The Keeper

 This is not actually a review of the content of Tana French’s new book The Keeper.  I did not realize just how important the voice is in an audiobook, but I quickly realized it with this one. I only got about 2% into the book when I simply could not stand to listen to the narrator. The voice was too slow, too dramatic and hysterical, so I gave up. Although I liked and gave positive reviews of a couple of her early books, and although I did review six of her books, I’ve not been a great fan of her writing and haven’t read her work since 2018. Anyhow, perhaps this book would have turned the tables for me since she is obviously a very successful writer. But, the narrator soured my mood. I even tried to listen to it a day later – just could not do it. Now, duh, I've developed a new appreciation for most of the great narrators that have brought me so much pleasure. I didn't realize that I was taking them for granted. No more! Maybe you won't be turned off to this reader the way that I was.

The Butcher's Boy

 The Butcher’s Boy by Thomas Perry, a very prolific writer, published his first novel in 1982, and he won an Edgar Award for it. Although I listened to this audiobook to the end, I thought the best part was the introduction, I’m guessing it was written in the early 2000s, by Michael Connelly. He wrote about struggling with people who were complimenting his own writing only to have someone say they still liked his first book the best (The Black Echo published in 1992).  Connelly wrote this introduction at a time when Connelly had already written 12 books, so he lamented that such a back-handed compliment meant his time since the first publication must have been time squandered. He described feeling some difficulty with his feeling that The Butcher’s Boy was also Perry’s best work. Connelly added that his own reaction to such a compliment did eventually change and he was able to respond more kindly to those compliments. (I’ve read The Black Echo several times, and while I think it was a very good story, Connelly is the master of this genre, and he has in fact written more and better works.)

My primary problem with this audiobook was the narrator. The man spoke in too slow a cadence and there was a slight slur to his words, as if he was a bit drunk. The story itself was quite solid as you might guess given its history of winning the Edgar, but I think the novel would be better received by reading it and not just listening. I’m not really motivated to read the second book in the series, at least not in the audiobook format with the same narrator. The reviews of the four-book series have been quite favorable.

 

Against All Odds

 It was about a year ago that I read and reviewed my first Richard Danzig novel, The Collectors. It was the third in a series of novels about Chance Cormac, a Brooklyn attorney. Against All Odds is the fourth book in the series and I thought it was a better read than the prior one. There were three main story lines in this novel. One had to do with Chance’s choice to confront a very dangerous woman who was the head of a corrupt triad group based in Hong Kong. It was a story that was a sequel to The Collectors, and once again, it showed Chance’s willingness to put his life at risk in order to help his friends and to right a wrong.

The second storyline had to do with the ICE arrest of Dr. Lyla Abda. She was born in Syria where she overcame the most difficult circumstances at home in her country and win scholarships to a university. Her successful scholarship next won her admission to a medical school in London. After medical school, she began working on various projects to feed impoverished and malnourished refugees in various locations in the world. She ended up writing a paper about malnourishment that was published in a medical journal. She was then invited to do research on that subject at Yale. Based on the misinterpretation of that research paper, in the US, she was charged as being a terrorist. When she was ordered to be released from custody, the government shipped her off to a notorious prison in El Salvadore. Chance took on that case which ended up leading to him getting shot in the chest while delivering a public challenge to the ICE operation. He barely survived. You’ll have to read the book to learn about the resolution of this matter.

The third story line was the continuation of Chance’s troubled personal life. He had a relationship with Sally that he was very certain would lead to marriage. As a younger woman, Sally had a daughter via IVF from a sperm donor. The pregnancy resulted in the birth of Melody who turned out to be a bright and talented student and athlete. Chance loved both Sally and Melody. When Melody was in high school, they investigated who the sperm donor might have been and learned that it was a man named James, a pro tennis player who had briefly played on the pro circuit, but who had retired to become a tennis teacher. He then became Melody’s coach, and she loved the attention of both men. James became a part of the family, and Chance felt quite threatened by is love for the two women. But James had a serious and eventually fatal diagnosis of cancer, and Sally decided that the father of her child deserved to have a true family experience with what a short life he had left, and she agreed to marry him. Chance was incredibly wounded by the experience, and he exited himself from the family although his live for Sally and Melody was unchanged. As James’ disease progressed to its fatal conclusion, Melody became severely depressed and withdrawn from school and her tennis activities. The resolution of those problems was most touching and brought this novel to an end.

