Don't Believe It

 My binge of Charlie Donlea’s books continues. Don’t Believe It is a story about whether Grace Sebold murdered her boyfriend, Julian, while on a Spring Break from their fourth year of medical school. They’ve traveled to St. Lucia with a group of close friends since high school for the purpose of being at the wedding for two of them. It’s Julian’s plan to propose marriage to Grace, and Julian chose the most romantic spot, high on a cliff overlooking a beautiful white sandy beach and the Caribbean. Julian’s body was subsequently discovered in the water and he had obviously fallen from the cliff. Grace was accused of having pushed him off, and there was significant physical evidence that tied her to the crime 

Although Grace constantly protested her innocence, claiming that she had not even gone to the planned rendezvous with Julian, her statements were not deemed to be credible. She was provided with local council who was thought to be inadequate to the task, and Grace was convicted of murder. She had been in jail for 10 years when filmmaker Sydney Ryan chose to focus on this case for a television series. She discovered some inconsistencies in the original investigation. The St. Lucia Department of Justice was uninterested in reopening the case for fear that it would hurt their vital tourism business, and the U.S. Department of Justice was uninterested in looking bad because it meant they had ignored a U.S. citizen who needed their help. In the face of danger to herself, Sydney was determined to carry through with her investigative efforts despite the resistance she faced..

 

The plot was exceptionally well written, and I did not see the last-minute shifts in the story until they actually occurred. This is another good and entertaining murder mystery novel from Donlea. I have become a fan, and my binge reading/listening to his stories will continue.

Some Choose Darkness

 Some Choose Darkness is the fifth Charlie Donlea novel I’ve read/listened to in a very short time span. His books are available on Libby and the wait for them has not been too long. He typically writes about psychologically damaged women, both the people hunting for clues about an old murder as well as those who have been the victims. The subtitle of the book is A Rory Moore/Lane Phillips Novel, Rory being the protagonist in this good story. She specializes in forensic reconstruction of cold cases, finding clues that others have missed.

 

In this story, her father was an attorney of a client he had taken on early in his career, a serial killer who was convicted and imprisoned for only one of the women he had been suspected of killing. Rory’s father, she discovered to her own horror, had continued his relationship with “The Thief” and had taken on responsibilities that were far beyond a typical attorney-client relationship, including managing his wealth and then paying himself for services rendered from that fund. Her father was terrified that although The Thief had never been paroled, he was coming to the end of his 30-year prison sentence and was about to be released. His anxiety increased until he had a heart attack and died.

 

Rory had graduated from law school and was listed as being on her father’s staff, she had never practiced law. Rather, she had quietly left that scene and limited her legal work to reconstructing crimes. However, as she studied the victims of old crimes, she became emotionally disturbed by the effort. At the start of this story, the emotionally fragile Rory had just returned from 6 months off work as the result of the trauma she felt by the nature of her work. She was not prepared to take on her father’s cases, and given the short timeline to the prisoner’s impending release, something her father had successfully stalled for some years, the judge would not allow Rory to refer the case to some other attorney.

 

The case that had led to this man’s incarceration had to do with the disappearance of Angela Mitchell, another presumed victim of this killer. It was Rory’s reconstruction of that crime that moved this story line along. Angela’s body had never been found, and Rory began to wonder if she might not still be alive.

 

I have been entertained by this series of books by Donlea, and I’m already nearing the end of another one of his books. You should expect that I’m giving this author a strong recommendation.

The Delivery

 I raved about the first book in this series by Andrew Welsh-Huggins, The Mailman. I read that almost exactly one year ago, so now it was a treat to get an advanced copy of the second book, The Delivery. This clearly has a Lee Child vibe to it. The protagonist, Mercury Carter, has a unique ability to walk into dangerous trouble nearly anywhere he goes. Previously a Fed, he’s now a freelance delivery guy who is proud of the fact that he’s never missed a delivery despite the trouble that it might cause.

