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 

The Wolves Are Watching by Victoria Houston

Victoria Houston’s The Wolves Are Watching continues her Lew Ferris mystery series by blending rural suspense with crime intrigue. Set in early September, in way the hell up nort' Wisconsin, the story kicks off with a high school aged member of a competitive fishing team (hey, it's northern Wisconsin, what do you expect?) who is being coerced by a stranger threatening his family—pushing him into murky waters both literally and figuratively and throw the tournament. The kid takes off into the nearby woods, sleeps under the unblinking gaze of wolves.

The story revolves primarily around Sheriff Lew (for Llewellyn)  Ferris and her deputy/ace tracker, Ray Pradt. The boy’s father seeks help plunging Ray and Lew way deeper into a world foreign to the northwoods and certainly worse than trying to get a kid to purposefully lose in a blackmail scheme. The woods are alive with illegal betting, arms dealing, and a wicked web of corruption.

If a story is set in northern Wisconsin, the author better be skilled at presenting the environment as well as the characters. The isolated woods, flickering campfires, and sense of being watched lend the story real tension. The wolves are more than wildlife. They are symbolic predators, lending weight to the very real human dangers while not being to involved in human shortcomings. Houston manages to weave crime, rural suspense, and uncanny wildlife imagery in the later fall of Wisconsin. 

Two plots are evident—illegal sports betting on one side and a mysterious disappearance of a retired couple on another—keeps the stakes high. Lew Ferris is a grounded, no-nonsense sheriff, both competent and vulnerable.

The book is fairly compact as most novels go these days. Some of the criminal threads and secondary characters seem underdeveloped and the extent of the gambling and arms dealing could've been more developed. 

Nonetheless, The Wolves Are Watching is a decent mystery, especially for fans of stories based up in the Northland. 

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

publication date: February 26, 2026 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cross

 I reread a book by Ken Bruen, one of the 20 that he wrote in the Jack Taylor series, previously reviewed by me in 2009. This is a very dark series about Jack who is driven by alcoholism, either when he’s deep into the drink, or when he is spending most of his waking hours fighting against taking a drink He is haunted by that. Atypical of most of the books in this series, Jack is actually sober throughout the book as he fights off his demons while trying to solve a crime that involved the seemingly random killing of dogs in Galway, Ireland. Bruen clearly understands the agony of alcoholism, and there is something unique about his writing style. Given that I’ve read and reviewed most of his books, it’s not a surprise that I highly recommend this series, if you can tolerate the darkness.

The Black Wolf

 

Louise Penny’s 20^th book in the Armand Gamache series is titled The Black Wolf, in a sequel to the 19^th book, The Grey Wolf. I love Penny’s writing and her group of recurring characters. I’ve reread most of her books, some of them, several times. This one was a bit different. Based on the notion that climate change is continuing to worsen, leaving the U.S. short of water, and Canada with an abundance, Penny also described corruption in Canada that had infiltrated all levels of government. All of the usual Gamache characters were involved with the plot, with the unexpected addition of Gamache’s wife and children. As usual, Penny will always be worth reading. She produces one book a year and I eagerly await her next release. But this one was not my favorite. I’ll be curious to read more reviews, which I haven’t done as yet.

Guess Again

 My third Charlie Donlea book in such a short time, and I expect there will be more, was Guess Again. Ten years ago, 17-year-old Callie Jones went missing. About to start her senior year of high school, she was going to be the valedictorian, was a star athlete, and was beautiful. At an end of the summer high school party, she was missing and no trace of her was ever found.

The great rogue detective Ethan Hall was so disturbed by the case that he opted out of law enforcement, went to medical school, and at a later than normal age, became a successful ER doctor. Ten years later, Hall’s detective partner was about to retire. Although the Jones case was cold, this detective had unsuccessfully continued to look for clues, and he begged Hall to come back and have another look. It turns out that Callie’s dad was the man who was about to become the governor, and he offered Hall the chance to cancel all of his med school debts if he would take leave from the hospital to do so. In love withh is work as a doctor, Hall was reluctant to do so, but the financial incentive was one he could not pass up. Hall’s hospital administrator was not happy about Hall’s agreement to do so. The governor placed Hall back on the case as a special hire.

 

Hall did not know he was about to encounter a serial killer and the killer’s psychopathic girlfriend. That’s when the story really took off. I won’t be a spoiler, just add this book to your reading queue.

Those Empty Eyes

 Those Empty Eyes was my second Charlie Donlea murder mystery novel. He has quickly moved up to my list of favorite authors, along with Michael Connelly, Daniel Silva, Louise Penny, Robert Crais, and C.J. Box. If he had a more substantial body of work already produced, I might include Grant Rosenberg in this list, but he’s just published one three-book series about a unique character, Gideon. I raved about Donlea’s The Girl Who Was Taken, and Those Empty Eyes was the next one in audiobook form that I could get on Libby. 