I enjoyed the author’s three stories, and I look forward to see what will happen with Chance’s personal life, as well as learning what important social issues he chooses to write about.

The Conviction

I’ve reviewed at least eight novels by Robert Dugoni, most of which I’ve commented about very favorably. The Conviction does not stand up to the author's prior efforts. This is meant to be a thriller about the never-loses lawyer, David Sloane. Written in 2012, the story surrounds Sloane and a friend choosing to take their boys on a wilderness hike. The story surrounds the boys running afoul of the law in a small California town which has been purchased in its entirety by a very wealthy man who wants to run a tight ship with regard to even the pettiest of crimes, or really, just bad manners. The boys are arrested for sneaking out at night and breaking into a small store at night, and before Sloane and his friend can even wake up the next morning, the boys have been tried and sent off to a juvenile boot camp respectively for 6 months and 12 months. Then Sloane and his friend are arrested for being rude to the judge who had sentenced the boys.

I thought the story was ridiculous. Those of us who love thrillers and murder mysteries must suspend judgement to some extent regarding the circumstances that we’re reading about, but the stories can’t go too far away from reality to keep us interested. This one crosses that line the wrong way. I got to the one-quarter mark of the book and decided I had better things to do with my time.

I’m not recommending this one. Good authors can’t write a winner every time, and this is just one of those books that does not qualify.

I Shall Not Want

 

I Shall Not Want by Julia Spencer-Fleming is this author’s sixth book in her Fergusson/Alstyne murder mysteries. If you’ve been following my reviews of these books, you’ll know that I’ve had quite favorable opinions of those novels. Please search for those comments in this blog. In this story, the relationship between the two protagonists is finally consummated, this being made possible by the murder of Alstyne’s wife of 25 years. However, as seen in the earlier books, Spencer-Fleming does not make that happen easily. Both parties are torn between living according to high ethical standards and the obvious sexual craving that they have for one another. In addition, the mutual self-tortures of Clare and Russ are accompanied by serious criminal activity of others that must be solved. As we’ve seen in prior stories, this involves Clare overstepping the usual boundaries expected of an Episcopal priest and Russ rushing into a dangerous circumstance and getting injured. This time he was shot in the chest, and while close to death, he survives to fight and love another day.

 At this point in the series, I was screaming for the consummation to finally happen. I thought the author really took much too long to get there. From the above paragraph, you get my sense that these stories have gotten a bit formulaic. I just did not enjoy this book much as the earlier ones, but I also know that even the best authors do not always write winners. I do find it remarkable that this reviewer is a nontheist and it is a surprise, even to me, that I’ve gotten this far with a character who is a deep-faith Christian who makes frequent referrals to scripture. Given that I started reading about Clare and Russ in the 11^th book, At Midnight Comes The Cry, and I gave that one a 5-star review.

Theo of Golden

Theo of Golden is not a murder mystery, and it’s not a thriller. It is a wonderful read. Theo, an 86-year-old man suddenly appeared in Golden a small southern Georgia town. He was a wealthy man, but he was quite secretive of his own history. He talked only guardedly about his past and the source of his wealth. He did make friends of the locals, and he was especially enamored with the work of a local artist who was trying to market himself by drawing portraits of local people who frequented a certain coffee shop. The portraits were for sale, but no one was buying them, and the owner of the shop began posting them on the walls of his establishment. Theo hit on the idea of buying the inexpensive works and giving them to the subjects as long as they would reveal to him their stories. He also began to anonymously pay for other needs, like the medical care of those who could not afford it and rehabilitation costs to those in need.

Theo had talked about staying in Golden for at least a year. In that time, he became friends with many people, but when a year went by, he heard the sounds of an assault going on just outside the apartment he was renting. He went to intervene, but fell in the process and died. It was in response to Theo’s death that the author revealed some of Theo's secrets.

