[Whip me with an Udon noodle because I don’t do enough of these. These reviews are short—not as short as the average Amazon review—but, like everyone else, unless I write a review shortly after finishing a book, my procrastination becomes infinite. Here are two books, though, that are certainly worthy to read. Enjoy.]

The Billion Dollar Spy. David E. Hoffman, author (Anchor, 2015). This was a gift from someone. Anchor is a subsidiary of Random House (who distributes the book), so the book is overpriced. Thanks to whoever gave it to me as a gift. It’s non-fiction but reads like a spy novel. While Putin has declined to follow his foreign minister’s advice to expel U.S. diplomats who enjoy that oligarchical paradise known as Mother Russia, all in retaliation for Obama’s actions (and those in retaliation for the cyberattack on his beloved DNC), the Cold War was difficult for the CIA as they tried to find spies in Moscow. This is the story about their most successful recruit and his handlers. A lot of this material was undoubtedly classified TOP SECRET for decades. So fascinating I added it to the “Steve’s Bookshelf” page! As they say, truth is stranger than fiction.

Dark Secret. Edward M. Lerner, author. (Phoenix Pick, 2016.) Can six people start a new human civilization out among the stars? They can with frozen and fertilized embryos and a lot of science and technology to back them up. Their adventure begins when a gamma ray burst from two merging neutron stars gives the Mars colony’s VIPs only a short time to prepare an expedition to preserve the human race. The teeming billions of Earth and Mars are doomed, so the six have to muddle on.

Human nature being what it is, the probability there will be one power-hungry fanatic among them is certainty. Ask yourself what the choir boys in Lord of the Flies would become if brainwashed by such a warped individual—that’s the danger the other five face. Sinister, exploitive danger generated by one individual with Hitler-like aspirations.

This sci-fi novel can be many things to many readers—dark psychological drama, extrapolative science, post-apocalyptic tale, refined space opera—but entertaining will be all their common denominators. The title is a play on words. The planet is named Dark, but the fanatical despot in the tale has a dark secret until the nefarious plans become known to the other five. Better than your average sci-fi story, I must say. Well done, Mr. Lerner!

In libris libertas!

[Note: these reviews are generally reserved for R&R books I’ve found entertaining. They are NOT on Amazon, and please don’t query me to review your book here. I do my “official reviewing” at Bookpleasures.com–query there instead.]

The Nuremberg Puzzle. Laurence O’Bryan, author (Ardua, 2016). The PR for this novel calls it the “most controversial mystery of 2016.” Hmm. It’s not very controversial—people have been wondering about the Catholic Church’s support of the Nazi regime for years—so it’s just another conspiracy wrapped up in some historical fiction. It’s also not a mystery but a thriller. That said, it’s OK, and reading it is probably time better spent than playing some stupid computer game because it’s a gory tourist guide to the city where those famous trials were held.

Sean Ryan becomes involved in a neo-Nazi conspiracy designed to apply the final solution to the wave of new immigrants in Germany from the Middle East via an ethnic-specific virus. If you can stretch your mind far enough to believe that, you’ll be ready for the subplots that include the search for letters from Pius XII encouraging Hitler to invade Russia to eliminate the godless Communists (not clear why the neo-Nazis want those), a fictional excuse for Hitler’s stupid repetition of Napoleon’s mistake (Hitler already had a treaty with Stalin’s government).

The ending of this adventure in Nuremberg is unsatisfying and a 67% cliffhanger—to avoid a spoiler alert, you’ll have to read it to see what I mean—and I abhor cliffhangers. (This probably means there’s a sequel coming, but I won’t be reading it.) That 67% is just about the main characters, by the way; you’ll never know whether authorities can defeat that virus!  There are some interesting characters (FYI: Ryan isn’t one of them), but they aren’t well developed nor interesting enough to compensate for a herky-jerky plot that leaves you breathless for all the wrong reasons. There are no big plot twists or interesting themes either—the West doesn’t need neo-Nazis to make immigrants’ lives hell.