The story starts with the horrendous murders of a husband, wife, and son, leaving only the 17-year-old daughter who had miraculously escaped the massacre. The killer fled and the girl emerged from her hiding spot only to find her dead family members. To protect herself in case he came back, she picked up the shotgun the killer had discarded. When the police arrived, Alexandra Quinlin was sitting on the floor with the shotgun in her lap, covered with blood, and uncontrollably sobbing.

 

The police mistakenly identified Alexandra as the killer even though the murder scene did not fully support that scenario. She had just finished her junior year of high school, and the police whisked her away to a juvenile detention facility where she spent the next two months. It was then that a pro bono attorney got her charges dismissed. But, the case of her family’s murder was never solved. Devastated by this turn of events, the lawyer and his wife took Alexandra into their home and they became her guardians, her surrogate parents. That was when the story got even more interesting.

 

The lawyer filed a wrongful arrest case against the city, and he won a multimillion dollar suit on her behalf. However, there were people in and out of the police department who did not accept this outcome and clung to the belief that she really was the murderer. She was pursued by a local reporter who began to make a career for herself based on her false belief of Alexandra’s guilt. Meanwhile, Alexandra was reeling from this series of events and she found it impossible to go back to school. Having been a beautiful girl who was both a brilliant student and athlete who was headed for a great life, she was suddenly depressed, unable to concentrate, and at a loss of her direction in life. She changed her name, moved to England, but was still unable to get her life organized. She was involved in drugs and other meaningless activities. Finally, the lawyer offered her a job to come back to the U.S. and to work for him as an investigator.

 

Alex turned out to be very good at her new direction, but after 10 years, she was assigned to a case which was rather similar to her own. That’s when this already gripping story became even more so. Enough said. I won’t be a spoiler for these good stories and great plot.

The Amalfi Secret

 

Admittedly, I found it difficult to review this book without commenting about my own strong feelings about the main content, but I’ll try to do just that. This was a Dan Brown-like novel, a murder mystery which took place in Italy and involved symbols of the Freemasonry. Although ChatGPT suggests the roots of the Freemasons dates to the medieval stonemasons’ guilds, the authors essentially trace it to the time of Christ. In essence, the book suggests that Freemasons had a long history of secretly trying to undermine and sabotage the Catholic church, all of Christianity, and the Muslim faith as well. Freemasonry was not a religion, but its members were  required to believe in a supreme being, the form of which was left to individual belief.

 

The authors Reinekings wrote that there are 33 levels of Freemasonry which members advance through, and as they advance, the members gradually learn about the true meaning of their symbols. While the masons openly supported brotherly love, charity, and truth, it was only the members at the highest ranking who knew what the symbology was really about, and their intentions were hardly charitable or noble. Secretly, the society had been supporters of both Hitler and Stalin.

 

Given the current decline of Christianity over the last many decades, it was the decision of those of highest ranking in Freemasonry to give up their centuries-old long game for a more daring big play. Their idea was to steal a nuclear weapon from the poorly secured soviet arsenal, to explode it in an American city and to blame the whole matter on the Muslims. By so doing, the masons thought they would hasten the end of all organized religions.

 

The Reinekings have produced a good storyline with a well-disguised plot. The main characters are both believable and compelling. I will leave other readers to comment further.

Wildwood by Amy Pease

 Welcome to rural northern Wisconsin. Small summer resort town. Main lakeside hotel is a pricey retreat for the 1% who value their privacy. The only real connection with the town is with the locals who quietly clean rooms, cook, landscape, etc. The law is maintained by sheriff Marge North and her PTSD afflicted (Afghanistan) son Eli.  

Also in the community are what seem to be a large number of group homes for recovering addicts, an in-patient recovery facility, and what appears to be a pharmaceutical distribution business. 

Trinity is a stunning 20-something artist wannabe recovering addict struggling with her addiction while trying to regain custody of her 4yo son from her prepper parents in Illinois. One of the hotel guests, Charles  Dawson, is a suave, handsome 'businessman' of note; he owns most of those group homes. And the FBI (Alyssa) and the DEA (Adam) are convinced he is part of a drug scheme that has made him rich from fraud and drug distribution. The investigation has been going on for a few years and getting no where.

After crossing paths with Trinity, Adam convinces her to be his CI. He cleans her up, dresses her, and sends her to the hotel to catch Charles' eye, get close to him, and try to find some evidence that will drive the investigation. 

And she does. 

But along the way, people are dying. A recovering addict is just the start. As the bodies pile up, the evidence against Dawson becomes convincing, but it also points to someone above Dawson who drives an international industry of drugs, trafficking, weapons, money laundering, and murder.

This is Amy Pease's 2nd book set in rural northern Wisconsin featuring Sheriff North. But in this book, Pease focuses mostly on her son's slowly resolving PTSD, a possible relationship between son Eli and Special Agent Alyssa (that appears to have begun in 'Northwoods', book #1), what appears to be real feelings between Trinity and Dawson. Not a whole lot about Sheriff North (maybe that was the subject of book #1). Lots of balls in the air that Sheriff North juggles right down to the last chapter. Have to say that I liked how Pease presents the primary actors here: Eli, Alyssa, and Trinity. Each seems real, with their own issues that sometimes both interfere and aid in the entirely entertaining resolution. I'm interested enough to try and dig up her first book, Northwoods. I like William Kent Krueger's books set in northern Wisconsin/Minnesota so I'm not surprised that I like this one, too. And having live in Wisconsin for 2 winters (they don't tell time by 'years', they use 'winters'), I guess I come by that honestly.

