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Amazon.com Review The more Chief Inspector Alan Banks investigates the murder of a schoolgirl in a church graveyard the less he likes the whole sordid affair. The vicar at St. Mary's has been allegedly seeking sex from his sexton; the vicar's wife has been seeking solace in a bottle and the arms of a schoolteacher; and those in and around the church aren't keen on anybody who doesn't view matters as they do. And there happens to be a few suspects who meet that description. Banks investigates a murder and finds religious and societal affairs stickier than those in the normal mystery. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Publishers Weekly Moving his ever dependable Yorkshire-based copper, Alan Banks (Final Account, 1995, etc.), to the periphery of this work, the equally dependable Robinson focuses instead on the tragic plight of a possibly innocent man charged with murder. In the process, Robinson adds another level of nuance to his already fully dimensioned fiction and takes a quantum leap as a writer. A schoolgirl is murdered on church ground. Her school bag is left open, and her clothes are disturbed. The local vicar is already embroiled in a sex scandal, and his adulterous wife is wandering drunkenly through the grounds when the body is found. Without a decent motive, but with a plethora of damning evidence, Banks is led to one Owen Pierce, a moody young schoolteacher. Pierce is revealed as a man with enough minor aberrations in his life to fashion a believable criminal. His smutty tastes in literature, photography and teenage women invite easy condemnation, and he is further burdened with a past lover who nurses a deep grievance against him. If Banks has occasionally appeared a shade too decent and placid in past works, this eighth appearance finds him with a new, sharper edge. Banks is still a kindly enough soul, but he knowingly occupies a world that has suddenly become more richly treacherous. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly This richly atmospheric yet action-starved crime drama is the fourth installment in Atkins's New Orleansâ€"based series featuring Nick Travers, a former professional football player turned amateur sleuth. Here, Travers agrees to help an old football teammate, now a wealthy music mogul, find nearly $1 million conned from one of his record labels' marquee stars, a 15-year-old rapper known only as ALIAS. Travers meets with ALIAS, but the brooding, self-involved punk is either too embarrassed to say how he got swindled or may have something more to protect than just his pride. Prowling the seedy side of New Orleans, Travers rubs up against social extremes - rival record producers, street urchins, old athletes and wealthy agents who make sport of separating entertainment stars from their money. In the process, Travers attracts a long list of enemies, several of whom make it openly known that he'd best butt out if he knows what's good for him. Atkins (Dark End of the Street) writes with the same lean prose and descriptive acumen that earned him praise for earlier efforts. Yet the plot of his latest is thin, sluggish and confusing (exactly who is the corpse-like figure who tries to kill Travers on two separate occasions?). Fans of the Delta blues will appreciate Atkins's inarguably deep musical knowledge - Travers teaches blues history at Tulane in his spare time - yet those looking for a good yarn may find themselves hopelessly tangled by the end.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From In his Nick Travers books, Atkins has demonstrated that writing a mystery is a lot like playing the blues: innovation and virtuosity are less important than the ability to find a comfortable groove. Reading him is like settling into the passenger seat for a curb-crawling drive from the staccato noise of New Orleans, through the slow funk of the swamp, to the dusty twang of the Mississippi Delta. And wiseass Travers, "roots music field researcher" and ex-pro footballer, is just the guy to steer the car and tune the dial on the dashboard radio. Here, Travers' former teammate is now a rap producer who needs big bucks to call off a death threat--and someone just conned his 15-year-old prodigy out of half-a-million bucks. After blues- and soul-related mysteries, this foray into the world of MTV and BET is a logical development. The new guard doesn't know their booming beats and angry rhymes have roots in the past, and Travers has a hard time realizing that rap might just be the blues of a new generation. Keir GraffCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Amazon.com Review This addictive tale of a young lawyer defending a black Vietnam war hero who kills the white druggies who raped his child in tiny Clanton, Mississippi, is