Mysteries Galore.com

Archive for June, 2010

Reviewed by Woodstock

Aberdeen cop Logan McRae struggles with the most dysfunctional group of supervising officers in today’s police procedural fiction. No one gives him credit for anything unless matters have gone very wrong indeed, then he gets all the blame.

His immediate supervisor has been turned down for an adoption, and wants McRae to impregnate her partner. There is pressure from all sides to find those responsible for a gruesome series of torturing episodes which have left the victims blinded. In the midst of it all, McRae carries on. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Allen Hott

Matt Hunter was a twenty- year old college student when he was convicted of killing another young man in a brawl started by a drunken friend of Matt’s. Although there was doubt as to intent Matt was sentenced and served four years in prison.

Nine years after his release Matt and Olivia (his pregnant wife) each get cell phones and this very interesting mystery written by Harlan Coben begins. While his wife is away on what he believes to be a business trip, Matt receives some very disturbing photos via their new cell phones. He becomes angry, perplexed, and decides to find out what is going on.

After getting involved with both the local authorities and a private investigator Matt discovers that an unknown man is following him. However shortly thereafter that unknown man is killed. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Allen Hott

A sequel to Sidney Shelton’s Master of the Game is really well put together by Ms Bagshawe. The Shelton family consented to allow her to do the sequel to one of Shelton’s great books. Their choice was a good one as she follows the original in all respects. Perhaps a little more explicit sex than Master of the Game had in it but not a lot more.

The story follows the Blackwell clan who were the heirs to the Kruger-Brent Ltd empire, which began basically in Africa with diamond mining and expanded into becoming one of the major conglomerates in the business world. Since this has taken many years to happen there are quite a few Blackwells as well as other descendants of the founder Jamie McGregor. Needless to say all is not always well among the heirs of any large fortune. Mistress of the Game primarily focuses upon Lexi Templeton and her quest for power in the control of Kruger-Brent.

She is followed from her birth to her hoped for ascension to the Chairman of the Board of Kruger-Brent. However throughout her life, which is in fact a very exciting and full trip, she has to battle various others to get the control she seeks.

Her biggest adversaries are her cousin, Max Webster, and his mother Eve Blackwell who was Lexi’s mother’s identical twin. The twin sisters’ grandmother had ruled the entire Kruger-Brent as Chairwoman and also ruled the family. Throughout her entire life she let it be known that Lexi’s mother was definitely the favorite and Eve would never have the position she desperately wanted. Even when Lexi’s mother died in childbirth her grandmother did not allow Eve to take control but rather gave the reins to Lexi’s father. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Cy Hilterman

Having read Karin slaughter’s books before and thoroughly enjoying them, “Broken” was even better! Allison Spooner stayed at college during the holidays. She was having a rough time from a room that barely heated, a car that smoked, a boyfriend that she felt had left her, and to top it all off the weather in south Georgia was cold, so she disgustedly took a walk around Lake Grant near the college. She really didn’t think of anything else but her “crappy” life as she plodded through the mud, tripped over the tree roots and fallen branches, sometimes falling down. One time when she fell she was pushed into the water and held down as she was brought back to reality. Someone was trying to kill her and they succeeded.

At 3:00 in the morning Lena Adams phone awake her. She knew it couldn’t be anything good at that hour. It wasn’t! She traveled in the rainy, misty, foggy weather to the site where the lake was being searched for a body. When she arrived all the various agencies were there to assist in all the work created by a missing, then found, body chained to two concrete blocks in the lake. What they thought was a suicide now was a murder. The small town inexperienced police force led by interim chief Frank Wallace had been fractured with the death of their police chief, Jeffrey Tolliver, several years previous and seemed to work against each other instead of cooperating. Everything Jeffrey had set up and had running smooth became a Keystone Cops force. Lena got along fairly well with Frank.

Sara Linton now lived in the Atlanta area. She and Jeffrey had been as one and she had been lost without him. She had taken a job in Grant County as a part time coroner while buying out the local clinic. When she lost Jeffery, she left the area with a bad taste in her mouth towards the entire area, especially officer Lena Adams, who she blamed for Jeffery’s death. Now Sara had come back to Grant County to visit her family for four days. It was hard seeing all her connections with Jeffrey. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Nancy Eaton

Emma Caldridge was competing in a fifty-five mile ultramarathon. She was on mile marker thirty-six when a car bomb explodes. Seconds later she is lying on the road with the sun blinding her. Emma sees a blurry image of a man standing over her. He wore running shoes just like everyone else. She was very disoriented and before she could do anything, he pricked her arm with a needle. What had he injected into her system? This mysterious injection seemed to have given her more energy and she finished the race at a much faster pace.

Pirates attack a cruise ship in the Gulf of Aden. Cameron Sumner, a person who has saved Emma’s life in the past, is on board this cruise ship. Intelligence sources indicate this ship is carrying something very valuable – a weapon of unknown origin. The pirates have a very big advantage because they have automatic weapons and grenades.