***

On sale: The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan. This sci-fi thriller will be on sale at Smashwords for $0.99, reduced from $2.99 (67% discount) from now until September 1. Use the coupon code FU54W. First question: what will the U.S. in the future do with retirees with Top Secret information? Second question: how do you prevent the assassination of a presidential candidate? Third question: is there room for romance in the life of an old agent? This fast-moving story’s main character is a woman who shows perseverance and strength to survive while unmasking a terrible conspiracy. Don’t miss the thrills!

In libris libertas!

[I was cleaning off my book shelves and found a hardbound I’m definitely offering up to some school book fair.  They might get a buck for it?]

By the Book.  Pamela Paul, ed.  (New York Times, Henry Holt, 2014).  The long subtitle is “Writers on Literature and the Literary Life, from the NY Times Book Review.”  First objection: most of these people aren’t writers by my definition.  Lena Dunham?  Not exactly a prolific writer.  Neither are Colin Powell, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Emma Thompson, Sting, Carolyn Kennedy—you get the idea.  For the most part, you have personalities where the Times has sent faux-interview-like questions about literature and the literary life like “What book would you recommend that the president read?”  This is the Times doing its pseudo-intellectual masturbation in grand style.  At $28, it’s a rip-off, unless you’re a one-percenter who thinks it will create some conversation sitting on your coffee table.

Among the 65 people responding, I’ve read books by only 9 of them.  That sounds like I’m an illiterate clod, but remember, most of these people aren’t writers.  Celebrities like Powell, Sting, and Schwarzenegger probably used ghost writers; Bryan Cranston doesn’t even have a book.  The real writers in the group should feel insulted.  Many are academic, or pseudo-academic types like Malcolm Caldwell, who write for other academics; many write non-fiction; and others write “literary fiction” (whatever that is, I don’t read it).

Most real authors here aren’t prolific.  Joyce Carol Oates is a prolific writer, but she recommends that the president read Moby Dick.  What does she want to do?  Bore him to death?  He’ll already be there when he leaves office and doesn’t have McConnell and Ryan to enliven his existence.  Lee Child, who’s become formulaic with his Reacher novels, lauds Cruise’s portrayal of the famous stud.  Huh?

I guess a third of that subtitle is real: these people are talking about reading, so maybe they all have a “literary life.”  The rest is false advertising on the part of the Times.  I got this book for Christmas two years ago—well-intentioned, I suppose, because I am a full-time writer.  I would never have bought it otherwise, though.  You shouldn’t either.  And you can get 7-8 ebooks for the price of this monstrosity.

***

May Day Sale.  It might still be going on.  It’s not clear what the Amazon cut-off time is for a Kindle Countdown Sale.  Mary Jo Melendez has been inviting you to that sale all week.  Her stories, Muddlin’ Through and Silicon Slummin’…and Just Gettin’ By, were on sale through today, May 6, for $0.99 each; they might still be.  But don’t worry: they’ll just revert to the original $2.99 price, which is still a bargain.  Want more summer reading?  Check out my entire catalog: here’s my Amazon page.  Three more series, twenty more recent books, all save one for $3.99 or less, including my new sci-fi/fantasy novel, Rogue Planet, for $2.99.  What are you waiting for?

In libris libertas (just not the Times’s)…      

[Two crime stories today that maybe justify the $0 price?  Don’t take my word for it, of course.  Reviews are always just a reader’s opinion.  Yours is as good as mine—maybe even better!]

Eleven.  Carolyn Arnold, author (Hibbert & Stiles, 2011).  There’s a lot of publishing folklore out there.  One bit of advice to authors is: give away the first book in the series so that readers are attracted to the rest of the series.  Another, almost contradictory piece of advice: write the next book in the series because the new book will motivate readers to read the first ones.  My answer to this bit of folklore is: it all depends on how the writer writes!  If the series is a good one, books that use a few of the same characters and maybe similar settings but can be read independently, it doesn’t matter—but the writer has to spin a good yarn.

