X FILES: PERIHELION.....AGENTS MULDER AND SCULLY, STILL IN SEARCH OF THE TRUTH THAT'S OUT THERE.....(*****)

 X Files: Perihelion by Claudia Gray  (2024)

      Here's a book that millions of X Files fans will thrill to immerse themselves in. I know I certainly did..

        I'm not sure how to diplomatically discuss any details here since the story is steeped deep into the entire X Files mythology and backstories of all the previous seasons. But I feel comfortable in revealing that FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully are still in pursuit in finding out the Truth That's Out There and as always, they should Trust No One.

       Somehow, they're back on the job, made doubly perilous by their being blessed with Scully's miraculous pregnancy. And they're faced with multiple formidable threats at the same time = a serial killer/monster-of-the-week who's targeting pregnant women, an assassin who can literally go up in smoke and back again, and a new iteration of their worst global conspiracy enemies.

      Author Claudia Gray makes superb use of the novel form in the ability to lay out a fully detailed picture of Mulder and Scully's tortured pasts that lead them to their current adventures. X-Filers who've always wanted an articulate presentation of their unseen, unspoken private lives and inner thoughts will find a true bounty here.

       I wouldn't dream of revealing anything else, except to say I couldn't have enjoyed this book more and look forward to author Gray continuing on with more. 5 stars (*****)  An obvious Don't Miss' for all fans.

EXES & FOES.....TWO ESTRANGED BFFS VIE FOR THE NEW GIRL IN SCHOOL.....(****)

 Exes & Foes by Amanda Woody (2024)

          Even if the journey of the love story here is as inevitable as the sun coming up each morning, you won't find a sweeter, more heartfelt YA romantic triangle. It's loaded with hugs, tears, long overdue emotional showdowns and a sigh-worthy ending you can't wait to wallow in even if you knew it was coming all along.

         Caleb and Emma, were lifelong best friends until something dire and unspoken split them apart in 8th grade. But yet their undeniable attraction and unspoken love for each other has continued to make them battling frenemies through high school . Caleb, gentle, gangly and easily bullied, still finds himself often protected by the feistly, hot tempered Emma, whose reputation for not suffering fools (and bullies) gladly lands her in trouble over and over. Each of them copes with their separate parental woes....Caleb, from his indifferent divorced dad who can barely spare the time to meet him and Emma from her toxic mother, who's spent a lifetime belittling and denigrating her.

         Now a new complication comes between them - they've both fallen hard for Juliet, the  new girl in school who's so adorable, she's impossible to resist. 

         They agree to engage in an all out competition for Juliet's heart, with the winner declared as the first one who kisses her. And the race is on, with no quarter given.

         The ongoing drama in Caleb and Emma's home life throws all kinds of bumps in the road for them, so readers should be prepared for multiple tender, heart rending moments, right up through the final pages. No real surprises here, but if you can't resist a book that literally envelopes you with warm, fuzzy feelings, look no further.  

          4 stars (****)

NO ROAD HOME......A DYNASTY OF BIBLE THUMPERS, HEADING FOR RETRIBUTION.....(*****)

 No Road Home by John Fram (2024)

      What a twelve course meal this book serves up......

        'No Road Home' operates on so many multiple levels, my head was spinning. There's grand Gothic horror, there's an intricate 'locked room' whodunit that's enough to a make a Dame Agatha book read like "Goodnight Moon'. And finally, there's a torrential rain storm hovering over the Versailles-sized mansion of the televangelist Wrignt family dynasty..........a poisonous Addams Family collection of grifters, lunatics and psychotic pederasts. The horrorshow Wrights are nothing but a litany of wrongs

          Hurled into this cauldron is Toby Tucker, who unwisely entered into a marriage of convenience with one of the Wrights to assure a financially comfortable future for Luca, his sensitive queer little boy. After the murder of the family Patriarch, it doesn't take long for Toby to realize how much danger he's placed himself and Luca in. He's overwhelmed by the depths of the family's crimes and perversions and this hissing nest of vipers has ominous plans for Luca that Toby realizes will destroy the child.

         If that isn't enough going on, somebody (human or other-worldly) . is using red paint to smear foul, threatening messages that promise bloody, Biblical revenge and retribution on the Wrights for their multitude of sins.

        The rain keeps pounding as Toby and Luca try to desperately find their way out of both the labyrinth of the vast house itself and the tangled web of the family's schemes they're trapped in. And all the while, Luca's bonded with a.....well, let's just say someone who's pivotal to what's going on.....
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         Quite a wild ride from beginning to end, with a climax that rivals Stephen King in finishing off things with a bizarre satisfying spectacle. I love how this book just went for it fully, throwing everything in one huge package. Definitely a 'Don't Miss for this year's thrillers.

