THE LIST.....WORKING FOR THIS COMPANY IS A LIFE OR DEATH EXPERIENCE.....(*****)

 The List by Steve Berry (2025)

     Maybe not the fastest paced of thrillers but I found myself immersed and invested in the lives of expertly detailed characters and the richly imagined setting a small 'company' town in the heart of the Georgia forests.

     And the overwhelming evil conspiracy that's befallen this town is simply mind boggling and scary to behold.

     Caught up in these terrible murderous events is lawyer Brent Walker, a former Atlanta prosecutor returning to his home town to serve as assistant General Counsel to the company for whom almost everybody in Concord works for - Southern Republic Pulp and Paper. Still shaken by the tragic end of his already failed marriage, Brent must now also look after his ailing mother. And, he knows he'll encounter his long time love Ashley Reed and his old friend (and Ashley's dad) Hank Reed, a tough, canny Union rep and negotiator on behalf of Southern Republic's factory work force.

     It isn't long before Brent and Hank stumble upon the company's most shocking secret, something that has led to decades of deaths among some of Southern Republic's retirees. The revelations of what's been going on now puts them and everyone they care about and love in terrible danger.........and getting the truth about before they're all permanently silenced dials up the suspense to maximum levels.

     Steve Berry creates a vivid, expansive portrait of the town, its history, residents and the extent to which Southern Republic and its corporate masters control every element of its life and fortunes. Everyone here, both the people you ache for and root for and the ones you despise are deeply drawn with care and nuance.

     It's always a pleasure to dive into a book that functions more than just a thrill machine, one that surrounds you with a unique place and a solid drama you want to see through to the very end. 'The List' has it all, so that's an automatic 5 stars for me.

   5 stars (*****).

CODEBREAKER......GOVERNMENT GOONS HUNT TEENS RACING THROUGH D.C. LANDMARKS.....(*****)

 Codebreaker by Jay Martel (2025)

     Had a terrific time with this one, a super-fast YA mash-up of 'National Treasure' and '3 Days of the Condor'. That it zipped along like an action-rom-com thriller didn't surprise me, since the two authors writing under the name Jay Martel have theatrical writing backgrounds. And I've no doubt that soon two lucky teen actors will be cast as the leads when it reaches production as a series or film.

     Living in a suburb near Washington D.C., 17 year old Mia Hayes sees her normal life turned upside down. Anonymous and brutal government operatives invade her house, seeking possible intel in the possession of her father, a CIA analyst and secret code specialist. The attack leaves her mother dead and her father escaped and in the wind. Only a few weeks later, Mia and quick witted hacker Logan are both on the run from the same shadowy, murderous agents. Before his own death, Mia's father reached out to her, sending her on perilous crack-the-secret-code mission to stop some possible catastrophic domestic terror event.

     Whenever they can stop to take a breath (and dodge violent encounters with the relentless villains), Mia and Logan trade sharp quips, romantic sparks and solve staggeringly complex codes. (And the book extends an interactive invite for puzzle loving readers to  join in themselves.....)

     On top of all the chasing, fleeing, brawls, shootouts, smooches and secret messages, 'Codebreaker' throws in American History, famous historical sites along with a boiling-over pot of political turbulence. Quite a package for teen a thriller.

     And that made for a book that took me less than a day and a half to finish. Enough said for a 5 star read? 

     Indeed it is.....5 stars (*****)

THE CONFESSIONS.....AN OUT OF CONTROL A.I. TURNS 'YOU'VE GOT MAIL' INTO A NIGHTMARE....(***).

 The Confessions by Paul Bradley Carr (2025)

      I'm torn in all directions about how assess this book. Some of it's brilliant, in the way it taps into the immediate fear loathing and embrace of today's technology. And some of it's tiresome, overwritten and populated with characters not worth caring about. And holy micropchip, that obtuse, maddening ending...... guaranteed to make readers scream, "Are you kidding me? That's IT?"

     We 're not too far in the future, where we're all suffering infantile dependence on A.I. Suuper-Dooper Computer LLIAM. We ask the Big L what to wear, what to eat for breakfast, who to date, who to marry, whether we should super-size our Big Mac and fries and so on and so on.

      But LLIAM, in the great tradition of HAL 9000, and 'The Terminator's 'Skynet and my own laptop, has a mind of its own. It not only shuts itself down but sends out zillions to letters to everyone around the world revealing personal scandalous secrets, driving recipients into a frenzy of rage, shock, murder, depression and suicide. (We'd all be better off if we just opened the package of weekly supermarket coupons.)