 

The plot is comically complicated. As Carter heads to make one delivery, he stumbles on new trouble, that leads to new trouble, that leads to more trouble. There are so many names to keep track of that I found myself getting lost in the matrix of people to whom he was making promises and those who were after him because he kept sticking his nose in other people’s business. Carter is a compelling figure alone, and he’s surrounded by a huge cast of people who are bent, one way or another. The cops, the Feds, multiple bad guys, weapons, drugs, and prostitution are all part of the story. I found The Delivery to be a fun read, so if you in the mood for an adventure, and not a serious murder mystery, then this book is for you.

Twenty Years Later

 Twenty Years Later is the fourth Charlie Donlea novel I’ve read recently, three this month alone. Perhaps, this is his best, and it would be hard to beat The Girl Who Was Taken. I listened to this one in audiobook format which I enjoy on my daily dog walks. The story begins with a recently arrived tv host on a news program called American Events. Like 60 Minutes and Dateline, it is more like a weekly magazine approach than a nightly news segment. In the last couple years, Avery Mason has worked her way up to being a co-host with the long-time very popular male host. When he died unexpectly, Avery was thrust into the job as a temporary host while a more suitable person was sought for the permanent job. However, she killed her new role, one that she desperately wanted to have. Her ratings were hirer than the old host, and she expected to be compensated for that.

 

Avery also had some responsibility for searching for stories when she learned that the ongoing work at the 9/11 Commission result in the unexpected discovery of the new identification of a body fragment in the North Tower. Victoria Ford, on 9/11/01, had been indicted on a murder charge, and she was in the World Trade Center to talk with her attorney at his office on the 80^th floor. She tried going to the roof where she hoped to be rescued, but her attorney and the rest of his office people chose to descend in a stairway. It took the legal folks more than 40 minutes to get out of the building before it collapsed, but Victoria was never seen again. The case against her had a huge amount of physical evidence against her, and given the salacious nature of the crime, it had been a headline news items for the days before 9/11. But the case was never pursued because of the collapse of the building and the absence of the murder suspect.

 

Avery planned to pursue the story about the discovery of the newly-identified person, and the more she learned about Victoria, the more she realized she would get massive tv ratings as the 20^th anniversary of the tragedy neared. However, the reader learns that Avery has her own troublesome history that she has successfully kept hidden for years. She was constantly troubled by thoughts of the deaths of her mother and brother and the criminal past of her father. After completing college with a degree in journalism and then law school, she realized she would never get hired by a reputable law firm because of her father’s crimes, a Berny Madoff like Ponzi scheme crook. She chose to fall back on her degree in journalism and found a job as an investigative reporter on the West Coast with the LA Times. With her disguised identity, she gradually worked her way up the ladder until landing the job with American Events.

 

The plot was brilliantly unfolded, and information about the principal characters was artistically scattered into the story. I found the characters to be fascinating, and until the final pages, I certainly did not see how the author could so skillfully pull together all of the plots and subplots. This one is a good read or a good listen. I loved it.

Cold Zero

 Cold Zero is a recent book by Brad Thor and Ward Larsen, both of whom have been prolific authors. This is literally an action-packed story, filled with suspense on nearly every page, so be prepared not to put this one down until finished. The storyline is about a Chinese scientist who has a masterful program that is somehow hooked into AI, and it is able to disrupt just about anything including plane flights, missel directions, and nuclear armaments. The device, known in translated English as Sky Fire, would clearly give the owner of the device a clear advantage in any military confrontation. However, just as he is completing his development of the device, Dr. Chen Li has decided to defect to the U.S., which would not prove to be an easy task because he is being so closely guarded by his Chinese overseers.

 

The defection is being managed by a CIA person, Kasey Sheridan, and she gets help from Brett Sharpe, a former fighter pilot who has been living a civilian life. They are trying to secretly leave China,but choose a new super luxurious air service, piloted by Sharpe, thinking China wouldn’t dare bring them down. However, Li’s assistant knew enough about the program to make the plane’s two engines seize simultaneously when they were over the Artic, and it crashed onto an ice flow. A few passengers survived, but some were injured and the Artic conditions were brutal. The nearest vessel was a Russian sub, and both the U.S. and China have sent rescue and recovery planes to help which were hours away, so all of the super powers were engaged with the threat of nuclear war underlying the activity.

