One Good Eye by Kevin Wade

One good eye, several bad secrets, and absolutely nobody telling the whole truth.

One Good Eye by Kevin Wade was a solid, engaging read from beginning to end. It didn't keep me up half the night insisting on "just one more chapter," which is generally my requirement for that fifth star, but I thoroughly enjoyed the ride.

Jeep Mullane is the police chief of Center Brookville and the kind of character I immediately like: a genuinely good guy who wants to do the right thing but understands that occasionally a rule may need to bend a little to get there. When Nicole, a former Suffolk County police officer, comes to Jeep about an assault on his childhood friend Jenny Racine, she puts him in a difficult position. Jenny doesn't want him involved, and technically, the crime isn't even in his jurisdiction.

But Jenny has more going on than she's willing to admit.

Years earlier, Jenny was in a terrible car accident that cost her an eye. Questions still surround what happened that night, including who was actually driving, and now someone is using the past to blackmail her. Meanwhile, another thread involves the death of Carl Stubblefield, brother of Jenny's husband, Aaron. Carl died in what appears to have been a motorcycle accident. But was it really an accident?

Wade tells the story through alternating timelines, moving between the present investigation and incidents from the past that shaped Jeep and Jenny into the people they are today. I'm sometimes wary of books that jump back and forth in time, but this structure worked very well for me. The past chapters weren't simply there to hide information until the author was ready to reveal it. They added context to the relationships, explained old wounds and loyalties, and gradually filled in pieces of the larger puzzle without becoming confusing.

I particularly liked Jeep. He's decent, loyal, and believable, with just enough willingness to operate in the gray areas to make him interesting. I also enjoyed his prickly friendship with retired Nassau County detective Ron Arbogast. Jenny was more complicated for me. I certainly sympathized with what she'd endured, and the past timeline helped me understand her, but I never completely warmed to her. She could be self-absorbed, and I occasionally thought Jeep might want to reconsider his choice of childhood friends.

The mysteries themselves kept me guessing. I didn't figure everything out before the reveals, but more importantly, the answers felt like a natural result of the story Wade had been building rather than twists dropped in simply to surprise me. The plot moved steadily, the different threads worked together well, and I never felt lost despite the number of characters, relationships, and events involved.

This was a very good four-star read for me. It didn't have me sacrificing sleep or abandoning everything else until I knew the answers, but it held my interest from start to finish and gave me characters I wouldn't mind spending more time with, especially Jeep. Readers who enjoy character-driven crime fiction, cold secrets coming back to cause trouble, morally decent cops who occasionally recognize that rules aren't carved in granite, and mysteries that unfold across past and present should find plenty to enjoy here.

Content warnings: assault and violence against women, death, fatal motorcycle and boating accidents, and infertility.

Thank you to NetGalley and Celadon Books for providing me with an advance copy of One Good Eye in exchange for an honest review.

 

Cult Leaders: Their Sinister Techniques and Goals by Al Cimino

Apparently, ‘charismatic leader’ is sometimes just ‘control freak’ with better branding. 

I don't often read nonfiction, but somehow ended up with a change of pace. I picked up Cult Leaders: Their Sinister Techniques and Goals by Al Cimino as an audiobook because I’ve always been fascinated by cults, particularly what draws people into them and makes them stay.

This book doesn’t really answer the first part of that question. Instead, Cimino focuses primarily on the cult leaders themselves: the techniques they use to gain control, maintain it, and manipulate the people who follow them.

And wow. Humans can be truly awful.

The book looks at a number of different cults and their leaders, including several I had never heard of before. Obviously, it would be impossible to cover every cult and every charismatic charlatan who decided that what the world really needed was someone else telling everyone how to live. But Cimino provides a broad enough selection to make the patterns painfully clear.

Again and again, leaders identify the things their followers hold most dear: family, relationships, faith, possessions, independence. They then use those very things to manipulate them. Often, those things are gradually stripped away, leaving followers increasingly dependent on the group and its leader. And disturbingly often, sexual exploitation becomes part of the equation.

It’s sickening, but it’s also fascinating to see how similar the methods can be even when the groups themselves are very different.

I listened to the audiobook and thought the narration was excellent. Considering some of the material, I’m impressed that the narrator managed to simply present the facts without sounding as disgusted as I frequently felt while listening. I’m not sure I could have managed the same restraint.

I’m giving this one four stars. It’s informative, accessible, and covers enough different groups to provide a solid introduction to the subject. Someone already deeply familiar with cults and coercive control may want something more comprehensive or psychological, but for someone beginning to research cult leaders and the methods they use to maintain control, this is a very good place to start.

Four stars, and further proof that charisma should occasionally come with a warning label.

Tear It Down by Nick Petrie (Peter Ash #4)

 Peter should have just stayed in the truck. But nooo....

I just finished Tear It Down by Nick Petrie, and once again, Peter has proven himself to be one of my favorite trouble magnets. I started it today. I finished it today. I'll be up half the night getting things done I should have done earlier. Oh, well. I'll sleep when I'm dead.

This time, Peter heads to Tennessee as a favor to June, who has asked him to check on her friend Wanda. Wanda is a photographer, and and Peter arrived at her home to find someone has rather aggressively introduced her home to a dump truck. And not accidentally. I'd say that was a pretty big clue someone has an issue.

Peter arrives intending to help figure out what's going on, which would probably be enough excitement for most people. But this is Peter Ash. Before long, his truck is stolen by Eli, a desperate young man with plenty of problems of his own. Now Peter has two very different situations demanding his attention, and naturally, he can't leave either one alone.

That's one of the things I love about Peter's character. He doesn't go looking for people to rescue. Trouble simply wanders into his path, waves hello, and hands him a detailed itinerary.