And don't forget northern Wisconsin and its flaky fall/winter weather, is also a critical character. Gotta love Wisconsin weather, its 2-week summer/mosquito season and the endless frigid winter. 

Publication date Jan 6, 2026 (in the winter, naturally). And thanks for NetGalley for the advance reviewer copy in exchange for an unbiased review. 

ECD 

The Girl Who Was Taken

The Girl Who Was Taken is Charlie Donlea’s second novel of the 11 that are currently listed in my Google search, and it is his first novel reviewed in this blog, but I’ll guarantee it won’t be the last one. I continue to find it exciting to find a good mystery novelist and find that the author already has created a significant volume of work. The author was suggested to me by one of my daughters who said Donlea was quickly becoming her favorite author in this genre. She had read several of his books already, but none of those were available in audiobook format on Libby, so I “settled” on this one. It was fantastic, and after reading one book, I plan to look for more.

Megan McDonald had just graduated from high school when she was kidnapped. She was also a star athlete and was on her way to a scholarship ride at Duke. But, she disappeared from a high school celebration party, and her story hit the headlines nationwide. Missing the same night, was a lifelong friend of Megan’s, Nicole Cutty. Hardly the student-athlete that Megan had been, Nicole had only scratched her way through high school while she looked for good times, not her own future. Nicole had a very dark side to her character. It was Megan’s story that stayed in the press, especially after she escaped from her captivity after 13 days. A year later, with the help of a ghost writer and pressure from her mom to complete the task, Megan published a book of her ordeal which immediately became a best seller. She was seen as a hero, was in demand on the talk show circuit, was known to be a woman who escaped her captor (who had never been caught), one who had emotionally healed from the ordeal – facts which Megan eventually revealed were untrue. But other girls had also gone missing and it seemed a serial killer was at work.

 

Meanwhile, Nicole’s older sister Livia had graduated from medical school and was completing a fellowship program in pathology. She was guilt ridden because she had not taken a call from the always troubled Nicole on the night of her disappearance. Livia contacted Megan to pick her brain about the details of what had happened to her, details which never appeared in her book.

 

Donlea’s characters were quite believable, and it sounded as if the characters in his book were sincerely emotionally traumatized by their ordeals. The plot kept me riveted to the book. Donlea skillfully jumped back and forth between prior times when Megan was a little girl, when she was in school, when she was an athlete, and the present as success in the unraveling of the killer’s identity came closer to being discovered. This was an excellent suspense and murder mystery, cleverly written, and it gets my very strong recommendation. There will be more Donlea in my life.

Troy, The Greek Myths Reimagined

 

Troy, The Greek Myths Reimagined, by Stephen Fry is the third of four books that cover the entire ancient Greek mythology from Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, as well as events that occurred both before and after those books by Homer.  I’ve already reviewed the other three books, and I basically raved about the quality of Fry’s efforts as both a writer and narrator of this material. The story of Troy, is certainly the equal of the other three books. Although I’m very familiar with the old Greek myths and other ancient Greek literature, I found this retelling of the stories to be refreshing and wonderous. Fry’s appendix in Troy put all the issues about the timing of these events and his thoughts about myths versus reality into a very acceptable perspective. It’s my opinion that all modern story telling about human drama starts with these Homeric works. He lived, perhaps, in 750 BCE, and the Trojan War occurred several hundred years before then, and it is remarkable that his stories have survived nearly three millennia. He writes about life, death, illness, all sorts of life’s challenges, fidelity/infidelity, love, hate, self-aggrandizing, humility, religion, atheism, war, peace, and so much more. If you’re a fanatic about adventure stories, you owe it to yourself to read Stephen Fry.

Gideon Redemption

 

Gideon Redemption is the third novel by Grant Rosenberg that I’ve reviewed, the third in a series about his protagonist Kelly Harper. It was Kelly’s father, Dr. David Harper, who was the main figure in the first book, Gideon. He was a physician who took over responsibility for a clinic in the Mission District of San Francisco, but in a highly unusual situation, in order to adequately fund the medical care that he was doing at a considerable financial loss, he accepted a roll as an assassin of the worst of society’s dregs. The assassin was known as Gideon. When he was killed in the second book, Gideon Resurrection, Kelly, who had followed her father into a medical career and who placed her father on top of a tall pedestal for his humanitarian acts, knew nothing about his dark activities until she read his diary. Although aghast at what she learned about her father and then when she gained responsibility for the clinic’s survival, she eventually agreed to become the next Gideon. The contrast in roles of being a literal savior of the downtrodden on the streets of the Mission District, and a woman was also a killer who used the money she earned to pay the clinic’s bill, caused Kelly great emotional distress. In the third novel, Gideon Redemption, it becomes clear that stress of her two identities was tearing her emotionally apart.

