Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A rock star New York City cop is a problem solver for the NY elite that do not want problems. He is given any means to fix the problems that arise from a bad police shooting. This leads to more problems to be solved.
Comments: I really liked the premise of the story, but for some reason the flow was just a touch off for me. Good news, it appears Coleman has a second novel with Nick coming soon.
Starred Review: Novel of 2023
Danny Ryan is on the run with his son and remaining crew in the second installment of this incredible trilogy. Ryan settles in California and is looking for a way to be legit and care for his son. An offer comes along, from none other then the DEA to make some money and pay off some debts. What can go wrong, right? An incredible story. Don't start this book if you have things to do. It will paralyze you to race to the finish. A little treat at the end will have you gasping for the next installment. A stunning novel.
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=don+winslow+city+of+dreams&crid=2NXRYB2VNYW8P&sprefix=Don+winslow%2Caps%2C93&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_2_11
Rating: 5 stars
Summary: “Pop” is a junk yard owner with a son in prison and he I’d raising a teen granddaughter since her birth. He wants to live a quiet life and try to forget his demons from Vietnam. When his granddaughter goes out for a date with her boyfriend she disappears putting Pop back into his Vietnam ghosts.
Comments: The sophomore crime noir from Cranor is a gangbuster of a thriller. Cranor future is wry bright. Great novel based on some facts.
Starred Review
William Kent Krueger arguably is one of Minnesota’s finest crime novelists to come along. His long running Cork O’Conner series is as fine of writing you will read. Kent Krueger has now been occasionally gifting us with some side work, Ordinary Grace and This Tender Land, and don’t forget the fine prequel Lighting Strike which blew me away. Devoured it. Never getting comfortable seems to be Kent Kruegers hard scrabble Minnesota roots. Much like our way of life and embracing our brutal winters, Krueger tackles southern Minnesota in the late 50’s. See there is nothing sexy in this area of the state. It is featureless farm land. Wavy landscape, beautiful on a Spring morning, but nothing to set a novel in. Except Krueger who is always stretching his prose says wait a minute, and creates a crime noir, police procedural, unlike his previous writing that blooms beauty in an otherwise boring featureless landscape. The smell, the vibe, the people are drawn out.and given a certain reality that’s hard to write. Somehow Krueger does this effortlessly. Made me almost feel I was reading a Jame Lee Burke novel. Sheriff Dern almost had me thinking he was Robicheaux. In this rare novel Krueger works his characters by exposing their insides and examines them in a slow burn of a novel. However do not take this the wrong way. Clearly he does this intentionally to build the tension, but also to the readers delight places you inside the novel to see how your own humanness is the same as the characters spread throughout. Brody Dern is the Sheriff old Black Earth County in Southern Minnesota. Late 1950’s post World War 2 and Korea is still fresh on everyone’s minds and the scars theses men and women carried. Krueger really does exposes the era so well you feel placed into his writing as not only and outsider looking in, but in the farmland your self. Incredible talent for a novelist. A town bully who takes what he wants and pushes people around, also quite the drinker, is found dead in a river that flows gently through the land. Gruesome and violent Dern has to unpack how he got there. Late 1950’s we still held many prejudices for minorities and again with grace and skill Dern has to see through these themes find out how he died. Was it an accident or a murder? Krueger, although it seems impossible to up his writing, sure has accomplished it with this brilliantly crafted crime novel. I believe it’s the most police procedural, crime noir he has written. Two final thoughts: certainly Dern needs more attention, and when does the streamers start producing Kruegers work to the television. Early call. Novel of 2023.
https://www.amazon.com/River-We-Remember-Novel-ebook/dp/B0BTZZPHG4?ref_=ast_author_dp
Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A young deformed and mute boy is rejected by his father than his mother. He is accepted by an older man who taught him how to read a write, but he died of old age. Left alone he finds nothing but trouble and has to flee his home town.
Comments: Yis is an odd and slow cooker novel of Western delights.
Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A single mother working an enormous amount of hours for little pay takes a night for herself and winds up in bed with a drug dealing psycho. He winds up dead, she has been drugged and can not remember if she killed him or someone else. Also we are missing a bag full of drug cash. All the while the cops are on the hunt to see who killed the scum bag and where’s the cash.
Comments: A wild ride of a debut novel. A F Carter is the real deal.
Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A former Minneapolis police officer holding in the woods like a hermit is asked by the former county sheriff to look into his missing daughter and grandson when the current sheriff thinks it’s a simple runaway.
Comments: Unfortunately weakly plotted and time line and distances are off, probably to not overly complex the plot. Rather formulated and predictable unlike Eskens previously brilliant novels.
Rating: Starred Review
Summary: A women with little going on decides to deep dive and create a crime podcast about a unsolved double murder around Christmas time in 1972 on the border of North Carolina and Southern Virginia. She enlists the help of a famous Washed up TV news anchor and some notes from her Grandfather’s attic she discovered. Told from a parent and past narrative.
Comments: A brilliant developed crime novel expertly written. Pruitt nails the narrative of the time.
Rating: Starred Review
Summary: Before a fathers release from prison for a technicality he has to defend himself from a ruthless Aryan gang. Upon his release he kidnaps his daughter when her mother is murdered by the gang in revenge. He fleas with his daughter and seeks to survive a gangland murder on himself and daughter.
Comments: A high octane violent crime thriller. Of the likes of Eli Cranor or S A Crosby float your reading boat, this will be right up your Southern Cali grill. Don’t ignore Harper like I did. Jump on it.
Rating: Starred Reviews
Summaries: The city of Baxter is going to be transformed after the announcement of a huge Nissan factory being built. Two nifty crimes stories expertly written from various character points of view. Drugs, money, desperate people.
Comments: Highly recommended crime novels. Fast paced and page flippers.
http://smile.amazon.com/A.-F.-Carter/e/B08CZYJS7W%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share
