The way Lake earns her money is as a marketing/PR consultant. Her current client is a Manhattan fertility clinic that needs an image overhaul, particularly since stories like OctoMom out in California make people distrust these types of places. While Lake is there, she meets Dr. Mark Keaton, a George Clooney-like playboy who flirts with Lake relentlessly. She gives in to Keaton’s advances (because hey, it’s been a while), and has sex with him at his apartment. Afterward, she heads out to the terrace to enjoy the view, where she promptly falls asleep until morning.

Upon returning to the bedroom, Lake discovers a ghastly scene: Mark has been brutally murdered. His throat was slashed and there is blood everywhere. Lake knows how this would look to the police, so instead of calling 911, she hightails it out of the place and hopes the cops won’t learn she was there.

The next day, news of Dr. Keaton’s murder circulates at the clinic, as investigators come in to question everyone. A paranoid Lake is convinced the cops will learn she was at Keaton’s apartment on the night he was murdered, so she decides the only way to save herself (and have a shot at maintaining custody of the kids) is to track down the murderer herself.

The rest of the novel then follows Lake as she digs into Keaton’s personal and professional lives, hoping to find something that can point her to the killer’s identity.

Liked:

• The basic setup had promise. To be honest, it reminded me a bit of the first season of the TV show Damages, where the heroine wakes up in an apartment with a dead body and doesn’t remember what happened. This book had the potential to be a good story.
• The reveal that the fertility clinic was basically giving away embryos without the parents’ consent was sufficiently chilling and creepy. Too bad the author DID NOTHING with that storyline and chose instead to make it one big red herring.

Disliked:

• I didn’t think White did a good job of building and maintaining tension throughout the book. It really felt as though Lake would have been safe if she simply left the whole thing alone. Someone shaved her cat… so what? If that was intended as a warning, then all she had to do was back off the investigation. It didn’t seem as though there was any pressure from the police, either. She was getting rattled by routine questions, but the cops never had anything concrete on her that would place her at the scene of the crime. Also, most writers add to the body count at some point (because doing so elevates the stakes), but White chose not to. Again, this was a mistake because I didn’t get the sense that Lake was truly in danger.
• The writing was downright amateurish at times, featuring godawful sentences like the following: “With her free hand, Lake ran her hand roughly through her hair.” Huh? How about a simple, “Lake ran her free hand roughly through her hair?” Where are the editors these days?
• While White did a relatively good job of masking the killer’s identity throughout, I felt cheated after learning that Rory was the culprit. Really? A woman in her fifth or sixth month of pregnancy did all that damage? I know women are still mobile at that stage, but let’s get real here. That final fight in Rory’s basement was particularly high on the ridiculousness scale. It was as though White deliberately chose the least likely person and thought to herself, “Oh, wouldn’t it be a great twist to make her the killer?!” Cue eyeroll.
• White didn’t do much to differentiate the various personalities at the clinic. I couldn’t tell one doctor from another even at the very end of the book, and had trouble keeping anyone’s name straight. They were all just random folks holding a variety of health care jobs at a fertility clinic as far as I was concerned. In other words, character development was severely lacking.
• I hated the detours that took Lake to the kids’ camp two or three times in the novel. Way to lose any momentum that might have been built in the main plot! When writers willingly wander off track like this, it’s a sign that they’re simply looking to beef up the page count because the main story isn’t solid enough to stand on its own.

Rating:

Hush by Kate White is something I just grabbed from the library one day because the blurb on the back sounded fairly interesting. However, I was disappointed by the lack of urgency and tension that are necessary to the success of a “thriller”, and won’t be checking out any of White’s other works any time soon. This book doesn’t even have enough entertainment value to warrant an average rating, so I give it 2 stars out of 5.

The first case involves a man named Arthur Brinkley, who one day listens to the voices inside his head and opens fire on a crowded ferry. He ends up killing or injuring five people, including Chief Medical Examiner Claire Washburn. Claire takes a bullet to the chest, and while she suffers a collapsed lung and loses a lot of blood, she ends up surviving. Meanwhile, Brinkley turns himself in by showing up at Boxer’s doorstep one night, making this one of the easiest arrests in her career. Of course, putting Brinkley away will be tough, as he’ll clearly use the insanity defense. But Lindsay leaves that to Yuki the prosecutor.