This writer has taken the first advice.  She even puts an excerpt from the next book right up front.  I paid $0 for this book, but I don’t like to see giveaways.  The author might as well take a promenade in Times Square carrying a sign that says, “I put $0 value on all my hard work”!  But this author was a believer, yet advice #1 didn’t work with this reader.  The book’s OK, but I won’t be buying any more books from this series.  It moves slowly in the beginning—the proverbial “hook” for me was completely absent (ho hum, another serial killer tracked down by an intrepid FBI agent)—but it picks up speed toward the end.  The Redeemer (the serial killer) is already in jail, but he has disciples.  The agents don’t know who they are.  The reader doesn’t either.  They come out of the woodwork throughout the novel.  If mystery, that’s not misdirection, that’s using deus ex machina to save a plot.  If thriller, that just doesn’t work for me.

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[Two mysteries today with no earth-shaking themes.  It’s amazing how murders can find their genesis in petty meaningless stuff.  Happens all the time in real life, of course, but I’m not sure the events are worth a novel.  Nevertheless, I like to try new authors, and these two were new for me.  You can read the following and decide, but I found that I had to write the review immediately because it’s too easy to put them out of mind.]

Bone Hook (Lei Crime #10).  Toby Neal, author (Toby Neal, 11/10/2015).  Well plotted, interesting characters, and a setting that’s my second favorite Hawaiian island, Maui (Kauai is the first), but the author commits the sin of a cliffhanger (she apologizes for it in a note at the end, so every reader becomes her priest in the confessional).  Lei is a Maui cop who has a lot of domestic problems but still has to solve a murder that has too many suspects.  The cliffhanger isn’t a major negative, by the way, because it corresponds to the subplot associated with the domestic problems, which are a bit ho-hum because they’re more common these days than dishonest politicians.  I still found the cliffhanger annoying, though.  You might not.  Reading between the lines, maybe previous books in the series don’t have this flaw?  Still, this is only good for a few hours entertainment when you get tired of the schlock on TV.  Sorry, Toby.

Shadows of the Past (Logan Point #1).  Patricia Bradley, author (Revell, 2/4/2014).  Many pros, one con.  This is a well written mystery with a good plot and interesting characters.  The settings are near Seattle and Memphis, about as far apart in distance and culture as one can imagine and still be in the U.S., and that creates some of the tension.  Psych prof and profiler Taylor Martin is scratching a lot of old Southern family wounds by insisting on looking for her long-last Daddy.  In the process, she acquires a stalker and has an on-again-off-again affair with a famous author.  If it were shorter, this could almost be a cozy, but there’s a lot of criminal meat in this romantic stew.  I enjoyed it by steaming by the romance, which wasn’t a wee bit steamy, and looking beyond the religious mumbo-jumbo associated with Taylor finding Jesus again (that one major con).  In fact, it’s a shame all that fluff wasn’t eliminated to have a perfect mystery.  I suppose there’s a big market for this stuff, but for me the price was right: $0.  Sorry, Patty.

***

Like more edgy mystery, suspense, and thrills that treat some important themes?  Have you tried the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series”?  Some of the books are more thriller than mystery, but in either case the two NYPD homicide detectives, often with viewpoints that are yin and yang, make an astonishing crime-fighting duo.  There are six novels in the series that starts with The Midas Bomb, already in its second edition and available in all ebook formats and paper (Create Space)—other ebooks in the series are still Amazon only.

In libris libertas….

[Do you like series?  Series can be problematic for an author.  On one hand, your characters can demand another chance to live again amidst your prose, and you can get another chance to develop them further.  On the other, you run the risk of becoming formulaic and neglectful of those other stories your muses are pressuring you to tell.  Whether for those, or for some other reasons, few people review an entire series.  I have four myself, and it’s hell to advertise them and get reviews for them.  In the spirit of trying to turn that situation around, today I review two crime series that have captured my R&R reading attention.]