Edward Banner, President and CEO of Darkview, is in Washington D.C. He must explain to a committee comprised of senators and congressman why his company took certain actions. Is there more to this hearing? Does someone have a hidden agenda to get Darkview? Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Douglas R. Cobb

Fifth-generation Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong is back on a mission to see justice done for Las Mujeres de Juarez, over four hundred dismembered and mutilated women found murdered along the border between Texas and Mexico, in Jon Land’s suspenseful thought-provoking mystery thriller, Strong Justice. In the first book featuring Ranger Caitlin Strong, Strong Enough to Die,Jon Land took a close look at government-sanctioned torture and the degradation of civil rights. Besides the action-filled, tense, page-turning plot of Strong Justice, in which Caitlin also has to go head-to-head with Colonel Montoya, a terrorist determined to bring America to her knees, I like that Jon Land incorporates the news headlines into his novels, like the often ugly and brutal reality of the cruel fates that Mexican women forced into prostitution sometimes face, of young lives cut short way too early and nastily. Strong Justice is that rare type of book that will live with you long after you have finished reading it, and it’s one that both those who love the Western and Mystery genres should heartily embrace.

She teams up in San Antonio with Cort Wesley Masters again, whose wife was murdered in Strong Enough to Die. Caitlin has had a romantic relationship with Cort, despite his criminal past, because he wants to become a better father for his two boys. There’s a tension created by this complication, also, both wondering if they can reignite their relationship, or if violence and guns are the only things that they had in common and that brought them together. They head to the town of Nuevo Laredo to try to find the evil, bald-headed steroid freak Marcerio, whom some call El Demono, a man it’s rumored cannot be killed. Besides being involved with a sex slavery ring, he also might be “the worst serial killer in history,” the person who murdered the Women of Juarez. Maria Lopez, a young woman who’d been forced into prostitution by Marcerio and his men – and whom he will do anything to get back – draws Caitlin Strong a crude map in black marker to Nuevo Laredo and the house she and other women were held at, one with “birds on it big enough to house a lot of people.” Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Douglas R. Cobb

What is a saint? There’s the classic definition, that, among other things, calls for the person to have performed at least two miracles. The vast majority of us, however, could never be classified as saints, no matter what some of us might claim. Some of us come close to being saints, in that we put up with a lot of terrible stuff in our lives, including horrendous behavior from our spouses. But, if you tried to do your best, to be moral, to be church-going and law- abiding, what would it take, what would be the final straw, to make you snap, to lose your saintliness? That’s the question that author Annette Sobolak asks in her tense and psychologically powerful debut thriller, The Last Saint.

Ever since she was a little girl, Mariella DiDomizo’s father told her: “Heaven doesn’t accept murderers.” Her father blamed her for killing his wife, whom died giving birth to Mariella. Her death could possibly have been prevented if he had got his wife medical attention sooner, but he thought he was putting his faith in God, and so his wife died. Mariella’s father conditioned her from the time she was an infant to feel guilty for her mother’s death. He was a strict disciplinarian, also, beating her and her older sister Helen for the slightest infractions of his rules, ones which changed as he saw fit. He even sometimes beat them with an iron poker. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Teri Davis

Once someone is rid of a husband who really is a criminal, they are not looking forward to the day when the ex-spouse reappears. So when Annie Seymour is at a bachelorette party, she is surprised to discover her ex as the manager of the establishment. When Annie hears gunshots outside, she is shocked to discover Ralph, her ex, on the sidewalk facedown and dead.

So who would gain the most from this death? Who would have the means, motive, or opportunity for killing him? Logically, the ex-wife who immediately viewed the dead body would be an obvious suspect. Of course, it doesn’t help that Annie’s gun was discovered under the seat of her car by a police detective, who also was a former boyfriend, and is missing four bullets. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Teri Davis

Living at a service academy can be a difficult adjustment. For Harold Lindstrom, his life as a plebe at the U. S. Naval Academy, just became extremely difficult when a marine discovers him naked, unconscious, almost dead, and in need of resuscitation in a cheap motel in Annapolis.

Added to that, Harold’s closest relatives, Ole and Lena Lindstrom, are also having challenges with their politically active lives and decide they need an attorney for their copyright ideas, as well as for Harold. They have finally found the newest political candidate to support for the state attorney general, Veronica Gephart who is focusing on a domestic violence platform. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Caryn St. Clair

When Rosie and Jayne return from their stint with the USO in the South Pacific, they are greeted with a couple of major shocks. The first is really just an inconvenience. Their room at the boarding house has been let out to someone else so they are forced to share rooms with a couple of other girls-one of which that Rosie does not get along with at all. But are the girls really who they say they are or are they mixed up in something much darker?

The second is a much bigger blow. Jayne’s fiancé was killed in action and so the girls plan to visit his parents when they returned to the states. But when the do travel to up state New York to pay a condolence call on his parents, they are stunned to find that the Jayne’s Billy isn’t Billy at all. The man Jayne fell in love with stole the identity of another soldier! Of coarse the girls have to investigate who the guy they knew as Billy really was. When they visit his apartment, they find some things that just create more questions than answers.

Rosie’s former love interest, Jack, is back in the picture as well. In the previous book in the series, Winter in June, Rosie followed her love interest to the South Pacific only to have him fall in love with another woman. Now Jack is home in New York as well, recovering from war related injuries and it falls to Rosie to help him out. Read the rest of this entry »