Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Recurring character Cal Claxton hires a young eager man to help and learn the ways of private investigation. When his sister is killed on a grape farm near Portland Oregon Cal steps in to help the migrant family when police fail to investigate throughly.
Comments. Easley has a great series of Cal Claxton PI crime novels. Much like William Kent Krueger race and politics play a large role in Cals life. Well worth your time.
Rating: Starred Review
Summary: A twelve year-old boy is with his family in Beruit Lebanon during the 1972 Olympic massacre of Israeli athletes. He is a curious boy with two friends that share a hidden fort near there home. One day he hanging out in his fort when a man is killed right in front of him. He slowly puts together his fathers job and his mothers dislike for him into a saga of guilt, dishonesty, and distrust.
Comments: one of the best books of 2021 this far. It has touches of Young Adult but is a fabulous who done it. Highly recommend.
https://smile.amazon.com/City-Edge-David-Swinson-ebook/dp/B08HLPQ6ZL
Rating 4 stars
Summary: Freddy Ottash is a fired cop and now working for a tabloid spreading lurid tales of the Hollwierd. Freddy will do anything but murder. He is a classic criminal and abuser. He is wholly unlikeable.
Comments: Much like American Psycho, this novel is full throttle nuts. Fast moving page turner. One of the craziest novels I’ve ever read.
https://www.amazon.com/Widespread-Panic-novel-James-Ellroy-ebook/dp/B08JKKHLLT
Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A twelve year old Cork O’Connor finds the body hanging from a tree at a location in the woods known as Lighting Strike for its history as a for logging location. The man found dead haunts a young. Cork and his two best friends so much they run a side investigation with his father who is the local county Sheriff.
Comments: Kent Krueger has be the best writer in Minnesota. His voice is loud among crime writers. Writing this prequel was an amazing opportunity to see Cork and his childhood growing up with his father. There is a pretty sad turn of events in the final pages just when I hoped we’d see more prequel work. Maybe we still will? Highly recommended. This will easily be one of the best books of the year.
https://www.amazon.com/Lightning-Strike-Novel-OConnor-Mystery-ebook/dp/B08LDWY46J
Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A young man with a sad history and semi adopted family is notified his best friend is missing. Jacob is also extremely mentally ill. After they find him dead a thousand miles away in Minnesota under bizarre circumstances he goes on a quest to find the Shadow People.
Comments: Clifford again goes in a different direction with his writing into the mystical genre with a ton of suspense built in. Think Dean Koontz with some steroids shot into the story. Great stuff.
https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-People-Joe-Clifford-ebook/dp/B091D3QCK6
Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Elliott Kane returns from a forced seclusion teaching and recruiting possible spy’s. He is called to look into a suicide of a man on the desolate South Atlantic spy island of Ascension.
Comments: An incredible researched spy novel in the likes of David Ignatius and Brad Thor. There is a several points in the novel when it becomes difficult to tell fiction from reality based on the research written in. By far the spy novel of the year. Highly recommended.
https://www.amazon.com/Ascension-Elliot-Thriller-Oliver-Harris-ebook/dp/B08B3LKJ31
Summary: A young PI Darien Ross is introduced in rural Scotland in the rich history city of Chillaid. He is tasked with finding the killer of a local man that police seemingly want kept quite.
Comments: Mackey might be the finest crime writer around right now. Gives new meaning to Rebus. A must read author. Do yourself a favor and read all his books. Not a single bad novel. This is part one of a two story novel with the same protagonist.
https://www.amazon.com/Saviors-Two-Novels-Malcolm-Mackay-ebook/dp/B07L2TPM6V
Rating: 4 stars
Two damaged fathers trying to reform come together to try and find out who killed there sons in a brazen shooting in downtown Richmond Virginia. The path they follow is violent, fought with race and often times difficult realities must be confronted to right wrongs.
Comments: A extremely fast paced crime novel of two fathers facing there own biases to find the killer of there once disproving family members. I hoped for more past from the two main characters, but the pages will turn with no wasted effort. Also read Blacktop Wasteland a marvelous crime novel.
https://www.amazon.com/Razorblade-Tears-Novel-S-Cosby-ebook/dp/B08FGVMHNG
Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Gene Hammons is a down on his luck PI in the new city of Phoenix. He was a former rising star in the Phoenix police department. With ties still strong with the police he is asked about a dismembered women found in a dirty rail yard. Hammons has got demons from the war and is a guy who won’t stop looking for justice in a corrupt city.
Comments: An old school detective police procedural. Hammons is a great character that kept me reading. Not much crime fiction in Phoenix but this is great mid century historical crime novel. Read it.
https://www.amazon.com/City-Dark-Corners-Jon-Talton-ebook/dp/B08NBZKJWZ
Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A psychologist who runs a private group therapists is asked by her niece to come to Cambridge to help her with a murdered student she knew. Once she arrives she finds a group of maidens attached to a professor who are suspect of misdeeds.
Comments: A tightly page turner novel of suspense. If you enjoyed his first novel The Silent Patient he follows a similar formula of pealing the onion. He makes a few nice references to his first novel.
https://smile.amazon.com/The-Maidens/dp/B088DRJXHW