        5 stars (*****)

      

ONE BIG HAPPY FAMILY.....ON A STORMY NIGHT, A YOUNG MAID COPES WITH HER HOTEL'S MUDEROUS FAMILY (****)

 One Big Happy Family by Jamie Day (2024)

     It was a dark and stormy night........

     And an especially eventful night at the picturesque Maine hotel, The Precipice. As the name implies, the place sits on a seaside cliff,, overlooking a lethal drop into the crashing waves below. There's more wave crashing than usual tonight in the midst of a raging hurricane that's washed out the roads and left everyone in the hotel stranded there, guests and staff alike.

      What a night for a reading of the last will and testament of George Bishop, the odious owner who spent most of his time sexually harassing our narrator, young Charley Kelley, the hotel's sole full time maid. Also in attendance are George's spawn - sisters Vicki, Faith and Iris, a dysfunctional trio from hell, each holding on to backstories chock full of dark secrets, separately and together.

     Excess baggage includes an imperious woman lawyer to read the will, Vicki's repulsive obnoxious husband, Todd, their grown son Quinn and Oliver, the weird little teen son of Faith and her partner Hope. A hidden guest unbeknownst to all of them except Charley, is Bree, a desperate young woman on the run from an abusive boyfriend.. Soft-hearted Charley moves Bree from room to room while the nest of Bishop vipers hurl long simmering contempt for each other.

     The storm howls. The lights go and off. Threatening messages start popping up. Could it be that some folks among this group won't make it through the night upright and breathing?

     What could possibly go wrong? (Feel free to insert a long evil Bwaa-haa-haa laugh here....)

     Author Jamie Day obviously had a terrific time nailing down every single 'locked-room' murder mystery trope. I don't think there's a single one left out and the fun of seeing them all in play once again is contagious. The only thing missing from the apparent endless, regularly scheduled revelations is hearing an orchestra launch into one of those 'Dum-dum Dummmmmmm!' crescendos every time a twist is revealed.

     More than once I was thinking that this book piles on so many of these homages that it borders on sly parody. But then again, author Day takes the time to vividly portray each of these characters, bringing all of them to life, both the hateful ones and ones to root for, like Charley. Even when its plot complications start to resemble a 'Saturday Night Live' skit on murder mysteries, 'One Big Happy Family' never seems less than fully committed to its genre.

     I had such a good time with this, I didn't even mind the blatant shamelessness of the book's epilogue, tying up every little thing with pretty little bows. If the mission was to give a mystery buff a breezy good time, then mission accomplished.   4 stars (****)  (For a really immersive experience, wait a night of howling thunderstorms to crack this one open.....)

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SHADES OF MERCY......HACKERS AND CARTELS AND SPIES, OH MY......(*****)

 Shades Of Mercy by Bruce Borgos (2024)

     I was unabashed in my praise of "The Bitter Past", the first book in a series about Nevada Sheriff Porter Beck and that goes double for this one.

     Sheriff Beck may be an aging Army veteran with failing night vision, but he's fearless, intuitive and relentless as Jack Reacher when it comes to sniffing out and hunting down villainous, violent conspirators.

     And as fate would have it, the vast arid Nevada desert that he and a mere handful of Deputies patrol invariably attracts a mixture of both homegrown and global evil. This new case finds him pitted against no less than a cartel drug lord's flooding the county with lethal fentanyl laced opioids and Chinese spies plotting all out cyber war on America.

     Somehow, smack in the middle of all these nefarious goings-on is Mercy Vaughn, a mysterious teen girl incarcerated in a desert juvenile facility. She happens to possess the kind of computer hacking skills that somebody's been using to remotely hijack and pilot armed Air Force drones, which brings her to Porter Beck's attention. Though Mercy's cut off from using computers, the Sheriff instinctively knows she's anything but what she seems but so does a ruthless Chinese spy who's on the hunt for her.

     That's as much as I'd dare reveal because the book then proceeds to unload a hold-on-to-your-seats ride of suspense, surprises and brutal action. that never lets up, much like Sheriff Beck never lets up until things are put right and the various perpetrators get some good old fashioned Nevada justice.....no matter what their country of origin.

     Loved this book and count me in as first in line whenever Porter Beck's up against a new slew of malefactors straight out of Miami Vice and James Bond. Put it high on any 'don't miss' thriller list this year. 5 stars (*****)  (Chances are, you'll want to immediately catch up with the first book in the series, if you haven't done so already....)

THE UNRAVELING......A PSYCHIATRIST'S NEW PATIENT - THE MAN SHE'S BEEN STALKING......(*****)

 The Unraveling by Vi Keeland (2024)

        Oh boy, did I have fun with this one. For me, it evoked all those domestic psychological thrillers that permeated movie theaters throughout the 1990's.......and I could never get enough of them. Usually they involved some esteemed professional (doctor, lawyer, professor, etc. etc.) who makes one reckless decision after another, putting them in terrible danger and even under suspicion by skeptical police detectives. Of course, twists abound and nobody's what they seem.

