THE TRAIL OF LOST HEARTS.....DEEPLY HURT SOULS FIND SOLACE AND LOVE....(*****)

The Trail Of Lost Hearts by Tracey Garvis Graves (2024) 

        After reading a slew of domestic, psychological thrillers, this book provided just the kind of heartfelt, emotional read I needed.....to maybe renew the idea that there's good people in the world and that possibly there's hope for humanity after all.

        And also, I'm rendered powerless to resist a story of two terribly hurt damaged people who find solace, love and glimmers of happiness in each other's company........only to have circumstances and fresh turns of fate drive them apart.

      Wren and Marshall encounter each other on the hiking trails of National Parks in the Pacific Northwest. Wren's lost the man she loved dearly for three years - in the double catastrophes of his accidental death and traumatizing revelations about him. Marshall's own sudden, tragic loss of a beloved family member was so gut-wrenching, he can't bring himself to speak of it.

       Tentatively, they form a bond of friendship as they pursue their shared, adventurous devotion to 'geocaching'....a sort of outdoorsy scavenger hunt of using GPS tracking to uncover small objects hidden by their fellow geocachers.

       At this point, I hardly need to mention that Wren and Marshall's friendship grows into something much more. But obstacles, complications and a surprising turn of events are hurled into this couple's path........none of which you'll hear from me. The pure enjoyment of a story like this comes from a reader experiencing all the characters highs and lows as they occur......and as a reader you find yourself quietly cheering them on and then suffering along with them when their lives go awry.

      So here's a book unashamed and unafraid to deliver everything it promises.....all of those big impassioned, poignant and heartstring-pulling moments you'd expect to find when lost hearts come across each other. (And an especially nice change of pace if you need a break from those 'there's-something-strange-about-the-next-door-neighbors' thrillers......)

       5 stars (*****)    

OFF THE AIR.....A TV REPORTER ON THE TRAIL OF A TALK SHOW HOST'S KILLER.....(***)

Off The Air by Christina Estes (2024)

       A fast, mostly entertaining read, but a very mixed bag of the good, the bad and the ugly.....

        First thing to like - author Christina Estes, an award winning Phoenix TV reporter certainly knows the territory. She plunges you into the the super hectic life of a local TV station "live on the street" reporter. Jolene Garcia. Jolene spends her days scrambling around the city for a hot scoop to make the evening news, along with her equally ambitious competitors from rival stations. If the book had solely concentrated on this part of the story - the day to day frenzied life of a journalist, it might've been on its way to a much higher rating than I'm giving it.

        A murder mystery rocks the city with discovery of the poisoning of controversial local talk show host Larry Lemmon,, a sort of local Tucker Carlson-Rush LImbaugh right-wing wanna-be. Jolene craves to make the story her very own exclusive since she did the last interview with Lemmon before his death. But she's scooped at every turn by "JJ", her hated glamorous and gorgeous rival. J.J.'s the embodiment of the TV news-babe in Don Henley's "Dirty Laundry" song - the bubble headed blonde who can tell you about a plane crash with a gleam in her eye.....

        More pressure falls upon Jolene from her station manager and news director, who demand nightly fresh breaking stories to feed the station's growing social media outlets of facebook, instagram and twitter.

       And here's where "Off The Air" starts to fly off the rails a little in terms of our investment in Jolene's hunt for news. She quickly becomes unlikable and obnoxious in a series of series of foolhardy, unprofessional and highly questionable maneuvers to hunt down her story. Her reckless interviewing and reporting antagonizes her subjects and angers her confidential police source. The only time a reader might feel empathy for her is when she's harassed by some repulsive creep trying to date her.

        The pacing of the book also begins to stop cold as it takes time outs to indulge in some Phoenix lore and recaps of past true current events that relate to Jolene's tribulations.
And I should warn that those who don't care for today's all too real toxic politics inserted into novels, will see it on full display here. But given the Larry Lemmon character, it's unavoidable.......which makes the mystery factor not very surprising since he was so roundly hated by everyone around him, there's an overabundance of likely suspects. (And that even includes some of his once ardent supporters who fell out of favor with him....)