 

If you check out my prior reviews of Mr. Rosenberg’s books, you’ll find that I literally raved about his writing and the characters that he skillfully developed. The third book is equally well written with regard to the evolution of Kelly and the associated characters. The three books together get my ultimate 5/5+ rating. He does a remarkable job tying together the plots and subplots in a most satisfying manner.

 

I think this book was originally intended to be the last in the series, but I hope Mr. Rosenberg changes his mind about this. Kelly is such a compelling and intriguing character, I would be disappointed not to see where she might go from this point forward. Whatever he decides, if you’re a fan of murder mysteries, this three-book series should be on your bookshelves.

Ensorcelled

 Ensorcelled by Eliot Peper is the 13^th Peper book that I’ve read and reviewed. Considering that I’ve read so many of his books, you might get the hint that I really like his writing. The title is a word I’ve not seen before, so I looked it up. In the past tense ensorcelled means enchanted, fascinated, or captivated. The reader was forewarned that magic was a part of the story.

The protagonist of this short novel, only 90 pages, is about a teenage boy who has been captivated by the gaming world. Games are what he thinks about, dreams about, and lives for. As a new game was about to be released by his favorite gaming company, he planned to be first in line to acquire the game, and then to spend all of his upcoming hours engaged in the play. Her expected to be ensorcelled once again in the game world. Then, he was stunned to learn that his parents had planned a family camping trip on the very day of the game’s release, and he could not talk his parents out of having to go along with them.

 

In total disbelief, this boy who was somewhat handicapped with regard to his social skills (whose name we never learn), went along to a remote camping site where two other families, friends of his parents, had already arrived. There were two other teenagers there too, Theo and Lenny. Lenny was a teenage girl who loved an adventure, apparently a trait that had gotten her into some troubles in the past. Theo was a high school kid to whom everything came easily, socially, academically, athletically. He was remarkably modest about his skills and he seemed to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. He was loved by all for his authentic personality, except for our protagonist who is horribly jealous of him. Theo was everything he was not. Theo and Lenny were great friends and obviously enjoyed each other’s company.

 

The book is told in the first person, and our main subject was also an artist, and he could avoid social engagement by disappearing to do some sketching. On the trip, he was fascinated by one particularly beautiful tree that was a ways from the camp. When Lenny decided she should help him actually visit the tree, without revealing her plan, she got him to go with her. The adventure involved a hike, a canoe ride, a swim in a cold mountain pool, and a treacherous rock climb, all done in the dark while parents were left bar behind, asleep in their tents. They got to the tree, and it was a beautiful experience, but on the way back down, tragedy struck. Lenny was badly injured in a fall. It was left to him to get them out of this mess, a task that he was sorely unprepared for. That’s when the magic happened for Lenny and our narrator. 

 

To tell the end of this beautiful story would be a spoiler I just can’t give away. My advice, buy the book and spend just a short time absorbing this great story. Peper strikes again. If you’ve not already read his work, then you are in for a treat.

 

Zafara, A giraffe's True Storny, from Deep in Africa to the Heart of Paris

 

Odyssey

 

Odyssey is my favorite book of all times, and I’m surprised that I haven’t reviewed it in this blog which we began writing in 2009. I know that I’ve reread it at least a couple times during the last 16 years. Of course, it was Homer’s book to which I’m referring, not this new version by Stephen Fry. I read Homer’s Odyssey for the first time in junior high school, then again in high school, then again several more times as a college undergraduate. I’ve returned to it many times thereafter simply because the author captures so many human struggles that continue to be applicable to current day life. Issues like money, greed, power, sex, drugs, faith, and adversity are present throughout this epic novel. The vicissitudes of life in 700 BCE was not so much different than life in 2025.

 

I’ve recently reviewed the first two of Stephen Fry’s four-book into the ancient Greek Myths. The first was Mythos, The Greek Myths Retold, and the second was Heroes, The Greek Myths Reimagined. I raved about the qualities of those books which I listened to in audiobook format. The multitalented Fry was the narrator for the entire series, and his skill in that regard was simply remarkable. Because Odyssey, the fourth book, became available on Libby before Troy, I just couldn’t wait to get to Odyssey. Fry had perhaps the most famous author of adventure books in the history of mankind to compete with, to be compared to while relating these well-known stories, and it’s my opinion that Fry succeeds in doing so. This is not like trying to read Homer. It’s a more modern and readable novel, and I could not possible give it anything but a 5/5 or A+ rating. As an adventure book reader, it’s hard for me to imagine that you won’t be entranced by the quality of Fry’s writing and narration. I think Troy is going to be available any day – can’t wait.tt

Serves You Right

 Serves You Right by Orion Gregory is the second novel by this author, the first that has been reviewed in this blog. The protagonist is Sydney Livingstone, a female rookie police detective in Walsh County, Ohio. She had been struggling with her tennis career and chose to leave that to join the police force, then at the age of 24. She walked into a situation in which it seemed that a number of bad guys were getting off too easy, or were hiring good attorneys who were able to get them declared not guilty. However, someone else was finding it unthinkable that such characters were not being sufficiently punished and took it upon themselves to bring their justice to the picture. A vigilante who called himself “The Enforcer” was at work, and the police department had to go after whoever that was. Suddenly, it looked like the vigilante might just be a cop, but who could it be?

