Mysteries Galore.com

Archive for March, 2012

Reviewed by Julie Moderson

I love reading Kate White books; she has a style of writing that is like listening to a friend tell you a story. I especially enjoy her Bailey Weggins mysteries because she has such great story lines and you really feel like you are part of the story and just can’t put the book down.

Bailey is invited to a weekend getaway at a record producer’s home, with Jessie Pendergrass who is her best friend and coworker at the Manhattan tabloid magazine the Buzz. Jess has a crush on Scott the record producer and doesn’t want to go alone and since Baily’s boyfriend, Beau, is away for the weekend she decides to go along for support. They are one of the last to arrive at the remote home surrounded by nature. The driveway into the home is over a mile and a half long.

When they meet the other guests they find Devon Barr a famous model who wants to be singer, her agent Cap Darby, his wife Whitney, Devon’s booker Christian Hayes, Devon’s best friend Tory, Tory’s boyfriend Tommy Quinn and Richard Parkin who is a writer for magazines like Vanity Fair. It was an interesting group and they joined in the conversations. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Teri Davis

“Perhaps the power of music is greatest because it is temporal rather than spatial, meaning that once it is heard it is gone forever.”

In Devil’s Trill, it is obvious that many musicians do not easily blend into society. These gifted few, expect more from themselves and others, while not always living in the everyday world. Many have their own eccentricities that in turn allow them to experience and communicate music on a level that is difficult to achieve and understand.

Daniel Jacobus is one of these. He is an excellent musician. However, he has difficulties with people. He is blind but is considered to be one of the best violin teachers alive. For those few who are fortunate enough to become his students, they are challenged by using their technical expertise to truly create music as the composer chose to communicate this through his writing. There is a difference between being technically correct and playing music. If his students refuse or fail to notice this, Daniel does not hesitate in humiliating anyone. If the student quits, Daniel feels that it is for the best. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Jud Hanson

A cruise ship attacked and sunk by a Russian sub……….Air Force One attacked by one of the very planes escorting it……..the testing of a new drone fighter in Israel goes horribly wrong. In these and other cases, it is claimed that some phantom force took over the controls and caused these mishaps to happen. Lord Alex Hawke is assigned the task of discovery who or what this force is. At the same time, he must protect his son and himself from those in Russia who would see him dead: the Tsar Society, who lost their leader at the hands of Hawke and seek revenge. Hawke’s quest to stop this phantom and stop those who are hunting him and his son will take him across the world and pit against some of the worst criminals in the world. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Allen Hott

Yep, the recession hurt everyone. And that includes Mickey Haller, the criminal defense lawyer in Los Angeles. So much so did the recession hurt that Haller began chasing down wrongful foreclosures. At least in his mind and in his methodology Haller felt that many foreclosures were definitely illegal. With that in mind he began defending many of these folks so that they could keep their homes at least for a spell while either they earned more to be able to make their payments or the bank figured out some other way to fight Haller’s methods.

Strangely enough one of his foreclosure clients quickly became one of his criminal defense clients when the lady was accused of murder. Lisa Trammel, the client, was arrested rather quickly when one of the top men at the bank who foreclosed upon her was shot and killed in the bank’s parking garage.

Trammel had built quite a reputation for herself somewhat similar to the Occupy “Whatever” folks have done. In her case she built a tremendous following by picketing outside the bank, appearing on every type of media broadcast that she was able to, and she even had put together a website extolling the good things about the poor people that the bad banks were foreclosing upon. Lisa had been a high school teacher and her husband was a BMW salesman. However when their loan (which had been sold back and forth several times by banks and financial wizards) ballooned and then went into default her husband left her and headed to Mexico. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Cy Hilterman

This book is excellent. Some of Patterson’s books lately have been only fair, especially the ones written with another author. In “Worst Case” I think the story is very well written and in today’s world of not knowing what to expect, it is very plausible. This book features Detective Michael Bennett of the NYPD, who has been featured in a few other books by James Patterson. Bennett has 10 children, all adopted and of all origins. He has a nanny to take care of this brood when he has to work, which is quite a bit of time. Since his wife had died several years earlier, the children give Michael Bennett quite a problem of balancing his work and his personal life. In this story he is teamed with an FBI agent, Emily Parker, who, while working close with Bennett, has made both of them open their eyes toward each other.

