally jacked about this series. I think it’s going to be great. I can’t believe Hill decided to do it as a comic book instead of a novel, but in an interview I read he said he’d just always envisioned it as a comic book.

I love Rodriguez’s art, so that’s a bonus in addition to a great, macabre story with plenty of mystery and suspense. But the waiting over the next five months is going to test me to my limits. I expect I’m going to be daydreaming – or having nightmares – about Keyhouse and what’s really going on for some time now. If you’re a comics fan or a horror fan or a Joe Hill fan, you gotta check this one out.

No Control is author Shannon K. Butcher’s second novel. She writes boiling hot romance intertwined with huge dollops of intrigue and a generous backstory. Romance readers don’t always get those, so someone who provides a good mix of terrific hero and heroine, as well as the above elements, is going to get noticed. Butcher has. And if you think her last name is familiar, you may be thinking of her husband, Jim Butcher, the author of the Harry Dresden fantasy series.

I enjoyed Butcher’s take on her characters. You could almost have picked them out of stock players (take one emotionally damaged heroine who no longer trusts herself, and take one Special Forces guy with a Savior complex that gets totally ensnared in the damaged female’s life). Yet Butcher makes both of these characters jump from the pages larger than life but as people readers will learn to love.

Eighteen months ago, Lana Hancock was the lone survivor of a terrorist attack. A group that called themselves the Swarm took a group of young American’s hostage, tortured them, and killed them. Lana was believed dead as well. Even though she survived, she had to undergo several surgeries and torturous months of rehab to reclaim even a shadow of her life. She’s since started a foundation based in art that’s aimed at helping kids.

The last thing she needed was for special forces soldier Caleb Stone to come striding back into her life. But he did. As it turns out, there’s some question about the Swarm and whether that organization was razed to the ground in the bitter firefight that followed the capture of the hostages. Caleb gets assigned to protect Lana, but he’s also been ordered to find out everything she knows. Caleb’s superiors don’t think Lana told them everything she knows.

Unfortunately, Caleb is probably the last guy that should have been sent. He was undercover at the time of Lana’s abduction. He was onhand and some of the worst torture she went through – and he did nothing. She didn’t ever want to see him again.

I loved the instant antagonism that Butcher placed between her characters. It’s always best to believe in the forces that try to keep two lovers apart. Stupidity and selfishness are big reasons to keep the characters apart in romance novels that I read, yet some writers continue to use them. I totally bought into Butcher’s scenario, and she builds up the reasons for Caleb’s presence there – because of that history – instead of letting it just sit there.

The romance elements of the story are incredibly hot. Butcher takes her time to build those up as well. Nothing happens too quickly in the novel, and readers aren’t kept waiting too long.

In addition, Butcher is a fine action writer as well. In the action scenes, she proves herself time and time again. The choreography is great, and her military thinking and jargon is dead-on. There isn’t much in the way of action for a long time, but when she gets to it, the result is deadly earnest.

Even more, Butcher’s backstory with the villains and Caleb’s special forces friends is marvelous. The creepy intensity of the woman who’s out for Lana’s blood is awesome, as well as the head of the Swarm. And there are enough other things going on that a small puzzle of who’s doing what to whom builds up as well. I loved Caleb’s friend Grant, and I hope he ends up getting featured in her third book.

Butcher is an excellent romance writer. If you haven’t picked her up, you should. Her first book, No Regrets, is still on the shelves as well.

Bernard Cornwell is my favorite historical novelist of all time. No one delves into history and comes back with a humdinger of an action-packed and fact-filled story as he does. I first found out about him because I’m a Sean Bean fan, too. I watched a Richard Sharpe movie (set in the Napoleonic War) and discovered that the British series was based on novels. Curious, I picked up the books and started reading. I’ve been reading Cornwell ever since, and I’ve tracked him and his heroes throughout the ages.

His latest series is called the “Saxon Series” and it’s set in the 9th century in England. The books, four of them so far with more coming, center on King Alfred the Great’s war with the Danes (also known as the Vikings). I love the action and the sheer savagery of the tale and characters Cornwell has chosen to bring to life. His main characters are fictional, but many of them are straight out of history. King Alfred was real, and so was Ubba Lothbroksson, the Viking champion and great warrior. However, Cornwell shoehorns the lives – and deaths – of the real people into his story.

The books are told in the first-person, from the main character’s point of view many years later. His name is Uhtred, and he was born an Englishman. However, due to the huge changes in his life, Uhtred becomes known by many names and his allegiances are mercurial. He starts out with the English, but after his father falls to the Danes in battle, he’s raised by Earl Ragnar, one of the fiercest Viking warriors to ever take the field.

The story sounds true. For anyone who’s studied history, and I have, captives raised by other cultures than their own aren’t a surprise. History is littered with such individuals. Those people often have an impact on the way their lives and the lives of others play out. Uhtred becomes one of those people.