The second case involves a series of kidnappings taking place in San Francisco and Los Angeles. It seems that someone is after child prodigies, but, surprisingly enough, the kidnappers don’t bother making ransom demands of the parents. What’s happening to the kids? Lindsay and her crew soon get to the bottom of that mystery as well after tracking down leads through a nanny service that all of the victims’ families had in common.

The third case had to do with a string of brutal attacks at Cindy Thomas’ new apartment building. A dog was bludgeoned to death, and then two residents were murdered. The only common link is that all of the victims were known to make excessive noise during the daytime. Boxer and Co. of course come through in finding the killer here as well.

Liked:

• Honestly I’m finding less and less to like about these Women’s Murder Club books. I’m going to finish the series (or at least get caught up to #9, which is the most current book), but I doubt I’ll go any further. The only reason I’ll continue is that I already have the audiobook versions loaded onto my iPod.

Disliked:

• Why were there so many damn storylines? It was hard to keep them all straight, and having three main plots just made each seem less important. Could it be that Maxine Paetro (let’s face it, she must be the one who’s really writing here) simply couldn’t puff up a single storyline enough to meet the minimum page requirements? It certainly seems so.
• I used to like Lindsay Boxer as a character, but I don’t anymore. She was so damned wishy-washy in this one regarding her personal life that it made me cringe. She was forever crying and going back and forth about whether or not she loved Joe. She hated being without him, but then when he moved to SF for her, that still wasn’t enough? WTF?? Women like that give us all a bad name!
• Again, this is not so much the Women’s Murder Club anymore as it is the Lindsay Boxer Show. I got hooked on these books because of the special club dynamic. If it’s just going to be Lindsay… well, that sucks.

Rating:

The 6th Target by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro suffers significantly from several problems that the writers simply weren’t able to overcome. There were too many plots to follow, there weren’t any “club” meetings or activities that led to the solutions of the crimes, and the characters are becoming less and less likable with each installment. I give this book 2 stars out of 5.

In the meantime, Mikael has been busy trying to get back into the swing of things at Millennium after the Wennestrom affair that nearly ruined his career. The magazine has turned around and is performing fairly well, which is of course good news. Things are expected to get even better as freelancer Dag Svensson and girlfriend Mia Johansson are working on a brilliant piece that will expose the illegal sex trade. The story is sure to be explosive because the two journalists are prepared to name names — a list that includes several cops and other prominent figures.

But then Dag and Mia are found brutally murdered in their apartment. Blomqvist is convinced that the killings are directly related to the article the journalists were about to publish, but the police aren’t so sure. Since Nils Bjurman, Salander’s guardian, was also found murdered on the same night, and since all three were killed with the same murder weapon, the official investigation targets Salander — whose fingerprints happened to be on the gun.

The rest of the story then focuses on how Salander and Blomqvist, working together via messages left on Blomqvist’s computer, work to prove her innocence, while the bumbling cops and real killers do everything they can to prove she is guilty — or eliminate her altogether.

Liked:

• The pacing really picked up towards the end of the novel. The last 10 percent of the book made for a fairly good read — and showed me that the whole thing might have been decent if an editor had the sense to use the ‘Delete’ key on scores of pages in the beginning and middle.

Disliked:

• Larsson sure as hell took his sweet-ass time getting things moving along in this book. The beginning was filled with a holiday in Grenada that didn’t connect with the rest of the story at all, and a bunch of minute details about Lisbeth getting set up in her apartment. What kind of details? Um, like the exact catalog names and descriptions of all the modern sofas, chairs, tables, beds, and other furniture she bought. No, seriously. The double murder didn’t even occur until 34% (Kindle edition, obviously) of the way through the book. Yawn.
• Why is Lisbeth such a freakin’ caricature? She has no emotions because of “All The Evil” (again, eye-roll at how this phrase popped up over and over) and is like the damn Terminator with the way she takes/unleashes beatings and escapes from dire situations. Need I even mention how she was shot three times (including once in the fucking HEAD), and yet still managed to claw her way out of a shallow grave and kill a full-grown man in that state??? LOL. Her character, while somewhat entertaining, is not the least bit believable.
• Exposition, exposition, exposition. There is just soooo damn much of it in this book!!! There are long stretches where Larsson TELLS us about Salander rather than SHOWING us through action. Remember when the boxer explained Salander’s past to Blomqvist? Yeah, I literally fell asleep and dropped my precious Kindle in the process!
• Speaking of the boxer, how effing ridiculous was it that he got involved in the story at all? Yeah, I can really see Manny Pacquiao following a kidnapper and getting his ass beat to protect the friend of someone he “used to spar with”. Whatever.
• Salander bought a 25,000,000 kroner ($3.4 million) 21-room apartment in cash, and the transaction didn’t raise an eyebrow with authorities? She regularly transfers large amounts of money from overseas with similar ease? Yeah, not likely in the post 9/11 world.
• God, it was so annoying to have Salander referred to as a “little girl” throughout the whole damn book. She was a 26-year-old woman, ferchrissakes!!
• “All The Evil” turned out to be the most underwhelming reveal ever. Her father tried to kill her mother, so she firebombed his car? Traumatic for sure, but I personally thought the Bjurman torture/rape was 100x worse.

Rating:
I am truly having a hard time understanding why there is so much fuss being made over Stieg Larsson’s work. Is it because these books were published posthumously? I seriously don’t get it. The writing is mostly awful, the characters are utterly ridiculous, and the plots are extremely thin. What is it we’re supposed to like about this stuff? I give The Girl Who Played With Fire 2 stars out of 5.

Fortunately, the case happens to fall in Mace’s lap when the body of Diane Tolliver, a high-profile D.C. attorney, is found stuffed into her firm’s refrigerator. Beth inexplicably lets Mace tag along on the initial crime scene walk-through, where Mace meets Roy Kingman, another lawyer at the firm and the man who found the body. After establishing that Roy didn’t kill Diane, the two start investigating the case together despite Beth’s objections.

The rest of the book then goes through the usual police procedural motions. Roy and Mace track down clues, interview people, try to piece things together, and are cornered in dangerous situations several times. Nevertheless, they manage to escape every time and beat the “real” cops at cracking the case — which turned out to be some convoluted scheme of piggybacking dirty money on top of legitimate business deals in order to pay for foreign and domestic intelligence operations involving tracking down terrorists. Diane happened to come across the information and the intelligence agencies involved simply couldn’t risk her going public with the proof.

Liked:

• Well, there wasn’t all that much to like about this one, but I do have to say that the plot moved along rather quickly. This was kind of a long book, but I was able to breeze through it because there weren’t too many slow spots. To be sure, there were a lot of subplots that could have been edited out, but I was surprised at how fast I was able to get through this.
• I liked Mace and Roy, for the most part. Mace was a bit too perfect to be believable, what with her nearly super-human strength built up from endless hours spent on prison pull up bars and free weights, but I thought she and Roy made a decent crime-solving team. Even though I didn’t particularly enjoy this title, I wouldn’t necessarily be opposed to reading another book featuring these two characters.

Disliked:

• Wow, where to start? Well, first of all, there were just too many unbelievable situations in the book. Like a big-time drug dealer named Psycho would wager Roy and Mace’s freedom on a one-on-one game of basketball with some guy he was 2 seconds away from killing? Uh huh. And later, Psycho would again delay killing Mace just because she asked him if she could get a punch in (at which point she tasered him). OMG, yeah right. Then, to top it all off, Mace was able to pull the SAME stunt on the trained assassin by asking for a knife fight? WTF kind of killers are these supposed to be? What a crock!
• Where can I get a six-figure position as a research assistant? That was another eye-roll plot point that didn’t even need to be there. Would it have killed Baldacci to make Mace a waitress or something the least bit believable? It’s not like the job ended up having anything to do with the main story — except for allowing Razor to miraculously appear on the spot to rescue Mace from Psycho. But that same ending could have been accomplished in a number of other ways besides a ludicrously cushy job.
• The main case was dull and boring. Why couldn’t Mace and Roy have been working to find the people who framed her? That would have made a lot more sense — and would have allowed readers to become much more invested — than this totally random piggybacking scheme.
• The whole scene where Mace was locked in the refrigerator. Man, in a book filled with stupid scenes, that had to be one of the worst. It didn’t help that Baldacci drew the thing out so long. I knew she would escape, so I just skimmed to the end of that ridiculous part.