Children of rich people disappear, followed by a phone call to the parents. When the police get involved, Bennett and Parker along with their teams, at first the culprit says he does not want any ransom but tells them where the child can be picked up. After leading them on a wild goose chase, the body of the first child is found. This is repeated several times with some variation on the kidnappers method of operation. Since all the parents are rich and very influential the police can’t make a connection as to why certain children are taken and with different variants involved, how do they get to the whys and wherefores? Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Cy Hilterman

I don’t know how Colleen Coble keeps coming up with such super-duper stories. I have read most of them, missing only those that were not sent my way to tell me they were available. In my mind Blue Moon Rising is possibly the best of Colleen’s books so far. She keeps a Christian atmosphere in all her stories and many times shows how God can turn lives around through living the way He wishes us to live. The good of people are brought out in her stories along with the evil some humans can inflict on fellow man and woman.

This book takes place in the 1870’s as young Lucy Marsh struggles to raise her younger brother and sister in a dilapidated house. Now she has lost her job and has no way of knowing how she will keep things going as a family. At the same time her landlord approached her and told her he had sold the property so she would have to move. What else can Lucy overcome to keep things together? She had lost her father to a supposed accident and then her mother just took off. When Harry Stanton from Texas appeared at her door, telling Lucy that he had received all the news about the disasters she has now in her life, she was in a deep quandary when Henry said she was welcome to come to Texas where he said his son needed a wife and Lucy was in such an entangled mess that she, being a strong Christian, would serve the family perfectly by accepting his offer. Lucy and her brother, Jed, and her sister, Eileen, got together and had a good prayer with God. Eventually Lucy decided that they would go since she had nothing where they now existed.

With mixed thoughts and emotions, they left for Texas without the slightest knowledge of what they were going into but she figured since some were family that she was going to live with, a marriage to someone she didn’t know, in an area they knew nothing about, it couldn’t be worse than what they were leaving. The thought of marrying a man she never knew gave her much thought but if other family was around she figured things should work out. The main thing was to keep her brother and sister with her and raise them correctly. To make it worse a mysterious man was bothering her. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Teri Davis

Luca Terracini is a journalist living outside the safe-zone in Iraq during the year 2006. Luca is following a
story that scares other journalists. What happened to all the money hidden in Saddam’s Iraq and the money sent from the United States to rebuild the country? As he investigates, it seems that someone is does not want him to find the truth in this story. He is being constantly followed and it is obvious that someone is trying to kill him.

Vincent Ruiz discovers that he has been a victim of a scam. It begins with a young attractive couple who argue. The boy becomes physical and hits the girl. The victim, the target, witnesses this and sympathizes with the hurt girl. While talking with the girl, she discovers that her purse has also been stolen by the angered and now disappeared boyfriend. The girl is taken to the witnesses home where she can take advantage and steal the household valuables. However, someone kills the boyfriend and wants the girl dead. Why? Also Vincent needs one of the stolen items. His daughter is promised her mother’s comb on her wedding day which is quickly approaching.

Richard North, a vice-president of a bank, disappears. With a pregnant wife, a young son, and marrying into this banking family, he is the obvious scape-goat for money missing from the bank. Obviously, this missing man could be dead. The frantic wife hires a private investigator. What happens to him? Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Allen Hott

This was the first in a short series about Terry McCaleb, a forced-into-retirement former FBI agent. The reason for the forcing was the fact that McCaleb had a heart transplant and was thus put into the “physically unable to perform” category by the department. However his physical condition did not change his thinking about his profession and try as he might to stay out of the grind it didn’t take long before he was drawn back into it.

