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.

D. C. Fontana, the author of several of the best original Star Trek scripts ever written, returns to kick off the stories of the fourth year of the Enterprise’s five-year mission to boldly go where no man has gone before. Only three years were revealed in the television series, and subsequent adventures were only hinted at in the moves set well after that voyage had ended.

This initial series is actually a sequel to Fontana’s “The Enterprise Incident” and the capture of the Romulan cloaking device. That was the episode where McCoy equipped Kirk with the pointed ears that make him look so much like Spook.

Although the television series didn’t deal with the captured technology from that point on, Fontana chooses to make it a focal point in this first arc of new adventures. And that’s a great place to start for Trek fans: answering old questions!

In fact, Fontana and co-writer Derek Chester do just about everything right in this first issue. The story starts with Kirk and Spock together in a shuttlecraft trying to find the Enterprise while she’s employing the new cloaking technology. That relationship was the heart and soul of the series, but I do have to wonder – again – why the captain AND his XO were off the ship at the same time. But I digress. That particular die was already set a long time ago.

The conversation between Spock and Kirk is fantastic. Spock is pontificating on the differences between humans and Vulcans – again – and Kirk enjoys needling him. The brief interchange of dialogue quickly and efficiently brings the reader up to date with what’s going on. I love the effortless ease the writers have in putting the story onto the page.

Purcell’s art explodes with color. The space scene showing the shuttle on page 4 is awesome, and it’s bound to leave some old-time fans seriously jacked about seeing that dated hardware in action.

I also enjoyed seeing the environmental suits again. The crew very rarely used them, though I do recall one of the episodes where Kirk was trapped in limbo in one (which echoes some of the plotting of this comics arc to a degree) as well as another episode where Kirk was just out of phase with everyone. Still, this story just FEELS like ST:TOS so much that I felt like a kid again. Of course, they’re out of the suits in nothing flat.

Another aspect I really am enjoying is the inclusion of other races that aren’t quite human in the crew. I’m looking forward to seeing what other treats are in store now that the budget restraints have been lifted.

And we get a mind-meld in the first issue! That totally rocked! I love how this comic is coming together and the artwork on the page. After that, the problem turns out to be anchored in science, which – hopefully – will be resolved in some creative way in the next issue or two.

Best of all, Kirk is facing off against a Romulan Bird of Prey in the final few panels of the comic! The hook for next month’s comic is definitely set. The cover of the second book, with Kirk and Chekov firing phasers and floating in zero-gee, has got me salivating. I can’t wait to see how this one turns out, and I’m betting if you’re a ST:TOS fan, you won’t enjoy waiting either.

Ms. Tree started out as a comic book series back in 1981. Conceived by writer Max Allan Collins and artist Terry Beatty, she began the longest ever career for a lady private investigator in the comics field. She also set some milestones in the publishing world. Much has been said of Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone and Sara Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski. I’ve read both those series, as well as Linda Barnes’s excellent Carlotta Carlyle books, and can honestly say that none of them have ever been as cold-bloodedly ruthless as Ms. Tree.

Of course the name is a tongue-in-cheek joke, but the lady’s work isn’t. Ms. Tree was written by Collins as a tribute to his friend and mentor Mickey Spillane, who penned the tales of Mike Hammer, who was about as hard nails as tough has ever been.I read all the comics that came out about the character, beginning with the release by Eclipse Comics and finishing up with the run at DC Comics. Those haven’t been re-released, but hopefully they won’t be long in coming now that interest has once more been stirred.Deadly Beloved is a new novel about Ms. Tree. In fact, it is the first – and thus far – only novel about the character. But longtime readers who remember the stories are going to get a feeling a déjà vu. Collins and Beatty recently got an option for Ms. Tree as a television movie, with the intention of potentially adding more movies to the initial one.

The book has been published by Hard Case Crime, a line of novels produced by Charles Ardai that is about 50% new material and 50% books that have been out of print as much as fifty years. All of the books are crime novels, and all of the covers offer noir stylings that make my heart beat faster. I can remember reading some of those books back when I was a kid and got them at the secondhand stores.