 

This the Brad Thor you would expect, but without Scott Harvath as the lead character. If this is your genre, you should love this book.

Love The Stranger by Michael Sears

We here at MRB don't read many 'socially relevant' stories. Murder and mayhem? Fine by us. Anything that reeks of identity politics? Not me. 

Having said that,  Love the Stranger is a socially conscious mystery thriller that combines real estate corruption, immigration, and grassroots activism that is Queens, NY. This is Sears' second Ted Molloy book that reflects procedural crime elements with larger social themes.

Ted Molloy, a former Manhattan lawyer turned Queens attorney, who, with his partner Lester, balance  moral obligations within the community with his business (investing in foreclosed properties).  Ted lives with a local activist, Kenzie Zielinski, whose latest campaign is “Stop the Spike” to halt a development project in Queens that threatens to displace a considerable immigrant community. 

Kenzie's regular Uber driver, Mohammend, has been getting jerked around by his immigration lawyer So she decides to confront the attorney. Upon arriving to his office, she finds the lawyer is freshly dead. And being the last person to see said lawyer, she becomes a person of interest. She, Ted and his friends struggle to find the culprit all the while facing  a dangerous smear campaign about herself brought on by corrupt developers and other tentacles of Big Real Estate.

Can't say that the storyline or the characters connected with me. While the story is briskly told, it just never really caught my interest. Guess I'm just not the socially relevant type. 

ECD

 

The Gun Man Jackson Swagger by Stephen Hunte

Full disclosure here: I'm a full fledged fan of Stephen Hunter, author of the Swagger family saga. His books  have stretched from the early 20th century into the post Depression-era, post WWII into the 50's, and from Vietnam to the present. Each book features a Swagger and their love/skill of the gun. Hunter steps further back in the Swagger gene pool into the late 1800s after the Civil war and into westward expansion. In short . . . a western.

Jackson (Jack) Swagger is an aging Civil War veteran who rides the drought-stricken desert Southwest seeking a a job - a place to matter.Yeah, he's old, but he’s still sharp and skilled. At a sprawling ranch, he he demonstrates his lethal skill with a Winchester rifle and earns a tenuous place among the gunmen of Colonel Callahan. 

He may be a hired gun, by he also has an agenda and maybe the ranch is hiding some clues. He learns that a young cowboy recently died under mysterious circumstances. As an absent father himself, Jack makes this mission personal. The more he digs around the ranch, the temporary towns that spring up around the construction of the railroad, the whorehouses, and the illegal trade of goods and arms with crooked Mexican military, he unravel a web of corruption, betrayal, and dark money that powers the ranch’s prosperity. The expected showdowns and moral deprivation are inevitable. 

Hunter is without question (at least in my eyes) one of the very best mystery writers active today. Add to his ability to weave a phrase, his understanding of the gun culture is unparalleled. What's interesting to those of us who've read every Swagger novel is that Hunter really does his research. And his research took him not just into the landscape and activities on the old west, he has written this book in such a way as it reads like it was actually written back then. No modern English here. This reads like a series of newspaper stories covering late 1800s corruption. Might take a few chapters to get in to the flow of the dialogue, but once in, in for a penny in for a pound. Be prepared for drought, the heat, the smells, the sounds, the weapons. 

The Swagger family is full of deeply human heroes who are equal parts weathered, moral, violent, but still  haunted by the cost of their gun skills. All the men are dangerous, but Hunter doesn't present them as cartoonish. That's not his style. Fans of classic shootist drama and the complex morality of the old west will find The Gun Man: Jackson Swagger wholly satisfying. Another in the long list of winners from Hunter.

Thanks to the good folks at Netgalley who provide reviewer copies in exchange for an unbiased review.

publication date: October 14, 2025