Rating:

True Blue by David Baldacci is certainly not one of the author’s best efforts. It is a mostly by-the-numbers procedural with too many unbelievable events to make the story the least bit enjoyable. I give this book 2 stars out of 5.

The story is not told in chronological order, so along with Barbara’s death and the subsequent trial, readers are taken back in time to events that happened a year or more before. For instance, we learn of 60-year-old Rusty’s affair with his 34-year-old law clerk Anna, and of a massive breach of ethics when Rusty tells a defendant, out on bail for murder, that his appeal won’t hold up. Rusty eventually ends the affair with Anna (or she ends it with him…I’ve already forgotten which way it went!), and she starts dating Nat, Rusty and Barbara’s son. Later, Barbara learns of Rusty’s affair by snooping through his emails, and sets in motion a plan of revenge.

About midway through Rusty’s trial for Barbara’s murder, the chronology gets back on track and things proceed somewhat more linearly. In the courtroom scenes, Molto and Brand present their circumstantial evidence for charging Rusty with Barbara’s murder: the browser cache on his computer showed evidence of searches regarding MAO inhibitors, which Barbara might have OD’d on. Plus, there are store receipts showing Rusty purchased a bunch of foods that interact dangerously with MAO inhibitors, and there is forensic evidence that Rusty’s fingerprints were the only ones on the pill bottle. But Sandy Stern, Rusty’s lawyer, has plausible explanations for everything. Plus, there wasn’t exactly a real motive. Rusty had ended his affair 15 months or so prior to Barbara’s death, and it wasn’t as though there were searches for term life insurance rates on his computer, indicating that he was after money.

When all is finally said and done, Rusty ends up copping to a plea of obstruction of justice, while Molto dismisses the murder charge. Rusty is sentenced to two years in a minimum security prison, but is sprung after a couple of months when Molto discovers some professional malfeasance on the part of Brand.

Liked:

• I initially liked where the crime angle was going. I had figured out that Barbara was behind everything (particularly since I remember her as the killer in the first novel), but I attributed different motives to her and thought she would have succeeded in nailing Rusty this time.

Disliked:

• I don’t know why Turow decided to tell the story from all these different points of view and from different points in time. That was kind of confusing at first, and then just got to be a drag. By jumping around like that, there was no natural building of suspense, so the courtroom scenes ended up being boring when they should have been the high point of the novel.
• The whole Nat-Anna relationship was just disgusting. How could Anna move from the father to the son so effortlessly and barely even feel guilty about it? And if she truly loved Nat, as she said, how could she allow their relationship to be built on a foundation of lies? Sure, Turow conveniently had Nat say that he didn’t want to hear about Anna’s sexual past, but gimme a break. If he had any inkling that it involved his own father, I’m sure he would’ve been singing a different tune at that point!
• Nat was just an annoying character all the way around. I got sick of Turow describing him as “achingly beautiful” or whatever. Good grief. And wtf was with all of Nat’s crying? I swear, he cries or breaks down or sobs 10-15 times in this book. This is a 28-year-old man we’re talking about. Look, I’m all about men embracing their sensitive side, but that was friggin’ ridiculous.
• The ending was pretty lame. After all that, the two sides ended in what was essentially a stalemate? Meh. Even though Rusty was innocent, it would have been a nice twist to send him to jail for Barbara’s murder anyway. Or maybe I’m just saying that because I found him to be an utterly despicable and unlikable character. Whatever the reason, the ending was unsatisfying.