Dearly Beloved is a blindingly fast read. Clocking in at a little under 200 pages, Collins spins his story quickly, dipping in and out of two plotlines that he dovetails neatly back into one cohesive whole. The action is intense, the dialogue gripping and constant, and the feeling of the city around Ms. Tree and her colleagues feels true.

For me, this was a pleasant walk down memory lane with a few interesting twists and turns thrown in for good measure. I generally like all of Collins’s novels, and have re-read several of them over the years. I loved his Mallory series as well as his Nate Heller books.

If you haven’t met Ms. Tree before, this is the perfect place to do so. The book is lean and mean, and the character steps right off the first page and into your face. And if you have read about her before in one of the comics or graphic novels, it’s probably been too long. Pick this one up, put your feet up, and prepare to spend a couple hours in total tough gal noir bliss.

I’m a big fan of Kiefer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer character on the television show 24. I like the way Bauer is driven to get the job done no matter what, no matter who gets hurt. It sets him up as great flawed hero among his family and peers, but all of us who love the character know the price he’s paying to stop the bad guys. I also have to admit that I can’t stand waiting from week to week for episodes of the new season. I have to make a deal with myself. I don’t watch the first-run showing of the seasons. After they’re finished, I wait until the DVD sets come out and buy those. I watch those straight through, more or less. It’s easier on me than having to wait every week. I know there are some people who enjoy getting together to watch the episodes and then rehashing the twists and turns of the plot as well as making predictions about what’s going to happen. I tried that it first, and it drove me crazy.

When I first found out Harper Collins paperbacks was going to be releasing new books set in the series, I was excited and dismayed at the same time. I was glad to get the extra Bauer adventures, but I didn’t know how the books were going to pull off the immediacy of the television episodes.

Nor did I want anyone to try to sandwich books between the ongoing series seasons. Bauer’s life changes from season to season and I prefer that that be shown within the television world.

Fortunately, with the tight driving plot lines of the series, publishers weren’t willing to risk trying to elaborate on stories set between the seasons. They elected to go back to earlier in Jack’s career and call the series 24 Declassified. This way we get to see the first season CTU (Counter Terrorist Unit) team in action all over again. From time to time, though, a few mishaps with canon will occur, or the characterization will not quite seem right.

One of the biggest problems in the book series is the fact that all of the television fans who read them know what Nina is really like. We know that she was not a good person, yet the authors of these books have to portray her as decent and professional. But no attempt can be made to evoke a lot of sympathy for character because we won’t buy it.

John Whitman and Marc Cerasini together have written six books in the 24 Declassified novel series so far. Chaos Theory is the latest in the successful run. The book opens with Bauer interrupting a poker game and shooting one of the man dead. This prologue is set a few weeks prior to the opening hour of the next 24-hour run. It sets the plot into motion and raises questions. Two pages later, we learn that Bauer is in prison awaiting trial for murder of a man he shot in the prologue. Questions arise immediately, but they take back seat to the action that begins with a bang. Within minutes, Bauer is attacked by an Hispanic street gang in the shower. He has no idea why he’s been targeted, but he knows something has gone drastically wrong.

It isn’t long before the reader understands that Bauer is in jail because he wants to be. He has a mission on the inside. However, his cover has been blown because someone has taken out all three people that know he’s innocent. Bauer has no choice, as usual, but to take matters into his own hands and move events directly toward critical mass. This is typical, great Bauer action.

The plot is convoluted and multi-layered. The CTU team all have parts to play. Whitman does an excellent job of “seeding” events that lead up to betrayals and double-crosses that play out in the television series. This foreshadowing works well and doubles down on the pleasure the reader receives because not only is a new mission unfolding, the fans get to see some of the other pieces of the television series’ twists and turns fall into place.

The title, Chaos Theory, relates to the action in the book and a lot of ways. Everybody seems to take some part in the chaos that eventually unravels. Nobody’s plans, not Bauer’s or the villain’s, go as intended. Some of the twists and turns can be predicted, and some of the action is a little over the top, but there are some surprises.

I read the book on the plane on the way to San Diego Con this past weekend. With three hours of flight time ahead of me, I wanted something familiar to read that would easily grasp my attention and immerse me in a world other than the airplane. By the time I reached San Diego, I was totally engaged in the book. After arriving at my hotel, I settled in, put my feet up, and finished the read rather than going exploring. For me, that’s a sign of a good book.