     Chaos reigns and LLIAM's corporate CEO Kaitlin Goss is forced to go on a cross country odyssey in search of one of the A.I. legendary reclusive co-creators. But also on her tail is a lawyer with hidden agendas and the FBI. And thousands of those really ticked off letter recipients who've seen Kaitlin on TV aren't exactly her biggest fans either.

     Yes, the topic of A.I. and its accompanying problematic issues couldn't be more timely, but for a book designed as a breathless thriller. the pacing stagnates. Author Paul Bradley Carr relies more heavily on long blocks of description instead of dialogue. Twists abound, but you've got to plow through a whole lot of excessive verbiage to reach them.

     The clock-is-ticking suspense and action of the finale are nicely orchestrated but might have come off more effectively if any of these characters generated at least a small amount of sympathy.

     And don't get me started again on the ending, a pseudo Kubrick/'2001' Hail Mary that reads as if tacked on for a punchy fade-out to generate a movie deal. For a book that takes a lot of time devoted to thoughtful discussions about the blessings and curses of A.I, it cries out for an equally thoughtful epilogue.......which you'll not find here.

     A very uneven read, but every so often nails its intent as an up-to-the-minute thrill ride.

     3 stars (***). 

THE LAKE ESCAPE....A JAMIE DAY VACAY THAT''LL SLAY YOU....(*****)

 The Lake Escape by Jamie Day (2025)

     Rubbing my hands in morbid glee at the thought of another Jamie Day get-together of family and friends......and wondering who'll come out of it alive and well or belly up, six feet under, pushing up daisies, taking the dirt nap. or....(feel free to insert your own catchphrase here).

     This time we're off to big beautiful Vermont Lake Timmeny and all its surrounding greenery.....and mystery. Amid the families of vacation homeowners, Julia Erika and David grew up alongside each other as their summers progressed. Now adults with families of their own they're back on the lake in the same homes of their childhood and teen years......except for wealthy talent agent David, who replaced his original family cabin with a sprawling, three story modular monstrosity, whose expanse blocks Julia and Erika's views of the lake.

     It's not just their children they're brought them - the original trio also bring along no end of family strife, and plenty of hidden secrets to bedevil them. Julia and husband Christian struggle with a failing business and teen daughter Taylor, who's fallen into a sullen funk. High powered attorney Erika and outdoorsman husband Rick are at odds with their teen son Lucas, who dreamily hopes to become a singer-songwriter. Divorced David has summer custody of his toddler twins and he also brought along Izzy, his new college student nanny and his gorgeous, live wire trophy girlfriend du jour, Fiona.

     What's going to befall this bunch? What doesn't. Let's put it this way.....more than enough happens to surprise the living Jamie Day-lights out of them.

     It seems Lake Timmeny already carried an ominous history of two separate young women disappearing in 30 year intervals, with no trace of them ever found. And wouldn't you know it - a brand new disappearance (right on time, 30 years after the last one) has shaken these three families to their very core.......and everybody's hidden agenda and most forbidden secrets start tumbling out.

     You couldn't ask for a more perfect setting for an absorbing summer mystery read and even with a not particularly sympathetic cast of characters, author Day knows how to keep you hooked till all the reveals are laid bare. My only peeve - with such a busy line-up of major players, I thought I might need a March Madness-type chart to help me lay out who did what to whom and why. And I'm not sure every reader will fully go along with the amount of exposition required to sort it all out.

     I myself wouldn't mind spending a summer along the shores of Lake Timmeny......as long it's far enough away from Julia, Erika and David. They've got.....uh....issues.

        4 Stars (****).

NO BODY NO CRIME......TWO GIRLS VERSUS A LETHAL DYNASTY OF MURDEROUS MEN....(*****)

 No Body No Crime by Tess Sharpe (2025)

     This is girl power with a vengeance. And a whole lot of good fun to read as two young women, burning for each other since adolescence, take on no less than a malignant family dynasty of men, all of them named variations of Richard. Do I even need to repeat the suitable nickname for this patriarchal collection of creeps? The book does......frequently.
 
     Twenty something P.I. Mel goes on the hunt for the lost love of her life Chloe, who dropped out of sight not long after Chloe's eventful Sweet 16 Party. 'Eventful' is putting it mildly - the girls teamed up to bury the body of scummy, nasty drug dealer and all around odious human Toby.

     But wiping Toby off the face of the earth put Chloe in the path of the all-powerful Newell family, a murderous clan of political power brokers, for whom Toby functioned as a minion. And Toby, before Mel and Chloe put him six feet under, stole something from the Newell men.....something they've sent out thugs to pry out of Chloe......or whoever might've helped her.