And as a good mystery writer would do, Michael Connelly sets up the perfect circumstance to pull McCaleb back into action.

A lady comes to McCaleb’s boat (which he is rebuilding for his new life) and very quickly convinces him that she needs him. The lady, Graciela Rivers, had just recently read an article in the newspaper about McCaleb, his background, and his transplant. Graciela’s sister was the one whose donated heart gave McCaleb a second chance at life! And now Graciela wants McCaleb to find her sister’s killer.

Against his own better judgment and definitely against the advices of his heart doctor, McCaleb decides to at least check with the L.A. Police to see what if anything they have found out about the case. He finds that in essence they have done very little and appear to be continuing on that path. The lead detective on the case is very antagonistic toward McCabe and basically tells to keep his nose out of their case. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Cy Hilterman

The preface for this story took place in 2009 when the CIA, always looking for specialist agents to assist in the war on terror, thought they had found a man who was fully knowledgeable about all the enemies in the Afghanistan area to the point where, except for his immediate handler who had some doubts about this man, polished him to gain access to those who would kill all Americans, then report this information to his superiors. This preface gives the reader an excellent start to the intrigue and suspense to follow.

The story advances to present day Afghanistan at a friendly forward operating base where the friendly military, some out to gain only for themselves, could fairly well come and go as needed with few checks on them. They were smart and had most of the superior officers brainwashed thinking they were always on military missions when they left the perimeters of the base. Little did they know about all the money some of these “friendly” military made on their visits to other areas. They were good but there were some higher ups that suspected something wrong was going on and decided to bring in the best intelligence person they had, John Wells, to investigate closely. Wells appeared in the authors preceding book and immediately gave readers a likeable role in almost everything he did, despite being a bit loose in morals and tougher than nails physically even though he was getting up in years. He had kept himself well conditioned, physically and mentally. Before Wells arrived in Afghanistan, there were people disappearing, bodies found, even some in charge were killed. Also before he departed for Afghanistan, he had to make a trip to meet his son who he had not seen in many years. They had their meeting but the son only knew his father as one who always had to leave rather than do things with the family. They did not part with good feelings as his son thought of his father as leaving his family once again, apparently without concern. Such was the life of a deep cover spy. When he left his son he headed for the CIA to obtain the details of his mission, should he decide to go back into action. After learning how the crookedness was going on in Afghanistan he decided he had to take this assignment so off he went to work his way into the area hopefully as an unknown. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Jim Kalla

Raven Strike is book number thirteen in Dale Brown’s Dreamland series of action thrillers. Fans of the Dreamland series have enjoyed reading about the adventures of the team members of the Dreamland and Whiplash organizations as they battled enemies of the United States while fighting for their own existence in the military and political arenas of the American government. Lt. Colonel Tecumseh “Dog” Bastian inherited Dreamland, an advanced aerospace-weapons testing facility, when the Pentagon was looking for an excuse to shut it down. Under his leadership, Dreamland and its people provided a fast-strike, high-tech alternative to conventional military response options.

In Raven Strike, readers meet up again with Lt. Colonel Bastian’s daughter, Breanna Bastian Stockard, a retired Air Force Captain and Megafortress bomber pilot, who is now heading up a combined CIA and Pentagon high-tech wizardry program. Her husband, Jeff “Zen” Stockard, another retired Air Force Dreamland pilot who is wheel-chair bound and now a U.S. Senator is both her biggest supporter and potential adversary. Her main CIA contact is Jonathan Reid whose official title is Special Assistant to the Deputy Director Operations, CIA. Colonel Danny Freah, a Medal of Honor winner, heads up the Whiplash military team that is called in to support the CIA. The in-field CIA agent, Nuri Abaajmed Lupo, is a top CIA operative who is used to working on his own but must now adjust to the quasi-military team to complete his mission – the recovery of a top secret aircraft that has crashed in Africa while on a covert operation to assassinate a Chinese arms dealer. Read the rest of this entry »