John Grisham's first novel, and his favorite of his first six. He polished it for three years and every detail shines like pebbles at the bottom of a swift, sunlit stream. Grisham is a born legal storyteller and his dialogue is pitch perfect. The plot turns with jeweled precision. Carl Lee Hailey gets an M-16 from the Chicago hoodlum he'd saved at Da Nang, wastes the rapists on the courthouse steps, then turns to attorney Jake Brigance, who needs a conspicuous win to boost his career. Folks want to give Carl Lee a second medal, but how can they ignore premeditated execution? The town is split, revealing its social structure. Blacks note that a white man shooting a black rapist would be acquitted; the KKK starts a new Clanton chapter; the NAACP, the ambitious local reverend, a snobby, Harvard-infested big local firm, and others try to outmaneuver Jake and his brilliant, disbarred drunk of an ex-law partner. Jake hits the books and the bottle himself. Crosses burn, people die, crowds chant "Free Carl Lee!" and "Fry Carl Lee!" in the antiphony of America's classical tragedy. Because he's lived in Oxford, Mississippi, Grisham gets compared to , but he's really got the lean style and fierce folk moralism of . --Tim Appelo From Library Journal In this lively novel, Grisham explores the uneasy relationship of blacks and whites in the rural South. His treatment is balanced and humane, if not particularly profound, slighting neither blacks nor whites. Life becomes complicated in the backwoods town of Clanton, Mississippi, when a black worker is brought to trial for the murder of the two whites who raped and tortured his young daughter. Everyone gets involved, from Klan to NAACP. Grisham's pleasure in relating the byzantine complexities of Clanton politics is contagious, and he tells a good story. There are touches of humor in the dialogue; the characters are salty and down-to-earth. An enjoyable book, which displays a respect for Mississippi ways and for the contrary people who live there. Recommended.- David Keymer, SUNY Coll. of Technology, UticaCopyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly Marshall's debut thriller, which is essentially two seemingly independent stories that meet in the middle, takes its time hooking readers. But once the complex and disparate plot lines meld, this expansive work demands the readers attention. In Dyersburg, Mont., narrator Ward Hopkins, attempting to make sense of the accident that killed his parents, discovers a note and videotape that lead him to believe their lives (and deaths) were not as they appeared. Meanwhile, the abduction of 14-year-old Sarah Becker renews the search for a serial killer who scalps his victims, embroiders their names into sweaters using their hair and then delivers the clothing to the victims parents. As Ward and his CIA buddy slowly unravel the mystery surrounding Wards parents, FBI agent Nina Baynam and former LAPD homicide detective John Zandt search for the elusive killer. Their paths cross when a series of connections is made between the victims and a bizarre cult known as The Straw Men. Marshall's book is filled with pages of uninterrupted description, which, while compelling, doesn't make for fast reading. But, to borrow a cliche, the devil is in the details. Thats certainly the case with this novel, whose graphic scenes of child abuse and dismemberment depict humankind at its most evil.Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. Review Humour, a cracking pace and fluid prose! Sizzling! Michael Marshall has a Crichton--like knack of attracting film studios The Times 'Humour, a cracking pace and fluid prose! Sizzling!Michael Marshall has a Crichton-like knack of attracting film studios' The Times --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. A full cast delivers a gripping performance of John Buchan's classic tale of espionage and intrigue. When Richard Hannay discovers a dead body in his apartment, he's dragged into a dark and dangerous world of global politics, secret societies, and undercover agents. Accused of murder and with the fate of the British fleet resting in his hands, Hannay must elude the police and foreign spies, decode a cryptic notebook, and convince the enigmatic Sir Walter Bullivant to believe his incredible tale. David Robb dazzles as Hannay, delivering a gritty, nuanced performance of a man living a nightmare, and with the addition of dramatic music and a host of pitch-perfect sound effects, this audiobook is highly enjoyable and highly recommended. (Jan.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the edition. Review It is the dimension of the mysterious that makes Buchan’s writing so unfailingly compelling. (John Keegan, from the introduction) --introduction --This text refers to the edition.