Rating:

Innocent by Scott Turow is nothing like the page-turner that brought the author to nationwide prominence two decades ago. I found myself skimming a good many pages, not liking or rooting for any of the characters, and rolling my eyes/shaking my head at the various plot developments Turow threw out there as the story unfolded. I give this book 2 stars out of 5.

The second case involves an unhinged Iraq war veteran named Pete Gordon who really despises women and children (including his own wife and kids) because of some of the things he saw in the desert. So he goes around the city executing mothers and children in various parking garages, leaving behind the letters “WCF” in lipstick at each crime scene. Nobody knows what that means until the Lipstick Killer himself literally spells it out for the cops: Women and Children First.

Along with the cases, which are solved in more or less the usual way, the authors spend a bit of time addressing the private lives of a few of the main characters. Lindsay and Joe are still engaged, and apparently trying for a baby. Cindy and Rich Conklin (Lindsay’s partner on the force) are moving in together. And Yuki, who finally won a court case, is dating the bartender at one of the Club’s usual haunts.

Liked:

• This is a very quick, mostly entertaining read listen (I had the audiobook version from the public library), which is what I’ve come to expect from the series.
• The Hello Kitty storyline was fairly interesting. I wouldn’t have minded if that had been the main focus of the book. I particularly liked that Sarah and Heidi were lovers. When they first met up in the cafeteria after Sarah’s night at the Dowlings’, I expected them to just chitchat about diet pills that work, hair products, or whatever else BFFs usually talk about. That they were planning a liaison was a definite surprise.
• Lindsay wasn’t quite as annoying and whiny as she has been in the past few books of the series. Hopefully this improvement continues.
• I liked that Pete Gordon (the Lipstick Killer) turned out to be Heidi’s husband. I didn’t see that twist coming.
• It was interesting that both criminals got away. The Lipstick Killer managed to disappear into traffic, and Hello Kitty got placed in Witsec. Does this mean these people will pop up again in future books?

Disliked:

• What was up with all the sex scenes in this book??? The Dowlings, Sarah (Hello Kitty) and her husband, Pete and Heidi, Sarah and Heidi, Rich and Cindy, Joe and Lindsay… wtf? So many interludes, so little time.
• Sarah aka Hello Kitty just returns all the jewels without holding anything back, and then agrees to go into witness protection? Seems like a smarter move would have been to fence at least some of the stuff and leave the country, which was the original plan. It’s not as though the cops were any closer to unmasking her, and it’s not as though she completely erases her culpability in the crimes by returning the goods, so what was the point of that?
• And what was the point of the plane crash fake-out involving Joe? Was that just so Lindsay would come to realize how much she loves him? If it takes something like that to convince her, then she has problems. That whole “epilogue” just seemed totally manufactured and unnecessary.
• Wow, the Lipstick Killer storyline was pretty brutal. The authors didn’t really hold back, what with having Pete kill five children. Yikes. Also, I found it completely unbelievable that Pete would refer to these children that he hated as “kiddos”. That seemed way too tame. He would have called them brats or bastards or little shits… something other than “kiddos”.
• Would the feds really have allowed Sarah to go into WitSec with Heidi and her kids? They don’t just let “friends” come along for the ride, do they? Heidi didn’t ‘fess up and say the women were lovers, so I don’t understand why the FBI let that happen.

Rating:

If you’re a regular reader of the Women’s Murder Club books, then you already know what to expect from 9th Judgment. You’ll get neither more nor less than the authors have churned out in past installments. The action clips along at a decent pace, the criminals du jour are slightly interesting, and Lindsay carries the show once again. I give this 3 stars out of 5.

Nikki Heat is called to a fancy apartment building in Manhattan where real estate tycoon Matthew Starr has plummeted from his sixth floor balcony to his death. Whether the death was a suicide due to deteriorating financial health or the result of foul play is something that Heat and partners Raley and Ochoa have to figure out. Along for the ride is magazine writer Jameson Rook, whose main job is not to get in the way of the real detective work.