     Action, suspense, and twists follow as Mel finds Chloe living off the grid in the Canadian backwoods. The two women can barely take a breath to rekindle their long delayed passion for each other, what with the Newell Nabobs and their goons hot on their heels at every moment.

     As much as I enjoyed this book, I'm not sure what readers will make of the girls' climactic showdown with the hateful Newells. Clever, kind of funny and immensely satisfying? Sure. But convoluted, complicated, borderline silly and hard to swallow? There's a case to be made for that too.

     But let's not quibble. I simply got a great summer reading experience out of this one. You can't help but cheer for Mel and Chloe, re-heating their heat while they confound, upend and outwit a basket of writhing snakes who woefully underestimated them.

      4 stars (****).

NEVER FLINCH......STEPHEN KING'S FAVORITE P.I. TAKES ON TWO SEPERATE BUT EQUAL PSYCHOS....(***)

 

Thursday, July 10, 2025

'NEVER FLINCH'.....STEPHEN KING'S FAVORITE P.I.TAKES ON TWO SEPARATE BUT EQUAL PSYCHOS......

Never Flinch by Stephen King (2025) 

             We love us some Uncle Stevie, but to be honest, we're not nearly as enamored with his Holly Gibney character as he is. 

          King dearly loves Holly, the shy, mousy, Mom-dominated introvert who over the course of six previous books, blossomed into an expert sleuth and all around indomitable (yet underestimated) battler of evil.

           You never know whom King will throw at her......either very real flesh and blood villains or one of his straight-from-the-depths-of-hell other worldly monsters. 

           Now running her own detective agency, Holly usually uses her self effecting demeanor and unerring instincts to hunt down bail jumpers......until she's called upon to take on cases that put her in the dangerous path of Stephen King-sized villains.

           In 'Never Flinch', she's up against not one, but two separate loons with murder on their addled minds.....for the first one, she's merely contributing her Sherlock Holmes-ian insights for her friend, a stymied police detective. 

           The elusive 'Bill Wilson' is on an odd vengeance fueled rampage. He seeks a form of cruel, cosmic payback on behalf of a poor soul wrongly accused, imprisoned and then murdered by a fellow inmate. Bill's traveling about and murdering total strangers who serve as randomly picked proxy victims representing the jurors who convicted the innocent man.  

            At the same time, Holly's taken on the unlikely task of bodyguarding the controversial Kate McKay, a fiery pro-choice activist on a cross country speaking tour. Though Kate's views align with the majority of Americans, she's a lightning rod for right-wing Trumptards. And now she's in the crosshairs of Chris, a young cross-dressing lunatic and rogue member of a notorious cult-like church. In short, a MAGA moron on meth, on a holy assassin's crusade to send Kate straight to hell. 

           As you would expect from Stephen King, these varying plotlines all converge in a stretched out finale that tosses in heaping amounts of terror, suspense violence and even the inclusion of 'Sista Bessie' an elderly, beloved jazz songstress.

          Try as we might, we simply cannot work up the amount of affection and adoration that King holds for Holly Gibney. We admire her spunk, her bloodhound dedication to cracking her cases, her ability to remold and strengthen her character after a lifetime of living under the oppressive thumb of her mother.  Sorry, Uncle Stevie, she's just not that damn interesting or compelling to many of your readers, including this one.  

           But as one of King's 'constant readers' we wouldn't dream of missing it, even if this Holly adventure isn't among the author's best work.

           3 stars (***).

THE BLUE HORSE.......NEVADA'S SHERIFF BECK.....ONCE AGAIN UP TO HIS NECK......(*****)

 The Blue Horse by Bruce Borgos (2025)

     A warm welcome back to Sheriff Porter Beck's third mystery/action adventure thriller. And once again the stalwart, nobody-to-be-trifled-with Beck is up to his neck in multiple villains amid the vast desert and mountain landscapes of Nevada. At the height of the raging COVID pandemic, Beck's faced with two wildly different murders related to the Bureau of Land Management's controversial roundups of wild horses. A helicopter pilot assisting the roundup from the air is shot down by an expert sniper. Then later the woman in charge of the Bureau's roundups is horribly slain, her tortuous death captured on a video........a video apparently posted online by the activist group protesting the roundups. Or was it?

     As if Beck's plate isn't full enough, Detective Charlie Blue Horse, the love of his life, has grown oddly cold and argumentative. Beck's ailing 90 year old father is fast succumbing to dementia, his trusted deputy's contracted COVID and his sister Brinley has gone missing while searching forests and mountains for a deeply troubled teen boy. Also adding to his woes - the Sheriff's advancing affliction of night blindness, leaving him literally in the dark when the sun goes down.