 

Gregory created an excellent cast of very different characters. Livingstone seemed to keep making poor decisions and was close to being terminated from a job she desperately wanted to continue. Meanwhile, she continued in a relationship with a man who remained on the tennis tour, but her dedication to the job was threatening their relationship. The Police Commissioner Ed Lasek, Police Chief Delvin Pratt, Captain Wilma Griffin, Sergeant Stuart Montenegro, Detective Kevin Fosterno, Detective Tom Mitsoff, and others all had some obvious faults who could have been The Enforcer. It was near the end of the book that Livingstone made a Perry Mason like speech in a meeting of all the principal police people, addressing each of her fellows from the Commissioner, the Police Chief, and each of her fellow detectives about why it could be them, but then why she eliminated them one by one from being The Enforcer, until her choice was revealed. That was the point at which disbelief struck this reader. A bumbling rookie was supposed to have unraveled a case that none of the more senior officers could figure out.  I just found this suddenly astute rookie detective to not be a believable character. In the middle of her definitive speech I found myself wondering where this had come from.

 

I think this story has the possibility of being a good book, starting with an interesting protagonist. But, since when do rookie officers attain the rank of detective? On the one hand, her stumbling and bumbling attempts are good for misdirection to the reader, but for me, it was just too many signs of incompetence to go with the ending of the novel.

10-22-63

Stephen King published 11/22/63 in January 2012. Admittedly, I’ve never been a Stephen King fan as the result of his frequent departure to supernatural story lines. However, I’ve also been a lifelong fan of time travel stories, and my daughter recommended the book as one of her all-time favorites. I found it on Libby and listened to it’s beautiful narration by Craig Wasson. It’s a date that I clearly remember. I was 13 years old and in an eighth grade world history class with Mr. Williams who was interrupted for a brief private discussion with the school’s Vice-Principal, Mr. Bragg. Mr. Williams came back to the classroom to announce the news that President Kennedy had been shot. It was also my sister’s 16^th birthday. Hopefully, you know something of that day and the days that followed.

In King’s novel, an English teacher in a small town in Maine, Jake Epping, stumbled into a time warp that allowed him to go back to 1958, and then return to his private life inn 2011. Unlike other time travel stories, like H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine or the movie Back to the Future, Epping could not dial in any date he wanted, so it was 1958 or nothing. He was so disturbed by the Kennedy murder that it was his ambition to go back in time in order to stop Lee Harvey Oswald from this horrible act. Epping had to go back to this time five years before the assassination and figure out how to go about doing the deed, and then escaping back to 2011. In 1958, he created an identify for himself, and found a job teaching English on a substitute basis. He quickly became accepted in his small community, but he had to keep his actual reason for being there a secret. Epping did not expect to fall in love which added a significant wrinkle to his plans.

 

King did a beautiful job describing life in the US during the 1958 to 1963 period. He wrote about the awkwardness of Epping meeting Oswald and his family. Meanwhile, there were a number of unexpected roadblocks to interfering with Oswald, as if the past was working to defend itself and keep anyone for making any profound changes. I won’t be a spoiler and write if Epping was successful, but King did skillfully introduce the notion that changing history, even from the most grotesque of acts, might not always lead to a better outcome for mankind.

 

Like my daughter, I was entranced by the story that King spun, and this novel gets my strongest recommendation.

The Last Hit Man by Robin Yocum

 Remember the opening story from Goodfellas? When teenager Henry Hill says that all he ever wanted to do was be a gangster? In this book, Angelo Cipriani wanted to be a criminal dating back to his high school years. 

 

Angelo grew up in a Steubenville, OH (NE Ohio for you geographically challenged) neighborhood known as Spaghetto, home to Italian immigrants.  But Angelo wasn't a pure breed Italian. His mom was Ukranian and the 'real' Italians in town never let him forget it. As such, Angelo grew up tough, because he had to. 

Angelo dropped out of high school and took a job cleaning floors and spittoons in a local pool hall. His willingness to do what was necessary caught the eye of a capo within the Fortunato family eventually getting to meet Alphonso - the boss. This family controlled gambling, numbers, sports book, and prostitution up and down the upper Ohio River valley (from Youngstown down the borders of OH, PA, WV) to Wheeling. The Fortunato's were frequently at odds with other families controlling other regions of the upper Midwest, but in the interest of business, a tense peace prevailed. Big Al kinda liked the kid and brought him into the family and the organization. So Angelo was brought up slowly by doing collections and helping with record keeping on the book making operation.

