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Reviewed by Vickie Dailey

Jefferson Bass is the writing duo of Dr. Bill Blass and Jon Jefferson. This is their sixth bone farm novel.

Dr. Bill Brockton is a forensic anthropologist at the Bone Farm. Here they take bodies and teach students forensics. One such student, Angie, is called away home. Dr. Brockton then gets a call from Angie requiring his help. Her sister is dead apparently from a self-inflicted gun shot would that Angie believes her brother-in-law committed. This is not the story of The Bone Yard. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Teri Davis

Life is seldom simple for Harry Hole. As a recovering alcoholic, Harry knows that he is an excellent police detective but realizes that he will not rise any higher in the law enforcement hierarchy. He believes in doing the right thing, solving the crime, even if he does step on toes of those who are in power positions. Harry just doesn’t play the political game well. His expertise is doing what is just, in his mind.

Harry Hole is investigating a bank robbery. A man walked into a bank in Oslo, Norway and immediately placed a gun to an employee’s head. He quietly tells this employee to count to twenty-five while the manager is opening the safe. If the safe is not opened within the time limit, the employee is murdered. She is shot in the head. What are her last words to her killer? On the tapes, Harry wonders if she recognized the murderer. She seemed to have a smile on her face and he seemed to definitely be in her personal comfort zone of space.
Being that Hole’s significant girlfriend has returned to Russia for a custody battle with her former husband, he quickly falls into a former relationship with Anna, an artist. Somehow, Harry awakens with no memory of this night and Anna is found murdered. Did Harry kill her while he was in an alcoholic blackout?

Harry has difficulty with many of his superiors in the police force, especially Tom Waaler, who is everything that Harry is not, his nemesis. Tom is handsome, political, accustomed to getting his own way by using people, and with his own sense of morality or ethics. Perhaps in the morality or ethics, the two in some way resemble each other. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Patricia Reid

This newest addition to the Matt Royal series manages to keep the reader on pins and needles until the very end of the book. Matt is an attorney living in Longboat Key, Florida. Matt has pretty much given up the practice of law and is just enjoying a leisurely life.

Jim Desmond, a young groom, is killed on the beach in Longboat Key the day following his wedding. On the same day three other murders occur on a local dinner cruise. Longboat Key detective and close friend of Matt, Jennifer Diane Duncan (J. D.) isn’t coming up with any answers. The groom was from Atlanta. One of the victims killed on the dinner cruise was a lawyer from Jacksonville, Peter Garrison. Another victim was a twenty-five year old woman from Charlotte, North Carolina. The third victim was the Captain of the dinner cruise.

Matt is puzzled by the deaths but has no reason to become involved until an old buddy from Matt’s years in VietNam stops by for a visit. Charles T. Desmond (“Doc”) reveals that the young man killed was his son. Doc pressures Matt to file a civil case in order to gather evidence that the police can’t access and hopefully find out who killed Jim. Doc agrees that any evidence that is turned up from the civil action can be turned over to the prosecutors. Matt finds it difficult to say no to a man that saved his life so he agrees to take on the case. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Caryn St. Clair

The Thief is a bit different than most of the titles put out under the SOHO Crime label. Generally, the books feature strong protagonists and are set in exotic locales that are so well described it leaves the readers feeling like they have traveled to the book’s setting. While this book is set in Tokyo, there is not that vivid sense of place that is found in many of the SOHO titles. And while Nishimura, a pickpocket in Tokyo, is one of the most unusual protagonists I’ve come across lately, I wouldn’t describe him as a strong character.

The basic setup for the book is Nishimura has perfected the art of pick pocketing in the busy streets and trains of Tokyo. He has become so skilled at his job that he carries on without giving the actual act even a thought. He rather goes into a sort of auto pilot when he begins assessing the marks and making his moves. Readers meet Nishimura through a sequence of pickpocket maneuvers-some while he is in a near trancelike state. In one early case, he finds a wallet in his coat pocket that he does not even remember taking. From the early pages of the book, one is struck by how disconnected to his life and isolated from the world around him the character is. The one and only real connection Nishimura makes is with a small boy who is shoplifting in a grocery store for his prostitute mother. The other character that is a force in Nishimura’s life, is his former mentor who Nishimura believes may be dead after a botched job.

