Category: Contemporary

Reckoning by Catherine Coulter

On By BarbaraIn Barb's Reviews, Contemporary, Mystery, Part of a SeriesLeave a comment

Reckoning (FBI Thriller, #26)Barbara’s rating: 5 of 5 Stars
Series: FBI Thriller #26
Publication Date: 8/2/22
Period: Contemporary
Number of Pages: 432

As always, Catherine Coulter has delivered a stellar book. One might think that a series with 26 books would become a bit stale and repetitive, but that is NOT the case here. Each book is as fresh, engaging, and inventive as the first. These later books haven’t made use of Dillon’s sixth sense as much as the first ones did, but that isn’t an issue for me – after all, it allows them to solve the crimes by following the evidence. Although – sometimes – a bit of that intuition would be good in the suspenseful parts.

I listened to the audiobook version from my public library and I loved the way they did it. Harper Audio presented the book with narrators Saskia Maarleveld and Pete Simonelli, so we had a female narrator for the female voices and a male narrator for the male. Both narrators did an excellent job with the pacing of the narration and each character had a nicely unique voice.

If you are a fan of the series, you’ll remember Emma’s story – The Target, book #3 in the series. One of the things I love about this series is the continuity of the characters. They don’t all show up in every book, but they recur often enough you can keep up with them. Emma was kidnapped by a heinous pedophile when she was six years old, and now several years later, someone is again trying to kidnap her. Is it a family member of the pedophile who is coming after her as revenge for the death of the pedophile? Is it the man who actually paid the pedophile to kidnap Emma in the first place? Is it someone totally different?

Savich and Sherlock definitely don’t have an easy time solving this one – especially when the victims are very good friends of theirs. They manage to thwart more kidnapping attempts before the kidnappers decide to change targets. Catching the villains and rescuing the abductees becomes a near-death thing for all participants. Can Savich and Ramsey save everyone or will some of them die?

The other featured case features Agent Griffin Hammersmith as he pairs up with Kirra Mandarian, a commonwealth attorney in Porte Franklin, Virginia. When she was just twelve years old, Kirra barely escaped with her life on the night her parents were murdered. Now, after living with her uncle in Australia for years, she is back in Porte Franklin and she is determined to uncover the murderers of her parents.

Little does Kirra know how dangerous those murderers are or how far they can reach until the attempts on her life begin. Lucky for her all of those years in Australia taught her many survival skills – and she’s going to need every one of them to survive. Things are very close even with the ever-so-handsome agent Hammersmith looking out for her. Can Kirra and Hammersmith get the evidence they need to convict the murderers before those murderers get them?

I thoroughly enjoyed this intense, suspenseful read and I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did.

View all my reviews

Mania by L.J. Ross

On By BarbaraIn Barb's Reviews, Contemporary, Mystery, Part of a SeriesLeave a comment

Mania (Alexander Gregory #4)Barbara’s rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Series: Alexander Gregory Thrillers #4
Publication Date: 3/3/22
Period: Contemporary
Number of Pages: 270

I read the first book in this series because I am a big fan of this author’s DCI Ryan series. I enjoyed the book, but I thought Alex needed a bit more humanizing to be a truly relatable character. I skipped from the first book to this fourth one because I wanted to see what sort of character growth Alex may have had between the two books. I definitely liked him better this time and will check out the next book to see how it goes.

In this story, there were plots within plots and they had to be disentangled before the case could be solved. Frankly, I’m not a fan of ‘coincidences’, but the coincidences in this book make for a very nice set-up for probably the next book. So, in this book we got a case to solve and we got some intriguing hints about things to come. Cool!

Over a decade ago acclaimed actor of stage and screen, Sir Nigel Villiers, saved the Old Palace Theater from ruin. He is the consummate performer – always prepared – and his personality just dominates the stage. Then he dominates the stage in an entirely different way – with his dead body. He collapsed onstage in front of a full audience. Dr. Alexander Gregory was in the audience along with his friend and mentor Professor William (Bill) Douglas and he rushed to the stage to help. Despite his best efforts, Villiers died – from poisoning.

When cryptic clues turn up – with references to both Socrates and events that happened in Villiers’ past, the investigators are perplexed. Witnesses lead them to suspect after suspect, but none of them lead anywhere. Then, there is another death with the same type of cryptic clues. Obviously, the deaths are related but is it because of what happened in the past or the present?

With yet another death that has similarities, but is still different, the case becomes yet more complicated. Has the murderer changed his pattern? Are all three murders related? They all knew each other – but still? Whose past holds the correct clues?

We meet a couple of potential love interests for Alex and that could get interesting. At least it can if we don’t play around with a love triangle for a while because then I’d just have to put the series down. William and Alex’s pasts are coming back to haunt them and it should be interesting to see how that goes.

This was an interesting, suspenseful read and I’m looking forward to the next book in the series.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

View all my reviews