Rollins is the pseudonym of Jim Czajkowski, but he also writes fantasy novels under the pen name James Clemens. As Clemens, he’s written and published seven high fantasy novels so far, with more in the works.

Writing under the Rollins name, he wrote five stand-alone thrillers that took readers inside the earth — Subterranean, into high mountains — Excavation, to the ocean’s bottom — Deep Fathom, through the deepest jungles — Amazonia, and to the most remote and dangerous pole in the world — Ice Hunt. He also wrote the novelization of the newest Indiana Jones movie, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

In Sandstorm, Rollins introduced a covert espionage team called Sigma Force that deals with archeological and scientific threats to the world. Made up of scientists and military personnel, Sigma Force goes anywhere and battles anything to ferret out puzzles and mysterious left throughout history. Imagine Dan Brown on steroids with Tom Clancy weaponry and you’ve got a good idea of what Rollins does in these books.

His interest in science and history are immediately noticeable in these books. They’re carefully researched (albeit with an eye toward getting Rollins and his fans where they want to go in high adventure), and the pacing is absolutely frantic. Not only does Rollins present information, but he also leavens the exciting mixture with no-holds barred conjecture on his part. He doesn’t just know how to relay information, he’s quite handy at spinning theories in bite-sized chunks that don’t get in the way of the action and don’t blow the readers away. I read these books for the information bytes almost as much as for the action and adventure.

The fifth and newest novel in the series, The Last Oracle begins with a bang. After a prologue containing a compelling peek back at the Oracle of Delphi, Commander Gray Pierce is approached by a man only seconds before he’s shot and dies in Pierce’s arms. The callous murder sends Sigma Force into motion to try to figure out what’s going on. Especially since the dead man seemed to know about Sigma Force, one of the most closely guarded secrets in the United States espionage network.

The man turns out to be Dr. Polk, one of the men who helped create Sigma Force. As soon as that mystery is cleared up, the team realizes that Polk – not Pierce – was the intended target all along. Even more mysterious, Polk was a walking dead man, already dying from radiation poisoning.

Rollins plants his clues deftly, charging into the adventure vigorously. A coin clutched by Polk leads them to the museum, and to Dr. Polk’s daughter, Elizabeth. I love the pacing of these books, but Rollins strips the characters down a lot, leaving them more blocked-out than filled in. Sometimes I miss not getting to know more about them, but then I realize with the headlong pacing of the books there’s no real way to explore any kind of personal life.

In short order, Rollins has got his plot up and running, separating Sigma Force into teams and branching out with different avenues of action. Director Painter Crowe and his group try to figure out the mystery of the Russian girl that falls into their hands while Gray Pierce follows up on the trail of bread crumbs Dr. Polk has left behind. On another front, we pick up the story of yet another Sigma Force member who’s fighting for his life to escape enemy clutches with a cadre of the psychically gifted children. And then there are the machinations of the bad guys.

Although I finished the book in a couple sittings, I admit I had to take a breath now and again to figure out who was doing what to whom from time to time. Rollins introduces all the elements of his adventure, from the Oracle of Delphi to the Gypsy culture to Punjab history, then kicks in a lot of psychic spying (remote viewing that the Russians spent so much time with) as well as archeological and scientific background.

Rollins tells his story adroitly, like a sketch artist. He lays out a line that gives the reader just enough to whet the imagination, then jumps to another set of characters and does the same. The pacing and plotting is pure potboiler, and these books could have easily been pulps or serials movies back in the 1940s. Rollins has acknowledge a love of Doc Savage novels when he was younger, and it truly shows.

The Last Oracle also deals with a cliffhanger left over from The Judas Strain, and a lot of fans are going to be reading with even more interest than the casual reader. Rollins puts a lot on the line for his regular readers, and they’re going to respond.

The book is out just in time for summer. But I have to warn you, if you open this book and begin reading expecting to have a calm day of it, you’re going to spend the day on the beach or in a hammock tensed up, dodging bullets and bad guys, and trying to figure out the final mystery of The Last Oracle.