Amazon.com Review Former Air Force General Patrick McClanahan and his Night Stalkers are a freelance commando team that operates outside the American government--way outside--for reasons that author Dale Brown never makes entirely clear. Hired by a petroleum cartel to protect its interests in the Middle East, the team is testing new weapons developed by Sky Masters, McClanahan's private company, in the skies over Libya. Defending themselves against Libyan missiles, they get involved in a conflagration sparked by the new Libyan leader, who's convinced a radical Muslim faction to assassinate the pro-Western president of Egypt and help him take over the country's oil fields in return for his promise to unite all of Arab North Africa under theocratic fundamentalist rule. But his plans are foiled by the American-born widow of the slain president, with the timely assistance of McClanahan, the Night Stalkers, and their laser ray guns, plasma bombs, exoskeleton battle armor, and other weapons that Brown, an acknowledged master of the techno-thriller, describes in painstaking detail. The cumbersome plot and convoluted relationships among the central characters don't make much sense, and the action is so far over the top that it's barely believable, but that won't matter to Brown's enthusiastic readers, who've made his previous 13 books best sellers. --Jane Adams From Publishers Weekly Military-action thriller-master Brown (Warrior Class) ignites a Middle East powder keg and drops an unsanctioned special ops corps of retired U.S. military officers armed with new superweapons into the mix in his best outing yet. Forcibly retired Air Force Gen. Patrick McClanahan leads the Night Stalkers on secret humanitarian ops. His latest contract, from Big Oil, is to destroy missile sites set up by Libyan president Zuwayy, a Muslim fanatic who deposed Khadafy and wants Egypt's oil fields. Zuwayy kills Egypt's president; the president's widow, former American air force pilot Susan Bailey Salaam, barely escapes. Patrick's team attacks during the uproar and destroys the missiles, but many soldiers are captured, including Patrick's wife, Wendy. Susan, wildly popular in Egypt, decides to run for president and sees the Night Stalkers as her secret weapon against Zuwayy's aggression. Needing a base from which to rescue Wendy, Patrick agrees to help Susan take action when a deadly nerve gas wipes out an Egyptian army post. Meanwhile, the Night Stalkers' weapons lab in Nevada is facing a coup led by the parents of a child science prodigy who takes laser weapons to a new level and gives the Stalkers a deadly edge. Brown's knack for action allows him to set a speedy pace that doesn't let up until the shocker ending. The politics and Middle East setting are spot on; the superweapons are eye-openers; and the villains deliciously evil but the election of a woman, much less an American woman, as president of Egypt and head of the Muslim Brotherhood defies credibility. Still, it's a white-knuckle read from start to finish.Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From *Starred Review* Santa Barbara attorney Evan Delaney is gutsy and tough, but she has a tender side, too. She dotes on her nephew, Luke, who’s staying with her while his fighter-pilot father, Brian, is deployed overseas. (Brian, who’s stationed at the Mojave Desert naval weapons-testing center, China Lake, has been divorced from Luke’s mother, Tabitha, for years.) Evan’s peaceful cohabitation with Luke is thrown into chaos when Tabitha returns to town under the spell of the Remnant, a fundamentalist sect arming itself for the apocalypse with artillery and biological weapons. Tabitha wants Luke back—no questions asked. Brian comes home, and when the sect’s eerie leader is found dead in Brian’s backyard, the career military man is thrown in jail with little hope of release. Evan and her boyfriend, Jesse, come to Brian’s defense, prompting a flood of memories for Evan, who grew up in China Lake. Gardiner, an American who lives in Great Britain, renders a cast of compelling characters and a hair-raising plot that never stops. This is her second novel to be published in the States (after The Dirty Secrets Club, earlier this year); happily for readers, four more Evan Delaney mysteries are slated for release this summer and fall. --Allison Block Review China Lake has echoes of the film version of Cape Fear, except that the menace in this story is not a lone psychopath, but a fanatical religious cult known as The Remnant. Evan Delaney is the feisty young heroine who must battle to protect her small nephew Luke from the evil clutches of the cult. The nightmare begins when Tabitha, Luke's mother, becomes involved with The Remnant and uses their power to try to regain custody of her child. Evan joins forces with her brother in order to counter the destructive plans of the group and their belief of a forthcoming Armageddon. These are the elements in Meg Gardiner's compelling tale, a powerful mix of murder, terrorism and a wealth of dark secrets. --This text refers to the edition.

