Author: James Patterson, Maxine Paetro
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Genre: Mystery
Release: May 2005 My Rating: 0
Summary: After losing one of its own, Lindsay Boxer and the Women's Murder Club make a courageous return for their fourth and most chilling case ever-one that could easily be their last. A young girl is killed in crossfire after a routine arrest goes terribly wrong, and Lt. Lindsay Boxer has to defend herself against a charge of police brutality. In a landmark trial that transfixes the nation, Lindsay fights to save her career and her sanity.
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Genre: Mystery
Release: May 2005 My Rating: 0
Summary: After losing one of its own, Lindsay Boxer and the Women's Murder Club make a courageous return for their fourth and most chilling case ever-one that could easily be their last. A young girl is killed in crossfire after a routine arrest goes terribly wrong, and Lt. Lindsay Boxer has to defend herself against a charge of police brutality. In a landmark trial that transfixes the nation, Lindsay fights to save her career and her sanity.
Author: Patrick Mcginley
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (T)
Genre: Mystery
Release: Jan 1981 My Rating: 0
Summary: Bogmail is an unclaimed jewel of a book. Why this story has never been snapped up by Hollywood I cannot understand (although BBC Northern Ireland did a TV adaptation in 992, the ridiculously named 'Murder in Eden') The characters are well crafted and believable, particularly the central figure, Roarty the pub landlord. Some of the dialogue had my belly aching with laughter. A thoroughly recommended book for lovers of Ireland and the Irish. Five star excellence.
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (T)
Genre: Mystery
Release: Jan 1981 My Rating: 0
Summary: Bogmail is an unclaimed jewel of a book. Why this story has never been snapped up by Hollywood I cannot understand (although BBC Northern Ireland did a TV adaptation in 992, the ridiculously named 'Murder in Eden') The characters are well crafted and believable, particularly the central figure, Roarty the pub landlord. Some of the dialogue had my belly aching with laughter. A thoroughly recommended book for lovers of Ireland and the Irish. Five star excellence.
Author: Dennis Lehane
Publisher: William Morrow
Genre: Mystery
Release: Jan 2001 My Rating: 0
Summary: Ever since blasting onto the literary scene with the Shamus Award-winning "A Drink Before the War", Dennis Lehane has been the golden boy of noir. His Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro novels are marvels of tight pacing, dialogue so good it gets under your skin and stays there, with dead-on portrayals of working-class Boston neighborhoods. Sure, he's the oft-proclaimed, hard-boiled heir to Hammett and Chandler, but Lehane also takes a page from the Hemingway school of hyper-intense writing. He pares away and pares away until he's left with the absolute essentials--and then those essentials just explode off the page.
In his five Kenzie-Gennaro novels, the detective duo is at the nexus of Lehane's big bang. Darkly funny and just this side of jaded, Angie and Patrick move through Dorchester's bleak streets with an assurance born of familiarity. It's impossible to imagine these streets without the pair, or to imagine the pair away from those streets. "Mystic River", then, arrives as a bit of a gamble, as Lehane moves from the sharp edges of portraiture to the broader strokes of landscape. No Angie, no Patrick: this neighborhood is on its own. It's not any prettier and certainly no friendlier, and its working-class façade still barely masks the irresistible tug of violent ways, means, and ends.
Twenty-five years ago, Dave Boyle got into a car. When he came back four days later, he was different in a way that destroyed his friendship with Sean Devine and Jimmy Marcus. Now Sean's a cop, Jimmy's a store owner with a prison record and mob connections, and Dave's trying hard to keep his demons safely submerged. When Jimmy's daughter Katie is found murdered, each of the men must confront a past that none is eager to acknowledge. Lehane tugs delicately on the strands that weave this neighborhood together, testing for their strengths and weaknesses; this novel seems as much anthropological case study as thriller.
By turns violent and pensive, "Mystic River" is vintage Lehane. How good is it? You may go in missing Angie and Patrick, but after a few pages you won't even realize they're gone. Lehane's noir is still black magic. "--Kelly Flynn"
Publisher: William Morrow
Genre: Mystery
Release: Jan 2001 My Rating: 0
Summary: Ever since blasting onto the literary scene with the Shamus Award-winning "A Drink Before the War", Dennis Lehane has been the golden boy of noir. His Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro novels are marvels of tight pacing, dialogue so good it gets under your skin and stays there, with dead-on portrayals of working-class Boston neighborhoods. Sure, he's the oft-proclaimed, hard-boiled heir to Hammett and Chandler, but Lehane also takes a page from the Hemingway school of hyper-intense writing. He pares away and pares away until he's left with the absolute essentials--and then those essentials just explode off the page.