He still remains as DC Comics’ most radical hero. Mike Grell created The Longbow Hunters and pushed away the trick arrows for a time, getting Ollie back to his roots as a cutting-edge back street brawler, then enjoyed a long run on the strip. Chuck Dixon shortly followed Grell and even killed Ollie off long enough to give us a new Green Arrow in Connor Hawke.

Even though he’d died and gone to Heaven, Ollie come back in issues penned by Kevin (Daredevil, Clerks) Smith. Lately Judd Winnick has married him off to Black Canary and invented a whole new Speedy for this generation.

But Andy Diggle (The Losers) got the green light to pen the adventures of Oliver Queen’s Year One origin while so many longtime DC Comics heroes are getting spotlight treatment. I really enjoyed Diggle’s run on The Losers as well as some of his other forays, but I didn’t know if he was the right guy for Green Arrow. As it turns out, Diggle was just the guy to bring Ollie once more to the masses.

Diggle’s scriptwork is excellent. He moves the story along and finesses the characters and relationship through dialogue and action, and the overall effect is like watching a movie with first-person voiceovers. An added bonus in the graphic novel contains the first few pages of the actual script Diggle turned in to the editor and artist. He didn’t just put the words on the page, he actually planned on where the action would go and how it would be revealed.

In the beginning, Oliver Queen was a playboy with more money than he knew what to do with. He rambled and tried extreme sports to fill the gaps in his life, constantly trying to find his happy. Diggle does a masterful job of portraying that, and even ties in the Robin Hood touchstones of Errol Flynn and Howard Hill’s longbow at a fundraiser where Ollie really makes an idiot of himself.

Jock’s artwork is fantastic. The panels and spreads flow cinematically across the pages. Movement comes alive, tension is as tight as a bowstring, and the sweeping majesty of nature fills the senses so much I could almost smell the grass and the gunpowder. The fact that Diggle and Jock have worked together before shows. They’re a well-oiled machine attuned to turned out powerful stories.

The plot of Green Arrow: Year One is absurdly simple, but it shows off so much of what has become canon for the character. Oliver’s disenchantment of his own prosperity, the dislike of the image of so many of the rich and celebrity, the false platitudes so many hucksters and politicians spout, and his search for real meanings takes shape in these pages.

His inherent survivalist’s nature shines through in the wilderness and the human adversity he faces. Diggle also touches on Ollie’s abhorrence of drugs (which became a major plot point in the 1970s when it was revealed that Roy Harper, Green Arrow’s original sidekick Speedy who has now gone on to become Red Arrow, had a drug problem). Understanding that Ollie got addicted to opium while healing on the island actually shores up Ollie’s overreaction and disappointment in Roy at that time. There’s even a comment made after a drastic injury regarding the potential of Ollie losing his arm that plays off the way Ollie was killed – for a time.

There’s a lot to love about this graphic novel if you’re a Green Arrow fan. I had a blast reading it, then re-reading it. And it’s a great introduction to the character if you’ve never read anything about him. Despite the fact that his series seems to constantly respawn, there’s a resiliency of Oliver Queen that just won’t go away forever. He’s become an icon in the DC Comics universe, and Diggle and Jock reveal here in these pages.

Cardiac surgeon Anne Dunne has been stressed out by the twists and turns her life has taken. Her husband has died and she barely held it together. Then she got swept off her feet by Peter Carlyle, a dashing attorney. They’ve been married for a couple years, giving Anne time to heal some of her hurts and get her feet solidly back on the ground.

I like Patterson’s books for the sheer velocity of the story. He doesn’t provide more than a skeletal background for his principle characters, but that’s all that’s needed to understand the machinations he puts them all through.

Although a lot of Anne’s emotional turmoil is glossed over in the novel, I still felt her pain and uncertainty. But there simply wasn’t time to dwell on Anne’s loss because things constantly happened in the book. The authors introduced one vicious turn after another, and the Dunne family became more and more endangered.