The family business was run top down with Big Al pulling the strings, paying bribes and tributes, playing criminal and cops against each other, and making all decisions regarding the family business. His son, Big Tommy, a business graduate from Bowling Green St Univ, would take over upon Al's death. Big Tommy had a son, Little Tommy, who was Big Tommy's heir apparent. Big Tommy liked  Angelo and elevated his importance by making him the understudy of Carlo Della Russo, the family executioner who taught Angelo the ways and practices of ethical execution. When Angelo finally gets his chance, he shows Carlo just how much he'd learned. Little Tommy has no use for Angelo and he also learns that because he isn't 100% Italiano, he'd wasn't in line to become a made man. Just the way it is. He'd be treated as such, but he wasn't and never would get that honor.

The book traces the fortunes of the Fortunato family over 40 years and three generations of leadership. Of the changing face of organized crime from book making, loan sharking, and prostitution in the old days to running hard drugs. All businesses evolve, even crime. Angelo also has to evolve. He has a growing reputation amongst the neighboring mobs and police, but he's so good at his job, the cops are left with suspicions, but never any evidence. Besides, the police don't much care if one family's hit man offs some leadership of another mob. 

In the 70s, Angelo gets married, his wife is pregnant, and they go out to celebrate. That doesn't go well and it leaves Angelo with a vendetta that must be reconciled with, no matter how long it takes.  Angelo has a long memory, but also has a girlfriend, a waitress at a local diner he frequents daily. 

Once Big Tommy passes, Little Tommy, ruthless thug and spoiled rotten piece of . . . you know,  has no real use for a late 60s yo hitter when he's got his own favs in their 20s. Little Tommy effectively rejects all the income streams that have kept the family going for nearly 40 years in favor of trafficking in hard drugs. Money is coming in so fast, he hardly knows where to stash it all. 

Now the Fortunatos had a 'you scratch my back' relationship with the cops and if the local cops were happy, the Feds sort of let things go the way things were. For two generations of Fortunatos, this was SOP. Little Tommy? Not so much. 

The Feds want Little Tommy and to get him, they approach Angelo. Rat out Little Tommy in exchange for witness protection. After plenty of back and forth, Angelo agrees only if he can take one of the few remaining mobsters still around as well as his girlfriend. 

And while that sounds like the perfect solution to Angelo's problems. Oh so wrong, grasshopper. The FBI still has a few tricks up its sleeves. And I'll leave it at that. 

Robin Yocum has six novels to his credit, most all of which were either nominated for various national awards or won a few. I hope people will pick this up and give it a go. It's told in flashbacks from current day (Angelo is 69yo) and back to the pool hall and forward through 40ish years. The prose flows smoothly (it's told like the reader is listening to Angelo recite his life story), the dialogue sounds pretty authentic (but who am I to say whether it is or isn't. Maybe friend of the blog, Charlie Stella, might have more to say about that). The setting (Steubenville) is almost a character in and of itself. This really is an engaging read. You are rooting for Angelo to find whatever it is he is looking for. To avenge what was taken from him. To get away scott free. Reach that turning point in his journey that gets him safely out of the life. In short, I think readers will grow to like Angelo as the story unfolds.  

This is Yocum's latest and, unless I read the ending of the book all wrong, it's not the last we've heard from Angelo Cipriani. 

Set a reminder on your calendar for 2 DEC 2025 for its release date.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance reviewer copy in exchange for an unbiased review. 

ECD 

Killer Tracks

 

I’m sorry that I’m only getting to this review when it’s been a full month since I actually read it. I’ve been on a long and very busy vacation in places where my internet connection was weak, if it even existed at all. I remember thinking that the plot of Killer Tracks by Mary Keliikoa had potential. It’s a story about a married couple who lost their 3-year-old daughter to leukemia. The loss was so painful that the marriage didn’t survive. Some years later, Sheriff Jax Turner and his ex-wife Abby Kanekoa were trying to see if their relationship had a chance of survival and if it was worth it to try again. Both were involved in law enforcement. Jax was the sheriff in a small summer tourist town, Misty Pines, and Abby was an FBI agent in a big city. In the book, we quickly meet the whole cast of characters in the Misty Pines Sheriff Office. Jax and Abby are trying to have a weekend away despite their nearly 24/7 responsibilities.

 

My criticism has to do with the flow of the plot, which was uneven. The author spent too much time on the worries of the main characters that the relationship was really gone and there was no hope for them, as well as their fear that their respective other had already moved on. It was the introduction of Hannah that turned the experience of this book to a negative one for me. She was a psychopath, apparently in league with a very bad man, Backstrom, who was released from prison on a technicality. It was not believable that despite both Jax and Abby having been experienced and successful law enforcement officers that they repeatedly got sucked in to Hannah’s manipulations. Her statements were contradictory, but supposedly Jax and Abby were distracted from seeing clearly because of their own relationship issues. I just don’t buy that.

 

Bottomline, I can’t recommend this book. I think it could be rewritten into a much better story.

 

Atmosphere

 Atmosphere is the first novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid to be reviewed in this blog. She has written at least five other novels. I found this on my Kindle and read Atmosphere while on a long airplane flight. The author certainly captured the thrill of learning about the sky and stars, and she clearly created a story of space flight that is entirely believable and a tragedy that seemed very real. The plot is about that tragedy in space and the attempts by a former astronaut and a current astronaut to bring the space shuttle safely back to earth. The story was about the CAPCOM, the only person on the ground from NASA who talked with the astronauts in the shuttle, and others who were a part of NASA. Joan Goodwin was the first woman to have done so. 

