Anne Frasier first captured my attention with Cool Shade, a book written under the name Theresa Weir. Her edgy characters, dark stories and good use of settings make her books page turners for me and, even though Play Dead has a few rough spots, it is still well worth reading. Someone in Savannah is killing…
There’s an interesting story lurking somewhere in Taylor Smith’s Liar’s Market, but the way it’s told seriously undermines the book’s effectiveness. Carrie MacNeil is the young wife of CIA official Drummond MacNeil. One day her husband disappears, leaving behind suspicions that he was involved in selling information to enemy parties. The FBI brings Carrie in…
In her suspense novels Shirley Palmer (who also writes as Nell Brien) often takes on real and disturbing issues and portrays settings that seem true to life. Her latest novel, The Trade, takes readers to Malibu, California in the wake of a wildfire. As the novel opens, Matt Lowell is racing home through the canyons…
Out of Reach immediately hooked me with a gripping prologue. Lewin’s latest offers quick reading, but not enough in terms of characterization, and many of the book’s twists turn out to be less than surprising. Still she hooks the reader right away away by somewhat devious means: she uses children in need of rescue. CIA…
Gwen Hunter’s Rhea Lynch series has given me much enjoyment in the past. The first book in the series, Delayed Diagnosis, is a great, suspenseful read and the two books following it (Prescribed Danger and Deadly Remedy) are also quite good. Because the author has worked in the medical field, her use of medical terminology…
It’s a shame Unspeakable has already been used for the title of a book by Sandra Brown. It would perfectly fit Hello, Darkness in several ways. The book is unspeakably boring, the characters are unspeakably irritating, and the suspense plot is unspeakably obvious. Charging people $26 for this? That’s the most unspeakable thing of all….
I know it does not bode well for a book when I’d rather scrub my kitchen than read it. Sadly, that’s what I was doing last night instead of reading Blind Run. There’s lots of potential here, and I could appreciate the book, but I could not connect with the characters or story enough to…
An author takes a risk when they write in first-person. In order to make it work for me, the person telling the story simply has to be incredibly compelling, either in a good or a bad way. A great example is the narrator from duMaurier’s Rebecca – her perspective of the events and characters around…
Photographer Alex Graham is no stranger to disaster sites. A dam collapse in Arapahoe Junction, Colorado, is different though and pulls her into the story more than any other she’s covered. Alex becomes so involved in the rescue efforts that she capture the images she’s paid to get. Then, while trying to get caught up,…
I backed into reading mysteries through my love of romance novels, which grew to include romantic suspense and then evolved into a curiosity about “straight” mysteries. These days I enjoy mysteries and thrillers quite a bit, but I admit that I still appreciate a romantic angle and tend to prefer mysteries that include a romance…
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