However, the furious plotting robbed the characters a little. Anne organized the sailing vacation for her three children because she felt the family was falling apart. Everyone who has a busy family has felt that stress. Oldest son Mark has a drug problem, Carrie is suicidal, and Ernie has become strongly anti-social. These issues were introduced in a straight-forward manner, then resolved almost instantly. I feel I missed out on some of the character growth and interaction with the headlong pacing of the book, but I couldn’t stop turning the pages, which is exactly what the authors designed the book to do.

I really liked the character of Jake Dunne. He stepped onto the page and became real to me at once. He’s the solid kind of guy that will always see things through no matter how messy they get. But, like all of the characters in this novel, he has his secrets too.

Peter Carlyle, Anne’s new husband, turns out to be one of the blackest hearted villains I’ve seen in a while. He’s only out for himself. His relationship with his much younger girlfriend Bailey really sets the tone, and readers will learn to hate this guy, and fear his single-minded determination.

The international hitman Carlyle hires nicknames himself The Magician because of the ease with which he can make people disappear. He’s cool and calculating, and fills the story with menace.

Lost at sea, injured and dysfunctional, the Dunne family’s struggles will pull most thriller readers through to the end in a single sitting or two. They won’t be able to put the book down as the authors pile on one surprise after unexpected twist after impending doom. Sail runs before the wind as a perfect beach read now that summer is upon us.

 Jordan Dane hits a solid homerun with her debut novel, No One Heard Her Scream. The book is marked as romantic suspense, but the accent is on suspense, with clearly defined characters, a taut plot, and forensic and police terminology that will satisfy the armchair crime scene investigators looking for a new buzz.

The novel’s pacing is frantic, the prose pared down and swift, the love scenes torrid, and the bad guys as creepy and evil as anyone would ever want. I had a good time blazing through this book. It offers a lot of excitement and twists, as well as the San Antonio background that I’d recently visited. The scenes along the historic riverwalk really jumped out at me.

I liked Detective Rebecca “Becca” Montgomery right out of the blocks. She’s cut from the same larger-than-life cloth that a lot of action/suspense heroes are cut from, but she wears it well. I liked the fact that she was tough, independent, and good in a fight, though that isn’t what most romance heroines are noted for. However, more and more young women in our world are getting that way – including familiarity with the martial arts – and I think Becca presents a good role model in several respects.

Dane grabs our attention immediately in the beginning with the short action piece, then segues smoothly into Becca’s story. Still reeling with the guilt and pain from her younger sister’s disappearance months ago, Becca is pulled off Dani’s investigation and placed on a cold case assignment. Along the way she’s hauled into an investigation involving the body of a young woman that was bricked up in a recently burned-down movie theater.

While at the theater crime scene, Becca crosses paths with Diego Galvan, who quickly proves he’s more than he seems. Diego is a strong lead that easily holds his own with Becca, and he’s a man hiding a lot of secrets.

Real life has to be squashed almost into sound bytes in a novel to keep the pacing up, and Dane masters that art easily. Her strength lies in the plotting, which has enough twists and turns to keep most readers guessing or second-guessing which path she’s going to take.

With the meteoric pacing of Becca’s investigation, the budding relationship with Diego sometimes gets overshadowed, but I found myself accepting the fact that the author would handle it. My main attention focused on Becca’s pursuit of the bad guys and who everyone really was. The headlong storyline made it almost impossible to let the relationship breathe, but I think it’ll be satisfying to romance fans.

However, the suspense, action, and detailed police knowledge should have fans of Tami Hoag and Lisa Jackson picking up Dane’s books as well.

Dane scored a great deal with her publisher. Over the next three months, three of her novels will be released. No One Left To Tell comes out next, followed by No One Lives Forever. Although they sound like a series, all of them feature different heroines and heroes.

