Fire Feud

 Fire Feud is the second novel by Thomas Roehlk, but now that I’ve enjoyed that murder mystery published in 2025, I’m going to find his first novel, Red Deuce which was published in 2024.

 This story involves two construction companies that have been rivals for more than 100 years, and under suspect circumstances, one of them has consistently underbid and won the major construction projects while the other has played second fiddle to those biggest deals. The founders of the companies, both immigrants from different companies, had learned to hate each other while they were helping to dig the Erie Canal. At the conclusion of that project, they went separate ways although both continued to work mostly on canal projects until they both ended up founding construction companies in Chicago. It was during a current major dig in Chicago that a body was discovered, hidden in the pilings of a bridge abutment. It turned out to be a man who had been the founder of one of those companies.

 

Patrick Carney was thought to have perished in the 1871 fire that devastated the city, The Great Chicago Fire, but his body was never recovered. By legend, it had been Mrs. O’Leary’s cow that knocked over a lantern which set the city on fire. Roehlk wrote that it now looked as if the fire had not killed him, but that he was murdered, and his body had been purposefully hidden. Meanwhile, more murders happened involving the two families who had been feuding with each other since the two companies had been founded Frank Wagner was the founder of the company that had been significantly more successful than the other. Could he have been involved in the 1871 disappearance of Mr. Carney?

 

Meanwhile, an important subplot was developing. The term Red Deuce was a reference to identical twin redheaded sisters. One of them was an attorney who worked for the more successful company and the other was a forensic pathologist employed by the FBI. They lived together in Chicago and were sometimes involved in the same cases, and both were very eligible women in their 30s.

 

Good plot, good characters. I recommend this one highly. I thought the book should have been dedicated to Mrs. O’Leary since it absolved her of having caused the fire that killed hundreds of people and destroyed most of Chicago.

Fortune Favors the Dead

 Fortune Favors the Dead is the first of a five-book (so far) series regarding the detective team of Lillian Pentecost and Will Parker. I’ve already reviewed books two and three and I wish I had read them in the order that they were published. The books do work as stand-alone novels, but if you don’t read them in order, then you would miss some of the character development that the author, Stephen Spotswood has written so skillfully. This book introduces the primary characters and gives the history of their lives before they teamed up, and there’s a quick review of some of the cases that they solved in the three years since they met and this story occurs in 1945. Pentecost is the wise detective, now 45 years old and suffering from slowly advancing muscular dystrophy. She is widely recognized as the best detective in NYC if not the whole world, and Parker is her talented protégé. 

 

Spotswood has developed fascinating characters including the unlikely pairing of Pentecost and Parker. It’s a great plot which I choose not to give away, and I certainly did not see the very late twist that changed the perspectives that these two females sleuths had uncovered over the course of the book. This novel gets my highest recommendation.

Hold Strong

 

Hold Strong is the latest novel by Robert Dugoni that I’ve reviewed. I’m impressed with the wide variety of genres that he has tackled. This one is historical fiction, a WWII novel that mostly takes place in the Pacific theater. I’ve probably read several hundred WWII novels although most have been stories that took place in the European arena. This is a sentimental story of heroism and love that must have truly taken place thousands of times during the course of the war. A young couple from rural Minnesota has just graduated from high school and it was their plan to return to Eagle Grove and continue their family tradition of being farmers. Then WWII happened and it changed both of their lives in immeasurable ways.

 

Dugoni tracked the most interesting lives of Sam Carlson and Sarah Haber. Although this book is fiction, Dugoni wrote with accuracy about the lives that they lived. This story touches the lives of so many people I knew from that same generation, including my parents. While I knew so many of the true events to which Dugoni placed his characterts, I had never heard of the “hell boats” that the Japanese used to transport POWs or the decision by the US Government to sink those boats although they knew so many POWs were being kept there. The thinking at the time that if they selectively saved the “hell boats” that the Japanese would figure out that the US had broken their communication codes, which would cause the Japanese to change the codes and thus prolong the war.

 

To complete your own knowledge about life and at home during the Pacific battles of WWII, I highly recommend this novel.

Secrets Typed in Blood

 Secrets Typed in Blood by Stephen Spotswood is the third book of his five-book series, The Pentecost and Parker Mystery Series. This story takes place in 1947 in New York City where the world’s greatest detective, Lillian Pentecost, lives and maintains her office. Will Parker is her young protégé and the two of them have formed a formidable detective team. They continue to be hired by people who either don’t want to go to the police with their problems, or the police had simply been unable to solve their problems, usually murders. A successful crime writer, Holly Quick discovered that someone was acting out her murder mysteries in real life. She felt violated to have to her ideas stolen.

