Category Archives: Thrillers

Review: I’ll be You (Janelle Brown)

Twins Elli and Sam are discovered one day on a beach by a talent scout/agent. While Elli isn’t exactly over the moon about being an actor, Sam takes to it immediately. They hit the jackpot, since twins are able to allow Hollywood to work around the max hours underage children can work. As the grind off filming goes on, Elli becomes more and more reserved, and it’s clear she doesn’t want to do it any longer. Sam come sup with an idea: “I’ll be you,” she says, and so she does, taking on both her and Elli’s parts. This is draining, though, and no one notices. Except the makeup artist, who tells Sam she’s going to burn out if she keeps it up. Sam continues, though, and the makeup artist starts her on a dark road by giving her Adderall.

Eventually, the girls age, and as happens far too often for the very young in Hollywood, there are soon some unpleasant items popping up: Elli gets drunk and vomits at a party, Sam, now on to more drugs than Adderall, passes out one day after excusing herself from another party.

The book deals with the grownup Elli and Sam. The backstory we get in a series of “Then” chapters. Sam’s downward trajectory into drugs and alcohol continued, eventually consuming her and leaving her broke. After multiple rehab stints, she’s finally sober for over a year, and attending AA. She now works as a barista at a coffee shop. Part one is from Sam’s POV.

One day, Sam gets a call from her father, asking her to come home and help them. With what? The niece she didn’t know she had, because she hasn’t spoken to Elli in over a year. The toddler is running the grandparents ragged. Sam agrees, and heads home.

There she finds her parents caring for Elli’s adopted child, while Elli attends some kind of spa. But Elli’s been gone for a couple of weeks, and her parents have no idea where exactly she is, or when she’s coming back.

From there, the book takes off, and it’s Sam who drives it forward. Part two is from Elli’s POV, and we get her story on what’s she’s doing – basically, joining a cult that’s obviously based on Scientology. She’s pushed into a rather despicable act

But it’s Sam who is the more interesting POV character, who tracks down Elli, who discovers the truth about everything and who, despite her history, and against all odds, winds up being the rational one in the entire mess. I love a good redemption story.

There are a couple of UK Englishisms on the front end of the story but they’re not interruptive ad it’s clear what is meant, so no ding for that. the story is well told, and the dive into the formative years for the twins in Hollywood is fun, despite what Sam gets into. There are no slow spots here. It’s a one sit read, really, and in this case, that’s a good thing.

A solid four out of five stars.

Thanks to Random House and NetGalley for the reading copy.

Review: Agent in Berlin – Wolf Pack Spies #1 (Alex Gerlis)

Another fantastic book from Alex Gerlis, whose Richard Prince novels are as fine fiction as I’ve ever read.

We’re back to Berlin and more spying, except this time, it’s a bona fide ring of spies, cast from diverse characters living in Berlin.

Barnaby Allen is recruited to the spy game and tasked with setting up a network of spies in Berlin after the Nazis have taken hold but before the invasion of Poland in 1939. He also encourages those recruits to be on the lookout for others who may be willing to engage in a very dangerous game as well.

His very first recruit is a gay German citizen and businessman, Werner Lustenberger, who is affable, charming, and about as Bondian a spy as it gets in Gerlis’ world. He befriends, and then beds a member of the SS, among other things.

American Jack Miller joins the ring of spies, having come to Berlin to cover the Olympics, and who stays to write travel and sports pieces, which allows him to go practically anywhere with a ready-made reason to be there. He gets friendly with the Reich’s sports minister, who gives him additional protection when he wanders out of bounds a couple of times.

There’s Sophie, sick of her high ranking SS husband, and who finds the husband’s personal diaries and realizes the horrific things he’s doing. Though afraid, she’s able and willing to do the things the spywork requires: taking pictures of various places, getting people out of the country, and so on.

And there’s the saddest spy ever: Tadashi Kimura, a diplomat at the Japanese embassy in Berlin, who, in his words, commits treason for the sake of love.