       As I said, the nuts 'n bolts, give-and-take of local TV news reporting makes fascinating reading, but Jolene's problematic behavior only muddies up the plot (most painfully in the big reveal finale.) But there's enough good stuff that made it a quick, diverting read. 3 stars (***) 

THE WIND CHILL FACTOR.......HEIL, HEIL, THE GANG'S ALL HERE........(****)

The Wind Chill Factor by Thomas Gifford (1975)    
            Here's a long lost genre that SQ stumbled upon and immediately loved....high octane international thrillers about Neo-Nazis making a comeback for another go at conquering humanity.

            Oh yes,,.....in these propulsive and scary novels, the Nazis were back, bigger, badder and more murderous than ever.

            For a few months or so, I couldn't get my hands on these books fast enough, staying up all night to finish 'em.

             After re-reading this one, it holds up as one of my favorites even more. Maybe because we''re facing a fascist, racist psychotic Presidential candidate, of course, but also, I'm more appreciative of the family melancholy and tragedy that hangs over the story, deepening its violent thrills.

              Nazi-ism hovers like a perpetual dark cloud over alcoholic, recently divorced John Cooper and his family, forever stained by his wealthy, industrialist grandfather, who notoriously befriended Adolf Hitler and other Third Reich gangsters.

              When Cooper's called back to the family's Minnesota homestead, beckoned mysteriously by his brother, he's immediately plunged into an an all out assault by Neo-Nazi agents. The Fourth Reich goons wage war on Cooper's snowbound little town as if they're storming through Europe all over again.....with murders, firefights and bombs.

              Somehow surviving this dead-of-winter Britzkrieg, Cooper and the oddball town sheriff both end up in Europe, joining forces to track down and confront the revitalized Nazi plotters.....

               For Cooper, the hunt becomes intensely poignant and personal........after discovering that his late little sister Lee, long believed dead under the rubble of the  London blitz, may be alive and well and all grown up.......and married to the head Neo Nazi.  Yikes.

              Author Gifford unleashes many surprises along the way, as you'd expect in this kind of thriller..........but nothing compares to the monstrously overwhelming twist he saves for the final chapters, an evil, profoundly depressing turn of events worthy of Richard Condon's "Marchurian Candidate."

              Far fetched? Outrageous?  Maybe in 1975.......but in this day and age, it's far easier to swallow the premise of "The Wind Chill Factor" than ever before. And come November, we're be closer than ever to tumbling down the abyss of a rabid dictator tossing away 248 years of Democracy.

               And that's why I'm giving it 4 bone-chillin' stars (****). and recommend you check this one out as preview of potential horrifying coming attractions. Prepare to stay up all night......

END OF STORY.....IF 'CLUE' WERE PLAYED AS A GREEK TRAGEDY.....

 End Of Story by A.J. Finn (2024)   Nothing any blogger could say would prevent this book from becoming an instant best seller....

       After all, it arrives from A.J.Finn, whose "The Woman In The Window" flew off the Barnes & Noble tables at the front of each store...

       Everyone wants to know......any good?  Will it keep me up all night?  Is it as fun and readable as "Woman In The Window"?

      SQ's reply......

      It's a vastly more ambitious effort than "Window".....sometimes with wit so sharp, you could cut a knife with it.  But in telling its long, involved story, sometimes a maddening, 1 mile-an-hour slow boat to who knows where......

       At times, the prose will dazzle you with cleverness, even while you mutter, "Oh please, just cut to the chase and get on with it already, willya?"

       Yes, it's that kind of book.

       Welcome to the sprawling, sumptuous San Francisco mansion of world famous mystery writer Sebastian Trapp. A dying, elderly recluse, Trapp himself is surrounded with as much mystery as was ever in his whodunit adventures of a 1920's Holmes-ian detective.