Cornwell’s depiction of Viking life and the bloodthirstiness of those warriors is well done. I loved how he started out with Uhtred as a ten year old boy and let him grow up among the rough-and-tumble Danes with death more or less as his constant companion. But, as all of Cornwell’s best heroes do, Uhtred rises to the occasion each and every time and faces down the threats and opponents that are in his way.

The author creates a large and twisted tapestry of the tale in The Last Kingdom. Childhood friends and villains show up again and again in Uhtred’s life, and they bring wanted and unwanted changes. One of the most telling events in Uhtred’s young life is when Sven, the son of Kjartan, kidnaps Ragnar’s young daughter and strips her out in the forest. Uhtred and Ragnar’s son save her just in time. Later, though, Ragnar takes his vengeance on Sven by blinding him in one eye. Kjartan is a shipbuilder, an important man in the Viking community, but he’s powerless before Ragnar’s rage. However, that act of vengeance comes back to haunt Ragnar and Uhtred. Nothing is ever forgiven among these people, and they carry long grudges.

The battle scenes are particularly harsh and described well. I felt as though I were standing in the shield wall next to Uhtred when he faced battle. I could feel Wasp Sting and Serpent’s Breath in my hand as he used them to defeat and kill his enemies.

The rock and roll of the waves against the Viking longships as they journeyed to other lands and fought battles on the sea is amazing. Cornwell brings that whole world to life so easily it’s breathtaking.

The first book ends while Uhtred is young and has yet to see his newborn son. He’s on his way there on the last page of this book, and if I know anything about his life, the way isn’t going to be easy. I can’t wait.

Although Rick Riordan’s young fans don’t know it, they’re getting something of a classical education while they’re reading his Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. The stories are set in today’s world, with side trips into pure fantasy, but they’re told in a simple, down-to-earth way that has won Riordan readers throughout the world.

Greek gods walk through the pages of Riordan’s novels for juvenile readers, and they bring with them all the old stories from Greek mythology. I read the first volume of the projected five-book series to my nine year old and we had a blast with it. He was amazed at how I always knew the stories behind the stories and knew so much about the gods themselves.

I explained to him that I read a lot of Greek mythology when I was in third grade. Since getting his interest piqued, he had me buy him a compendium of Greek myths and has been reading constantly. His knowledge has surpassed mine at this point. That’s the power of Riordan’s storytelling.

Percy Jackson is a great hero for the series. He’s an average kid for the most part – ADHD, video game junkie, pop culture freak – except that he has extra problems: he never gets to stay in the same school because some weird thing happens, he gets blamed for it, and then he’s expelled. The weird thing that happens is usually some god or monster tries to kill him. Thanks to the Mist, the mystical spell that keeps mere mortals from seeing the gods or their creatures, everyone believes Percy did something.

In the first book, The Lightning Thief, Percy finds out he’s the son of Poseidon, the god of the seas. He also finds out he has a lot of cool powers while in the water – like being able to breathe underwater and swim superfast. Percy’s character, and his pals Annabeth and Grover, are true highlights of the series. I also enjoy the adults as well, Percy’s mom, Chiron, the centaur mentor, and Mr. Dionysius, the camp director. Every summer, Percy goes to Camp Half-Blood, where the half-gods go hang out to learn how to fight and be champions, and where they learn their powers and go on quests.

I also like how Riordan is incorporating his own world-building into the myths of the Greek gods. He borrows a lot from the original mythology, but he changes it and warps it to fit the modern world as well. That’s important because his young readers get to see how dysfunctional the Greek gods were and how their problems might apply to their own families. That’s just one of the lessons that become apparent throughout the books.

The Sea of Monsters starts out with Percy getting in trouble at school again. He’s become friends with a new kid, Tyson, that no one likes, and he’s become a target for school bullies that turn out to be monsters in disguise. Their grudge dodgeball match literally destroys the school and it isn’t long before it’s just a memory and a burning ruin. And the battle will leave most readers laughing their heads off, even though they might be worried about Percy at the same time. Tyson ends up having secrets of his own.

Pursued by the monsters, Percy beats a fast retreat to Camp Half-Blood with Annabeth and Tyson in two. As soon as he gets there, though, he knows trouble has broken out all over. Thalia’s tree, the one that protects Camp Half-Blood, has been poisoned and is dying. The blame has been placed squarely on Chiron.

The tree is important, not only because it protects the camp, but because Zeus turned his daughter Thalia into it as she lay dying. So a lot of bad things are about to start happening. This whole plot point shows how good Riordan’s storytelling and world-building is. I knew about the tree and the history from the first book, and now all of that is menaced. You can’t help but be drawn in.

Furthermore, to see Chiron take the fall for someone else’s evil is just wrong. I couldn’t wait for Percy to undertake a quest to figure out exactly what was going on.

