Mysteries Galore.com

Reviewed by Gina Metz

Joe Hunter returns in Matt Hilton’s Judgment & Wrath. He has now moved to Florida where he has partnered up with his buddy, Jared “Rink” Rington in his private investigation business. Some would call Joe a vigilante although he just thinks of his work as helping those in need.

Joe meets with Richard Dean who wants to hire Joe to rescue his young daughter, Marianne, from her mega rich boyfriend, Bradley Jorgenson. He tells Joe that Bradley is physically abusing Marianne and produces a police report as proof. In the police report Marianne refused to name her attacker. Dean wants Marianne returned to him and any threat from Jorgensen eliminated. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Caryn St. Clair

Fire and Ice brings together Jance’s two most popular protagonists uniting Seattle’s J.P. Beaumont and Cochise County, Arizona’s Joanna Brady. When they were last pulled in on the same case, there was a bit of electricity between the two both professionally and personally leaving readers wanting more. And now we have it.

Beaumont’s case involves a string of brutal murders of Hispanic women killed, then dumped and burned. Brady is investigating a cold-blooded attack on the caretaker for an ATV Park located in a Dunes area. Was the attack random or by an environmentalist group? There is also quite an ugly eldercare issue involved. Unlike their first joint venture in Partners in Crime, Jance takes her time merging the separate cases together in this book, leaving readers with a constant shift between two seemingly unrelated cases being handled by two very different departments. The shift between the two cases often occurs within the same chapter as well, giving readers the feeling that they are literally reading two books at once until quite deep within the book. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Cy Hilterman

In 1987 Keith Sutter, age 27, was working on high temperature super conductors knowing he had discovered a new source of energy that would revolutionize the worlds power supply and reduce the dependence on current sources such as coal, oil, and nuclear methods that have been strangling the worlds population. Keith decided he would keep this new source to himself. He did not want to have to share this great energy source at this time since all his work and the income from it would have to be shared with the government and the university that they backed. He wanted all the credit and income for himself. He would wait until he was free of all that bound him to his current employer.

Twenty years later in 2007, all the plans that Keith had been mulling over started to take shape. He had brought Phil into his plans even though Keith felt he was running the show. They started advertising for employees to work in a new factory working on electrical semi-conductors. The old factory they bought was in a bad section of town and they re-configured the insides to their needs. No one but Keith and Phil knew what the factory was researching and physically working to produce.

Katherine Murkowitz needed a job. She had experience in the electrical field so she applied when Keith and Phil advertised for a person with such experience. She was so tired of applying for jobs but with the economy being so terrible, the jobs in most fields were non-existent. When she was called back for a second interview she was elated and then was finally hired to a job description she didn’t know much about but Keith and Phil were happy with her interviews. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Caryn St. Clair

Following How to Host a Killer Party, How to Crash a Killer Bash finds event planner Presley Parker planning a major fundraiser for the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. The director has requested a murder mystery theme for the party so guests arrive decked out in costumes of their favorite detectives. They are then given little spy glasses and notebooks to aid them in their quest to “solve” the crime they are to witness. The stage is set for the crime to happen and the “real” detectives straight out of crime fiction are introduced to the audience. The crime is staged with all of the appropriate screams and blood with everything seemingly humming along nicely-that is except for the part where the victim really is dead. Before long, Presley’s assistant becomes the main suspect and Presley is left to find the real killer.

Presley Parker is a protagonist that readers can’t help but like. She’s been down on her luck but lands on her feet when she comes up the idea for an event planning business. For a mystery series, it’s a near perfect occupation. Presley will be doing something different in each book and will then have an entirely new set of supporting characters each time out. Warner uses real places around San Francisco to set the stage for her series which gives the reader a definite sense of place. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Teri Davis

You can be killed if you have the third key. What is the third key to? What about the first and second key? Sydney Fitzpatrick quickly feels the need to answer these questions in THE BONE CHAMBER. She also has the feeling that she is always in the wrong place at the wrong time.

THE BONE CHAMBER begins with Sydney being summoned to Quantico to create a drawing from a skull of a possible victim who was obviously murdered and so extremely disfigured that she was not recognizable. Since she is a forensic artist for the FBI, this does not seem unusual except that the FBI is not involved with investigation. No one will tell her who is in charge or why she is to work with another agency.