 The cases are complex, but never too complicated for the remarkable Ms. Pentecost. Pentecost has muscular dystrophy which is slowly getting worse, and she is very dependent on Will for all of the leg work required of such an occupation. There are multiple copycat murders, and then one occurs when it is fresh off Ms. Quick’s typewriter, before it had even been published.

 

Spotswood has filled out his story with interesting characters surrounding both Ms. Quick and the detectives. The plot is well designed and I certainly did not see the end coming before I got there. The writing of Spotswood is starting to grow on me. Now, I’ve acquired the first book in the series, Fortune Favors The Dead. While these books do work as stand-alone novels, I think it makes more sense to read them in the order in which they’ve been published.

The Last Adam

 The Last Adam by Ron Echols is a modern era story about the second coming of Christ. The title of the book is a biblical reference to Jesus. It is written from a Christian perspective regarding the battle between good and evil. Nonearthly forces are called in on both sides of the battle as those same sides anticipate the birth of a new baby human who will be the force that turns the Earth into an example of success of the forces of good when the longstanding battle by the evil forces had slowly been winning that struggle during recent centuries. Mary and Joseph find one another to bring a male child into the world and it is their goal to keep the infant safe until he can begin to teach mankind the good values of Christianity. 

I am probably not the right person to write this review given that I’m not a Christian, and I certainly don’t trust the values of Christianity given the history of corruption and cruelty that has followed organized Christian churches, be they Catholic or Protestant. However, I was asked to review the book and report my thoughts about it. In a short comment, it is perhaps the worst book I’ve ever read. It might sell well in Christian bookstores, but I have trouble imagining that it would do well in any other retail setting. This story was a repetition of a 2,000-year-old-myth and was certainly not my cup of tea.

Murder Under Her Skin

 I read about the Pentecost and Parker Mystery Series by Stephen Spotswood in the New York Book Review, and the 5^th book Dead in the Frame was ranked as the best crime novel of 2025. The author raved about the whole series, so rather than jump into the fifth book, I found the second and third books on Libby and began to listen during my early morning dog walks. I’ve finished the second book, Murder Under Her Skin, and now I’ve started the third, Secrets Typed in Blood, and I’ve just gotten the first one, Fortune Favors the Dead. Meanwhile, the best crime novel of the year is sitting in my Audible account just waiting for me. I’ll review these in the order that I’m reading them. 

In Murder Under Her Skin, the reader meets the world-famous detective Lillian Pentecost and her protégé, Willojean Parker, as they learn of a murder that has occurred in a travelling circus. This just happens to be the traveling circus to which Willojean, Will, escaped from her very dysfunctional family as a young teen. The victim was Ruby Donner, the tattooed circus woman, a fascinating character who had been so loved by nearly the entire circus family, including Will. The main suspect had been Will’s circus mentor, a knife throwing expert. After being a part of the tight circus family for several years, as the circus was dying, Will had left for a better opportunity as an assistant to Ms. Pentecost. But, the circus people had always been loving and supportive of Will, effectively her surrogate parents. She expected to be as much a the part of that circus family as when she had lived with them, but Will soon learned that there were lots of secrets that were being kept from her. During her five years with Pentecost, Will had proven herself to be a hard worker and a very gifted detective herself.

 

The story took place on the East Coast during the 1940s. All of the characters in the circus were fascinating, and there was clearly competition among them for being the most desirable performer. I thought it was a fun read or I would not have acquired more of the books in the series. Still, I’m intrigued by the notion of getting to the “best crime novel” of the year. At Men Reading Books, we’ve reviewed more than 1800 books, most of them crime/mystery/thriller novels, more than 100 of those this year alone, and we’ve written about our favorite authors including Daniel Silva, Louise Penny, C.J. Box, Michael Connelly, Brad Thor, Charlie Stella, Greg Iles, James Lee Burke, John Grisham, Lee Child, Jonathan Kellerman, Robert Crais, and about 1,000 more. Are these stories by Spotswood better than those authors, or even as good as them? I’ll need to see more of his work before I rate him as the equal of than those others. However, I am titillated to have a new body of work to learn about, and at least my initial impression is favorable. I have been duly entertained.

Nash Falls

Nash Falls is a new novel from David Baldacci who is introducing a new protagonist, Walter Nash. Nash came from a Vietnam War verteran father and a most loving and supportive father. His parents’ marriage was a good one and both of them were obviously still in love with each other through Nash’s early years. Nash was proud of his father’s accomplishments in Vietnam, a decorated war hero. His dad had also been a star athlete in high school and college, and Nash thought he wanted him to follow in those footsteps. However, Nash chose tennis because he loved the sport and didn’t have to get beat up by others in the process of playing. Nash always thought that was the reason that they had a major falling out and then both father and son began leading noncommunicative lives. Nash perceived that his father hated him, and that did not change when his mother was diagnosed with late-stage cancer and died at too early an age. Although Nash himself got married and had two children with Judith, he always maintained an emotional distance from everyone.