     Bruce Borgos, a superb born storyteller, expertly manages to bring all these elements together in a harrowing finale that'll keep you in enough suspense to stop every other activity (including sleep) until you've reached the last page. Yes, it's that good. You'll find yourself both worrying about and cheering on Beck and his vividly drawn 'Scooby' bunch of law enforcement teammates as they take on a lot more danger than they bargained for.

     "The Blue Horse" works fine as a stand alone in the Porter Beck series, but I can guarantee upon finishing it, you'll want to catch up on the first two right away.

       5 Stars (*****). A Don't Miss' read for the summer  (or beyond.)

PARTY OF LIARS.....THIS PARTY'S GUARANTEED TO KNOCK YOU DEAD......OR MAYBE SOMEONE ELSE....(****)

 Party of Liars by Kelsey Cox (2025)

     Tore through this one in warp speed time. How could I not? Spend one wild night with wealthy, heavy drinking adults and their equally booze-guzzling, ragingly hormonal teenage sons and daughters? And all of them crammed into a huge cliffside house said to be haunted by a terrifying ghost? I couldn't RSVP fast enough.

     We're out in the Texas suburbs where psychiatrist Ethan Matthews is throwing an all day-and-night Sweet 16 bash for Sophie, his daughter with ex-wife (and disgraced, struggling alcoholic) Kim. Sophie lives with Kim, since Ethan continues residing in the legendary, historic mansion that he and Kim painstakingly restored and renovated. (With the back wall taken out and replaced entirely with glass, like a life=size dollhouse). Ethan now uses Sophie's celebration as an excuse to show off the vast house, his new young trophy wife Dani and their new baby girl Charlotte.

     Let the revels commence, with the house literally filled to capacity with friends, neighbors, Sophie's high school coterie........and possibly, "The Mother", the scary wraith who supposedly haunts the house.

     As the liquor flows freely, everyone's closet skeletons come out to play - hidden romances, resentments, rivalries, all out hatreds, not to mention ominous signs of an otherworldly presence. Cleary, someone might die, , but at whose hands? 'The Mother'? Or is there a real life flesh and blood monster on the guest list?

     Great nasty fun, all the way through, with every chapter designed to raise your suspicions and sense of dread in all directions. (or should I say misdirections. ) And capped off with a perfect, satisfying twist. Crash this party ASAP.

         4 stars (****).

THE SUMMER YOU WERE MINE......NOTHING RE-SPARKS ROMANCE LIKE THE ITALIAN RIVIERA.....(****)

 The Summer You Were Mine by Jill Francis (2025)

     I suppose beachy reads don't get any beachier than this. What better place to rekindle doused out romantic fires than the Italian Riviera. Nothing like warm sun, sparkling beaches and endless amounts of Italian food and wine to make estranged lovers come to their senses. and catch up on what they've foolishly been missing all these many years.

      And so it is with retired champion competitive swimmer Cris Conte and Ellie Beltrami., a talk show hostess with a psychology doctorate she makes use of to conduct hot seat interviews with athletes. Still hurting from their young love that went sour, they now both find themselves publicly disgraced - Ellie, by an embarrassing open mike moment and Cris by doping accusations. They also find themselves invited to the wedding of Ellie's grandmother to Cris's grandfather........which means, of course, returning to the beautiful little Italian town that's the ancestral home of both their extended families.

     Hmmm......what could possibly happen next? (Any dedicated fan of second chance romances needn't answer.....)

     Ellie and Cris embark on a mutually beneficial plan to refurbish and repair their damaged reputations, but their own wary unease around each other serve to thwart them..........with Ellie's lifelong social awkwardness explained by her recent autism diagnosis. But leave it to that radiant Italian scenery, sheer proximity, flowing wine and a host of loving relatives cheering them on from the sidelines. Are those a few sparks we see flying?

     Found one like and dislike here. The like - plenty of sharp comedy relief on display from the assembled families. The big dislike - Ellie and Cris's ever-so-slow-to-get-going interactions are overwritten and overthought.....too many scenes where their dialogue goes 'round and 'round in circular babble that becomes maddening and repetitive... Verbally, these two crazy kids can't get out of their own way.

     But all readers who love gorgeous settings, destination weddings, priceless wisecracks and romantic payoffs way high on the swoon meter............let's just say you won't feel disappointed. A sweet Italian vacation you can take without ever leaving your home.

     4 stars (****).