It doesn’t take long for Heat to determine that Starr was murdered. There is no shortage of suspects, as the man was rather ruthless in his business dealings and no doubt pissed some people off along the way. Trophy wife Kimberley is a prime suspect, as is the man with whom she was having an extramarital affair. Things get even more complicated when the detectives learn that Starr’s finances were precarious at best and that his prized, valuable art collection had slowly been replaced with fakes.

The book reads like an extended episode, and true to episodic format, the detectives fight through the misdirections and red herrings to figure out who the real killer is just in the nick of time.

Liked:

• This was a fast-paced book that provided the perfect kind of weekend read I was looking for while relaxing on the outdoor cushions on my deck under the warm spring sun. As I said, it felt like an extended episode of the show, so it flowed along very well.
• I loved seeing Nikki Heat and Jameson Rook through Castle’s filter. There were obviously some parallels between Heat/Beckett and Rook/Castle, but Castle took lots of creative liberties as well — particularly with the hot sex scene. I’m surprised they didn’t mention it more on the TV show. Beckett should have had a big reaction to that. Maybe she did and I missed it!
• Based on the way Richard Castle is portrayed on the show, I can totally buy this as the kind of book he would write. It’s perfect for him!

Disliked:

• There’s not a whole lot of literary merit to this book. It’s clearly something that staff writers churned out for promotional purposes. I wasn’t expecting all that much to begin with, though, so it wasn’t a major disappointment or anything like that.

Rating:

Heat Wave by Richard Castle is a fun little novel that was published as a treat for fans of the television series. In that regard, I thought it was ok, but if it were a standalone novel by a legitimate novelist, I wouldn’t think much of it. I give it 3 stars out of 5 and recommend that you check out the TV show. It’s good!

After conferring with partner and on-again/off-again lover Erika Berger, Blomkvist decides to take a leave of absence from Millennium before serving his sentence in order to get his bearings. At this point, he is invited to meet the wealthy Henrik Vanger, the former CEO of the Vanger Corporation, who has a job offer for Blomkvist. Vanger then explains that he wants Blomkvist to write a history of the large Vanger family — all the while focusing on the mysterious 1966 disappearance of then 16-year-old granddaughter Harriet, whom Vanger believes was murdered, perhaps by someone in the family.

Blomkvist is staggered by the salary Vanger offers (close to $750,000 for a year’s work), but doesn’t believe he’ll be able to shed any light on Harriet’s disappearance. After all, he’s not a detective. But Vanger insists that Blomkvist is the right man for the job — and to sweeten the pot, Vanger tells Blomkvist that he’ll provide him with some hard proof of Wennerström’s illegal activities at the end of the year so Blomkvist can clear his name. Blomkvist accepts.

At first, Blomkvist’s investigation into what happened to Harriet mostly consists of reading through the copious amount of documents and photographs that Vanger himself has compiled on the subject. But after Blomkvist starts to make some real headway, he decides that he needs an assistant to keep things rolling. Enter Lisbeth Salander, a twenty-something pierced and tattooed “researcher” who is a skilled hacker and has a knack for uncovering people’s deepest, darkest secrets.

The rest of the novel then deals with various aspects of the investigation. These include a sexual relationship between Blomkvist and Salander; Salander’s quirky, antisocial behavior; the tracking down of witnesses and deciphering of clues that are several decades old; and a resolution to both the Harriet Vanger case and the Wennerström affair.

Liked:

• Some parts of the book, particularly the ones dealing directly with the investigation into Harriet Vanger’s disappearance were highly engrossing. Lots of people have said that this novel is a page-turner, and that was certainly true in a few places.
• The discovery that Harriet was onto a serial killer was a surprise. I expected this to be a straightforward murder of the girl, but it turned out to be a whole lot more.
• The relationship between Blomkvist and Berger was different and sort of interesting. A 20-year sexual relationship in which both parties are great friends, yet don’t want to marry each other and don’t care if the other person marries or sleeps with someone else? Sounds like a pipe dream for sure, but as I said, it was definitely different!