Z series. John Stockmyer, author (Stockmyer Books).  Z is for Bob Zapolska, an unlicensed PI with some interesting high school buddies (one cop, one mobster)—they played on a championship football team together.  He also has a steady and sexy girlfriend who looks like a model but is an insurance company’s slave, and an on-again-off-again mistress who’s a sexy ghostbuster.  That’s basically the series cast—the villains come and go.  You’d think that Z’s encounters with them would be minimal—Z is for almost zero on the PI pecking order—but the bad guys seem to find him as his mundane cases turn into major ones.

Z is the quintessential anti-hero, an ugly bruiser who stumbles through life doing the best he can.  The stumbles, including tightrope walking between legal and illegal and balancing girlfriend and mistress, add some comedy.  The books in the series are uneven and formulaic at times, though.  Some new ones have appeared that are on my TBRoR list (“To Be Read or Reviewed”).  Jump in anywhere.  In each ebook there are references to Z’s previous cases, but the books can be read independently in any order, the mark of a good series writer.  I’m hooked.  (Yes, John, is also the author of the “Under the Stairs” fantasy/sci-fi series, which is even better.)

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[Authors, please don’t query.  These are generally reviews for books that I buy for R&R—if I like them, I’ll review them here…maybe.  If you want your book reviewed, query Bookpleasures.com—that site has many reviewers, including me.]

Magic Mirror (Georgia Lee Maxwell #1).  Michaela Thompson, author (booksBnimble, 2013).  This ebook proves a point that’s often made: when you discover an old book it can be a refreshing new read for the discoverer.  Ms. Thompson originally published the paper version of this book in 1988.  I don’t know anything about booksBnimble, but apparently they reissue old pbooks in ebook format.  I count myself lucky to have come across it.

The easiest way to write a mystery is to write it in the first person.  The reader can then discover all the clues right along with the “detective,” in this case Southern transplant to Paris Georgia Lee Maxwell, and no one is tempted to go into some other character’s point of view where spoilers can lurk.  I consider this mystery a precursor of cozies, but it has the average book length.  There are no serious themes entwined with the plot beyond the usual human ones of greed and obsession.  Misdirects abound, Georgia Lee is something like a bumbling Miss Marple, and the reader is taken on rides around Paris that show the charm of the city on the Seine and a few of the snotty Parisians who inhabit it.

You never find out whether the mirror, a circular and polished piece of obsidian once belonging to Nostradamus, is for real, but you won’t care.  This is a fine mystery by a fine writer.  For those readers wanting something in the Mary Higgins Clark tradition, download a copy.  For those writers who want to learn how to write things in that tradition, download a copy.  And, for those who want to do neither one, you’ll still find it an entertaining read.  (Perfectly edited, this book is appropriate for everyone.)

Misunderstood: Six People, Three Incidents, One Courtroom.  Gail Matelson, author.  A judge is about to retire.  Does blind justice become blinder in his courtroom?  As we age, we begin to worry about retirement.  Some go kicking and screaming into that Golden Age; others can’t wait to walk out of that day-job.  This is partly a study of that quandary with a psychological flavor.

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[Holiday shopping?  Check these inexpensive ebooks out as an online gift for your reading friends and relatives.  Or, any ebook in my catalog.  You can also give them one of my trade paperbacks.  Full Medical, Soldiers of God, The Midas Bomb, and Survivors of the Chaos are all available in paper.  The Midas Bomb, Chen and Castilblanco #1, will soon have a second edition in all ebook formats as well as paper.  All quality entertainment at a reasonable price!]