Spycraft abounds: secret meeting places, coded phone calls, and, as the years roll by, an ever-tightening, claustrophobic feeling that the next encounter could be game over for the spies. For some of them, alas, it is.

It’s a fascinating read that at points may feel slow but isn’t: the slower areas are just a pause, so the various pieces can be put into place before setting the board in motion once more.

Highly recommended, and five stars out of five.

Thanks to Canelo and NetGalley for the reading copy.

Review: Push Back (James Marx)

When I was younger and reading everything I could get my hands on, one summer I ran across the Mack Bolan Executioner series. Never read them in order, and never again after that summer,but boy, those were fun books.

Push Back reminds me of those books,but in a good way. It’s more cerebral than “guy goes out to inflict maximum damage on thugs who wronged his family” but at its heart, it is exactly that.

The book opens with a bang – literally. Dean Riley, former Ranger, ex-cop, is on his knees in his own home when someone uses his gun to murder two cops. He may not be as young as he used to be, but Riley manages to get the upper hand on the murderer and make his escape.

We then go back in time just a wee bit, with Riley’s nephew asking to meet him at a park. They’ll hang out, fish, have a couple of beers, talk. But when Riley arrives, his nephew’s car is there, but he is not – snatched by parties unknown, and Riley decides he’ll get his nephew back no matter what it takes.

What it takes is a ton of driving around, beating up three punks who want to rob him, taking peoples’ cars, sneaking back into his own house – a murder scene – to get a few things, and trying not only to outwit a large crew of corrupt cops, but to figure out what is going on with those corrupt cops.

He figures out part of it right away: they need a fall guy for the disappearance of the nephew, who is being held for a very specific purpose. How to unravel that plays out as Riley makes his way through various bent cops, beating up the people who need it (but not outright killing people unless it’s in defense), and slowly pulling out the thread to get the entire story.

There are a few UK Englishisms in the book, but they’re barely noticeable thanks to the fast pacing of the story.

One of the good things is that he is not some superhero cop who takes a bunch of beatings and bullets but shows no sign of it at all: he does get shot, he gets into fights, and by the end is about as worn down as someone can be without being dead. I suppose that’s a minor spoiler, but come on: there was no doubt Mack Bolan or James Bond would live to fight another day, and there’s no doubt here. There are just degrees of injuries to get past before the next fight. By the ending of this one, there seems to be a sequel planned, and I’ll be happy to read that whenever it arrives.

Four and a half stars rounded up to five because Dean Riley seems like a righteous dude and isn’t portrayed as Superman.

Thanks to Burning Chair LTD and NetGalley for the reading copy.

Review: The Silent Sisters – Charles Jenkins #3 (Robert Dugoni)

The final(?) book in the Charles Jenkins series has Jenkins once again going to Russia for the Sisters.

The last two Sisters – sleeper agents for the American CIA – have gone radio silent. Jenkins is once again recruited to head to Russia. The mission this time: get the two remaining women exfiltrated and back to the US.

I’ve mentioned in previous reviews my major issue with this series. It’s just fantastically difficult for me to see an over six foot tall, over 200 pound, black spy in Russia able to move around as he was, in a country that is predominantly white. That is (partially) solved, at least at the beginning here, by Jenkins assuming a disguise that involves making him white: mask on the face, long gloves on the hands, and so on. He also enters the country under an assumed ID of a British textile salesman (and hilariously, gets asked by a guard to give the uniform manufacturers something breathable, like cotton, as Moscow is in the throes of a late heat wave).

Jenkins checks in at an out of the way hotel, then goes to a really out of the way dive of a bar, where he does something monumentally stupid: he involves himself in the business of two locals and a woman who is obviously a prostitute. In the alley, he steps in when one of the guys is about to sexually assault the woman. One of the men accidentally shoots the other dead, then runs away, and the prostitute asks Jenkins, “What have you done?”

Good question. As it turns out,the dead guy is the son of the woman who runs one of the most powerful organized crime families in Moscow. Jenkins realizes he’s left a fingerprint behind at the scene.