Reid explored the efforts of Joan, who seemed to be on the spectrum of autism, something formerly called Asperger’s Syndrome. She had no real relationships with anyone other than her niece, had no significant connection to her sister or her mother. Joan had never had a boyfriend. She was in love with her work. Joan was also the victim of the rampant misogyny at NASA. It was the same with her classmates in astronaut training group #9, Vanessa Ford. Ford was a mechanic and pilot, but she was assigned to be second seat during training and was told she would never be allowed to fly the shuttle. I thought the various roles of different students and their different personalities was well-presented and it clearly contributed to the plot development. Reid wrote convincingly of the fire that killed three astronauts as they trained for Apollo I, an event that was used effectively to impress the fictional astronauts and this reader of the dangers these astronauts-in-training agreed to accept.

 

When she finally got her chance to go to space, Joan quickly discovered that the extended weightlessness of space was simply something she could not tolerate. She kept vomiting most of the duration of her trip. She made a decision to transfer out of the astronaut group and into the space command center. It was at about the halfway point of this compelling story that Joan discovered that she was gay, and that led to a relationship with Vanessa, a relationship that they had to hide if their careers at NASA were to continue. Reid wrote with relish about Joan’s awakening to the world about her and the meaning of her relationships with her niece, sister and mother, it was as if she was fully emerging from her Asperger’s. However, it was not only NASA that had to be kept in the dark about her love of Vanessa, it was also her own family.  So after the disaster happened in space and Joan was the only one who could feed Vanessa the data she needed to bring the shuttle back from orbit, the drama of the story ramped up even more. The title of this book is surely a double entendre which has been artfully applied by the author.

 

 

Return To Sender by Craig Johnson

Return to Sender is Craig Johnson's 21st Longmire mystery . . . dont' mess with a good thing. Full Disclosure: Johnson is firmly entrenched in my power rotation and I'm not likely to find anything at fault in the stories that come from his imagination.

This outing is quite the lively mystery set, per usual, in the rugged Wyoming wilderness. This time, Sheriff Longmire is called out by a relative of Walt's late wife to travel from Absaroka County to south central Wyoming . The relative is a postal inspector for the state but he needs Walt's anonymity in this region to sort of go undercover to investigate the disappearance of Blair McGowan, a postal worker responsible for the longest rural mail route in the United States that runs over three hundred miles across, around, and through the desolate Red Desert.

Walt poses as McGowan's replacement mail carrier, though the sheriff’s distinctive stature (six-foot-five) kind of undermines any real attempt at being secretive. Plus he does have a bit of a state wide reputation. No matter. Walt pursues this case, like all cases, earnestly by retracing McGowan’s route in her battered 1968 Travelall. On this lonely circuit, Walk is accompanied by Dog, his huge, but undeniably endearing canine companion. Their journey is littered with quirky encounters with the locals, curious clues left under painted rocks, confrontations with Blair’s odd/loser boyfriend and, most astonishingly, a cult, led by a has-been wannabe TV actor, hiding in the desert. Obviously, this cult quickly becomes the center of Walt's interest.

The book shows us just how comfortable Johnson and Longmire have become with each other. The narrative showcases Johnson’s trademark blend of wry humor, the colorful and dangerous Wyoming desert wrapped around a clever tale dotted with unrelenting suspense. Given the expanse of the Red Desert, Walt has to come to grips with modern technology - he gets his first cell phone. OK, an old flip phone - that he painstakingly attempts to learn. His 'relationship' with technology shows the classic Longmire charm and his stubborn, old-school grit that we devotees have grown to relish over twenty-one novels. While the main characters of the book really are Walt and Dog, we are still treated to the usual suspects in Walt's circle of support: his under-sheriff (and fiance) Vic Moretti, best friend Henry Standing Bear, secretary Ruby, the former sheriff Lucian Connally, and daughter Kady all make, for the purposes of this story, cameo appearances. The focus remains on Walt’s solitary investigation and Dog’s devoted assistance.

One of Johnson's gifts is his skill at presenting a sense of place. The desert's beauty as well as its dangers. And within this beautiful, if harsh, place Walt has to deal with  fistfights, gun play, and an adrenaline-charged chase across the desert. Overall, Return to Sender is another standout entry for rookie and legacy fans alike, brimming with tension, heart, and the colorful cast that keeps us coming back to for our annual visits into Longmire’s world.

The Cormorant Hunt by Michael Idov

This will be short cuz if I went too far with the plotline, I'd be the King of Spoilers. 

The Cormorant Hunt (a continuation of Idov's The Collaborators, that I see I forgot to post a review) is an electrifying, character-driven spy thriller thick with contemporary geopolitics, intrigue, and razor-sharp wit. The story centers around a disgraced CIA officer Ari Falk, exiled in the Republic of Georgia after exposing a massive conspiracy via what might be considered to be a WikiLeaks kind of disclosure. 