The Dante Connection (Genieve Lenard #2).  Estelle Ryan, author (Amazon Digital Services, 2013).  I read and reviewed the first book in this series too, but this one can stand-alone if you just want to jump in (the sign an author knows how to write a good series).  All the original characters are back, including the villain, but enough backstory is provided to bring the reader up-to-date.  Genieve is a functional autistic who retreats into a dark place and writes out Mozart opuses when she gets overwhelmed, but she possesses an uncanny skill for reading body language, from facial expressions (which many people can do) to small movements and muscle tensions.  There isn’t much mystery here—it’s more a suspenseful thriller.  It moves along with enough twists and turns to keep any fan of the genre interested.  It’s also better than #1.  Apparently an entire multibook series is planned, so if the author can keep this up, I’m hooked.

Dead Wrong (Blackmore Sisters Mystery #1).  Leighann Dobbs, author (Amazon Digital Services, 2013).  The price was right (a freebie), so I decided to try a cozy mystery!  What’s cozy mystery?  A story about ordinary non-pros solving a crime—the MC (in this case four MCs) are usually librarians, teachers, housewives, and so forth, living in out-of-the-way places, who lose patience with the pros and practice DIY crime solving.  The out-of-the-way place in this case is Ogunquit, Maine (it’s called Noquitt in the book, for some strange reason, but all the other local names are the same—I know them well, including Perkins Cove).  One of the pros is hiding something (not resolved in the book); another is romantically interested in one of the Blackmore sisters—Victorian-style romance is another characteristic of this fluffy subgenre.

I don’t get it.  I thought we were past Miss Marple and Jessica Fletcher (also hiding out in Maine).  There’s not enough meat on the bones to call this turkey a real mystery (not disparaging here, because I love succulent turkey meat), whatever that might mean now, although it was a pleasant four-hour read.  Is the only difference between cozy and romantic mystery the length?  I’m thinking of Mary Higgins Clark and Carla Neggers, who write longer pieces of fluff (i.e. no earth-shaking themes).  Fans of this subgenre (librarians, teachers, housewives, and so forth?) will enjoy this pleasant escapist piece, and I’ll have to admit it was very well written with some complex twists (some of the mystery still remains after you finish, so call that a series cliffhanger).  (BTW, I know “fluff” sounds condescending, but just think of cotton candy or whipped cream in Irish coffee—fluff can be good in the right circumstances.)

Kill Switch (Angel of Darkness #1).  Steve N. Lee, author (Amazon Digital Services, 2015).  Very little mystery here.  Tess is the Angel of Darkness aka old-fashioned Charles Bronson vigilante, except that she’s female.  She has some agenda we’re not sure about associated with returning to NYC and wreaking revenge on someone, and she has enough creds from training in India and China to do it, but Poland is a stopover where she helps a distraught and dying mother find a daughter kidnapped for a sex-trafficking gang.  Not finding out what Tess’ mission is a bit of a cliffhanger—that’s a negative.

This is definitely not for squeamish readers.  In one scene, for example, Tess calls the mother on her threat to kill one of the kidnappers, and she can’t do it, so Tess completes the job by sticking the guy’s switchblade into his eye.  Tess is a bad ass, but she has a switch that allows her to go from compassionate, sensitive person to a dangerous assassin (learned in the Far East?).  She reminds me of Barry Eisler’s hero, in fact.

If you’re OK with all the violence, let me insist that this is a great story about strong, intelligent women defending themselves from unscrupulous men and their criminal abuses.  In some of the fight scenes, I found myself cheering Tess on.  I agree with her vigilante sentiment—taking out these SOBs, even if it’s a drop in the huge ocean of bastards who exploit women, makes the world a better place.  I’m a firm believer that the world would also be a better place if women were running things—in that case, we probably wouldn’t need vigilantes like Tess.

In elibris libertas….     

Gold Rush Mystery.  Mit Sandru, author (Chivileri Publishing, 2015).  When I started this novella, I had some misgivings.  It’s probably just me, but I didn’t like the simple drawings and media interviews at the beginning.  Maybe some will see that as a clever way to do the background and/or get the story started.  I didn’t, but I continued.  I’m glad I did.  It became an entertaining and mysterious story that kept me interested until the end.

The background can be summarized as follows: the author is describing what the first steps might be for establishing a colony on the moon.  In many sci-fi stories, this is a fait accompli, and the protagonists move around in a colony that already exists.  Clarke’s A Fall of Moondust comes to mind; Heinlein, in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, turns this idea upside-down and makes the colony a prison.  This novella starts at the beginning with the first manned colony, but the “colonists” in the Gold Rush project find they’re not the first.  Armstrong and other friends aside, old Luna has had other visitors in the past, and their artifacts aren’t exactly benign to Humans at first.

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Dome City Blues.  Jeff Edwards, author  (Stealth Books, 2011).  The author says he wrote this in 1992.  That’s hard to believe.  If so, there’s some really good futuristic extrapolation.  It shares themes with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (the movie Blade Runner) and Pohl’s Hee Chee trilogy (more akin to the first book in that series, though).  Hard-boiled private detective David Stalin (too much attention is paid to the last name) lives on a polluted Earth and hops among the domes that now constitute Greater Los Angeles.

When he loses his wife, the PI retires, until a beautiful woman wants him to prove her brother isn’t a serial killer.  Channeling Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade (in spite of the pollution, cancer, including lung cancer, is a thing of the past), he had to unravel the mystery in spite of the LAPD’s closing the case—the brother’s suicide note admitted culpability.  A bit predictable I suppose, but I thoroughly enjoyed this book.  Do I like it enough to look for the other books in the series?  Probably not, because it’s hard to imagine any sequel can match this.  (Caveat emptor: R-rated for multiple reasons.)

The Inn.  Scott Dyson, author (Deadlock Press, 2015).  Is this the longest story I’ve read by Mr. Dyson?  It’s a novella, and there’s a lot of horror, mystery, suspense, and thrills in these few pages.  I loved it, and It’s not a genre I often read (the horror part).  No zombies, vampires, or werewolves (thank God!), just one seemingly ordinary human being doing horrible things to other human beings.  Some scenes reminded me of Hayton’s novel Breathe and Release reviewed here and that real life atrocity with the three girls in Ohio.

The band director, his student teacher (a woman not much older than the students), and the band are on a road trip.  They plan to perform and then spend a day at a nearby amusement park, crashing two nights in the inn.  I can’t say much more without writing spoilers, but I will send out a warning: if you were a member of a high school band, any nostalgia might fly out the window as your read this.  Or, some readers might say, “This is a lot more exciting than our band trips were.”  Mr. Dyson’s writing is fresh and original.  Fans of the genre will enjoy this one. (Rating?  How would you rate the TV show Dexter?)

Fires of Alexandria.  Thomas Carpenter, author.  (Black Moon Books, 2013) I finished a Churchill bio recently (see Monday’s pseudo-review); lots of history, so it led me to think “historical novel.”  This is what Amazon came up with, it looked interesting, and I bought it.  I guess it’s one time Amazon’s “Peek Inside” failed me, or I just failed to register certain things.  This is NOT a historical novel.  It’s something called “alternate history.”  That’s a genre or subgenre (of what I’m not sure), and I was never attracted to it, unless it was sci-fi involving time travel.  I felt duped (self-duped?), but I read it anyway.

Heron (AKA Hero) of Alexandria was a real dude who flourished in AD 62, according to the Britannica, and was a geometer and inventor.  The book takes place just before the “flourishing” in AD 50.  X’s take here is that Heron was actually a dudette (that’s not a spoiler because it’s introduced early), and s/he (that new pronoun isn’t used in the politically correct sense here) invents a lot more than water clocks in this novel.  The “big mystery” is who torched the library in 48 BC?  Julius Caesar is generally credited with accidentally doing that when he set Mr. Ptolemy XIII’s navy on fire and the wind blew the wrong way (only papyri in dock warehouses were burned on that occasion), but X has another theory.  The “big adventure” is that Heron’s inventions help kick Romans in their butts, and Alexandria falls to a new leader, a barbarian from the north (that is a bit of a spoiler, but not much).

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