 

Meanwhile, Nash used his college degree to become an expert in investments, and he advanced to a senior executive VP at a company called Symbaritic Investments. The company was wildly successful because of the financial success of Barton Temple who had founded the company, and then turned the CEO duties to his son Rhett. Rhett was Nash’s boss, and Rhett was clearly a severe narcissist and could not accept that the company’s significant continued prosperity was really due to Nash and not himself.

 

Although Nash and his father lived only eight miles apart, there was never a rapproachment for Nash and his father, Ty, and Nash only learned of his father’s death from an elderly neighbor who let him know that his father’s funeral was about to happen. It was at the funeral that Ty’s best friend, a fellow Vietnam veteran, stood up and openly verbally ripped Nash a new anal orifice. But then Ty’s will seemed to cloud the picture about his real feelings for his son.

 

At the same time, Nash was approached by the FBI about illegal dealings by his company, something that he had not known. This was when this story got most interesting. There were giant forces at workon both sides of the corruption, and Nash’s life was certainly in danger. When Barton Temple was murdered and all vectors pointed at Nash as being responsible, when this emotionally limited man’s marriage was coming apart, and then his beloved daughter was kidnapped by the very evil side in the corruption struggle, Nash turned for help to the very man who had badly embarrassed him at his dad’s funeral. He disappeared for more than a year while getting ready to return to deal with both the FBI and the evil forces leading the corruption. 

That’s enough of the plot. The plot development was excellent and the characters were believable and held my interest. I think this book shows Baldacci at his best. It comes to an end just as Nash is flying to Hong Kong to take on the very dangerous and notorious Victoria Sterers who has been stealing billions of dollars from Symbaritic. Now, ASAP, I want to get my hands on the sequel, Hope Rises.

The Blink of an Eye

 In The Blink Of An Eye by Yoav Blum is a story of time travel, which has always been a favorite of mine. Time travel just grabs my imagination. It was in the late 1950’s that I received a magazine, Boys Life, as the result of being a member of the Cub Scouts. They published a monthly serial of stories about time travel, and I could hardly wait for the next issue. It never mattered whether it was a book, a newspaper story, a short story, whatever, I always enjoyed thinking about the topic. It was several years ago that I read a fascinating time travel novel that had a psychoanalytic twist. I thought it was called “The Little Book,” but now I can’t find my review in the blog, and to make it worse, I can’t recall the author’s name.

 

This novel by Blum has a very complex plot. There are a close group of friends who have known each other since college, and they are all bright and talented. It was one of them, a brilliant physicist who built a time machine. The rules of the use of the machine were unique. One could only observe the past and not the future. In observing the past, the physicist insisted that one could not make any changes, like preventing Kennedy from being assassinated. He wrote that doing so would surely make time collapse on itself. He described that as a paradox which had to avoided. But, as the story continued, he began to actual travel in time, which was a most exciting thing for the world renown historian in the group. This was a murder mystery that by the book’s end, the murder of the builder of the time travel machine, and the mystery was not solved.

 

I did not enjoy this novel and do not recommend it to anyone that might happen upon it, but mabe you’ll find it more interesting that I did.

Life & Death & Giants

 At least for the length of this novel, I’ve abandoned our usual murder mystery, thriller, and espionage genres. Life & Death & Giants by Ron Rindo is just great literature. This is a story about an Amish community in Wisconsin and their interactions with people that live outside their community, typically referred to by them as the English. There is a very large Amish community in northern Indiana where I grew up, and I’ve visited the larger Amish community in Pennsylvania. My parents sometimes hired Amish women to help clean our house and we often visited an organic fruit and vegetable stand to buy food for the house. The quality of their sweet corn is something I can never forget. Our interactions with them were always curious, honest and wholesome. 

I learned more about the severe and unforgiving image of God that drives the organization of their lives, and the danger that “English” lives present to their way of thinking. Although generally withdrawn into their own community and avoidant of significant interactions with the English, some interactions are inevitable. The interactions among the Amish community itself is beautifully portrayed.