But the CIA hasn't forgetten (or forgiven) Falk for his role in the lead of trade secrets. The new Deputy Director of Cover Operations, Asha Tamaskar, has a plan for Ari . . . assuming she can find him. Now that the intelligence community knows that Falk is on the outs with the CIA, he might just be what the other side might be able to use, assuming he could be turned. And that's just what Tamaskar wants to do. She wants Falk to ingratiated himself in a shadowy organization bent on drilling some holes in the western capitalistic way of life. They are well funded and organized with tentacles crossing multiple borders, nationalities, and ways of life. If Falk can weasel his way in, the CIA could gain vital intel on how to disrupt plans and, with any luck, break up this cabal. The front man is Felix Burnham, Russian born but grew up in the US to the point of working in the CIA before dropping off the grid. Means Falk, who is used to being the one doing the recruiting of foreign, now has to become the one being recruited, this time by a skilled manipulator. 

As with any double agent, Falk struggles with being both a hero and a traitor, especially when alliances are always shifting. Dangerous new intelligence arises around most every corner. This complex covert assignment pulls Ari into a complex labyrinth of extremist groups and shadowy operatives across Europe as he is vetted at every stop. Burnham is a chilling, narcissistic antagonist with radical intentions to threaten global security and stability. Idov’s narrative moves briskly from Tbilisi to Prague and Russia taking us to seemingly authentic settings and pulse-pounding action; prepare to be constantly guessing.

Idov treats the reader to smart dialogue and moral ambiguity with real-world consequences, The Cormorant Hunt is quite the page-turner challenging us with the cost of loyalty and betrayal in a fractured world. If you like LeCarre and other modern storytellers of espionage, this is a story just for you.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance review copy. Publication date is Jan 27, 2026 so be patient. It's worth the wait

  

ECD 

Not My Type: One Woman vs. A President

 Not My Type are the words Donald J. Trump used in his response to looking at a photo of E. Jean Carroll, and then she used those same words as her book title as she provided the details of her life and the two trials that were held, the first for sexual abuse and defamation, the second trial for the same. Her subtitle is One Woman vs. A President. Of course, we know now that Trump lost both of those trials and was ordered to pay Ms. Carroll $83.3 million. Now, Trump hast lost his appeal and it is likely that this legal matter will probably be appealed to the Supreme Court. Although Ms. Carroll has yet to collect a single penny, the unpaid penalty is accruing 9% interest on a daily basis which apparently amounts to about $100,000 per day. Trump’s current debt to her stands at over $100,000,000. 

There is so much to this book that I did not expect. Ms. Carroll has been a gifted writer throughout her adult life, and she readily applied her skills to these events. I liked the organization of the book as she told her life story, and described the personalities of and physical descriptions of the primary players in this ongoing legal drama. I’ve read no clearer evidence of Trump being an outrageous liar. I’ve come away with an admiration of the legal knowledge and skill by Robbie Kaplan and her team, and the inadequacy of Trump’s legal team. Mostly, I’ve come away with admiration for Ms. Carroll and her ability to stand up to Trump under unbelievable pressure. It is my opinion that Trump is hampered in choosing competent people to surround him as the result of his narcissistic, sociopathic, and borderline personality disorder.

 

Carroll tells a very good story. I literally could not put this book down.

The Short Stories of Ernest Hemmingway

 I picked up The Short Stories of Ernest Hemmingway because I wanted to read a couple short stories he had written about his time in East Africa. It was Hemmingway’s sons Patrick and Sean who compiled the stories and published them in 2017. Ernest wrote “The Art of the Short Story” in 1959 from Malaga, Spain where he was staying at the time.

I must write that I’ve never been a big fan of Hemmingway although I was greatly enamored by The Old Man and the Sea, but his other novels just left me unimpressed. The two short stories that drew my attention were The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber and The Snows of Kilimanjaro. Those stories were suggested by my brother-in-law, a literature professor emeritus. Hemmingway certainly captured the dysfunctional and unhappy marriage of the Macombers. While the setting was in East Africa and hunting game was an important part of the action, I was left feeling quite flat after the story ended. The second short story just seemed dated and rather uninteresting in a current day light.

Heroes, the Greek Myths Reimagined

Heroes, the Greek Myths Reimagined by Stephen Fry is the second in a four-book set. I raved about the first book, Mythos, and I’m obviously not alone in my appreciate for Fry’s work. There had been a 14-week wait for access to that audiobook on the Libby app. While Mythos covers the whole beginning of the Greek mythologies, Heroes is a wonderful follow-up as Fry covers the stories of Perseus, Jason, Atalanta, Theseus, and Heracles (and more). While these stories have been told and retold for so long, Fry’s audiobook is done with the grandeur that such heroes deserve. He makes the stories seem bold and new. It’s where so many of our modern heroic acts were really told for the first time. I’m in love with this work, and now I’m waiting for my app Libby to bring me the third book, The Odyssey which I’ve read countless times. The Odyssey is perhaps, my favorite story, my favorite novel of all.