To complicate matters, Sydney’s colleague and friend is also killed in a hit-and-run incident once she has begun this investigation. She is being followed but has no clue as to why. Added to this is the hunky, Zach Griffin who just wants her safely out of this case. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Caryn St. Clair

Bones of Contention is a great start to a fresh new series. In what is essentially a house party mystery, readers are introduced to Dinah Pelerin who has travelled to Australia to be with her dying uncle in his final days. The family, called together to await his death, is made up of a large group of people related (or not) through a complicated series of step parents and half siblings-or nonsiblings, as the case may be. It is also a family that does not get along. There is not an average run of the mill person among this group with each one of them hiding some sort of secret or plotting another agenda altogether. The family is so dysfunctional that their behavior teeters on slapstick in some cases. In fact, the dying man may not actually be dying at all, as some family members believe, but is instead is playing out some sort of fanciful scheme with them all. Throw in that he is extremely wealthy and is redoing his will causes things heat up fast. Oh, and there are two murders to be solved along the way as well.

The book is set in the Australian Outback and the author has used the culture, language and landscape of the Outback to give the book a very realistic feel. As an example, Dinah’s own desire to pursue a career in anthropology was derailed, but she is quick to pick up the Aboriginals’ idea of song lines. This plot line was extremely interesting. The basic idea is that things in nature possess parts of the soul of the peoples who “sang” the land into existence and therefore the landscape holds the footprints of your people’s ancestors. The author arcs this idea over to Dinah’s search to find out her own family “song line,” a story thread not entirely resolved by the end of this book. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Allen Hott

Damaged contains all the elements of a great thriller and it is in fact just that.

Alex Kava has brought back FBI Special Agent Maggie O’Dell and as usual has dropped her in the middle of many problems.

After a Coast Guard helicopter and its rescue swimmer find a large cooler floating in Pensacola Bay, they find not shipwreck survivors but a pile of human bones. This surprise package brings the Department of Homeland Security into action. The deputy director of the Department decides that while he is going down to Pensacola to check it out he will ask the FBI for O’Dell to help in the investigation.

It turns out that the timing of their trip coincides with the anticipated arrival of Hurricane Isaac, which is heading straight toward Pensacola. And at the same time Colonel Benjamin Platt, the medical director of USAMRIID a unit specializing in fighting infectious diseases has just been called to the Pensacola Naval Air Station to look into badly infected combatants just returned from Afghanistan. Strangely all of those infected have recently undergone amputations. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Patricia Reid

Savannah Stone creates math and logic puzzles that appear in more than forty-two papers. Zach, Savannah’s husband, was the police chief in Charlotte, North Carolina before an on the job injury forced him into early retirement. Zach is trying to use his expertise as a police chief to start his own consulting business.

A phone call from Davis Rawles who stepped into Zach’s position sets Savannah on edge. She feels that Rawles has been soliciting too much free advice from Zach. Rawles informs Zach that Mayor Grady Winslow is receiving threats that seem to be tied to an unknown suspect that had already committed two murders. He asks for Zach’s help before the Mayor becomes another victim in the string of murders. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Patricia Reid

A giant man called Zeus is arrested for the murder of Benjamin Kuros, a famous evangelist. Zeus is accused of beating Kuros to death with a wooden cross. People are protesting and wanting Zeus punished.

Rick Bullock is a former advertising executive who is now director of a homeless shelter. This homeless shelter is where Zeus has made his home. Rick is convinced that Zeus is just not capable of hurting anyone let alone beating someone to death with a cross.

Rick sets out to prove Zeus is innocent. His sidekicks are a couple of very different characters and their trip to Florida where Zeus is being held is nothing short of hysterical. Rick has asked Dr. Douglas Kool who works with the United Way for help in financing the trip. Doug agrees but only if Rick will see that a mobster’s niece travels with the group. The mobster has obtained a job interview for Twyla Tharp, his niece, at Universal Studios in Orlando and Rick is to see she makes it to the job interview. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Julie Moderson

Andrea Kane’s Drawn in Blood pulls you into the story and grabs you. From the first page to the last you are on the edge of your seat. This book has so many twists and turns it is an amazing story. Kane writes so well you feel as if you are involved in the story. Read the rest of this entry »