So now, Jenkins has the mob boss, a cop on the verge of retirement (who is a widower with a perfect record of closing cases, of course), and the head of a division who is looking for a promotion on his tail. But not, amazingly, the FSB, who has a kill order for Jenkins. It would be inconvenient for all these other parties if Jenkins was knocked off.

He manages to get away fro his hotel before anyone comes looking, and gets the first Sister passed on to the person who will then pass her on to another person, etc., until she’s out of the country. There’s very little about her, as the other Sister – Maria, assistant to the head of the division – is the more interesting one.

Quite a good chunk of the middle is taken up by narrative from Maria’s POV, and it is absolutely fantastic. It’s the best part of the entire book, in my opinion.

Eventually, Jenkins and Maria are on the run – there’s an assassin working to eliminate her and capture him, the mob family, the cop, our old friend Federov who used to be FSB, and a heroin dealer whose nickname is The Fly involved and a nice comeuppance at the end for a particularly slimy party.

Overall: a solid four out of five stars, and a good closing to the series. Maybe. Dugoni puts in the afterward that he’s heading to Egypt, so who knows what the future holds for Jenkins. I sense Jenkins might fit in a little better there, but still, 6’+ and 200+ pounds? I suppose we’ll see.

Thanks to Thomas & Mercer and NetGalley for the reading copy.

Review: The Left-Handed Twin – Jane Whitefield #9 (Thomas Perry)

I jumped into this series at the ninth book. I have not read any of the previous books in the series, nor have I read anything else the author has written. This could be read as a standalone, but I think it would be better to read the series in order. As a first time reader of this one, I was a bit regretful that I’d not read the previous books to give some kind of context for the way Jane acts the way she does. She’s a guide, helping people disappear (said people are called ‘runners’).

We open with Jane driving to her original family home from the home she shares with her surgeon husband, and it seems every piece of road she travels is explained to us. If you’re a regular reader of my reviews, you’ll know that a pet peeve of mine is overly detailed descriptions of where the characters are traveling, what roads they’re taking, if they turn off any side roads, and so forth. There is a TON of this in this book. Once Jane gets what she needs, she heads home.

Jane travels again to what is basically her safe house and finds a young woman there. She’d slept with someone other than her boyfriend Albert. Albert drags her along and shoots the man dead in front of her. Albert is arrested and Sara is advised to testify against him. Inexplicably, Albert beats the charge and starts his pursuit of Sara. When his efforts to find and kill her are fruitless, he turns to a friend of his for some suggestions about how to go about catching her. Said friend introduces him to the Russian mafia – and they want Albert to join them in hunting – not Sara, however. They want Jane. If they happen to find Sara, he can do what he wants with he, but the primary mission is to find and kidnap Jane so she can be sold o the highest bidder.

It’s at this point the story really gets moving: a cat and mouse game between Jane (trying to find a place where Sara (now Anne) can call home) and the Russians (local crews trying to track them down). Eventually, we wind up with Jane on the most dangerous portion of the Appalachian Trail.

Issue: Jane, it is said, has conducted over a hundred escapes. Yet it didn’t occur to her that maybe the bad guys keep catching up because of a GPS tracking device, a lojack tied to the battery, or Onstar? Her plan also has a hole in it that I won’t detail here, and on the Trail, it takes her quite a bit of time to start playing offense versus defense.

Eventually, we wind up back at Jane’s safe house, where we get to see a very inventive solution to an almost impossible problem.

Issue: the writing. Repetitive, often stilted, and a lot of short, declarative sentences: Jane went to Target. Jane bought x, y, and z. Jane spread out he poncho. Jane fell asleep. Jane ate (food). Jane urinated. It really had a “See Spot run” to it.

Issue: we don’t get much about the runner in this one. We do get quite a lot about Albert.All we really know is that she went to a lot of parties the the elite A listers attended. I won’t ding the book for that, as the blurb for it suggests that the focus should all be on Jane.