 

In this story a huge baby boy is born to an Amish woman who was excommunicated because her pregnancy did not arise from a marriage. That is a severe punishment that challenged her own ability to survive. Fortunately, she found an English woman who helped her. The boy, surely suffering from acromegaly (a pituitary gland tumor) although that was not specified by the author, was huge at birth, and he just kept getting bigger eventually becoming over 8 feet tall and weighing nearly 600 pounds (all muscle). He was a sensitive and well-loved man who grew up on the periphery of the Amish community and he became a sensation when he accepted a football scholarship to the University of Wisconsin where he became a once-in-a-lifetime star until he lost his leg as the result of a football injury. His exposure to the English world led him away from the Amish, and he actually became a sensation in the sports world when he agreed to become a one-legged professional wrestler. From my perspective, it was a most creative idea.

 

The quality of Rindo’s writing was wonderful. The plot unfolded in a carefully planned manner, and this reader became fascinated with the Amish and non-Amish characters. These were complicated people, bot the Amish and English. I needed to know how Rindo would bring the various subplots of love, struggle, angst, and death to a meaningful conclusion. He succeeded in all regards.

 

I’ll be returning to my usual genre in the immediate future, but this book is surely one of the best stories that I read this year.

Tourist Season

 After reading and reviewing 1,835 books in this blog, most of which have been murder mysteries and thrillers, I’d say we’ve never seen a book quite like this one. Brynne Weaver has written about 11 novels, and I read about this book in the New York Times book reviews. She is a best-selling author, and her website recommends that her books be read either in the order of publication, or in the case of her three series, start with the first and read to the end. Tourist Season is the first of two books, the second called Harvest Season, and the series is entitled The Seasons of Carnage Trilogy. 

The novel begins with the tragedy of a driver crashing her car into another, apparently on purpose. Nolan Rhodes was a victim of the accident, and he spent months in a hospital in the course of his recovery. His little brother was killed, and two other friends in the backseat walked away with scratches. But Nolan’s life was turned inside out over the loss of his brother. He got a good look at the driver who fled from the scene and disappeared from law enforcement efforts to bring her to justice. It was the rage he felt about his brother and his own injuries that caused him to pursue the driver, Harper Starling. He spent for years trying to find her until Harper was located in a seaside town, Cape Carnage. Nolan’s anger led to him becoming a serial killer of other thoughtless criminals who had killed innocent people. Harper was already a serial killer who had found the place she wanted to grow old, and it was her intent to both protect the town and to protect her aging mentor, a famous but also elusive serial killer. Then, they were all being hunted by a true crime devotee who was operating a popular website and looking for another big story.

 

Most of the time I was reading this well-designed dark thriller, I felt the humor of Nolan falling madly in love with Harper who he wanted to murder, and Weaver wrote some of the most vivid sex scenes that I’ve ever reviewed. In an important sense, this was absurd. It felt like watching the TV series Dexter although the intensity was doubled, no cubed.

 

This is not great literature, but I was duly entertained, and I do plan to read the second novel in this series.

The World Played Chess

 The World Played Chess by Robert Dugoni is a coming of age novel that is about the very era in which I came of age. Although I was lucky enough to get a high draft number which kept me in school and away from military action in Vietnam, the Vietnam War has always been a part of my life, and as the years went by, it became a more tangible reality for me. After finishing medical school, I began training as a psychiatrist in the immediate post Vietnam War era. In med school, I spent many hours seeing patients in two different VA hospitals. My residency was based in a VA hospital as well as a predominant academic institution. When I left one residency program to move to another, it was once again at a VA hospital. Upon graduation, I ran the psychiatric emergency clinic at the same VA where I supervised every admission, many of which were once again, Vietnam related. After a couple years, I stayed with the academic setting in a volunteer status and continued to supervise psychiatric residents who were seeing lots of combat soldiers. I remember seeing one soldier from the Spanish American War, many World War II soldiers, a former POW in Korea, and many others from the various military conflicts in which the U.S. got involved.

 

I know too many war stories, and it was certainly traumatic for me as I sat for hours listening to men tell about the atrocities they had witnessed and participated in. I became an expert in PTSD. I remember walking out of a war movie because of the horror and anxiety I felt, and I’ve still never seen Band of Brothers. My sensitivity to such things has eased somewhat over the decades, but I’m still careful about any war-related material that I read. It was with some trepidation that I continued reading this book once I realized that a large part of it was about men who had to come to terms with combat experiences. All of the material presented by Dugoni was consistent with the war stories that I had heard directly from combat soldiers. It was the recognizance Marines that always had the scariest stories.

