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.