I’ll just say that this was a beautiful story about the benefits of charity and generosity. It is certainly not a story that I would seek out, but my daughters and my wife who are prolific readers all convinced me that I would enjoy the story. They were right. It left me thinking how I might be more generous and how listening to others tell their stories could be so enlightening and helpful. I’m not sure I’ve done the plot justice in this review, and I should add that the cast of characters with whom Theo interacted were most interesting. I’ll give this book a 4+ rating and I think you’ll be happy after diving into the story.

 

No Prisoners by Ellis Blake

The proverbial happy family living a comfortable life in the wooded mountains outside of Santa Fe. Hannah and Adam Lyon are PhD physicists. She is the breadwinner working in a private research organization. Adam may also have the degree but is lacking is something else. Drive? Ambition? He'd tried for some time to solve an unsolvable equation in physics (the Yang-Mills equation. It's real. Look it up. Way way way above my paygrade. Even Sheldon Cooper would be stumped) before giving up on physics and his career. In looking for other work he ended in construction. They have a 10yo son, Adam, who is a Type 1 diabetic. We don't learn much about Adam's background. Hannah's background? Yuck. Abusive father and submissive mom. Father continually beat up his wife and had no qualms about telling Adam he was a total loser who didn't deserve Hannah. 

Life in the Lyon household was going along OK until it wasn't. Adam just up and disappeared. No clues. No warnings. Just here today. Gone tomorrow. Without a trace. Police assume basic domestic issues. Guy got fed up and just left to find something, anything, better. 

Hannah isn't convinced. Lou Hunt is the detective who caught the case. He's a late-career Santa Fe police detective with a heart problem. Married with an adult daughter. He thinks Adam either bolted or got caught up in some criminal activity, drugs or human trafficking, and got his just rewards. And Hunt has issues of his own that he isn't proud of and must eventually make amends with his family.  

Not Hannah. Adam's been missing for 5-6 weeks when book begins. She constantly badgers the police who've effectively written her off. Except for Hunt. He'll al least talk with her about possible theories and continually pesters Hannah to tell him every possible scenario for a connection. Even back to her father who, mysteriously, also just up and disappeared a few years earlier. Hunt now ends up with two missing persons cases. 

Hannah's inability to let it go, that he's just gone, ends up making her paranoid when she repeatedly sees a red Jeep Cherokee following her around. As they say, you're not being paranoid if someone really is following. Returning from an outing, she finds her home has been broken into. Whoever did quite the job on her house. She looks high and low for anything that could be missing. Nothing. 

After searching every square inch of the hillside house, she ventures underneath the deck to check on the crawlspace that was unopened and undisturbed. But she also notices that a few of the overhead joists have been sealed. She pries open one seal and finds neatly stacked bundles roughly the size of a paperback. Odd. She pulls one out, tears off the paper and finds bundles of $100 bills. Pulling out all the bundles, she has discovered a whopping $3.9 million. Only reason to find that kind of money has to be drugs. 

Up until now, the story has been plodding along. Now the story skips into high gear. Hannah won't tell the cops because they think she's loony. She's got the money that means she's got some leverage. So she takes the investigation on herself. Think about that. An amateur with a bundle of cash (which someone is really gonna want to get back), a mostly disinterested police force, a missing husband, and a diabetic  child. 

Prepare for multiple twists (might help to keep a notepad nearby to keep track) over the last quarter of the book. 

The 'about the author' blurb says that Ellis Blake is a pseudonym for a NZ-based writer with nine mysteries to his credit but not much else. What I can say is that once Hannah uncovers the cash, the book really does abruptly accelerate to a breathtaking pace with most (but not all) issues being resolved without a tidy storybook happy ending. Have to say, I found Blake's writing style to be right up my alley. Lean, aggressive and sparse without a lot of unnecessary narrative clogging up the story. Pretty sure I'll be checking the library for any of his earlier eight books. 

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance reader copy. Publication date is 21 July 2026. 

 

ECD