Nick Petrie does a terrific job of keeping both parts of the story moving while gradually pulling everything together. There is plenty of action, plenty of danger, and enough unanswered questions to make "one more chapter" a very bad decision. Peter's white static is still there, adding another layer to a character who is already much more interesting than your standard tough-guy hero. He's smart, capable, damaged, decent, and occasionally terrifying to people who richly deserve it. My kind of guy.

Five stars for Tear It Down. Peter Ash went to Tennessee to help a friend of a friend. A dump truck went through a house, his own truck got stolen, and everything went downhill from there.

Seriously, Peter. Next time, stay in the truck.

To The Hilt by Dick Francis

Some people have comfort food. I have a Scottish painter, an embezzled fortune, and a brewery on the brink of disaster. 

I swear I have read To the Hilt at least twenty times. Maybe more. At this point, I've stopped counting. But when I want something I know will be good, something I can pick up and immediately disappear into, I find myself reaching for it again.

Alexander Kinloch is a painter who lives alone in a bothy on a Scottish mountainside, happily removed from most of civilization. Then his mother calls to tell him that his stepfather, Sir Ivan Westering, has suffered a heart attack, and Alexander reluctantly comes down from his mountain.

Turns out the heart attack is the least of his worries.

Sir Ivan owns King Alfred's Brewery, and the company is in serious trouble. The finance director has embezzled just about every penny he could get his hands on and disappeared ... and he didn't do it alone. The brewery is facing financial disaster, the bank is breathing down everyone's neck, and Alexander suddenly finds himself involved in a mess of missing money, family complications, questionable loyalties, and people who are definitely not playing nicely.

And because this is Dick Francis, somehow horse racing, fine art, brewery finances, a ceremonial sword, and a painter who would really rather go home to his mountain all fit together perfectly.

But after all these rereads, I've realized the plot isn't really what keeps bringing me back. It's Alexander.

There is something about his character that restores my faith in humanity a little bit every time I read this book. He's intelligent and capable without needing everyone to know it. He isn't particularly interested in wealth, status, or recognition. He's perfectly content with his paintings, his bothy, and his quiet life. But when the people he loves need him, he shows up.

Completely.

Alexander isn't perfect. He's stubborn, unconventional, and occasionally makes decisions that make me want to put my arm around him and gently say, "Perhaps we could THINK about this first?" But underneath all of it is a fundamentally decent human being. He doesn't behave honorably because everyone around him deserves it. He does it because that's simply who he chooses to be.

I already know the secrets. I know where the money went. I know who can and can't be trusted. I know how all the seemingly unrelated pieces eventually fit together. None of that matters.

At this point, I'm not rereading To the Hilt to find out what happens.

I'm going back to spend a little time with Alexander Kinloch.

Five stars. Again. Obviously.

Pawnbroker by Jerry Hatchett

Everybody wants ‘it.’ Nobody will say what ‘it’ is. At this point, I’d confess just to get an explanation.

“Just one more chapter.” Famous last words that never end well for my sleep schedule. Enter awnbroker by Jerry Hatchett. I stayed up way too late last night because I wanted answers, then picked it up again today and finished it as soon as I could. 

Gray Bolton owns a pawnshop, and one day a man walks in, points a gun at him, and demands “it.” There’s just one little problem.

Gray has absolutely no idea what “it” is.

When the situation turns deadly, Gray shoots the man. It appears to be an obvious case of self-defense. His security cameras recorded the whole thing, he gives his statement to the police, and he figures that’s the end of it. Instead, he’s charged with murder. The security video that should prove his innocence is mysteriously wiped. His family is threatened. Powerful people seem determined to get their hands on something they are absolutely convinced Gray possesses.

And STILL nobody will tell the man what “it” is!

That mystery hooked me. Every time I thought I might finally get an answer, Hatchett gave me another reason to keep turning pages. The stakes kept getting higher, the danger moved closer to Gray and his family, and it became very clear that someone powerful was pulling the strings. 

I especially enjoyed being just as much in the dark as Gray. He doesn’t know why his life is suddenly being dismantled, and neither do we. We discover what’s happening right along with him, which made the suspense work beautifully for me.

Five stars for Pawnbroker. It kept me up past my bedtime, brought me right back to the book the next day, and managed to fool me all the way to the answers.

The dust bunnies never stood a chance.

Code Blue by Fern Michaels (Sisterhood #37)

Justice is easy when you’re rich, connected, and apparently immune to things going wrong.

I just finished Code Blue by Fern Michaels, and I’m giving it a solid three stars. On paper, this book should have been right up my alley. A group of wealthy, well-connected women who have the money, resources, and determination to right wrongs and seek justice outside the system is usually more than enough to sign me up. I am always willing to spend some time with women who look at the regular channels of justice, decide they aren’t getting the job done, and take matters into their own hands.

Theresa discovers she has an aunt living in an assisted living community in Arizona. That said aunt is apparently at death’s door. She immediately drops everything and heads to Arizona, only to be turned away by a rude nurse who tells her she’ll have to make an appointment for the next day. When Theresa returns for her appointment, things get even stranger. The woman who is supposedly at death’s door isn’t her aunt at all, while her actual aunt appears to be heavily drugged and confined to a wheelchair.

Well, now we have a mystery.

It soon becomes apparent that something is very wrong at this assisted living facility, and the trail leads to some pretty hefty fraud with connections reaching all the way to the Senate. Naturally, Theresa and her very wealthy, very connected friends decide something needs to be done about it.

I was pretty ambivalent about the characters. They were all okay, except for the two evil nurses. Let’s face it. What’s a thriller without a couple of evil nurses? But I didn’t love anyone, and I didn’t really care enough about anyone to want to throttle them either. The whole thing just wasn’t that...suspenseful.