Pick up Jordan Dane’s novels even if you don’t have time to read them now. They’re perfect beach books, though you may be more tense lying in the sun and lawn chair than you’d planned on being!

Ghost Whisperer is currently in its third season on television and has a few more new episodes that will air now that the writers’ strike in Hollywood has ended. Produces confirmed in February that the show is returning for a fourth season.

Created by John Gray and based on James Van Praagh’s own experiences as a psychic and medium, the series stars Jennifer Love Hewitt as Melinda Gordon. Melinda operates an antique store and has had to deal with ghosts that appear to her to get messages to their loved ones nearly her whole life.

With the success of the television franchise, IDW Publishing has started a comic book series base on Ghost Whisperer. The first issue is out now and is called “The Haunted.” It’s written by Carrie Smith and Becca Smith and illustrated by Elena Casagrande. The two writers have written scripts for the television show, so it’s no surprise that the issue parallels the movement of an episode perfectly. Elena Casagrande has worked on “Star Trek Alien Spotlight: Orions” so she’s no stranger to tie-in work coming from a television series. Her panels come to life with movement and angles deliberately staged to seduce the eye.

I really liked the opening montage in the coffee shop and appreciate the quick way the story got up and got moving. There’s no stopping to explain things. The writers assume the readers picked up the issue because they’re fans of the show, and that’s not a bad assumption to make.

Three girls, obviously well-to-do, are menaced by a girl ghost that’s about their age. The ghost, Alice Henderson, is angry at them and seeking revenge for her untimely death. Melinda steps in and attempts to intercede, but Alice’s rage knows no bounds. When Alice disappears, though, Melinda is left facing a bird-man dressed all in black.

The way the story progresses so quickly is fantastic. A mere flip of the page brings us to Professor Rick Payne, another regular from the show. Quickly, with great one-liners and snappy patter, Rick brings Melinda up to date on Osiris, the Egyptian God of the Underworld.

Back at the antiques shop, Melinda confers with Delia, her partner, and finds out the name of the dead girl as well as how she died after being hit by a car while crossing the street. Melinda goes back to high school and finds the three girls that had gotten menaced in the coffee shop. The scenes set there are great, and Casagrande’s pencils really showcase what she’s capable of when it comes to establishing an environment. I was impressed with her vision of the high school building.

Melinda goes to see the girls again when she finds out where they’re living, and gets there just as Alice sweeps in for her revenge again. The action scenes and the angles Casagrande takes are marvelous. You can almost shoot the episode from these panels, or at least know how the story would look on television. The writers’ dialogue is spare and lean, and keeps the tale moving at breakneck pace.

When the story is resolved in tried and true fashion that’s become familiar to the regular viewers of the television series, the mystery of Osiris deepens. He doesn’t go away as Melinda had thought. Instead he threatens Melinda directly.

This beginning arc hammers the reader with the same kind of seasonal epic usually carried in the series. I can’t wait till second issue to see what happens next.

Michele Martinez is making her name in legal thrillers, and she’s doing it by offering rapid-fire action, legal expertise, and solid characters that grow with every novel. Notorious is her fourth book, and it once again features her New York City assistant district attorney heroine, Melanie Vargas.

Before turning to a life of crime-writing, Michele Martinez also worked as a prosecuting attorney in New York City. Her cases involved narcotics, smuggling, and murder. When she writes about something, she puts in a lot of authenticity.

Melanie Vargas is a hard-working single mother with an ex who was a lousy husband but a great father to her two year old daughter. As of this novel, she’s currently estranged from her FBI boyfriend Dan O’Reilly. I enjoy reading about her, getting to know her co-workers and family, and watching her struggle with emotional entanglements with those people as well as her cases. She’s cleanly written and feels like a real person.