Disliked:

• Lisbeth Salander was a very annoying character that I only liked occasionally. Most of the time, I felt that she was described in extremes merely as a literary device (make your characters memorable!), and as a result she came off more like a cliché than a believable character. Oooh, she has tattoos and piercings — but she’s actually very smart and competent. I mean, bfd, right? Oooh, she’s so skinny you’ll think she pops apidexin for breakfast — but actually she eats like a horse. Wow, what an amazing contradiction…not. And her whole sitting in silence act or just walking away instead of answering a question…. wtf?? That got old after the first 20 times she did it. I wanted to scream at her, “Just grow the fuck up, already!”
• I thought the author relied on far too much “luck” in the investigation. There just happens to be a photo of what Harriet was looking at on the other side of the street during the parade? Blomkvist just happens to be able to track down the person standing behind Harriet, taking said photo? Blomkvist’s daughter just happens to realize that some random numbers are Bible verses even though they have different names in front of them and aren’t written the way Bible verses usually are? I mean, this wasn’t your standard Jn 3:16, ya know?
• Wow, did there really need to be that graphic description of anal rape? We already knew that Salander’s trustee Bjurman was a disgusting pig from the time he forced her to perform oral sex in his office. Remember that? Did Larsson really need to include an extended scene of Bjurman raping her too?
• So Harriet was alive and well in Australia after all. Hmm, don’t you think she would have slipped a note or something to her grandfather to let him know she was doing fine? (Yes, she was sending those creepy flowers, but obviously the old man didn’t get the hint.) Was she still scared of Martin after all those years, despite being all the way in Australia with her big, strapping sons to protect her??
• Martin Vanger, Harriet’s brother, turned out to be a serial killer preying on women (mostly illegal aliens) and keeping them in his basement torture chamber until he was done having his fun. All of this happened because father Gottfried, who was also a serial killer, groomed him to be this way. Gottfried forced both Martin and Harriet to have sex with him, and then allowed Martin to have his way with Harriet too. Disgusting all the way around. But seriously, is this something that could have effectively been hidden all those years? How could Harriet just run away and not tell anyone about Martin when she knew damn well he was killing people??? Ever heard of leaving an anonymous tip with the authorities?!
• The Harriet mystery ended with a LOT of pages left in the book. I thought that should have been the proper place to leave things off, but Larsson goes on and on and on about the Wennerström affair, though I’d wager that few readers cared about that anymore.

Rating:

I was really looking forward to reading an excellent thriller, as so many people have been buzzing about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. But unfortunately, I found the book lacking in many respects and came away with the impression that it was pretty much the same as other books in the genre. There were some good parts, but the “yeah, right” eye-roll moments outnumbered those by a wide margin. I give this 3 stars out of 5.

Poirot asks what’s wrong, and soon hears all about the problem. Miss Lemon’s sister Mrs. Hubbard runs a student hostel at 26 Hickory Road. There have recently been some strange goings-on there, and Mrs. Hubbard is worried about the place and its inhabitants. When Poirot hears that a random hodgepodge of trinkets have been stolen, he is immediately interested in the case. This is something he has never come across before, and after all, retirement is rather boring for him.

Poirot ventures out to Hickory Road, where he meets Mrs. Hubbard and the various student residents. After a short lecture and questioning period, Poirot figures out that a young woman named Celia Austin had been causing the mischief, and she did so in order to get the attention of Colin McNabb, a psychology student that she likes. After talking to Celia once more Poirot realizes that someone probably put her up to the whole thing. Celia agrees to restore the items, pay for damages, and stop stealing. Case closed.

No, of course that’s not the end of bad happenings on Hickory Road! It wouldn’t be an Agatha Christie book without a dead body or three, and those are soon to come. Celia is the first victim, and then Mrs. Nicoletis, the owner of the establishment. Finally, Patricia Lane, another student is bludgeoned to death as well.

Poirot continues his investigation, and slowly uncovers some surprising details about the hostel and its inhabitants. For instance, there is a drug and gem smuggling ring being orchestrated by someone, and another person might be in possession of a fake passport. With lots of students from a bunch of different countries, Poirot and the proper police inspectors come up with lots of potential theories for what is going on, until they finally hit upon the right one.