And I did keep reading. I wanted to see what these women were going to do and how everything would play out. The problem was that I had to completely suspend my entire belief system to get there.

These women don’t just make complicated plans; they make complicated plans that work perfectly. Every. Single. Time. They have the right connections, the right resources, the right people, and apparently the universe itself is cooperating with them. Nobody screws up. Nobody throws an unexpected wrench into the works. Nothing goes spectacularly sideways and forces everyone to scramble. Where’s the fun in that?

For me, a big part of the tension in a thriller comes from wondering whether the characters are actually going to pull something off. I want that moment when the brilliant plan falls apart and everyone has to figure out Plan B while I’m happily turning pages and ignoring whatever productive thing I was supposed to be doing. Code Blue never really gave me that feeling. Once these women decided what they were going to do, they did it.

I also struggled with the writing itself. Despite some very adult subject matter, the prose often felt surprisingly simplistic to me, almost as though the book had been written for a young adult audience. I kept wanting more depth, more complexity, and a little more sophistication from both the storytelling and the characters.

Still, the premise was good enough to keep me reading, and I certainly didn’t hate the book. There’s something undeniably satisfying about watching powerful women use their resources to help people who have been failed by the system. I just wish getting there had been a whole lot messier.

Three stars. A great premise, some satisfying vigilante justice, and a group of women I wanted to root for...but apparently even Murphy’s Law knows better than to mess with rich women with connections.

Peace River Village by Christopher Amato

 "Retirement" is apparently detective-speak for "Sure, I'll get involved."

Practically everything a girl could ask for in a crime thriller: evil guys kidnapping young women to sell them, corruption in the police department, murder, and four retired detectives who discover that apparently retirement is more of a suggestion than an actual rule.

What’s not to love?

The four retired detectives were easily my favorite part of Peace River Village. Art, Jarvis, Lois, and Diego completely won me over. Art and Jarvis are regular old guys who seem perfectly content to enjoy retirement, desperately trying to do absolutely nothing. Lois and Diego, on the other hand, just can’t help themselves. There are crimes happening, people need help, and apparently you can take the detective out of the police department, but you can’t take the police detective out of the retiree.

This isn’t really a whodunit. Because of the way Christopher Amato tells the story, I knew who the bad guys were, and I knew who the dirty cop was. But that didn’t bother me at all. The fun and suspense came from watching the pieces come together.

There is some seriously ugly stuff going on beneath the surface of Peace River Village. Young women are being kidnapped and sold, people are being murdered, and police corruption makes it difficult to know exactly who can be trusted. Fortunately, four people with decades of investigative experience have a hard time ignoring trouble when it lands practically in their laps. Even when two of them would really rather be doing nothing.

And I have to admit, I particularly enjoyed Art and Jarvis dispensing just a teeny bit of home-style justice before the decidedly un-retired police department arrived. Was it strictly by the book?

Well...

They’re retired. They don't have a book anymore.

Peace River Village was a solid four-star read for me. It had plenty of crime and corruption, genuinely nasty villains, likable characters I enjoyed spending time with, and enough action to keep me turning pages. But the four retired detectives are what really made this one work for me.

Apparently retirement just means you get to solve crimes without having to fill out the paperwork.

Past Tense by Lee Child (Jack Reacher #23)

Come for the family history. Stay for the deeply satisfying application of Reacher’s fist.

I really need to stop pretending my audiobooks are going to stay in the car. This one escaped the vehicle more than once because I needed to know what happened next. 

Reacher is on his way to San Diego when he sees a sign for Laconia, New Hampshire. His father, Stan Reacher, was born there, so Reacher does what Reacher does. He changes direction. He decides to poke around a little, see the old family home, and learn something about where his father came from. Naturally, nothing is quite that simple.

While Reacher is digging into his family history, a young Canadian couple named Patty and Shorty are traveling through the area when their car breaks down. They end up stranded at a remote motel where the owners seem helpful enough at first.

Their situation goes from inconvenient to creepy to absolutely horrifying. There are some truly evil people in this world, and Lee Child apparently rounded up several of them and put them in one place. The more I figured out what was happening at that motel, the more horrified I became. It became impossible to hit the pause button.

Of course, those particular evil people have one rather significant problem they don't know about yet. Jack Reacher is in the neighborhood.

Child keeps Reacher's search for his family history and Patty and Shorty's nightmare running separately for much of the book. I knew they had to come together eventually, but I couldn't figure out exactly how he was going to do it. Those evil people needed to meet Reacher. Or, at the very least, Reacher's fist.

I also really enjoyed learning more about Stan Reacher. Reacher goes to Laconia thinking he knows the basic story of his father's childhood and discovers that some of what he knows doesn't add up. One revelation in particular finally explains something that has popped up before in the series: why Stan could never remember his own birthday. I love when a long-running series reaches back and answers a question I didn't even realize I was still carrying around.

And, because this was an audiobook, Scott Brick deserves some of the credit for those five stars. His narration kept me completely invested in both storylines. After spending this many books with Reacher, the voice matters, and Brick did a great job bringing him, and the suspense, to life.

Past Tense gave me everything I want from a Reacher novel: mystery, suspense, truly awful bad guys, some fascinating Reacher family history and the enormous satisfaction of knowing that some very evil people have absolutely no idea who just wandered into their general vicinity.

They really should have picked a different motel.

The Best Wild Idea by Lily Parker (Off Limits #3)

Sometimes you just need a billionaire and a sunset or two. 

Sometimes I want a book that twists my brain into knots, makes me suspicious of everyone, and has me scribbling notes in an attempt to figure out who killed whom. And sometimes I want to go to France with a billionaire. The Best Wild Idea by Lily Parker was exactly what I was in the mood for.