Overall: three out of five stars.

Thanks to Mysterious Press an NetGalley for the reading copy.

Review: Dark Horse – Orphan X #7 (Gregg Hurwitz)

The seventh book in the Orphan X series opens in south Texas, at a party for Anjelina Urrea, daughter of “unconventional businessman” Aragon Urrea – in actuality, as much of a cartel as any other south of the border. When he steps away from the party to deal with a young man who has forced himself on a woman, armed, masked gunmen invade the party and take Anjelina away. Indications are that she’s been taken by the Leones – one of the worst of the worst of the Mexican cartels, led by a bonafide psychopath. The opening is quite long- enough for us to know that Urrea is a bad man who also provides good things: the town is healthy, protected, people are taken care of, and he has a bit of a philosophical bent, not unlike Evan.

Evan Smoak, AKA Ophan X AKA The Nowhere Man is rebuilding his penthouse condo after it was destroyed in the previous book. Although I think most of the Orphan X books can be read as standalones, I’d advise reading at least the one before this for context, since the book opens in what could only be termed (for Evan Smoak) complete disarray.

Smoak hires temporary day laborers to help out in the evenings with the more unusual pieces of his rebuild. One evening, one of the (presumably) Mexican laborers asks if he is a bad man, or if he can help a bad man. Evan gives the man the usual number and tells him to pass it on.

And pass it on he does – to Urrea. When Urrea calls, Evan answers, as he always does. He has something telling him to say no on this one, but ultimately, he agrees to help, and the story takes off. Joey and Dog arrive to take over coordination of the legit rebuild of the condo, and also to provide IT services to Evan (Vera III in place!) as he heads to Texas and ultimately across the border to deal with the Leones.

This is by far the most gruesome of the Orphan X books. If you’re really squeamish, you might want to skim over those parts. There’s one really bad one involving a floor buffer – you should definitely skip that one.

One of the more interesting things about Dark Horse are the lengthy talks between Evan and Urrea about the nature of good and bad, and what bad men do for good reasons or for the greater good. They do slow down the action a little, but that turns out to be necessary, as do the moments when Joey and Mia come into the story. If those breaks weren’t there, it would be nonstop infiltration, fighting, killing, and bombs. There is nothing wrong with this, but we could read Mack Bolan or The Punisher for that.

As we rush headlong to the end, sometimes things are not quite what they seem.

While I didn’t like this one as much as the last one, I did enjoy it quite a lot: it’s true to what we know of Evan Smoak and continues his evolution from a disposable killer into a real human being.

Five out of five stars.

Thanks to St Martin’s Press/Minotaur and NetGalley for the reading copy.

Review: Brock Steele – Sphere (Alex Bloodfire)

If you took the Jason Bourne books and mixed them with the movie Total Recall (the original one, with Arnie), you’d get this book.

This is not to say it’s the worst thing I’ve ever read. It does hold together in its world, mostly, by a thin logic. The issue I have is that Brock Steele is 90% reactive and is only meaningfully proactive in the last 30 pages-ish. There isn’t a lot of tension – he doesn’t really ever seem to be in real danger – but there is a whole lot of driving around. We all know how I feel about that.

Brock Steele, six months out from an attack by persons unknown with a baseball bat, and three months out from a medically-induced coma, is working as a trainer at a gym, but doesn’t remember anything prior to being in the hospital. From the tenor of things, it doesn’t exactly seem like he’s been trying all that hard to figure out why he was attacked or who he is. He’s living a life, hates his boss, has a crush on a young woman named Sarah, and in general seems rather ordinary.

One night at a party, someone spikes his drink. Instead of collapsing at the party, he runs out into the night, collapsing there instead. This seems to be the catalyst for the rest of the book, and his quest to figure out who he is.

Steele’s being followed by some shady characters as he winds his way from place to place, often injuring himself along the way, either by fighting or by banging his head or fists against walls during nightmares, which was rather odd.

Along the way, Sarah is fired for trying to help Steele get his medical records – a doctor hilariously tells him that he is not entitled to his own records, which made me roll my eyes – and wouldn’t you know it, she’s a computer hacker. Steele’s buddy Ty, whom he does not remember, is a prolific car thief, getting them various rides so the three of them can drive all over the place. It turns out that the people after him want a thumb drive that apparently has some incriminating information on it. What’s that information? Who knows?

Steele roams around and speaks to a bunch of different people, but never seems to get any significant information until someone late in the book lays it out for him and the reader. At the end, Steele does the infodump duties by suddenly remembering everything and explaining what’s on the drive and why it’s bad news for the bad guy.

Eventually, he meets the bad guy and they duke it out over a bridge Steele’s been avoiding. He suddenly remember why that is, too, and just when he has the bad guy on the ground, instead of finishing him, he goes over to retrieve a gun he knocked out of the bad guy’s hand, setting things up for another book.

Overall, I’m giving it 2.5 stars, rounded up to 3, because internally, it’s at least consistent, if not always believable.

Thanks to BooksGoSocial and NetGalley for the reading copy.

Review: Every Hidden Thing (Ted Flanagan)

Worster, Mass EMT Thomas Archer and his partner have a problem. It isn’t the woman who has just delivered a baby who is respiratory distress, it isn’t even he woman’s boyfriend. The real problem is Eamon Conroy, a corrupt and sadistic cop Archer helped send to prison years ago.

Conroy is the fixer for John O’Toole, mayor of Worster from a prominent political family, who has his sites set on the Governor’s mansion. His issue is greasing the right palms, and getting Conroy to take care of other problems in a more violent way. That includes Archer now, given he and his partner’s witness of the baby scene.

Archer’s young son has a brain tumor, and one of the places they stop on their rounds is at a church where a young woman lies in a persistent vegetative state, while her mother stands by her, convinced that the power of god flows through her daughter. Many people come to pray in front of the woman in her be, seeing her through a window on the opposite wall, where a bench sits, ready for them to kneel. Archer and the mom have a number of conversations through the book, and at the end there’s a gigantic gathering where people can come to ask for miracles/to be blessed/and whatever other stuff religion does for people who believe. I’m not a fan off fraudsters and hucksters, so these parts had me rolling my eyes.

Luckily, the majority of the book is taken up by Archer trying to avoid crossing paths with Conroy.

We then switch gears to the POV of a reporter, who is going to be laid off not terribly far down the road. Her editor tells her it’s the best he could get for her, and she decides to go out with a bang, by investigating the new gubernatorial candidate, his shady deals, and his employ on Conroy. She faces some real danger, as an old white woman going to a rather rough part of town to talk to the woman who gave birth. She makes it out of there, but not before her car is set on fire by the crowd.

There’s a separate subplot about a man who is obviously a QAnon kind of nutjob, ascribing all sorts of ills in the world on Democrats, liberals, activists, and of course the LGBTQI+ category. He’s further indoctrinated by his father in law, and his father in law and what seems to be a council of sorts for the local militia have a job for him: go to Worster and assassinate someone. I found this the least compelling o the various storylines, not because it’s unrealistic, but because crazy seems to be his only character trait.

As we return to the main story, things stat getting out of hand and O’Toole is becoming impatient with Conroy. Conroy gets harder into his work, offering Archer’s partner enough money to put toward a new house for his family. Archer continues to be pressed by his life seemingly spinning out of control.

The end is….the end is good, and matches nicely with the events of the book. There is a loose string here and there, but nothing to make the ending less believable, and I kind of welcome that from time to time, since most writers seem to think everything has to be 100% in typing up everything that has happened in a book. In books like this, there’s too much ambiguity to do that, so like a lot of life, people wring what they can from it.

A very solid four out of five stars.

Thanks to Crooked Land Books and NetGalley for the reading copy.

Review: A Fire in the Night (Christopher Swann)

Nick Anthony has retreated to his cabin in the middle of nowhere after the death of his wife. Retired now, he whiles away his time at the cabin in peace.