       Whatever happened to his first wife Hope and teenage son Cole, both of whom disappeared off the face of the earth simultaneously ....from two different locations?  Kidnappings? Murders? Alien abductions?  

         Maybe Nicky Hunter, a young chronicler of detective fictions can figure it all out. Trapp's invited her to live in the mansion, supposedly to help him with his memoirs, but he teases her with the idea that "they might be able to solve a mystery or two themselves..."

        Swirling around in Trapp's orbit are all manner of unusual suspects... including his beautiful second wife Diana, his dutiful daughter Madeline, imperious Aunt Simone and her son, cousin Fred, who was Cole's best friend before the boy dropped out of sight. Do some of them or all of them know more than they're letting on?

        Little by little, Nicky's able to start snapping the Greek Tragedy family puzzle pieces together, particularly in the short heartbreaking life of Cole Trapp.  Sensitive, gentle and brutally bullied, the boy earned nothing but withering contempt from his famous father, who's sort of a mashup of Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle and Ernest Hemingway.   

        All the suspicious doings in Castle Trapp take a long, long time to unfold, but author Finn tries to entertain us with the book's knowing tributes to the tropes and lore of classic detective fiction.  Like the board game "Clue" and the play "Sleuth", he loads up the plot with clues, weapons, red herrings, and mysterious notes from.....(SPOILER REDACTED SO YOU'LL CONTINUE READING THIS REVIEW....)

         If you make it to the final chapters, "End Of Story" finally launches itself into a highly theatrical melodramatic windup......obviously thrown in to make the movie deal easier to secure.  The revelations and Big Reveals require pages and pages of dialogue exposition to explain fully......but Finn does himself or the book no favors by dragging this out even further with overwritten, literary fiction flourishes. 

          Those who savor and adore detective fiction of days gone by will feast on "End Of Story", but anyone seeking out a potential easy, breezy beach read.........the draggy pace may very well put you in a deep enough snooze until you're wakened by the tide coming in....

          3 stars (***).  (Helpful hint:  it's not Col.Mustard...in the library....with a candlestick.....)

IN THE ORBIT OF YOU.....CHILDHOOD FRIENDS RE-UNITE.....AS CONFLICTED HIGH-SCHOOLERS...(*****)

 In The Orbit Of You by Ashley Schumacher (2024)

        Quite a heart-tugger, this one. If you fall under its spell (which the book casts right away), don't be surprised if it's impossible to get through it with dry eyes.

        For sheer emotional power, nothing beats a story of childhood best friends abruptly separated and then reunited years later. And with the passage of time giving them a chance to nurture a long ago friendship into something much more.

        Sam and Nova's tender bonding as children was made heartbreaking by Nova's attempts to help Sam cope with the horrific physical abuse his father inflicted on him. Then circumstances end the kids' time together........Sam's rescued into the custody of his aunt and uncle while Nova's mother pursues her career as a travelling freelance accountant, forcing Nova to grow up in temporary locations, always the new girl in school.

         Once again, Nova lands in a brand new place for her high school junior year. It's the school where Sam, under the healing parentage of his relatives, has grown into a football star, complete with a beautiful cheerleader girlfriend, athletic scholarships, and maybe pro football in his future.

         But secretly, it's not the future he wants for himself. And his reunion with his long lost childhood friend Nova touches off multiple conflicting emotions for both of them. Years of moving place to place has left Nova struggling to define herself and her goals - her rekindled friendship with Sam only serves to send them on an emotional rollercoaster with each other. And their attempts to establish a shaky, semi-secret, platonic relationship brings them both to a breaking point.