Grant, Silas, and Juliette were best friends throughout college. Eventually, Grant and Juliette fell in love and became engaged, while Silas inherited his father's billion-dollar company. Unfortunately, Silas didn't handle his father's death particularly well. In his grief, he turned into a rich jerk, pushed away the people who cared about him, and badly damaged his friendship with Juliette. Then Grant became terminally ill.

Before he died, Grant made one final request of his best friend. Exactly one year after Grant's death, Silas was to take Juliette on the trip of a lifetime and help her remember how to enjoy living again. There's just one tiny problem. Juliette hates Silas.

Of course, I knew this was a romance when I picked it up. I knew where we were probably headed. There would be forced proximity. There would be feelings. There would be page turning of the decidedly non-plot-related variety. I knew what I had signed up for. And you know what? I enjoyed myself.

I bought the developing relationship between Silas and Juliette. That was important because Grant wasn't some conveniently awful fiancé who needed to be removed from the picture so these two could get together. They both genuinely loved him, and his loss mattered. Juliette is trying to figure out how to have a life after Grant, while Silas has his own regrets to face and relationships to repair.

As for the billionaire lifestyle, I cannot speak to its accuracy. I have never met a billionaire. I have also, somewhat regrettably, never been one. I'm therefore willing to take Lily Parker's word for it. 

But honestly, realism wasn't what I wanted from this book. I wanted something light that didn't require me to think too hard. I wanted to suspend reality for a while, travel somewhere beautiful, picture a gorgeous sunset in Spain, and watch two people who had been through some pretty awful things find their way forward. The Best Wild Idea gave me exactly that.

Was it realistic? I have no idea. Ask a billionaire.

Was it a lovely escape for a few hours? Absolutely.

Grave Secrets by Kathy Reichs (Temperance Brennan #5)

Nothing says ‘just one more chapter’ quite like human remains in a septic tank.

I finished Grave Secrets by Kathy Reichs at 1 a.m. this morning. That should probably tell you everything you need to know about the rating.

I enjoy Kathy Reichs' books immensely. Give me a strong, intelligent female lead, plenty of forensic science, a complicated mystery, and an author who can keep me three steps behind until she's good and ready to show her cards, and I'm a happy reader. Apparently, I'm also a reader who doesn't need sleep.

This time, forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan is in Guatemala, helping excavate the remains of 23 people who were "disappeared" during the country's brutal civil war in the early 1980s. It's grim, heartbreaking work, and the fact that the story is rooted in Guatemala's very real history gives this book considerably more weight than your average murder mystery.

But Tempe is a classic overachiever. One collection of human remains is apparently not enough. She's asked to consult on another investigation involving four young women who have disappeared without a trace. Then human remains turn up in a septic tank.

Yes. A septic tank.

I'm just going to give you a moment with that.

Reichs does what she does so well here: she gives us multiple investigations, piles on the forensic evidence, explains the science without making me feel like I accidentally signed up for a graduate-level anthropology course, and somehow makes me believe I'm keeping up with Tempe. 

I wasn't.

I happily followed her around Guatemala, collecting clues and learning fascinating things about bones, decomposition, identification, and forensic anthropology, while Reichs quietly stayed several steps ahead of me. I didn't figure out how everything fit together, and I didn't particularly want to. Half the fun of a Tempe Brennan novel is watching all those seemingly disconnected pieces finally click into place.

There's also something especially powerful about the setting and the cases Reichs chose to bring together. Tempe is helping recover and identify people someone tried to erase from history while young women are disappearing in the present. The past and present sit uncomfortably close to each other throughout the story, giving the mystery an emotional weight beyond simply figuring out whodunit.

And through all of it, Tempe remains exactly the kind of protagonist I love. She's smart, capable, curious, stubborn, and very human. She doesn't magically know the answers. She follows the evidence, trusts the science, asks questions, makes connections, and occasionally walks straight into situations that make me wonder whether forensic anthropologists come with a self-preservation setting that Tempe has simply turned off.

This proves to me that intelligence and common sense are sometimes mutually exclusive.

Grave Secrets had everything I want from Kathy Reichs: fascinating forensic science, a strong female lead, a complicated investigation, history woven into the mystery, and enough twists to keep me happily clueless until Reichs decided I was finally allowed to know what was going on.

And it kept me reading until 1 a.m.

Oh, well. I'll sleep when I'm dead.

The Witness by Nora Roberts

One woman versus the Russian Mafia? Umm...Sure.

There are five-star books that make me forget I own a mop, and then there are very good four-star books that allow the dust bunnies to remain at least mildly concerned. The Witness falls into the second category.

At sixteen, Elizabeth Fitch makes one spectacularly bad decision involving a fake ID and a nightclub and ends up witnessing a Russian Mafia hit. Suddenly, she's running for her life. Over the next twelve years, she changes identities, moves repeatedly, and does everything possible to stay one step ahead of the people who still want her dead.

Eventually, as Abigail Lowery, she settles in a secluded home in Arkansas, where she has security systems, a very large dog, and absolutely no interest in making friends. Naturally, this catches the attention of Brooks Gleason, the local chief of police.

I genuinely liked both Abigail and Brooks. Abigail is brilliant, socially awkward, extraordinarily cautious, and equipped with an eidetic memory that has helped keep her alive for twelve years. Brooks is persistent without being obnoxious about it, and I enjoyed watching him slowly work his way past the walls Abigail has built around herself. Their relationship gave the book a warmth I wasn't necessarily expecting from a story involving witnesses, murder, and the Russian Mafia.

Eventually, though, I had to ask my disbelief to go sit quietly in a corner.

