Sunday, January 23, 2011

The Art Of Racing In The Rain by Garth Stein

The book is fine, just too depressing for my tastes, I stopped halfway through.

Fidelity by Thomas Perry

Perry is probably my favorite active author and this book was pretty good. After L.A. PI Phil Kramer is shot dead as he's getting into his car one night on a quiet street, his wife, Emily, and his staff set out to find whodunit and why. As they dig, Emily discovers Phil had many secrets. Meanwhile, Jerry Hobart, the hired gun, is ordered to kill Emily. Suspicious of his client's motives, Jerry starts investigating his client, who, the reader learns, is Ted Forrest, a wealthy playboy with a secret life.

Monday, January 17, 2011

House Secrets by Mike Lawson

Very enjoyable, I look forward to reading another in the series.  DeMarco is sent to investigate the death of a reporter, the son of one of his boss’ old colleagues, even though it appears to be nothing more than an unfortunate accident. He soon learns that the reporter was on the trail of Senator Paul Morelli, a rising star considered a shoe-in for his party’s presidential nomination. Some politicians are lucky, and Morelli has been luckier than most, but his past has already been thoroughly scrutinized and he looks clean. But then, why is DeMarco being followed by a pair of rogue agents who freelance for the CIA?

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Print The Legend by Craig McDonald

Solid, well written and interesting...but for some odd reason its not hard to put down and not compelling to come back to. I felt the same way about Toros A Toros, and it's hard to explain because both are good books.

McDonald raises a little discussed theory about Ernest Hemingway's suicide in 1961—that the writer's last wife, Mary, killed her husband as an act of mercy—in his provocative third Hector Lassiter mystery (after 2008's Toros & Torsos). Set in Sun Valley, Idaho, at a conference of Papa academics in 1965, the plot zeroes in on three men who have come to the conference with their own pieces of unfinished business to discuss with Mary. One is crime novelist Hector Lassiter, Hem's old friend, who's heard rumors of the discovery of lost writings. Another is Richard Paulson, a Hemingway scholar who wants to set the record straight on the suicide. Finally, there's Donovan Creedy, an old FBI man who's dogging the case for his own, dark reasons. McDonald creates a fast-paced drama—replete with shifting motives and personal interests on the part of all the major players—about the lore of one of America's greatest novelists.

The Hunted by Brian Haig

Haig can write, sometimes he's very interesting, but I won't be reading him again. Too violent and goes on and on and on and on...

The incredible rise and fall of a Russian multimillionaire. The brilliant, hard-working Alex Konevitch amasses a fortune in the building trades in the early 1990s only to have it stolen by a cabal of KGB men led by the KGB's deputy director, who not only takes Konevitch's money and control of his company but also frames him for assorted crimes. Pursued by assassins, Konevitch and his wife go on the run. The couple make their way to America, where they begin to prosper, then fall afoul of a venal FBI director out to enhance his own reputation. The reality aspect of the tale will remind readers of the repressive regime that Russia was and may be again—and of the perfidy of individuals in our own government when greed and ambition are put before democracy and justice.

Wednesday, January 05, 2011

Hunting Season by P. T. Deutermann

Enjoyable story forgotten as quickly as it's read.  Would read another title by this author. Edwin Kreiss is a former FBI agent whose discovery of a Chinese espionage ring made him a lot of enemies and resulted in his early retirement. Now his daughter is missing, and nobody, least of all a junior G-woman named Janet Carter, is going to keep him from finding her. Browbeating the one clue to her disappearance out of a terrified college student, Kreiss follows his daughter's trail to a deactivated federal arsenal in southwestern Virginia, where a fanatic whose son was immolated at Waco is cooking up a plan to blow the ATF to bits.

Saturday, January 01, 2011

House Rules by Mike Lawson

I liked this book and look forward to the next one in the series. It's light mindless spyventure. From Publishers Weekly...At the start of Lawson's snappy third thriller starring congressional snoop Joe DeMarco (after The Second Perimeter), a series of three failed attempts by Muslim terrorists to attack Washington, D.C.—one by plane, one by car, one by lone suicide bomber—causes nationwide panic. DeMarco wades into the mess when his boss, House Speaker John Mahoney, asks him to check out the possibility that the terrorist onslaught may have been more homegrown than it appears.