 

So, The World Played Chess was about young men who were shipped off to Vietnam, the more than 50,000 who did not make it home, and those who did make it home with horrible experiences of war to think about in civilian life. The book was also about other young men who were learning about adult responsibilities and their own rebellious feelings. It was the character William Goodman who wrote a diary about his war and life experiences, and after many years of not seeing his surviving Vietnam buddies, he sent the journal to Vincent Bianco, who was Dugoni’s protagonist. By the time “Vincenzo” read the journal, he had become a lawyer, had a long-term marriage, and had children of his own who were dealing with their own coming of age events. Now, Vincent was dealing with a new set of trials which involved being a good parent as his children prepared to leave home to face very different challenges than he had faced.

 

I thought it was a well-designed plot and an entirely excellent account of the unique struggles Vietnam era soldiers had to face and then continue to manage over their ensuing years. The characters that Dugoni developed were all very believable. I give this book a very strong favoraable recommendation.

Long Time Gone

 My binging of Charlie Donlea’s novels might be over, at least regarding those in audio format I think I've now been through them all. If you’ve been following my book reviews, you know that I’ve found his plots and characters to be excellent. If read one after the other in the course of less than two months. In this one, Long Time Gone, there was excellent development of his protagonist, Sloan Hastings, a physician who is completing her fellowship in forensic pathology. When she submits her own DNA to a popular genetic tracing service, her own family of origin came back as a total surprise. Sloan knew she had been adopted, but she learned she had been the victim of an unsolved kidnapping 30 years earlier, a national news sensation.

I thought this was an excellent story and I was about to recommend it to my daughter. After an exciting plot, the final story hung on one ridiculous detail that was beyond the realm of believability. While readers in this genre must be willing to suspend reality to a degree, there are limits to that. For the first time, Donlea went beyond the border of believability, and it sure spoiled a good book. So, I was entertained until the very end. I am disappointed. Maybe you’ll have a different reaction.

King of Ashes

 My fellow reviewer, ECD, wrote a wonderful review about this novel on 8/5/25. Please read his review, and I'll only add a few words. It was ECD who introduced me to Cosby's work, and I had already read this one. Then, I saw it was available on Libby in audio format, and chose to listen to it. This is southern noir at its best. I find myself gasping as I take in the plot and learn about his characters. Cosby use of language is captivating. He gets a 5/5 from me.

The Suicide House

 I’ve continued my binge reading and listening to murder mysteries by Charlie Donlea. There may be only two books left that are available in audio format. My last read was The Suicide House, a story that takes place at a successful high school college prep boarding program. The campus is large and beautiful, and the teachers also lived on campus in a building that provided them with privacy from the students. However, when a train track was built to support a local mining operation, the teachers’ house became undesirable due to the constant noise. But when that structure was abandoned, it became the favorite place for students to use when they wanted to get away from the very strict rules that were a part of their academic program. Party on!

 

But then there was a series of deaths in the old teachers’ house and on the nearby railroad tracks. In the second book in the Rory Moore/Lane Phillips, Donlea further developed those characters. It was Rory who had a unique expertise in recreating murder scenes from cold case unsolved crimes. Lane was the one person in the world who understood this obsessional and autistic woman. His support allowed her to do her thing. She simply saw clues that others had missed.

 

This is a good plot and I appreciated learning more about the protagonists. Perhaps this book is not great literature, but it is captivating none-the-less. If this is your genre, you should get to know Charlie Donlea.

The Widow

 The Widow is a John Grisham novel. I think we’ve read and reviewed most of Grisham’s novels and he has generally gotten high praise, if not outright ravings regarding his characters and plots. In this story, an elderly widow, Ms. Eleanor Barnett, walked into a lawyer’s small office with a request to rewrite her will. She had done this recently with another lawyer in the same small town, but she had grown to distrust that guy. In fact, when it seemed she was a woman of great wealth, the lawyer wrote a clause to grant himself a near half-million dollar cash gift at the time of the widow’s death. Simon Latch, the new attorney, had seen his practice slide toward bankruptcy, in part because of his failed marriage, but also because of his gambling debts. The widow’s husband had apparently led a frugal life and left her with about $20,000,000 in stocks for Coca-Cola and WalMart.

 

Desperate to find a way to avoid his own financial demise, Simon agreed to take the case at a rather high fee for the work he would do, and he then avoided thoroughly vetting his client when she did not produce the usual documents with regard to her assets. He was afraid that if he pressed her for the information, that she would just take her estate matters to another attorney. She began to take up more and more of Simon’s time, but he kept on with the expenses that Ms. Barnett was accruing with a promise of a huge payout from her estate. Then she became ill, was hospitalized, and then died quickly under suspicious circumstances. All guilty motives pointed toward Simon.

 

I would rate this as an interesting book, but it’s not one which held my interest to the extent that most of his others have done. I don’t think this novel is Grisham’s best work.

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 

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.