Do I believe an extraordinarily intelligent woman who has spent twelve years preparing and protecting herself could be a formidable opponent? Absolutely. Do I believe one woman with an eidetic memory can essentially take on a major criminal organization and bring it down?

Ehhhhhh ... Okay, Nora. I'll go with it. 

There was plenty of suspense to keep me interested, but The Witness never became a book that required a lot from me. I didn't need a notebook. I didn't need to keep track of seventeen suspects and four timelines. I didn't spend half the night saying, "Just one more chapter." It was exactly what I wanted today: something suspenseful but light enough that I could simply relax and enjoy the ride.

And yes, there are the requisite Nora Roberts sweaty sex scenes. They're not my thing, but I knew perfectly well what I was getting into when I picked up a Nora Roberts romantic suspense novel. Pages turn. I turned them. 

The Witness didn't keep me up all night, and it didn't save the dust bunnies from their eventual fate, so it doesn't quite make five stars on my personal rating system. But it was a very good, satisfying, feel-good romantic suspense with two characters I genuinely enjoyed spending time with.

And as a bonus? The majority of the story takes place in Arkansas. One more state down in my 50 States Challenge! Apparently all I needed was Nora Roberts, a brilliant woman in hiding, and the Russian Mafia.

Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera

Even Lucy doesn't know if she can trust Lucy.

For September's book, the Rusty Book Club chose Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera. I should have waited. At least until September 1st. I had things to do today.

None of them got done. Instead, I picked it up and apparently decided that laundry, housework, errands, and anything else remotely productive could wait until I figured out whether Lucy Chase murdered her best friend.

Here's the scoop:

Years ago, Lucy was found wandering along a Texas road, covered in her best friend Savvy's blood, with absolutely no memory of what happened. Savvy was dead. Lucy couldn't explain why. There wasn't enough evidence to charge her, but that didn't stop pretty much everyone in town from deciding she was guilty.

And really. Amnesia? How ... convenient.

The problem is that Lucy doesn't know whether she did it either. She's reluctantly back in her hometown for her grandmother's birthday party, where a popular true-crime podcaster has decided to investigate Savvy's murder. Yeah. Grandma set her up.

As he starts interviewing the people who were there, old stories begin to shift, secrets start crawling out of the woodwork, and Lucy has to confront the possibility that somewhere inside her missing memories is the answer to what happened that night.

I loved Lucy. Absolutely loved her. This woman majors in snark and speaks sarcasm as a second language. She's been accused of murdering her best friend, nearly everyone in town thinks she did it, and even she can't say with absolute certainty that they're wrong. Rather than turn her into a weepy, helpless protagonist, Tintera gives Lucy a wonderfully dark sense of humor and a sharp tongue.

My kind of gal.

The podcast structure works beautifully alongside Lucy's narration. As the podcaster interviews people connected to Savvy and the night she died, we're hearing their versions of events while Lucy is trying to piece together her own. It adds another layer to the mystery because nobody's account can simply be accepted as fact—including Lucy's. She isn't deliberately hiding the truth from us. She genuinely doesn't know what the truth is.

Neither did I. I had theories, though. Isn't it always the boyfriend or husband? And when said man is apparently willing to screw anything that moves, surely we've found ourselves a prime candidate.

Think again. I was completely blindsided. 

That's exactly what I want from a thriller. Give me characters I want to follow, make me suspicious of everybody, let me confidently construct my little theories ... and then prove me completely wrong. And if you can make me abandon everything I planned to accomplish that day because I absolutely have to know what happened?

Five stars.

The dust bunnies will still be there tomorrow.

Blood of Hercules by Jasmine Mas

Sorry Hercules. We need to see other people. 

Blood of Hercules by Jasmine Mas was August’s pick for the Rusty Book Club, and I made it to page 152 of 460 before admitting defeat.

I was bored to tears.

And here's the frustrating part: I don't think the problem was the premise. Alexis is determined to be Spartan through a blood test of sorts, and there’s fighting, danger, insults, mythology, and plenty of things that should have made this interesting. The world-building wasn't particularly difficult to follow, and I didn't actively dislike Alexis.

I just didn't care.

By page 152, I should have been invested in something. Instead, people fought. People insulted each other. Things happened. Yada, yada, yada. I kept waiting for the moment when the story would grab me, and it never did.

The writing didn't help. The prose felt surprisingly juvenile to me, almost like something written at a sixth-grade reading level, except with cussing thrown in. There is nothing inherently wrong with simple prose, and profanity usually doesn't bother me, but here it sometimes felt as though the author had just discovered cuss words and was determined to try them all out.

The humor didn't land for me, either. At all. In fact, I was surprised to find out it was supposed to be funny. What was apparently intended as funny or edgy banter mostly made me wonder how many pages I had left.

Way too many, as it turned out.

I hadn't even reached the romance portion of the story yet, which I know is a significant part of the book. Maybe that's where everything changes. Maybe another hundred pages would have completely won me over. But I have a personal rule about reading: a book has to give me a reason to keep turning the pages. I had already given Blood of Hercules 152 of them, and I still wasn't curious about what happened next.

That's my signal to stop.

This clearly has an audience, particularly readers who enjoy dark romantasy, mythology-inspired stories, irreverent humor, lots of banter, and plenty of profanity. I am simply not that audience.

On a positive note, I thought the cover was nice.

This Jury is Guilty by Laurie Blake

Forget reasonable doubt. I had reasonable doubt about everyone in the room.

Thank you to Sourcebooks Landmark for inviting me to read an advance copy of This Jury Is Guilty by Laurie Blake through NetGalley. Being personally invited to read this one was a lovely surprise, and I’m very happy to say it turned out to be a five-star read.