        So here we have a widowed New York City psychiatrist, Dr. Meredith McCall, suffering under a crushing burden of guilt. Her NHL hockey star husband died in a car accident while under the influence of massive Opioid doses he obtained by swiping her prescription pads. His car plowed into a a young mother and her little girl, killing them instantly, leaving Gabriel Wright grieving for his perished family.

       But how grieving is he exactly.? When she does come across him, Meredith wonders why he seems not quite overcome with melancholy and takes to obsessively stalking him. Imagine her stunned surprise when one day Gabriel walks into her office as a new patient seeking therapy. Since he doesn't recognize her as the wife of the man who destroyed his family, Meredith throws medical ethics to the wind and chooses to see him.......and the "see him" part escalates into something way beyond the 'I see that our hour is up' stage.
 
         Under NO circumstances would I dare reveal how Meredith's off-the-rails choices send the plot twisting and turning into all sorts of dangerous directions. Just fasten your seatbelt and take this wild ride all the way to that final sentence that's guaranteed to leave your mouth agape, your eyes raised all the way to your hairline, and dying to tell friends to pick up this book.

        For anyone like me who pounces on thrillers like this, mark this one down as a 5 star Don't Miss.   (*****)  

LENNY MARKS GETS AWAY WITH MURDER.....AN UNUSUAL SCHOOLTEACHER CONFRONTS THE TRAUMA OF HER CHILDHOOD....(*****)

 Lenny Marks Gets Away with Murder by Kerryn Mayne (2024)

        While the title might promise a thriller, I'd consider this book more of a heartfelt journey out of terrible darkness for its title character. By the time neurodivergant schoolteacher Lenny Marks reaches a reckoning with the horrors of her past, readers will have already fallen for her and be cheering her on.

        Lenny (who prefers that name to her given one, Helena), survived a childhood so traumatic, it's warped her memories of it. In addition to her viewing the world from a distance in a methodical, precise way, her horrific past has rendered her even more cut off from people and human contact. But yet she's willing to struggle to establish friendships with her school associates and the manager of her favorite grocery store, a painfully awkward process for her. And then her world upends with a single, piece of news related to the nightmarish childhood she'd mostly suppressed up to this point, with only three words staying with her...."you did this'. The past is coming back for her, daring her to survive it again.

        The story becomes sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes harrowing and yes even humorous in the ways Lenny copes with the world at large. And I was riveted to the pages as she overcomes her fears, wrestles with her demons, and deals with stunning surprises as the reality of what she endured finally comes into sharp focus. Lenny Marks proves a force to be reckoned with and takes readers right along with her., which is why I found myself racing to reach the final chapters.

       Not a thrill ride, by any means, but you'll want to experience the emotional impact of a main character who's determined to end up as the hero of her own story........which, by the way is a 5 star read.  (*****) and one of the most unlikely but pleasant surprise reads I've come across this year......

BLOOD & MASCARA.....A MODERN DAY NOIR SINKS INTO VERBIAGE QUICKSAND.....(**)

 Blood & Mascara by Colin Krainin (2024)

       Initially, I couldn't wait to plunge into this one. How could I not? What a grabber of a title. A modern day private eye noir with an emotionally broken detective navigating his way through a tangled web of D.C. political corruption leading to murder.....yes please. And on top of all that, throw in a drop dead gorgeous woman in peril and an international assassin who's making people drop dead for real........you had me at "drop=dead=gorgeous-woman-in -peril......
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       But what a crushing disappointment this book turned out to be.

        All of those surefire elements tossed into the mix sank like heavy stones, gurgling for air as  they drowned in author Colin Krainin's quicksand of impenetrable literary fiction prose.
As much as the story and the characters intrigued me, I must have reached the bail-out point at least a dozen or more times. Was this a genuine mystery-action thriller or some graduate student M.F.A. creative writing thesis masquerading as one? I wasn't sure until the final chapters, when at long last, the book curbed its appetite for molasses-thick internal monologuing and finally swung into its ultra-violent finale.

        But even when the book erupts into a Quentin Tarantino-like display of graphic gore, it still can't resist some characters delivering speeches so blatantly overwritten, you can practically hear the author typing in the next room.

       I realize that hardcore mystery thriller fans might be willing to wade through all the ornate blah-blah-blah to reach those final chapters.. I know I did. The characters were well drawn and when allowed to breathe free at the end, the story gripped me. But given what a reader has to endure here, I'm still wondering if it was worth the time spent.   2 stars (**).  SQ's advice - there's far better thrillers out there this summer.......