In his five Kenzie-Gennaro novels, the detective duo is at the nexus of Lehane's big bang. Darkly funny and just this side of jaded, Angie and Patrick move through Dorchester's bleak streets with an assurance born of familiarity. It's impossible to imagine these streets without the pair, or to imagine the pair away from those streets. "Mystic River", then, arrives as a bit of a gamble, as Lehane moves from the sharp edges of portraiture to the broader strokes of landscape. No Angie, no Patrick: this neighborhood is on its own. It's not any prettier and certainly no friendlier, and its working-class façade still barely masks the irresistible tug of violent ways, means, and ends.
Twenty-five years ago, Dave Boyle got into a car. When he came back four days later, he was different in a way that destroyed his friendship with Sean Devine and Jimmy Marcus. Now Sean's a cop, Jimmy's a store owner with a prison record and mob connections, and Dave's trying hard to keep his demons safely submerged. When Jimmy's daughter Katie is found murdered, each of the men must confront a past that none is eager to acknowledge. Lehane tugs delicately on the strands that weave this neighborhood together, testing for their strengths and weaknesses; this novel seems as much anthropological case study as thriller.
By turns violent and pensive, "Mystic River" is vintage Lehane. How good is it? You may go in missing Angie and Patrick, but after a few pages you won't even realize they're gone. Lehane's noir is still black magic. "--Kelly Flynn"
Author: Robert B. Parker
Publisher: Jove
Genre: Mystery
Release: Sep 2003 My Rating: 0
Summary: Boston PI Sunny Randall is the daughter Robert Parker's series hero Spenser and his inamorata, Susan Silverman, might have had if they weren't so busy parenting Pearl the Wonder Dog. Like Spenser, Sunny is smart, tough, and fearless; like Susan, she's sexy, droll, and vulnerable; and like Pearl, Sunny's pit bull, Rosie, is the only character who's wise enough to hide when trouble comes knocking at the door. In "Shrink Rap", Sunny's working as a bodyguard for a famous romance writer who's being stalked by her ex-husband, a psychiatrist engaged in extremely unprofessional conduct with his female patients. To get the goods on Dr. John Melvin, Sunny goes undercover as a vulnerable divorcée, which isn't that far from the truth; simultaneously, she's also seeing another therapist, who's supposed to be coaching her for her undercover role but is also helping her understand her troubled relationships with men. It's a clever device, and Parker makes the most of it in this spare, smart, swiftly paced mystery, one of Parker's best in recent years. "--Jane Adams"
Publisher: Jove
Genre: Mystery
Release: Sep 2003 My Rating: 0
Summary: Boston PI Sunny Randall is the daughter Robert Parker's series hero Spenser and his inamorata, Susan Silverman, might have had if they weren't so busy parenting Pearl the Wonder Dog. Like Spenser, Sunny is smart, tough, and fearless; like Susan, she's sexy, droll, and vulnerable; and like Pearl, Sunny's pit bull, Rosie, is the only character who's wise enough to hide when trouble comes knocking at the door. In "Shrink Rap", Sunny's working as a bodyguard for a famous romance writer who's being stalked by her ex-husband, a psychiatrist engaged in extremely unprofessional conduct with his female patients. To get the goods on Dr. John Melvin, Sunny goes undercover as a vulnerable divorcée, which isn't that far from the truth; simultaneously, she's also seeing another therapist, who's supposed to be coaching her for her undercover role but is also helping her understand her troubled relationships with men. It's a clever device, and Parker makes the most of it in this spare, smart, swiftly paced mystery, one of Parker's best in recent years. "--Jane Adams"
Author: Patricia Highsmith
Publisher: Vintage
Genre: Mystery
Release: Sep 1992 My Rating: 0
Summary: One of the great crime novels of the 20th century, Patricia Highsmith's "The Talented Mr. Ripley" is a blend of the narrative subtlety of Henry James and the self-reflexive irony of Vladimir Nabokov. Like the best modernist fiction, "Ripley" works on two levels. First, it is the story of a young man, Tom Ripley, whose nihilistic tendencies lead him on a deadly passage across Europe. On another level, the novel is a commentary on fictionmaking and techniques of narrative persuasion. Like Humbert Humbert, Tom Ripley seduces readers into empathizing with him even as his actions defy all moral standards.