Superstar Danny Scott is on trial for hiring someone to kill his equally famous wife, Hope Harrison. Hope survives the attack, killing her would-be murderer while defending herself, but what really happened between this Hollywood power couple is far from clear. Hope says Danny is violent and wanted her dead. Danny’s side paints a very different picture, suggesting Hope has a personality disorder and may actually be responsible for the violence in their marriage.

So who is telling the truth?

There’s just one little complication: Danny and Hope are both actors. Convincing people to believe them is literally what they do for a living.

But This Jury Is Guilty isn’t just a question of whether Danny or Hope is telling the truth. It’s a question of whether you can trust anybody in the room.

The story is told through multiple jurors' points of view, and almost no one is quite who they first appear to be. Dee has done her homework on her fellow jurors. Franny seems like a harmless little old lady, but she has secrets of her own. Michelle will do anything to be foreperson. Sofia is keeping things from her wife. And then there’s Rick, who thinks pranking people is hilarious. I hated Rick. There. I said it.

And apparently those twelve strangers have enough skeletons to open their own cemetery.

That was probably my favorite part of the book. The trial itself is fascinating, but the people sitting in judgment of Danny are every bit as interesting as Danny and Hope. Everyone brings something into that jury box, their secrets, biases, motivations, and histories. The more I learned about them, the less certain I became about anyone. I may never look at a jury quite the same way again. I’m going to be giving them all the side-eye.

The beginning felt a little slow to me, and that was the one thing that initially had me wavering between four and five stars. But by the time I finished, I understood why. Blake wasn’t wasting pages; she was putting pieces on the board. With this many characters, secrets, motivations, and points of view, the groundwork mattered. I honestly can’t think of much information that was included without eventually serving a purpose.

And the payoff worked. I figured out a piece or two along the way, but certainly not everything. I was surprised by the verdict, and Blake kept me questioning what I believed - and whom I believed - right up to the end.

That ultimately settled my rating. A slightly slow beginning that turns out to be necessary setup isn’t enough to take away a star when the rest of the book is this cleverly constructed. This book is definitely five stars.

I’d recommend This Jury Is Guilty to readers who enjoy twisty courtroom and locked-room thrillers, multiple POVs, deeply unreliable characters, celebrity scandals, and stories where everyone seems to have something to hide. If you like trying to decide who is lying while gradually realizing that the better question might be who isn’t?, this one is for you.

Just don’t assume the people sitting in the jury box are any more trustworthy than the people on trial.

Content warnings: domestic abuse, violence against women, murder.

 

Long Shadows by David Baldacci (Amos Decker #7)

I had theories. Decker had theories. Only one of us should be solving murders.

As usual, David Baldacci’s audiobook refused to stay in the car. Kudos to Hachette Audio for keeping it entertaining and enjoyable!

Long Shadows brings Amos Decker back for another complicated investigation, and at this point, I really like this guy. The more time I spend with Decker, the more human he becomes. He’s still blunt, socially awkward, and capable of seeing connections nobody else sees, but he has changed considerably from the man we first met in Memory Man. There’s more humanity underneath all that Decker-ness now, and I’ve really enjoyed watching his character develop.

This time, Decker also has a new partner: Frederica “Freddie” White. I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel about somebody replacing Alex Jamison, but I needn’t have worried. White is terrific. She’s smart, capable, and takes absolutely no crap from Decker. Better yet, she isn’t Jamison 2.0. She has her own personality and her own way of dealing with him, and watching the two of them figure each other out was one of my favorite parts of the book. Especially since she has two black belts and threatened to take him out if he didn’t behave.

I like her already.

The story begins with a suicide and quickly moves to the murders of a federal judge and her bodyguard, killed in the same house at nearly the same time. Naturally, things aren’t quite as straightforward as they appear.

Decker has a theory. I had a response to his theory.

Oh please ... What are the chances?

Apparently, the chances were pretty darn good.

That’s Baldacci, though. He takes something that sounds just improbable enough to make me skeptical and then starts fitting the pieces together. Meanwhile, what initially looks like one investigation becomes something much bigger and considerably more complicated.

And I never figured it out.

He’s gooood.

That’s probably why this audiobook escaped the car. Again. I would finish my drive, turn off the engine, go inside ... and turn the audiobook right back on. Baldacci kept me curious about how the murders fit together, whether Decker’s seemingly unlikely theory was actually right, and just how many more secrets were waiting underneath the ones we already knew about.

Five stars from me. Long Shadows gave me a complicated mystery I couldn’t solve, continued the wonderful evolution of Amos Decker, and introduced a new partner I’m already looking forward to spending more time with.

Apparently, my car no longer has exclusive listening rights to David Baldacci.

My Husband's Family by Kristina Kamen

Somewhere on this floating soap opera, somebody may or may not have been murdered.

This family puts the “fun” in dysfunction, and I loved every messy minute of it. Buy this book. Now. Or at least as soon as it becomes available.

Rebecca has just married Preston Wexley, heir to a billion-dollar family empire, and is looking forward to her honeymoon. Unfortunately, her new mother-in-law, Savannah, has other ideas. Before Rebecca knows it, the honeymoon has become a family cruise (!) aboard a luxury yacht in the Mediterranean. Seriously. Who does that?

And what a family. We have Savannah, the overbearing matriarch who will do absolutely anything for her sons; her ex-husband Roger and his very young, very pregnant new wife; Preston’s brother Brad and his social-media-influencer girlfriend, who films things she probably shouldn’t; Preston’s former fiancée; Savannah’s wedding-bartender-turned-boy-toy; and a few more people with some very complicated connections to Rebecca’s past.

Honestly, there are so many juicy secrets aboard this yacht, these people practically don't need to eat.

And then someone goes overboard.