         For everyone who remembers the brief, golden time they spent with a past childhood crush (and who hasn't?) and also recalls the pre-college agonies of figuring out who you are and want you want.....what can I say except you'll find "In The Orbit Of You" kind of impossible to resist. So prepare to have your heartstrings not merely tugged and played like a rock guitar in a 5 star show....I, for one, didn't mind at all. If you need the book equivalent of a warm hug, look no further.....  5 stars (*****)

THE MYSTERY WRITER.....MYSTERIOUS AUTHORS AND CONSPIRACY LOONS WHO CAN'T TELL WRITE FROM WRONG....(***)

 The Mystery Writer by Sulari Gentill (2024)

       I guess it's official now......QAnon Krazies have become fair game for mystery-thriller authors. This is the second or third book I've come across populated with those Tinfoil Hat, conspiracy theory imbeciles who feed off the toxic river of disinformation flowing out of social media....and current political discourse. Given that they're both dumb and proven dangerous, it's no wonder they're starting to also infest popular fiction......

        These internet whack-a=doodles and their ludicrous tweets serve as the connecting glue holding together the two separate genres that this book unfolds. The first 60 percent sets up a multiple murder thriller set in an American town (Lawrence, Kansas).

         But then, for the remaining 40 percent, the story takes a hairpin swerve into some kind of breathless, international action-adventure, with two of the three lead characters hunting down what happened to the other one who disappeared.

        I found the Lawrence portion infinitely more gripping and entertaining then the abrupt excursion into a wild, incredibly far-fetched Robert Ludlum-esque whoop-de-doo. The final reveal of what the villainy's all about came close (at least for me) to very wry spoofery.. It really made me wonder if author Sulari Gentill was for real or maybe doing an elaborate send-up of......well, my lips must seal before any spoilers emerge from them.

         Yet with all these flaws, I still had a pretty good time with "The Mystery Writer".....I could never resist stories centered around writers,...... those established and famous and those young novices struggling to find their creative voice along with a publisher. Throw in bodies piling up and a baffling disappearance, then you've got me hooked.

Overall, it's a bumpy, lumpy goulash of those two genres I mentioned but I couldn't help but stay for the whole thrill ride. But I'm not comfortable with using the QAnon asylum inmates as window dressing (at and times, comedy relief). I find the mere thought of them as depressing......and given current events, more than little frightening. May they all check in to a padded room with a view....... 3 stars (***)

BLACK WOLF.....A GIFTED PROFILER AND HER PARTNER SEEK A RUSSIAN MOB WIFE ON THE RUN....(*****)

 Black Wolf by Juan Gomez-Jurado (2024)

        Awesome news for all readers who took the "Red Queen" thrill ride featuring the most odd couple of international crime fighters., Antonia Scott and Detective Jon Guiterrez.

        They're back and up against more than they know.....

        And once again facing a formidable array of vile villainy.

        But even if you haven't introduced yourselves to them by reading "Red Queen", you can still plunge into this one......and; then chances are, you'll also want to go back immediately to the first book in the series.

        Based in Spain, Antonia is a profiler-sleuth with powers of such instant perception, she may have skipped over an evolutionary cycle or two. 'Red Queen', a special agency dedicated to hunting the most dangerous criminals, has partnered her with Jon, a once disgraced, heavyset gay detective. Though brilliant beyond words, Antonia's also broken and tormented by the terrible damage left from their last case, with its still elusive perpetrator and her beloved husband left in a coma. And once again, her ever protective partner views her with a mixture of exasperation and tender adoration as well.

        Their new case pits them against what looks like a bloody internal war among the Russian mafia based in Spain. A key mobster's been murdered and his beautiful trophy wife's on the run......quite a harrowing task for a woman who's pregnant and diabetic. And to up the danger level even more, the home based Moscow mob has dispatched the 'Black Wolf', a relentless ultra-skilled female assassin who's famous for leaving nobody alive in her wake.

        All the thrills, twists and non-stop action are rendered even more entertaining when Antonia and Jon unravel what's really going on. Their interactions and revelations come at you fast, leavened with moments of heartrending emotion and sardonic wit.

       Quite a team and quite a book. Just like my experience with "Red Queen" I had the best 5 star reading time with this one. And as I expected, the ending will leave you checking new release book news to see when the next one's coming out. (Let me know if you hear the date.....)