Notorious begins with a bang – literally. After Melanie talks to Lester Poe, the famous defense attorney she’s presently bumping heads with while attempting to put his rapper client away, Poe’s car gets blown to bits. Poe dies with it, and Melanie is deeply affected by his death. In just that small scene, Martinez won me over to the pursuit of vengeance/justice throughout the rest of the novel. I believed in Poe as a character as well, he was a lot like other attorneys I’ve gotten to meet. And I totally understood Melanie’s need to ensure the world still made sense and the good guys could still win.

The action picks up intensity as the police and FBI get involved. The scenes (and chapters) are short and brisk and made the read both easy and pleasant as the pages turned and turned. I was on the trail with Melanie, and there was no way either one of us was going to back down.

The tension didn’t go away when Melanie returned home, either. New dilemmas came at her from family and her ex-lover. It seemed like the world had suddenly conspired to turn on Melanie and beat her down, and I cheered her on the whole way.

The legal action was cool and felt real, from the impromptu visit to judge’s chambers and the legal brinksmanship regarding the rapper client, Atari Briggs, to the protection of the witness list and the prisoner who offers to turn state’s evidence for a reduced sentence.

Martinez is equally at home with physical action as well. Her road trip to separate fact from fiction ends in disaster and in the death of a close friend. Those scenes ratchet up the suspense and ring true.

The mystery deepens as Melanie looks into Lester Poe’s life, though. What she knew of him was only the surface and he has a lot of secrets, a lot of people who were willing to kill him. Evan Diamond, Poe’s partner, steps in as Atari Briggs’s lawyer and immediately seduces the newest addition to the district attorney’s office. He’s a good villain and I couldn’t wait for Melanie to get the upper hand over him.

The ending is a thumping winner-take-all finish. Once I hit those final pages, I couldn’t let go of the book until I’d finished. Martinez is an excellent writer and I can’t wait to see more of Melanie’s court cases. I hope she keeps a full docket.

I’ve been a fan of G. M. Ford for a few years now. I’ve especially enjoyed his books about crusading reporter Frank Corso, and my personal favorite of those books is A Blind Eye. Ford writes larger than life heroes and about true evil, with a smattering of philosophy concerning the measure of an individual. Not enough to be preachy, but enough to make you stop and think every now and again.

His newest release, Nameless Night, is a good fit for him. A suspense story wrapped up with a mystery suspended by enigmas over certain death. It’s a stand-alone novel, the first that he’s written (unless there’s a sequel in the works).

The old hero-has-amnesia from a violent crime has been done near unto death. After The Bourne Identity, I really thought we wouldn’t see anything like that for a while. Or at least not see a writer pull it off quite so well.

Ford seems to thumb his nose at conventional thinking, though, and heads right to the core of the story on page one. His story is about an amnesiac and the people who are out to kill him, and he’s not going to back off from that.

I liked the way Ford sets up the character of Paul Hardy. Hardy is likeable and you can’t help feeling for him for all that he’s lost. His face is horribly disfigured and his skull is misshapen, which is the obvious reason he’s lost his memory. Not only has he lost his long-term memory, but his short-term memory is almost negligible as well. The characters at the house where he’s been made a ward of the state are a welcome addition, and I was glad to see that they weren’t just tossed away after the initial introduction.

As always, Ford kicks the ball into play from the opening page. Before the first chapter wraps, even Hardy’s dismal life as a mentally challenged person suddenly hangs by a thread. While trying to safe another ward of the foster home, he’s hit by a car and receives even more extensive damage.

I have to admit, I was ready to start playing the Six Million Dollar Man theme song as the doctors rebuilt him, starting with his face and the huge dent in his skull. As soon as he starts healing, he starts getting his memory back. The doctor that performed the surgery even stated that the brain started sliding back to occupy the space that was taken away. I knew something was going to change.

The book quickly moves into familiar territory. Hardy recalls a name and one of the well-meaning people at the home searches for it on the computer. Immediately black cars filled with government agents descend upon the home and start asking questions.