Now I know there are five other Jack Bauer adventures awaiting me that I’ll probably be able to cram into my schedule before Season Six arrives on DVD. If you’re a 24 fan, and like to read, these books are for you. If you don’t like to read but love the show, I’d recommend giving these books a try. If the others are like this one, they are lean and mean and move with the same blistering bullet speed as the television series. You may find the book interface seems to disappear completely as Bauer’s adventures come to life inside your mind.

If the rest of the books are like this one, they’re just sheer good fun.

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I’ve been a fan of CSI in all its incarnations since the beginning.  My preference is for the Vegas unit, though I love the color of
Miami. I’ve also been a lifelong fan of Max Allan Collins’ work, as readers of this review column will know.

Those two passions meet in the CSI tie-in novels published by Pocket Books, and Snake Eyes is Collins’ eighth novel in the series.  He usually writes them all with co-writer Matthew V. Clemens, though Clemens’ name isn’t on the books.

In Snake Eyes, violence breaks out between two rival motorcycle gangs in
Boot Hill, Nevada.  One of the gang leaders and a 20-year-old dealer are shot dead during the confusion.  Knowing that his department is outmatched and that he’d better come up with some answers, Boot Hill Police Chief Jorge Lopez calls out for help.  Gil Grissom, Catherine Willows, Nick Stokes, and Sara Sidle answer that call.

The crime scene is filled with complications at the beginning, and things don’t get any simpler.  The motorcycle gangs are camped outside the town like barbarians at the gate, and both sides are demanding answers for the murders.  The gang leader’s body – with the incriminating bullet lodged in it – disappears from the morgue.

In the meantime, Warrick Brown and Greg Sanders are holding down the fort in Vegas.  They get besieged with short-lived cases in a series of whirlwind murders that become The Night That Wouldn’t End.

I especially enjoyed the plot twists and turns the book took, and the fact that it was very much like the Western movies that Grissom kept aluding to in his conversations with Lopez.  Max Allan Collins and Matthew V. Clemens are good, solid and dependable writers, and that really shows in this novel.

The best compliment you can give to a Tie-In novel is that it reads entirely like an episode of the parent show that was never aired.  It takes real skill to step inside someone else’s world, temporarily claim it as your own, and leave a lasting impression about something without changing anything.

Snake Eyes is a great read for fans of the show, but it’s also a nifty little murder mystery that mystery fans who haven’t seen the show would enjoy as well.  And it’s just short enough to be read in a couple of sittings, a claim most books these days can’t make.

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Look!  A new cover by the legendary master, Robert McGinnis! 

That was what first drew my eye to this novel, but then I saw Max Allan Collins’s name and got a double whammy.  Then I saw that the book was indeed about Quarry, the rough-and-tumble hitman with nerves of steel and a blue collar worker’s mentality — he never takes on a job he doesn’t see through to the end.  I was sold. 

I first started reading the Quarry novels (there were 5 previous books featuring the character) back in the 1970s when I discovered MAC’s other works featuring Mallory (which I really should find and re-read at some point) and Nolan (a semi-retired heister who joined forces with Jon, a comic book artist geek).  Mallory was fun and Nolan was entertaining, but Quarry was just…HARD.  Like the mine where rock slabs are cut from the earth.  Quarry was definitely different, and not for the squeamish. 

The years haven’t softened him. 

In this novel, which MAC has confirmed in interviews as the “last” Quarry in the chronological order (though not the last book about the character he’ll necessarily ever write), Quarry is still recovering from losing his wife and unborn son to violence that he thought he’d walked away from by turning down an offer he couldn’t refuse.  He meets up with an old Army buddy from his
Vietnam days and ends up managing a resort for him. 

While in town during the off-season, going slowly bored out of his mind, Quarry meets a face he remembers from his Mafia days.  Following the man to a rental home, Quarry discovers the man and his partner are holding a kidnap victim:  a young, lush beauty.  Sizing up the situation, seeing a chance to eradicate any chance the man might have recognized him as well as make a few bucks himself, Quarry buys out the kidnappers’ interest with a bullet through the eye and a long walk across the thin ice of a frozen lake.  Then he ransoms the young woman back to her father, Joshua Green, a man with some semi-ties to the Chicago Mafia. 