The bleakness of Nishimura’s life sets the tone of the book. There are no real emotions in play here and it’s hard for the reader to really get involved with the protagonist since we are never really allowed to know him. What the disconnect of Nishimura’s life does deliver is the force that drives the book. From the opening pages when Nishimura starts his thievery, he functions at a near frantic pace leaving readers eager to find out what makes Nishimura tick-what drives him. As the plot develops and readers learn of the former mentor and the botched job that still torture Nishimura today. And then the mentor returns with another job for Nishimura and a chance to redeem himself-or is it? Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Patricia Reid

When I reviewed “Kind of Blue” I commented that Miles Corwin had written a book full of danger, excitement and secrets and “Midnight Alley” is more of the same. The reader learns more about Ash Levine, top detective in the LAPD’s Felony Special squad. Ash is not an ordinary detective. He served as a paratrooper in the Israel Defense Forces and this experience gives him a little different outlook.

This second in the Ash Levine series puts Ash in charge of solving the murder of two young black men found shot to death in a Venice Alley. The timing could not be worse. Ash has just left for a weekend with his ex-wife Robin. When he received the call ordering him back to work, Robin understood, but Ash was very disappointed.

Raymond Pinkney, one of the victims, was the son of City Councilman Isaac Pinkney. Isaac has been a frequent critic of the LAPD. Ash is under heavy pressure to find the killer but the case is puzzling. Teshay Winfield, the other victim, had just returned from serving in the armed forces. The two victims had known each other when they were younger but had gone separate ways. What brought them together to be found dead in an alley? And what was the strange marking on Pinkney’s bicep? And what does it mean? These are just a few of the many questions that leave Ash searching for answers. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Caryn St. Clair

Bailey Weggins returns in So Pretty it Hurts in a “country house party” themed mystery. While there are some variations for the standard formula-like the fact that people go home before the mystery is solved, most of the elements are there in this well executed book. A group of relative strangers are guests for the weekend at a remotely situated house, a mysterious death occurs and there is a snow storm that delays the guests’ departures. Therefore, the list of suspects is limited to the people at the house, even though the guests do eventually leave and the crime is not solved until much later. In fact, when the guests leave, it’s not clear if the death was a crime or just from natural causes.

Bailey Weggins, a true crime writer who freelances for the celebrity magazine Buzz, covers celebrity deaths, so when her friend Jessie invites Bailey to join her a house party for the weekend that was going to be loaded with big named people, work wasn’t really on Bailey’s mind. It wasn’t that is, until a famous model turned singer dies in her sleep. Bailey promptly starts nosing around and discovers some things that just don’t quite add up. The more Bailey investigates, the more sure she is that the Devon, the dead model, had help in her death.

Unlike some of the earlier books in the series, there really isn’t very much romance in the book. Bailey is uneasy in her new relationship and while there were couples at the house party, there was more fighting than romance. Another interesting omission is blood or violence. The victim died in her sleep and while Bailey gets herself into some scrapes, there really isn’t any blood, guns, knives or whatnot usually associated with murder. Those two elements lead to the one real negative with the book and that is there is painfully little action of any sort to drive the book. The mystery was interesting and well done, but the pace was quite slow in places.

This is the sixth book in the Bailey Weggins series, and fans of the series will surely be pleased with it, but readers who have not read any of the previous books will also enjoy this book. There isn’t really a need to know Bailey’s back story when reading So Pretty it Hurts.

Reviewed by Elizabeth Sheehan

The main character, Michelle Mason, goes on a previously planned trip by her husband, to Mexico. Her husband Tom has died and has left her in a financial mess with her credit cards maxed out.

While on the beach she meets a fellow American man named Daniel who is a private pilot. They end up in her hotel room and are attacked by two men with blood everywhere and Michelle ending up with Daniel’s cell phone. Michelle decides to leave and takes a cab to the airport. On the way the police, who demand her purse and then claim they found drugs in it, stops the cab. She is released to a friend of Daniel’s named Gary. She must then become involved with drug runners, etc. and is made to spy on Daniel by Gary to pay him back. Her vacation becomes a fight for survival. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »