RED QUEEN.......MISMATCHED ODD COUPLE SLEUTHS MATCH WITS WITH AN EVIL KIDNAPPER (*****)

Red Queen by Juan Gomez-Jurado (2023)

             Even if it's cobbled together from familiar tropes that all mystery-suspense lovers well know, "Red Queen" is such an expertly written, entertaining thrill ride, I doubt anyone will complain.

             You'll most definitely want to book a flight to Spain ("book" being the most operative word here) and meet yet another unlikely pairing of odd couple sleuths recruited by a clandestine law enforcement agency. They're tasked with with solving the most incomprehensible crimes imaginable and help to bring the dangerous, violent perpetrators to justice.

            Antonia Scott, estranged daughter of the British ambassador to Spain, is an emotionally damaged savant, whose perceptive brilliance measures somewhere off the charts. Her 'Red Queen' agency drafts a most unwilling partner to join forces with her (with the promise of making his problems go away) - Jon Gutierrez, a disgraced police detective on the verge of unemployment and impending indictments.

             This offbeat dynamic duo is pitted against a truly frightening, formidable adversary, the mysterious "Ezekiel" a serial kidnapper-murderer. And this psychotic but wily fiend exclusively targets the children of Spain's most powerful corporate billionaires......and tormenting them with unknowable demands they dare not comply with, even at the risk of their children's lives. 

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            The twists and turns here come hurling out one after the other. And the pacing and the cleverness of the the plotting kept me me glued to this book. deep into the wee hours. (I'd defy anyone to stop reading, no matter what time of night, once they arrive at Antonia and Jon's nerve-wracking climactic showdown with the unfathomable evil perp..) An extra bonus comes from the sly, often impish wit in the frequent pop culture and film references sprinkled about in the prose. For anyone who gobbles up thrillers, "Red Queen"s a 5 star treat from beginning to end.(*****)

              And for us North American readers, more good news......since "Red Queen" arrives here as the first in a best selling trilogy already published in Spain and Europe, there's two more books to look forward to. I for one will stand first in line for next one.

WHAT HAVE WE DONE......A SAD, HORRIBLE ADOLESCENCE COME BACK TO ENDANGER ITS SURVIVORS...(*****)

 What Have We Done by Alex Finlay (2023)

           Initially, I worried about the premise here. Oh no....not another group of friends haunted by a terrible crime of their adolescence, a shared guilt that's now come roaring back to put them in harm's way. I dreaded plowing through an onslaught of angst-ridden internal monologues.

           But what a terrific surprise in store for any reader who picks this up.......a non-stop, breathless thrill ride guaranteed to make you lose track of whatever you're doing, not moving an inch until you've finished it.

            Alex Finlay throws multiple, familiar genres into the mix.......starting with a bunch of emotionally broken, abused, orphaned teens trying to survive in a horrific group home. 'Savior House, its very name a sick joke, is a nightmarish hellhole right out of a Stephen King novel riddled with corrupt neglect and violent bullying. And the victims of this abysmal place, suspect its caretakers of kidnapping and sex trafficking.

           But this small group of the tormented Savior House kids strike back and manage to escape the hellish house, leaving a buried body behind them.......a secret that comes back to throw their later lives into lethal jeopardy.

           Now, as grown adults with a host of dysfunctions and troubles, four of them just barely survived attempts on their lives - Nico, a gambling addicted reality TV show producer, Donnie, a washed up, drug and booze addled rock star, Artemis, a powerful tech billionaire and Jenna, a former graduate and operative of one of those 'La Femme Nikita'-'Orphan X' assassin academies. But another of their original group wasn't so lucky.

           The hit-girl tasked with killing them all is a scary young sociopath, who can uncannily appear in two places at once, and wields that pneumatic captive bolt-firing tube favored by "No Country For Old Men"s infamous killer Anton Chigurh.

             What follows from this point on..... the book lays out an unrelenting chase as Jenna and her surviving Savior House friends become both hunters and hunted, unburying all the terrible dark secrets of their past and staying out of the crosshairs of ......well, that's another of the book's many twists you won't hear from me.

            All I can say is that I raced through "What Have We Done" at record speed, one of those books where you constantly find yourself saying..."just one more chapter and then I'll pack it in for the night"....and then end up awake to read way more chapters into 3 'O clock in the morning.....

             And that makes this one a pure and simple 5 star thriller(*****)..... a must red for armchair adrenalin junkies.