Amazon.com Review "A city that forgets its murder victims is a city lost. This is where we don't forget," Detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch is told by his new boss, as he ends a three-year retirement and rejoins the Los Angeles Police Department at the start of The Closers, the 11th installment of Michael Connelly's Edgar-winning series. Having long ago demonstrated his knack for cracking previously unsolved homicides, Bosch is assigned to the newly re-branded Open-Unsolved Unit (aka "cold case" squad), and charged with resolving the 17-year-old abduction and slaying of a mixed-race teenager. Rebecca Verloren, 16, was discovered missing from her Chatsworth home on a July morning in 1988. Her corpse and the gun that ended her life were later found on a hill behind the house. An autopsy revealed that she'd recently undergone an abortion, and a piece of skin tissue--presumably the killer's--was found trapped inside the murder weapon. Only now, though, has DNA science matched that tissue to Roland Mackey, a dyslexic 35-year-old tow-truck operator with no obvious connection to the deceased. It's up to Bosch, once more partnered with Kizmin Rider, to determine whether Mackey offed Becky Verloren, or was at least an accessory to that tragedy. But the more Bosch and Rider dig into this dusty crime, trying in part to determine whether racial animosity might have been involved, the more pain and resistance they encounter. Becky's white mother maintains the teen's old bedroom as a shrine, while her shattered father, an African-American chef, has vanished into LA's homeless community. Of the two original investigators on the case, one has since committed suicide, and Bosch suspects that the other--now a police commander--is helping to keep the lid tight on some old departmental secrets, perhaps linked to our hero's nemesis, Deputy Chief Irvin S. Irving. Understandably rusty after three years sans shield, Bosch makes his share of personal and professional mistakes here--including one that supplies The Closers with a lethal, plot-turning climax. But the greater problem is that Connelly exhausts so much time and effort following his protagonist through the tedium of modern police procedures, that he neglects what readers have liked more about this series in the past: its persistently deft exploration of Bosch's lonely, haunted soul (which remains mostly out of sight in this tale), and the author's frequent flights of lyrical prose (also not much in evidence). Would-be novelists wanting an example of a solidly constructed cop tale need look no further than The Closers. But readers hoping to learn why Connelly is so well-respected in this genre should turn, instead, to previous Bosch titles such as , , or . --J. Kingston Pierce --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. LAPD detective Harry Bosch, hero of last year's The Narrows and other Connelly thrillers, is back on the force after a two-year retirement. Assigned to the Open Unsolved (cold cases) unit and teamed with former partner Kiz Rider, Harry's first case back involves the killing of a high school girl 17 years before, reopened because of a DNA match to blood found on the murder gun. That premise could be a formula for a routine outing, but not with Connelly. Nor does the author rely on violent action to propel his story; there's next to none. In Connelly/Bosch's world, character, context and procedure are what count, and once again the author proves a master at all. The blood on the gun belongs to a local lowlife white supremacist, Roland Mackey; the victim had a black father and a white mother. But the blood indicates only that Mackey had possession of the gun, so how to pin him to the crime? Connelly meticulously leads the reader along with Bosch and Rider as they explore the links to Mackey and along the way connect the initial investigation of the crime to a police conspiracy. Most striking of all, in developments that give this novel astonishing moral force, the pair explore the "ripples" of the long ago crime, how it has destroyed the young girl's family—leaving the mother trapped in the past and plunging the father into a nightmare of homelessness and drink—and how it drives Rider, and especially Bosch, into deeper understanding of their own purposes in life. Connelly comes as close as anyone to being today's Dostoyevsky of crime literature, and this is one of his finest novels to date, a likely candidate not only for book award nominations but for major bestsellerdom. Agent, Phillip Spitzer. Major ad/promo; 11-city author tour.