A few months later, Joshua Green tracks Quarry down and offers him a quarter million dollars to kill a small-town librarian.  Intrigued, but wary of the “one-last-job” syndrome that generally befalls all the movie heroes, Quarry agrees to the contract and goes to spy on the librarian. 

The plot takes a real twist when Quarry falls for his intended victim and finds he really doesn’t want to kill her.  The problem is, he doesn’t want anyone else to kill her either, so he can’t just ride off into the sunset. 

Max Allan Collins’s writing is as tight and quickly paced as I’ve ever seen it.  This is truly one of those Gold Medal books I misspent all my youth on (of course, now that I’m a professional writer, maybe it was more of an education).  I absolutely loved the book and the fact that I could read it from cover to cover in about the same time it would take me to watch a movie.  For less than the cost of a movie.  Now this is entertainment. 

Currently, Max Allan Collins is writing the books about the
Las Vegas based CSI team.  I really recommend those books as well, and the “Disaster” novels he does that mixes history, a disaster, and a famous writer (such as The War of the Worlds Murder — which I’ll review here at a later date). 

Grab The Last Quarry for a weekend read, when you have an hour or so that you can devote totally to a purely fun investment of your time.  

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A few years ago, Spider-Man fought an incredible being who called himself Morlun, who was supposed to be an Ancient and a drinker of souls. More to the point, Morlun feasted on the souls of people who chose animals as their “spirit totem.” He wanted Spider-Man because of his connection to the spider spirit. 

The original story became one of the most intense arcs in the Spider-Man comics at the time, and it rebooted the character’s origins to a degree.  Spider-Man defeated Morlun with help, but now the rest of the Ancients, a sister and two brothers, are out for revenge. And maybe a midnight snack. 

After being assigned a temporary basketball coaching job with a troublesome star athlete (which I personally wish could have taken on a slightly larger role in the novel), Peter Parker (Spider-Man) arrives home to find more trouble: his wife MJ has taken on an acting job but now has to drive to get there. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have a driver’s license (what native New Yorker does?) and just failed the tests. Peter tells her he’ll help her, then jumps into patrol as Spider-Man. He immediately gets jumped by Felcity Hardy, an old girlfriend who goes by the name The Black Cat. 

Black Cat tells Spider-Man that he’s being lured to his doom by the Rhino on a rampage. But, being a hero, Peter has no choice but to go — and nearly gets feasted on. Together, Spider-Man and the Black Cat have to figure out how to defeat the trio of Ancients without losing their lives in the process. 

Jim Butcher is the best-selling author of the Dresden Files, featuring wizard-for-hire Harry Dresden. A television show is being filmed now. He’s also the author of the Codex Alera fantasy series. 

Butcher hits some really nice licks with this book, capturing the humbleness and golly-gee of Peter Parker in his first-person narrative. Throwing the Black Cat into the mix with Peter and his wife MJ for a romantic triange of sorts was an especially nice touch, a romp down memory lane for old-time comics fans. 

The Rhino, always one of Spider-Man’s more simple yet complex villains, is played brilliantly in the book.  He comes across as very human and possessing more self-awareness than he ever did in the comics.  The exchanges of dialogue, the exploration of back story provided in The Darkest Hours is fantastic, demonstrating that all too often the line separating a hero and a villain is very thin. 

There are even a couple cameos with Dr. Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme (as well as an astonishing reveal about Wong, Dr. Strange’s majordomo, and the final punch of the novel featuring Wong is an all-out hoot that will leave readers rolling in the aisles). 

The pacing is frenetic, filled with the trademark quips as well as lots of dialogue among the characters, and surprising twists and turns of the plot that keep a reader moving along. Although these are comic book characters, they come across as surprisingly human on Butcher’s pages. While on a camping trip with my wife and my youngest son, I wanted some light reading, something I could pick up and lay down while we were at the lake.  But Butcher kept me nailed to the pages of the book and I finished it far too soon. 

The Darkest Hours is a solid Spider-Man novel, a great adventure read, and the very thing a comic geek or someone interested in Spider-Man through the movie venue needs to pack along to the beach. Harry Dresden fans will probably also enjoy this sideline jaunt Butcher takes through the Marvel Comics Universe.