But Riordan had some surprises to unveil first. The biggest one is that Percy has a half-brother, and it’s a person that Percy would never have guessed. Not only that, but his half-brother is someone no one else at the camp likes. So Percy is shunned by everyone at camp and is more mad at Poseidon than ever.

The second surprise is that Grover, the satyr that has been Percy’s friend the longest, is in BIG trouble. He’s masqueraded himself as a girl by stealing a wedding dress and has been taken by a Cyclops that plans on marrying him. And if Grover lets the monster find out that he’s a satyr and not female, the Cyclops will eat him.

Just as Percy’s getting ready to go to Grover’s rescue, he also finds out that the Cyclops has the Golden Fleece, and that it can be used to heal Thalia’s tree. From that point on, my son and I were swept up in a whirlwind of adventures that placed us on the sea in a ship, shanghaied by zombie pirates, trapped between Scylla and Charybdis (monsters that Jason and the Argonauts and Odysseus had to face in their respective adventures), aboard Blackbeard’s pirate ship, and face-to-face with Luke, Percy’s archenemy from the first book.

Riordan’s Percy Jackson novels are great reads. They’re filled with incredible adventures, lots of dialogue and jokes, magic and monsters, and real-life stories that kids (and adults!) can enjoy. We’ve got the third book in hand, The Titan’s Curse, and are anxiously awaiting Book 4: The Battle of the Labyrinth.

I recommend reading the series in order, but there’s enough explanation that you can jump on anywhere. Kids who love fantasy novels and haven’t yet found these will thank you forever.

The opening two chapters of James Patterson’s latest Women’s Murder Club series, 7th Heaven should be set to the Mission Impossible theme song. Tension and violence races through those first few pages as surely as that burning fuse tracked across the screen. And you won’t be able to stop there. Patterson and co-writer Maxine Paetro know how to get a thriller up and running and sustain the pace and the need-to-know-what’s-gonna-happen-next with the best of them.

The book starts out with a couple of serial killer arsonists who could be college kids, except for that nasty homicidal urge they maintain, which would be exciting enough. But then the authors mix in a poor little rich boy with a congenital heart defect that’s gone missing for a further delectable mystery that throws the Club’s newest member, Yuki Castellano, directly into the limelight and into harm’s way, I was flipping pages like a madman and trying to put all the pieces together.

Michael Campion, son of two of San Francisco’s wealthiest residents and waaaayyyy overprotective parents, was seen entering the home of Junie Moon, a known prostitute. He was never seen leaving again. I really like Lindsay Boxer’s first-person narrative in all the books as she takes the primary focus of the investigations. She was in fine form in this book as she and partner Rich Conklin roll on the anonymous tip the San Francisco PD get about the night of Michael’s disappearance.

Patterson starts throwing twists and turns at the reader from the very beginning because Junie Moon isn’t what anyone expects her to be. I was torn all the way through the book about how I felt about her, and I caught just a glimpse of how the whole question of guilt was going to be resolved only a few pages from the end – which is the perfect place for a faithful suspense reader to be rewarded for paying attention.

When Junie Moon breaks down and confesses to being present when Michael died as a result of his heart defect, I felt sorry for her. Then she goes on to talk about how she and a co-conspirator cut up his body and disposed of it so she wouldn’t be connected to his death. Even when Yuki had her on the witness stand, I didn’t know exactly how I felt about her. The authors played that card perfectly.

In the meantime, the escalation of arsonist murders continues. At the same time, I was drawn into the question of whether or not Lindsay’s relationship with Joe was going to survive the stresses and strains of her job and her dedication to that job. Not only that, but more Patterson whipsaws charge out of the closet when it looks like the arsonists could be tied into one of the fire investigators Lindsay has known for years. To make matters worse, Lindsay’s feelings for her partner, and his for her, threaten the relationship she has with Joe.

Cindy Thomas, the reporter in their little group, doesn’t get much face time in this novel, but Claire Washburn, the medical examiner, is on hand and ready to deliver her new baby girl.

The Women’s Murder Club novels are always filled with personal stories as well as murder mysteries and suspenseful chases. That’s why so many readers pick them up each year. I opened the new novel and settled in with old friends who had new stories to tell and had a great time.

As always, Patterson’s novel proceeds with breakneck pacing, surprises, and crackling dialogue. The courtroom scenes where Yuki goes up against one of the most brilliant defense attorneys on the scene reads like something from Court TV, but it’s her suddenly blooming romantic interest that will captivate readers.

Fans of the series already know why they pick up each book, and they’re going to be happy to have the latest one. 7th Heaven is written strongly enough to stand on its own, so if you’re new to the series or have been curious about trying one out, feel free to jump onboard with this one. Just make sure you start early or don’t have to go to work the next morning. You’ll probably read this one straight through.