(May 16) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly Connelly's new thriller features two of his series heroes-the wily defense attorney Mickey Haller and his half-brother, LAPD detective Harry Bosch. This time Haller is working the other side of the courtroom, as a special independent prosecutor trying to keep a very nasty child molester and killer behind bars, with Bosch doing his legwork. As we've seen in The Brass Verdict, the author has Haller narrating his chapters, while the Bosch-centered sections are told in the third person. For the former, Peter Giles has developed a breezy, fast-paced vocal approach, while the detective's process is presented in a tougher, no frills manner. Additional characters are provided their own unique voices, including the smooth-talking district attorney, the arrogant villain, Haller's icy-but-melting former wife, and a brave but wavering witness to the crime. Not only is the production highly entertaining, the package is particularly generous, offering an additional two CDs containing unabridged MP3-format versions of The Reversal and the previous Haller-Bosch match, The Brass Verdict, also read by Giles. A Little, Brown hardcover. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From *Starred Review* Connelly may be our most versatile crime writer. His Harry Bosch series has taken the hard-boiled cop novel to a new level of complexity, both in its portrayal of the hero’s inner life and in Connelly’s ability to intertwine landscape and meaning. His Mickey Haller novels, on the other hand, starring the maverick lawyer who uses his Lincoln Town Car as an office, are testaments to the sublime architecture of plot. With the crime novel now commonly rubbing elbows with literary fiction, it sometimes seems that pure story has become a forgotten stepchild. In his Haller novels, Connelly reminds us how satisfying it can be to follow the path of a well-constructed plot. So it is here, in the third Haller novel, which finds the antiestablishment attorney accepting an unlikely offer: a one-time gig as a prosecutor, retrying a case in which a killer’s 24-year-old conviction has been overturned on the basis of DNA. Taking second chair will be Haller’s ex-wife, the formidable Maggie, with Harry Bosch (identified in The Brass Verdict, 2008, as Haller’s half brother) serving as special investigator. The table is set for a straightforward legal thriller, albeit one starring three superbly multidimensional characters. And, yet, Connelly bobs and weaves around all our expectations. There is suspense, of course, and there are plenty of surprises, both in the courtroom and outside of it, but this is a plot that won’t be pigeonholed. Reading this book is like watching a master craftsman, slowly and carefully, brick by brick, build something that holds together exquisitely, form and function in perfect alignment. --Bill Ott

From Publishers Weekly Blake's gritty tales of the modern West (In the Rogue Blood; Wildwood Boys) have won him critical praise, a cult following and comparisons to Cormac McCarthy, but he has yet to attract a wide literary audience. Despite its gripping premise, his latest effort is unlikely to break him out. Narrator James ("Jimmy the Kid") Youngblood takes readers into the dark criminal underworld of Depression-era Texas, specifically the Free State of Galveston. Offspring of a Mexican revolutionary and a beautiful Anglo prostitute, Jimmy becomes the chief gunsel for the Maceo brothers, barbers turned mob bosses who run the city's graft and gambling enterprises. The plot ostensibly focuses on the conflict between the Maceos and a Dallas-based mob that has tried to encroach on the brothers' territory, but a subplot involving Jimmy's budding love affair with the young wife of a Mexican warlord soon overshadows the gang wars and carries the novel to an explosive climax in the Mexican desert. The historical detail is deftly deployed, and the portrait of 1930s Galveston alone makes the book worthwhile for fans of the modern western. However, the novel is hampered by trite dialogue and a thin plot that is only partially shored up by a 40-page flashback revealing Jimmy's checkered past. Supporting characters, even his chief love interest, seldom come off the page. Most of all, Blake doesn't quite succeed in making the ruthless Jimmy-a tough guy's tough guy who easily rationalizes murder and cruelty-into a three-dimensional, fully human character. The novel is still a good read, and Blake fans will find this a worthy addition to his growing canon-but one feels that Blake has a much stronger novel inside him. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. About the Author James Carlos Blake is the author of nine novels. Among his literary honors are the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Southwest Book Award, Quarterly West Novella Prize, and Chautauqua South Book Award. He lives in Arizona.