Was it an accident? Or was someone assisted into the sea? Who fell? What happened? And if they were assisted, why? Kamen lets us know just enough to keep us guessing while steadily revealing the secrets everyone brought aboard with their luggage. And their “baggage.”

The story moves among four timelines: before the fall, the night of the fall, the day after the fall, and eventually two weeks after the fall, as well as multiple points of view. Normally, that much jumping around has the potential to make me crazy, but it never did. Every chapter is clearly labeled with both the timeline and the character whose point of view we're following. This is an incredibly well-constructed book. I always knew where I was and whose story I was reading, while Kamen controlled exactly how much information I had at any given moment.

The characters were just as much fun as the mystery. I took turns liking and disliking nearly everyone depending on what they were doing and what new secret had just surfaced. Except for Savannah. I never liked her. She made me want to toss her overboard myself. Overbearing doesn't begin to cover it. She's fiercely devoted to her sons, but that devotion comes with enough seriously morally gray choices to require her own paint swatch. She's also exactly the kind of character who makes a book like this so much fun to read.

Best of all, I did not figure everything out. Not even close. Kamen kept me on my toes right through the end, and when the pieces came together, I could appreciate just how carefully everything had been constructed. The devil really is in the details.

I loved this book. It's twisty, funny, suspenseful, wonderfully complicated without ever becoming confusing, and packed with the kind of family secrets that make you very grateful for your own relatives. Readers who enjoy closed-circle mysteries, wealthy dysfunctional families, multiple suspects, shifting loyalties, and trying to figure out who is lying about what should have an absolute blast with this one.

Five stars, and I'd give it more if NetGalley would let me.

Content warnings include death/possible murder, infidelity and sexual relationships, references to sex work, pregnancy, and manipulative/dysfunctional family relationships.

Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for providing me with an advance copy. All opinions are my own.

 

The Icehouse by J.J. Richards (DCI Walker #1)

 Murder and Mayhem in Lancashire

There is nothing quite like a murder investigation that suddenly gets personal.

The Icehouse by J.J. Richards follows DCI Walker as he investigates a series of murders around Lancashire. The killer has a distinctive signature, and unfortunately for Walker, it looks a lot like the one left behind when his sister was murdered years earlier. Her case was never solved, so the similarities bring the past crashing straight into his current investigation.

This was a good, solid police thriller that kept me interested from beginning to end. Walker's personal connection to the case added an extra layer of tension without taking over the investigation, and I definitely wanted to know whether the new murders would finally lead to answers about his sister.

I listened to this one, and while it didn't completely refuse to stay in the car, it occasionally escaped the car, which is always a very good sign.

Four stars. A strong, engaging mystery with enough personal stakes to keep me listening and enough unanswered questions to make me curious about DCI Walker's next case.

Yours Truly by Abby Jimenez (Part of Your World #2)

Fake dating, handwritten letters, and no dead bodies. Somehow, I was still up until 3 a.m.

I picked up Yours Truly because I needed a break from murder and mayhem. I wanted something light, cute, and cuddly that didn't require me to keep track of bodies, suspects, motives, or who had buried whom in the backyard. I did not expect fake dating, good old-fashioned handwritten letters, and two ridiculously likable people to keep me reading until 3 a.m. Apparently, romance can be dangerous to my sleep schedule, too.

Jacob Maddox is an ER doctor with severe anxiety. Interestingly enough, the emergency room is one of the places where he is most comfortable. Give the man a medical crisis and he's fine. Give him an awkward social interaction and things can go spectacularly sideways.

Enter Briana Ortiz, an ER nurse and well-loved team leader who is up for a promotion. Briana is smart, confident, fiercely protective of her people, and possesses an almost sixth sense for figuring out what someone needs. Unfortunately, that sixth sense fails her completely when it comes to Jacob.

Briana decides Jacob is one of those doctors: the arrogant, I'm-better-than-you variety. She's not particularly shy about letting him know she doesn't care for him. Then she accidentally breaks his phone after crashing into him in the hallway, and Jacob's anxiety makes explaining what happened approximately 4,000 times messier than it needed to be.

So he writes her a letter. An actual letter. On paper. With a pen. In an envelope.

Be still my old-school heart.

That first letter changes everything. Briana realizes she has completely misjudged Jacob, and the two begin exchanging handwritten letters. In a world of texts, DMs, dating apps, and messages consisting entirely of emojis, there was something ridiculously charming about watching two people sit down and actually write to each other. More importantly, the letters give Jacob a way to communicate without the immediate pressures created by his anxiety, and they give Briana the opportunity to see the thoughtful, funny, compassionate man she couldn't see through his awkwardness.

Of course, this is a romance novel, so we need complications. Jacob needs a date to his brother's wedding. His brother, incidentally, is marrying Jacob's ex-girlfriend.

Oh, sure. Why not? Even in cute, cuddly romance novels, some people can be really weaselly.

Briana agrees to be his fake girlfriend, and the more time they spend together, the less fake their relationship starts to feel. Unfortunately, the original arrangement gives both of them a perfectly reasonable excuse to doubt everything happening between them. Is that touch real or part of the act? Did that moment mean something, or are they just putting on a convincing show?

Normally, this is about where I'd start yelling, “Communication, people!” But Jimenez gives both characters legitimate reasons for their uncertainty.

Briana is still dealing with the emotional fallout from an ugly divorce and an ex-husband who left some pretty deep scars behind. Trust doesn't come easily anymore. Meanwhile, her younger brother Benny desperately needs a kidney transplant, and Jacob becomes his donor. That creates another question Briana can't quite silence: Does Jacob really want to be with her, or does he feel obligated to stay because he gave Benny a kidney and became connected to their family?

