Category: Mystery

Game On: Tempting Twenty-Eight by Janet Evanovich

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

Game On: Tempting Twenty-Eight (Stephanie Plum, #28)Barbara’s rating: 5 of 5 Stars
Series: Stephanie Plum #28
Publication Date: 11/2/21
Period: Contemporary – The Burg (Trenton), USA
Number of Pages: 320

Diesel is back and he and Stephanie are looking for the same criminal. If you haven’t already met Diesel in previous books (and even from his own series a while back), here is how Stephanie describes him. “Diesel is over six feet of hard muscle and bad attitude…” Diesel has some talents that are very hard to explain and works for an organization that is even harder to pin down. He just appears in Stephanie’s apartment in the middle of the night, and he wants to stay with her. OOPS – how will her long-term boyfriend Joe Morelli feel about that?

Stephanie and Lula go about their business as Bail Enforcement Agents working for Stephanie’s cousin Vinnie. Some people are just easier to track down than others – and some are easier to apprehend than others – and some just steal your heart when you hear their stories. One of their FTAs (Failure To Appear) is Melvin Schwartz who was arrested because he hacked into the evening news and replaced the broadcast with a porno film. As one of seven members of the hacker group known as Baked Potato, Melvin is in more trouble than he knows because his group hacked into the ultimate, primo, hacker’s servers and now he’s after them. What started out as a lark for the Baked Potatoes, turns deadly and will cost all of them their lives if Stephanie, Diesel, Morelli, Lula, and Ranger can’t stop the revenge of Oswald Wednesday who did not appreciate being hacked.

Oswald is a psychopath who loves pain and torture, so when he manages to identify the Baked Potatoes, he takes great delight in torturing them prior to killing them. Oswald is very rich, very shrewd, very sly, and has all the skills and tools he needs to identify, track down, and dispose of each of the people responsible for hacking his servers. Soon, Stephanie is in his cross-hairs as well because she has dared to cross him and hide the people for whom he is looking.

As always, the story is entertaining, witty, and very well written. I absolutely adore all of the supporting characters – especially Lula and Stephanie’s mother. I believe I’d like to move to the Berg after hearing Stephanie’s description. “While many parts of the country are struggling with changing ideologies, the Burg continues to march to the beat of its own drum, thumbing its nose at political correctness.”

I can definitely recommend this book because it provided several hours of smiles and breath-holding entertainment for me – and I hope it will for you as well. Happy Reading!

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

View all my reviews

Death In The Woods by Jo Allen – Blog Tour

On By BarbaraIn Barb's Reviews, Blog Tour, Contemporary, MysteryLeave a comment

Death in the Woods

A series of copycat suicides, prompted by a mysterious online blogger, causes DCI Jude
Satterthwaite more problems than usual, intensifying his concerns about his troublesome
younger brother, Mikey. Along with his partner, Ashleigh O’Halloran, and a local
psychiatrist, Vanessa Wood, Jude struggles to find the identity of the malicious troll
gaslighting young people to their deaths.


The investigation stirs grievances both old and new. What is the connection with the
hippies camped near the Long Meg stone circle? Could these suicides have any
connection with a decades old cold case? And, for Jude, the most crucial question of all.
Is it personal — and could Mikey be the final target?

Purchase Links

Amazon UK https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09BG9BY1N

Amazon US https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09BG9BY1N

Author Bio

Jo Allen was born in Wolverhampton and is a graduate of Edinburgh, Strathclyde and the Open University, with undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in geography and Earth science. She’s been writing for pleasure and publication for as long as she can remember. After a career in economic consultancy she took up writing and was first published under the name Jennifer Young, in genres of short stories, romance and romantic suspense. She wrote online articles on travel and on her favourite academic subject, Earth science. In 2017 she took the plunge and began writing the genre she most likes to read — crime.

Jo lives in the English Lakes, where the DCI Satterthwaite series is set. In common with all her favourite characters, she loves football (she’s a season ticket holder with her beloved Wolverhampton Wanderers) and cats.

Social Media Links –

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Twitter

Facebook

Barbara’s Review:

Barbara’s rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars

With the suicides of three young people within a short period of time and all within the same forested area, people begin to wonder if they aren’t connected. When psychiatrist Vanessa Woods comes forward and agrees about the connections, the police accept her offer of help. DCI Jude Satterthwaite and his team are tasked with looking into whether there is a connection and whether they are actually suicides. Since they aren’t proven crimes, Satterthwaite’s boss keeps him from giving the case priority and thus he cannot get all of the resources he needs. Satterthwaite’s gut tells him something isn’t right, but the deaths really are suicides. So, where is the crime? Is there a crime? Every parent of a young person wants to know what is happening to cause kids to commit suicide.

We follow along as Satterthwaite and his team interview and reinterview anyone who might have information and at first, it seems there is absolutely no connection between those young people. When more bodies turn up – and more suicides are attempted, Satterthwaite knows he has to get to the bottom of it all. Satterthwaite is very worried about his much younger brother, Mikey, and Mikey’s rebellion has been putting him through a lot of worries lately.

I was happy to see the solution to the case and wasn’t surprised by how it worked out. However, I had to scratch my head at how the police got there – but once it did, they were off and running. It was out of the blue – like a lightning bolt – just wham and case solved. The reader had all of the clues that lead to that solution, but the police didn’t, so I have to wonder how they had their grand epiphany.

We also meet and learn of Satterthwaite’s romantic entanglements during the course of the investigation. Since the characters never really reached out and grabbed my interest, I really didn’t care one way or the other. As a workaholic who thought of nothing other than work, I think it would be very hard for anyone to have a relationship with him – and he seemed to have no interest in trying to change that. He was proud of himself for showing just showing up at his brother’s twenty-first birthday party – only an hour or so late.