That peace is shattered when a local deputy appears at his door to tell him that his estranged brother and his sister-in-law have been killed in a house fire. He’s shocked, of course, but not as shocked as he is when he finds out he has a niece, Annalise – now on the run and the primary suspect.

Annalise, for her part, is running toward her uncle, as her father told her to, in possession of a flash drive she was told to take. She has no idea what’s on that drive, but bad guy Cole does: he and his mercenary teams are on her trail.

There’s a flashback that doesn’t make a lot of immediate sense, but be patient, the significance of it will be revealed.

Nick, though, is not just a mild-mannered professor. He’s an ex spy, with skills that Cole and his gang of baddies don’t know about. When Annalise arrives, Nick sets about trying to build a relationship with her, and she eventually thaws. To read the drive, they have to go to a public library. Cole sends a crew to snatch them up, because there’s some kind of whizbang thing that alerts when the drive is accessed. Highly improbable, but it’s a staple these days of thrillers than some hacker can break into just about anything, so just roll with it.

There’s a big showdown at the cabin, of course, and the final fight scene is quite enjoyable – that fight alone gets five stars from me.

The ending is what you might think and expect.

A solid four out of five stars, and good for a day (or weekend if you’re not a straight-through reader) of escapism.

Thanks to Crooked Lane Books and NetGalley for the reading copy.

Review: Count to Three (TR Ragan)

A parent’s worst nightmare: their child is missing from her school, picked up by someone who looks just like them.

That’s how Count to Three begins: Tinsley Callahan is collected from kindergarten by a woman who looks just like Dani Callahan, her mother. Dani is devastated, as one might expect. While her husband insists they give up and move on, Dani refuses. Five years later, the husband is an ex, Dani is a private investigator, and she still keeps the case file on Tinsley open, even while she works on other cases.

She doesn’t do this alone: the original detective on the case is now a friend, and they chat every so often, about Tinsley, or when Dani’s trying to find out something for a client. She also has an assistant named Quinn, who wants to be a PI because he mother vanished some years ago, and she carries that around with her.

In the current timeframe, Ali Cross is kidnapped in broad daylight, dosed with some kind of drug, and tossed into a van. The only witness is 12 year old Ethan, a local “bad kid” who lives with his mom in a rundown trailer. Ethan has an unfortunate habit of lying, getting in trouble, and generally being someone who others ignore.

Ethan hires them to look into Ali’s disappearance, something the local cops have written off as a runaway, since she has run off before (not not really).

Dani and Quinn go to work, finding out everything they can about Ali – social media! – and eventually team up with Ali’s mom to work out strategy, make flyers, and figure out if someone had access to the house (contractors, and so on).

Eventually, they track down Ali’s boyfriend, getting a few minutes to talk to him before something really unfortunate happens.

To keep the place afloat, Dani is also working a case for a woman who insists that someone is coming into her house and rearranging her furniture. This is the comedy relief in what is a very dark book. If you have issues reading about molestation, child sexual abuse, or physical torture, you might want to skip this one.

As Dani and Quinn get closer to finding the perp, the perp is busy throwing obstacles in their way, and threatening Ali’s family if she doesn’t behave herself in her captivity.

Dani’s ex shows up, telling her again to move on, and she tells him off in a way that really gave me a smile. That smile got bigger when she just kicked him out.

The end rushes at us, as it often does in thrillers, and everything’s tied up with a bow on top.

My only real issue with this book is this: Dani and Quinn are running around, poking into this, and they KNOW that the perp is both out in the wild and dangerous, given that he’s killing more people. But they take NO precautions with 12 year old Ethan, even to the point of Quinn leaving him alone on a corner after they’ve been hanging flyers. There’s no sense in this except to make it another plot point, which it does. It just made me angry.

Other than that, it’s a good read. I’d have given it five stars except for the Ethan thing. Four stars instead.

Thanks to Thomas & Mercer and NetGalley for the reading copy.