In short order, Nameless Night becomes something of a road trip as Hardy, now called Randy, starts trying to pull his new life together while searching for his past. The pursuers are never far away, and the chapters often cut to shadowy bad guys and other people that get roped into the whole affair.

As always, Ford delivers a deftly paced puzzler with some roundhouse gutbusters that remind the reader that not everyone is going to make it out of the book alive. Everything remains up for grabs, and it’s interesting to see all of the people that are involved.

I have to admit, Randy’s real identity was astounding. I really didn’t see it coming, had no real clue. More than that, although there is a political coverup involved, it’s not one most readers have before seen.

I had a great time with the novel. Nameless Night is one of those perfect weekend reads or you can save it for the beach. Either way, Ford is back in fine form and this is a great little thriller.

Victorian London will be forever etched into the minds of readers that enjoy twisty mysteries and macabre adventures set against a history sharply defined in books and movies. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories first come to mind, as well as later forays such as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore. Stephen Spielberg even took a run at the genre and the setting in Young Sherlock Holmes.

I have to admit, I’m a bonafide sucker for the milieu. I grew up hanging onto Sherlock’s coattails while the game was afoot, and I never quite recovered from that first blush of fog-crowded streets and Hansom cabs clattering across cobblestones. Oklahoma author Will Thomas has set up a fine Sherlock riff in his own series about Baker and Llewelyn, Victorian detectives.

But Jonathan Barnes’s new novel, The Somnambulist, takes pre-conceived notions of Victorian mystery novels and adventures and turns them on their ears. And this is only his first novel!

I was captured at once by Barnes’s writing. He favors a blend of modern, easy to read, language mixed with a shading of the long-winded Victorian trappings and a touch of purple prose. It’s a fine brew and I found myself sailing along within just a few pages. His writing is so smooth, and his imagery so evocative, that the world of Edward Moon and the Somnambulist grew larger and deeper and more textured with every word.

I have to admit, Edward Moon isn’t one of the most likeable people you’re going to find in this novel, but he is our chief detective. Like Holmes, Moon is a quirky individual filled with his own ego and intelligence. He’s a stage magician by trade, but his intellect is keen and he’s knowledgeable about a great many things. Moon is also rather novel in his relaxation pursuits, and I found myself jarred quite deeply when he elected to sample the wares of a local house of prostitution. I decided at that point not to like him overly much, but the traits – all too human and poignant for some weird reason – made him even more fascinating.

But where Moon has a few things hidden from the reader that are eventually revealed, his companion – the Somnambulist – remains an enigma. He’s a large, strong man who can’t speak but does communicate through a portable chalkboard he carries with him. He also has the peculiar ability of being able to become a veritable pincushion for swords that Moon thrusts through him in their magic act, and for enemies that battle him. He’s got an unexplained fetish for milk.

Together, these two form our crime-fighting duo for the novel. In the beginning, Moon is vaguely interested in the murder of Cyril Honeyman. At first, Honeyman’s death is believed to be a suicide. But Moon believes it’s murder.

I really liked the mystery set up and the way that Moon and the Somnambulist were first brought into the mystery, then attempts were made to scare them off, then they were forced back into it. All the while the police were buzzing around trying to figure out what Moon knew. I enjoyed the familiar romp a lot.

Then about halfway through the novel, The Somnambulist takes a hard right turn into the Twlight Zone – without the warning signpost up ahead. I felt like Wile E. Coyote when he goes out over that empty canyon after the Road Runner. I’d been poking along with the novel at that point, simply enjoying the well-written read. Then the thing turned out to not quite be as simple as I’d believed.

I can’t tell you any more. You’ll have to read it to see where and to what lengths Barnes’s fertile mind takes you. However, I recommend the read whole-heartedly. Besides the quirky characters, some tantalizing mystery reveals, and a huge backstory, Barnes offers a wonderful view of Victorian London. The city comes to life on every page.

Barnes crafted a compelling read and characters with this first novel. I can’t wait to see where he takes his readers next. I’m going to be one of them.