Jacob has his own doubts, and his anxiety makes emotional risk particularly difficult. Does Briana really want to stay with him, or does she feel like she owes him because he gave her brother a kidney?

What I loved about Jacob, though, is that Jimenez never presents Briana as the magical woman who “fixes” him. Jacob has sought therapy and treatment. He understands his anxiety, knows his boundaries, and has built a successful life while learning how to manage it. He doesn't need Briana to cure him. He just needs someone willing to understand him.

And Briana does.

That's ultimately what made these two work so well for me. Briana instinctively understands what other people need, while Jacob has worked hard to understand what he needs. Both are caregivers. Both are compassionate. Both carry some emotional baggage. And underneath all the fake dating and romantic confusion, they genuinely like each other.

Yes, there are a couple of steamy scenes. Anyone who has read my reviews for more than five minutes knows those aren't my thing, so I exercised my highly developed page-skipping skills and carried on. I can't really fault a romance novel for containing romance-novel things.

I went into Yours Truly looking for a palate cleanser, something sweet and entertaining before I returned to my regularly scheduled murder and mayhem. Instead, I became completely invested in Jacob, Briana, Benny, those wonderful handwritten letters, and whether two very good people could finally convince themselves that the other one really did love them.

Using my own rating system, there's no question about this one.

★★★★★ — Five stars. I was still reading at 3 a.m. Bedtime never stood a chance.

Well played, Abby Jimenez. Apparently you don't need a dead body to keep me turning pages. And by the way, I'm absolutely stealing the glitter payback idea. That was genius. 

Malice by Jonathan Kellerman (Alex Delaware #42)

 Four bodies. One connection. Zero eye rolls. Five stars.

Four victims. One very specific method of murder. And absolutely no obvious reason why any of them should be connected. Jonathan Kellerman had me hooked.

Malice begins with the discovery of a young man who has been shot precisely in the brainstem, stabbed postmortem, and dumped in a secluded area on a college campus. And there are absolutely no clues. Then another body turns up. And another. By the time there are four victims, the method is clearly a connection, but finding anything else that ties them together is another matter. Even more puzzling, the fourth victim is the brother of the first.

Enter LAPD detective Milo Sturgis and psychologist Alex Delaware, who make one heck of an investigative team.

I particularly enjoyed Milo. He's smart, methodical, and has a wonderfully dry, sometimes macabre sense of humor that made me laugh at some very unexpected moments. Alex complements him perfectly. He doesn't spend the entire book trying to psychoanalyze everyone in sight. He observes, listens, thinks things through, and occasionally sees something from an angle Milo hasn't considered. Their different strengths work together naturally, and I thoroughly enjoyed following the investigation with them.

Kellerman's writing is also wonderfully visual. I could see this story as I read it: the locations, the crime scenes, the environments where Milo and Alex were working. He gives enough detail to put me firmly into the scene without slowing the story down with description just for description's sake.

But the real hook for me was that murder method. It was so distinctive that it seemed impossible for these deaths not to be connected, yet there was seemingly nothing tying the victims together. And, of course, Kellerman kept me guessing. I never figured out where he was taking me, which made watching everything finally come together even more satisfying. No spoilers here, but I finished this one with a very big smile.

I honestly don't have a meaningful criticism. I didn't get bored. I didn't get frustrated. I didn't roll my eyes even once. The plotting was smart, the mystery kept me guessing, the characters kept me entertained, and the ending absolutely landed. This was exactly the kind of crime novel I love.

Readers should be aware of descriptions of murder, violent death, and crime scenes, including postmortem violence and discussion of human remains.

Fans of intelligent police procedurals and psychological crime fiction, especially readers who enjoy trying to solve seemingly unrelated murders alongside the investigators, should have a great time with this one. Malice was my kind of murder and mayhem from beginning to end.

 

Walk the Wire by David Baldacci (Amos Decker #6)

Come for the murder. Stay for the toxic waste, terrorism, and  government secrets. I mean, why not?

This is yet another David Baldacci audiobook that refused to stay in the car. At this point, I should probably stop pretending these are strictly for my commute. I'm not kidding anyone but myself.

Walk the Wire is the sixth book in Baldacci’s Amos Decker series, and the more time I spend with Amos Decker and Alex Jamison, the more I like them. Especially Amos. His character development throughout this series has been fantastic. The man we met in Memory Man is still very much there: brilliant, blunt, socially awkward, and equipped with a brain that works unlike anyone else’s. With every book, though, he becomes just a little more human.

This time, Decker and Jamison are sent to investigate the murder of a young woman in a small North Dakota town. On the surface, it looks like a fairly straightforward murder investigation.

Oh, bless your heart, you sweet summer child. Have you not met David Baldacci?

Because before long, we've got secrets, more murder, toxic waste, terrorism, government interests, and enough people hiding things to make you wonder whether anyone in town has ever told the truth about anything.

This is one of the things Baldacci does so well. He starts with a crime that seems relatively contained, then begins pulling threads. Every person seems to know something they're not saying, and the only thing that is obvious is that nothing is obvious.

The narration made this another easy audiobook to get lost in. Or, in my case, one that was supposed to live in the car and mysteriously followed me into the house. Funny how that keeps happening with Baldacci and Hachette Audio.

Five out of five stars. No hesitation.

If you've been reading the Amos Decker series from the beginning, Walk the Wire gives you everything you've come to expect: a complicated investigation, twists piled on top of twists, plenty of danger, and Amos using that extraordinary brain of his to notice the things everyone else misses. But it also gives us another chapter in Amos's slow, fascinating evolution.

And apparently all it takes to help Amos Decker become more human is a little friendship, a lot of murder, some toxic waste, and the occasional terrorist threat.

No judgment here, Amos. You do you! I'm just going to stand back and watch the magic happen.