THE LAST VERSE....A NASHVILLE HOPEFUL'S PERILOUS QUEST FOR HER DREAM (*****)

The Last Verse by Caroline Frost (2024)

        Can't express enough how much I enjoyed this book, an addictive, immersive read that makes you lose yourself in the high drama of its lead character. Even better, it also performs an expert tightrope walk between the heartrending elements while functioning as a suspenseful thriller to you keep riveted as to what happens next.

        It's 1977. 19 year old Twyla Finch, shy, innocent and living under the domineering thumb of her Evangelical mother, impulsively breaks free. Upon hearing of Elvis Presley's death, she boards a bus to Memphis, joining the grieving crowds at Graceland. A gifted fledgling singer-songwriter (as was her late father), Twyla meets Chet Wilton. He's the son of weathy Nashville uppercrusts who've indulged his futile, untalented efforts to front his own country band.

        Like countless others, Twyla moves on to Nashville to pursue her dreams of singer-songwriter stardom. But when she crosses paths with Chet again, all of her life's ambitions and hopes become upended in catastrophic ways she could never imagine. (and which I'll not go into any detail here so as not to spoil the experience of the book's many twists and turns. )

         What does come out of Twyla's travails is a remarkable, stunning song......but it's a song that not only reveals her innate amazing talents, it also uncovers an agonizing, crushing guilt that she can barely contain. And what's worse for her, she's not alone in knowing where the song's inspiration came from.

         I loved how this book seized my attention immediately and had me rooting and worrying for Twyla from the first chapter on. The story gives off definite Nicholas Sparks vibes, in that it keeps your heart breaking and aching as her small triumphs and terrible troubles escalate . And if that isn't enough, the story throws in all the suspense of a procedural thriller.

        And those last epilogue chapters, I should warn, are expertly crafted to put readers through an emotional wringer ......meaning I didn't have to think twice about giving "The Last Verse" 5 stars (*****). This one stands as one of my favorite 2024 reads so far.

         If you enjoy some real drama mixed in with suspense, here's a top choice to put on the top of your list.........

 

FIRST LIE WINS.....A CON GIRL AND HER TOXIC BOSS, TWISTIN' THE NIGHT AWAY........(*****)

 

First Lie Wins by Ashely Elston (2024)    While many readers and reviewers might've found varying degrees of quality in Reese Witherspoon's book club selections, this one's a winner for sure.

         I can only do a bare bones description of the plot here, since this is one of those books that takes you on a funhouse ride overloaded with jolting twists and extra helpings of not-who-they-seem-to-be characters. 

          Or in the immortal words of 'X Files' episodes, Trust No One. 

          As a girl who switches names and identities from place to place, she's currently Evie Porter, professional con girl extraordinaire. 

         But Evie's no freelance. She takes her marching orders and 'mission impossible' assignments from her shadowy, anonymous, unseen boss, "Mr. Smith". 

         Her missions, done at the behest of Mr. Smith's equally unknown clients - to ingratiate herself into the life of her targets. Objectives: either to collect damning evidence against them or swipe precious objects near and dear to them for some reason or another. 

         Clever, resourceful and keenly smart, Evie considers herself Smith's best 'operative'.......but that doesn't stop him from pulling the rug out from under her at any given moment, for reasons known only to him.       

          The twists and turns here arrive in flurries, with Evie forced to not only complete the undercover con she's working on, but engage in games of potentially lethal one-upsmanship with the infinitely duplicitous Smith. 

         So who's the cat and who's the mouse?  I wouldn't dare say a word. Just settle into your favorite reading corner for as much time possible and prepare to say, "What the...." multiple, multiple times.

        For thriller fans, "First Lie Wins" offers a 5 star package of surprises, hairpin reversals of fortune, and a lot of pondering as to who will play who in the movie. Move it to the top of your TBR list..... 5 stars (*****)....and trust no one.......