The novel begins with a play on James's "The Ambassadors". Tom Ripley is chosen by the wealthy Herbert Greenleaf to retrieve Greenleaf's son, Dickie, from his overlong sojourn in Italy. Dickie, it seems, is held captive both by the Mediterranean climate and the attractions of his female companion, but Mr. Greenleaf needs him back in New York to help with the family business. With an allowance and a new purpose, Tom leaves behind his dismal city apartment to begin his career as a return escort. But Tom, too, is captivated by Italy. He is also taken with the life and looks of Dickie Greenleaf. He insinuates himself into Dickie's world and soon finds that his passion for a lifestyle of wealth and sophistication transcends moral compunction. Tom will become Dickie Greenleaf--at all costs.
Unlike many modernist experiments, "The Talented Mr. Ripley" is eminently readable and is driven by a gripping chase narrative that chronicles each of Tom's calculated maneuvers of self-preservation. Highsmith was in peak form with this novel, and her ability to enter the mind of a sociopath and view the world through his disturbingly amoral eyes is a model that has spawned such latter-day serial killers as Hannibal Lecter. "--Patrick O'Kelley"
Publisher: Vintage
Genre: Mystery
Release: Sep 1992 My Rating: 0
Summary: One of the great crime novels of the 20th century, Patricia Highsmith's "The Talented Mr. Ripley" is a blend of the narrative subtlety of Henry James and the self-reflexive irony of Vladimir Nabokov. Like the best modernist fiction, "Ripley" works on two levels. First, it is the story of a young man, Tom Ripley, whose nihilistic tendencies lead him on a deadly passage across Europe. On another level, the novel is a commentary on fictionmaking and techniques of narrative persuasion. Like Humbert Humbert, Tom Ripley seduces readers into empathizing with him even as his actions defy all moral standards.
The novel begins with a play on James's "The Ambassadors". Tom Ripley is chosen by the wealthy Herbert Greenleaf to retrieve Greenleaf's son, Dickie, from his overlong sojourn in Italy. Dickie, it seems, is held captive both by the Mediterranean climate and the attractions of his female companion, but Mr. Greenleaf needs him back in New York to help with the family business. With an allowance and a new purpose, Tom leaves behind his dismal city apartment to begin his career as a return escort. But Tom, too, is captivated by Italy. He is also taken with the life and looks of Dickie Greenleaf. He insinuates himself into Dickie's world and soon finds that his passion for a lifestyle of wealth and sophistication transcends moral compunction. Tom will become Dickie Greenleaf--at all costs.
Unlike many modernist experiments, "The Talented Mr. Ripley" is eminently readable and is driven by a gripping chase narrative that chronicles each of Tom's calculated maneuvers of self-preservation. Highsmith was in peak form with this novel, and her ability to enter the mind of a sociopath and view the world through his disturbingly amoral eyes is a model that has spawned such latter-day serial killers as Hannibal Lecter. "--Patrick O'Kelley"
Author: Jonathan Gash
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Genre: Mystery
Release: Jul 1984 My Rating: 4
Summary: One of my favorites in the Lovejoy series. As one of the series' earlier books, it lacks the frantic pace the author employs in the last five or six--much more care is taken with the details. There's a bit of everything here--a few harrowing escapes; a qurky thin and tall Irishmen with an equally quirky vehicle; his beautiful cousin who makes all the right moves; the usual scam by money-hungry pursuers and producers of false antiquities; and in the middle-of-it-all, the wise, and contradictorally naive but worldly Lovejoy, the man who understands what's important and oblivious to what is not.
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Genre: Mystery
Release: Jul 1984 My Rating: 4
Summary: One of my favorites in the Lovejoy series. As one of the series' earlier books, it lacks the frantic pace the author employs in the last five or six--much more care is taken with the details. There's a bit of everything here--a few harrowing escapes; a qurky thin and tall Irishmen with an equally quirky vehicle; his beautiful cousin who makes all the right moves; the usual scam by money-hungry pursuers and producers of false antiquities; and in the middle-of-it-all, the wise, and contradictorally naive but worldly Lovejoy, the man who understands what's important and oblivious to what is not.
Author: Aaron Elkins
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Genre: Mystery
Release: Jan 1985 My Rating: 5
Summary:
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Genre: Mystery
Release: Jan 1985 My Rating: 5
Summary: