[Note from Steve: These reviews are growing a bit.  I’ve written enough novels and read enough books to be opinionated about what I read.  Basically I’ll choose to review a book I’ve casually read (my “official reviewing” is done at Bookpleasures) if there’s something I like enough to recommend it to my friends, i.e. all readers of this blog.  That’s true of the first two reviews here.  Although I don’t like to review a book here if I don’t find any redeeming qualities (I will do that at Bookpleasures, though), I’ve decided to include one of those from time to time too (the last review is an example), because I don’t want my friends, the readers of this blog, to raise their BP while reading an author who really screws up.  Mind you, these are just my opinions.  Yours might be different.  I can only provide fair warning.]

Surface Tension.  Christine Kling, author (Ballantine, 2002, 2007; Tell-Tale Press, 2012).  This ebook is a reissue of the 2002 original.  I’m happy to see it.  First, it shows that even thrillers have long legs, so maybe some of my own ebooks will still be entertaining readers many years hence—this one certainly entertained me.  Second, it shows a migration from the Big Five.  I don’t know who owns Ballantine now, and don’t particularly care, except that it’s undoubtedly one of the Big Five.  But the author has decided to go her own way and reissue in what looks like an indie ebook.  ‘Nough said about indie v. traditional publishing…for now.

This novel is the first in the Seychelle Sullivan series.  Seychelle and brothers Pitcairn and Madagascar were named after islands, a quirk of her father.  That’s a bit of weirdness I didn’t need, but I guess it shows the family likes living on the water.  Sey is part-owner of the salvage boat Gorda and runs her own salvage and towing business.  In the opening chapter, she dashes off to get first dibs on the salvage job for The Top Ten, an expensive sailing yacht captained by her ex-boyfriend and ex-Navy SEAL Neal Garrett, only to find a woman’s body on board—his new squeeze—and Garrett missing.  Thus begins Detective Victor Collazo’s stalking of Sey because she’s his first suspect; he’s a Fort Lauderdale cop.

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[Note from Steve: Here are two British historical mysteries today for you to consider.  Because I’m also reading a Churchill bio, I was looking for something related to WWII.   These two caught my eye, and I wasn’t disappointed.]

The Man Who Never Was.  Hoylton H. Smith, author (Promethean, 2013).  This is a great story—or should I say two stories, forty years apart, that come together?  In 1985, a cement foundation shifts at an abandoned coke plant in northern England uncovering a skeleton.  The Nazi version of a “dog tag” is found with the bones.  Wound marks on the neck indicate murder, so the local police are called in, but soon representatives from MI5 and MI6 arrive on scene.

It’s determined that the foundation was laid in 1945 just before the end of the war.  That harks back to the other story, the one involving a five-year-old English boy from a nearby town, his German friend in a POW camp nearby where Luftwaffe pilots are held, and espionage and intrigue on both the English and German sides that continues for years.

Historical mysteries can be frustrating as well as entertaining: it’s often not clear where historical truth ends and fiction begins if the author convincingly mixes the two.  This author dedicates his book to three of the principal characters, so there’s some truth in here somewhere.  That observation might be intriguing for some readers, but the story stands alone.  It’s entertaining, generally well done, and I enjoyed it.

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[The first two and last ebooks reviewed here shows that it’s worth searching for older novels in a writer’s catalog, something Smashwords doesn’t seem to recognize with their searching options—Amazon is many things to many people, but it does that well.  The last two try to outdo Dan Brown.  Note to readers: These reviews express my opinions—your results may differ.  These reviews will not appear on Amazon, and I refuse to use their star system.  Note to authors and publicists of the ebooks reviewed here: you are free to quote from any review, but please give me credit.  And, can you tell, TV and movies are really bad this summer?!]

Outsider in Amsterdam.  Janwillem Van De Wetering, author. (1975, 2013).  Police procedural or mystery?  No matter.  There is a great deal of tongue-in-cheek here, plus the interesting question about whether a murder is ever justly committed.  Weight-challenged Det.-Adj. Grijpstra and handsome lothario Sgt. De Gier, a bit of a bumbling and chaotic pair, manage to get the job done.  Set in Amsterdam at the crossroads of European and Southeast Asian culture, this offers a peek into the city’s drug scenes and historical sins.  A wee bit of nostalgia too because I recognized some of the settings.  For some reason, I recalled Father Brown, Chesterton’s character.  Maybe not for everyone, but I enjoyed this.

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[In keeping with my new policy of posting reviews of some of the ebooks I casually read here instead of on Amazon, these are reviews of two interesting mystery novels from across the pond.  How I love them, from the local settings of England, Ireland, and Scotland, to the unusual characters and great mystery tradition of Agatha Christie, P. D. James, Ian Rankin, and many others.  You’ll find great writers over there; their success explains why it’s so difficult for Yankees like me to get a toehold in that market!]

The Verge Practice.  Barry Maitland, author.  (2003, 2013, Arcade Publishing, NY)  This one is set in London with side trips to Barcelona.  Parts seem an echo of recent news items, but it was obviously written years ago.  The theme is artistic ego and inner turmoil, but old Agatha would be shocked by the depth of the treatment here.

Famous architect Charles Verge has disappeared.  They find his second wife murdered, so the coppers automatically suspect he did it and set out to find him.  One task force from the Yard has no success.  Another one is formed to put the case to rest.

This is fantastic mystery writing, so much so that I didn’t miss the grand tour of London.  It’s so good I’ll excuse what follows: The protagonist, Kathy Kolla, is a bit too needy and bumbling, and there remain formatting and editing errors that can be distracting.  Some of the latter are comical—“…arrived promptly in separate ears,” for example.

This mystery is filled with more than the usual share of twists and misdirects.  You’ll not only be wondering who did it but why.  Great fun.

Taboo.  Casey Hill, author.  (2011, Simon and Shuster?, GB)  I loved my course with Pulitzer Prize winner N. Scott Momaday back in the day, but his TA was too malleable—all I had to do was mention Freud in a paper and my grade would go up.  What’s this have to do with this book?  Read it and find out.

I downloaded it because it’s about a CSI in Dublin starting out on the job by matching wits with a serial killer.  She’s not a newbie though.  That was my second problem: Why did the author need to jerk a forensics expert out of the FBI and transplant her in Ireland?  I’m sure the Garda has fine CSIs, but the author makes them seem prehistoric.

I liked remembering places in Dublin, and the book was greatly entertaining, but I didn’t like the author putting all the clues in verbose flashbacks and skimping on misdirects, making the plot too predictable.  Spoiler alert and my first problem: The preface was the only clue I needed!

The protagonist’s old instructor is also the most interesting character (again, why is the FBI needed?).  I also never found out what mysterious disease ailed the cop friend and surfing buddy.  Sometimes it’s better to put the first novel in the desk drawer and write the second?  You can always come back to that first one later (it was the chosen route for me and Harper Lee).  This one just misses.

[Kindle Countdown Deal: Teeter-Totter between Lust and Murder, #3 in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series,” will go on sale July 1 through July 7, reduced from $2.99 to $0.99 for this period.  Does Chen commit murder? The long answer is surprising.]

In elibris libertas….  

[Note from Steve: Two different books that are additions to series for your reading enjoyment, but with two different results…]

Ashes.  Kelly Cozy, author.  First book in a series.  (Smite, 2013, 978-0-9851234-5-1)  The obvious pseudonym is misleading.  This isn’t a cozy mystery.  It’s not even a mystery.  It’s a thriller, at least half of it—the other half reads like the clinical records of a mental patient.

The story begins when Jennifer Thomson becomes the last of a dozen or so survivors of a terrorist attack.  She works in an office building in LA filled with federal workers.  She survives because she needs a copier.  The only functioning one is on the other side of the building from her cubicle, the side that remains standing long enough for to find her way down the stairs and out of the building before the whole thing collapses.  This is a copy of the 9/11 disaster, of course.  She develops PTSD, wondering why she survived while others didn’t.  It doesn’t help that some relatives of victims blame her for surviving too.

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[Note from Steve: It’s been awhile.  I thought I should review some of the books I casually read for broadening my horizons and entertainment, so I focused on Amazon reviews instead of writing mini-reviews (which are still longer than your average Amazon review).  I’ll do that less in the future.  Like my movie reviews, most of my book reviews will appear here or Bookpleasures, not Amazon.  Writers—don’t bother to query.  These reviews are for books I choose to read and like well enough to review.  I won’t respond to queries.

For today, there’s something in the spring air, I guess.  My new ebook, More than Human: The Mensa Contagion, to be released soon, is about an ET virus changing Earth society.  So are the two books reviewed here.  The second review is an augmented version of what appeared in last week’s “News and Notices from the Writing Trenches.”]

Season of the Harvest.  Michael R. Hicks, author; 2012.  If you get by the anti-GMO rhetoric and rampant xenophobia manifest in the 1950s B-movie aliens, you’ll find an entertaining sci-fi thriller that’s like a fast marathon.  The nasty aliens aren’t needed—human beings are quite capable of destroying themselves and Earth, and that would be more believable if it were the case in this story.  And the GMO conspiracy theories are over the top—if you don’t like GMOs, get rid of your pet dogs and cats, snuff out that 3-year-old that just won horse racing’s Triple Crown, and forget about your corn flakes and fancy leather shoes.

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#15:  Henry Crumpton, The Art of Intelligence.  5+.  It’s not often that I give anything above a 3 in one of my mini-reviews, but here it is!  I saw Crumpton’s interview on CBS’s Sixty Minutes last May 13 and liked his story.  I gave into temptation and bought his new book.  Maybe I shouldn’t say any more than “Wow!”  Like a good spy, Hank often seems apolitical, feeling motivated in one meeting with Dubya where the ex-president thumps him on the back and says, “Go get’em” but nobly trying to work with all the policy makers who come his way.

My interpretation of the Dubya encounter after 9/11 is different than Crumpton’s, by the way.  Dubya and his neo-con friends, Cheney and Rumsfeld, had no idea about what happened or what to do to avenge 9/11.  Readers will remember that the CIA took the blame for the fiasco with the WMDs in Iran.  They also received much of the blame for the lack of intelligence nexus that led to 9/11 (I place most of that on the FBI).

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#9:  David Baldacci, One Summer, 2.5 stars—If you’re looking for a Baldacci thriller, this is not your book.  David is better known as a thriller and suspense writer (I’ve read so many of his books that I feel I’m on a first-name basis), but he can write literary fiction with the best of them (it probably doesn’t pay as much, however).  (How “literary fiction” became part of the legacy publishing lexicon is beyond me—isn’t all fiction literary?)

One Summer is a case in point.  Like his Wish You Well, this little jewel is a folksy, down-home, humorous, uplifting, and romantic entry in the genre that will please some and disappoint others.  While Wish You Well can be considered a coming-of-age novel, One Summer can be considered a dealing-with-death novel.  Nevertheless, One Summer is not morose, since the main characters work their way out of their funks—you might find it enjoyable, especially if you find Baldacci’s thrillers a bit gritty and violent (they’re not).  I found it slow going at first but more interesting as I worked through it—but definitely not a page-turner.

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To my readers,

My book reviews, especially those for Bookpleasures.com, are often long and more detailed than the average ones you’ll find on Amazon, for example.  Since I read many more books than those I review, I thought a few words and ranking about other books might help readers sift through the chaff to find the grain.  Information is useful, even in abbreviated form.

Another reason for adding this blog category is that I just don’t have time to weed through all the new features on Facebook and user-unfriendliness of Goodreads.  Since my blog is RSS’d to Goodreads anyway, this seems like an alternative that provides the same information to readers and is user friendly to me.

Finally, what I read and what I review is part of me, take it or leave it.  I’m often cynical about what’s going on in the publishing world and that cynicism creeps into my reviews (see my review of Deaver’s 007 entry, for example).  I expect that this will happen even in these mini-reviews.  Expect some politics sprinkled around too—when I can’t resist (I’m not as caustic as Stuart or Colbert).

Don’t look for these reviews on any regular basis.  My reading often goes in spurts, so reviews and mini-reviews will come in spurts too.  They will all be catalogued here, so, if you wonder about an old book a few years down the road, you might want to check here.  Most of these books will be eBooks.  These mini-reviews will not appear on Amazon, by the way.  I have no desire to compete with any Amazon reviewer who is out to win the “king of reviewers” title—I’d rather be writing!

With that wordy preamble, here are my first mini-reviews (be forewarned, some of these books are old; also, my stars are not given so freely as those you might find on Amazon):

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