Liked:

• This book had a different feel than some of the Christie books I’ve read recently. It seemed like a lot of things were going on behind the scenes, and the murders actually had a point to them.
• There were plenty of red herrings strewn along the way, making it hard to figure out exactly what was going on. But Christie played fair, so by the time the solution was revealed, it seemed rather plausible on the whole.

Disliked:

• The only thing I really disliked about this novel was how only a few of the students were truly developed as characters. In hindsight, I guess it would be possible to figure out the guilty parties by paying attention to who gets the most attention from the author.

Rating:

Hickory Dickory Dock is probably not considered one of Christie’s best efforts by true aficionados, but I liked it well enough. It held my interest throughout, and it featured Hercule Poirot, so those were definite pluses for me. I was disappointed not to get his standard speech at the end in front of a room full of suspects, though! At any rate, I give this book 3 stars out of 5.

The novel opens with a man named Dan Mercer getting busted by a “To Catch a Predator” type TV show for allegedly preparing to rendezvous with an underage girl. A subsequent police raid on the man’s home turns up further evidence that Mercer is a pedophile. Though the judge throws out the case on a technicality, Mercer’s name is tarnished, causing him to lose his friends, his job, and any chance of a future life in the community.

Wendy Tynes, the anchor who broke the Dan Mercer story, comes out the worse for wear as well. She loses her job due to the non-conviction, which makes her want to keep pursuing the case. She has to find out once and for all if Dan is a pedophile or not. This is one of the reasons she agrees to meet with him out at a trailer in a remote area — the only place he can hide out somewhat safely.

But when Wendy arrives, a masked intruder bursts in and shoots Dan. Wendy thinks it’s Ed Grayson, the father of one of Dan’s alleged victims, but she doesn’t hang around to find out. She escapes, and call the cops, who arrive too late. The killer is gone. So is the body. A later search of Dan Mercer’s hotel room turns up Haley McWaid’s iPhone, which could mean that Dan was a pedophile after all.

Wendy continues to investigate, and soon uncovers the fact that 3 of Dan’s 4 Princeton suitemates have also become the victims of scandals within the past year that cost them their careers. She pursues this line of inquiry until she gets at the surprising truth regarding the suitemates and Haley McWaid’s disappearance.

Liked:

• This was a good, old-fashioned page-turner. It started off a bit slowly as Coben set up the framework and introduced all the characters, but once the story got rolling, I could barely put my Kindle down. I finished this in just 2 days, and ended up with dark circles under my eyes for my trouble!
• I thought the connection between the two plots was feasible. Sometimes in books like these, the author really has to stretch believability, but I could buy it here.
• I loved that Win (from the Bolitar series) makes a cameo appearance in this one. It was cool to get a non-Myron perspective of him — and he actually provided information that was critical to solving the case.

Disliked:

• I was really hoping that Coben would not go for the expected endings. For instance, I hoped that Wendy Tynes would have allowed Jenna Wheeler, Dan’s ex-wife, to move away and get on with her life. Sure, that’s controversial, since she hosted the alcohol party where Haley drank too much and died, but again, it would have been unexpected. So what if Jenna framed Dan. That whole “dead is dead” thing was right.

  And, I was hoping that Dan really was a pedophile. All the other guys Phil Turnbull exposed were guilty (the senator with his hookers and the doctor with his drug deals), do it would have made more sense for Dan to be guilty too. But since the book opened from Dan’s pov, I kind of gathered early on that he was set up.

• I didn’t like the Father’s Club/Ten-a-Fly rapper crap at all. What a waste of space. I can buy what the other former Masters of the Universe were doing after losing their jobs, but a middle-aged white rapper? Yeah, right.
• That whole throwing-a-glass-ashtray-and-disfiguring-someone-for-life incident was a bit odd. You’d think Phil’s family, with as much money as they had, would have pressured the university into having a hearing or allowing Phil to finish his courses by correspondence or whatever. And why did the family have to pay the girl hush money if Phil got expelled anyway?

Rating:

Caught by Harlan Coben is a fast-paced thriller that will keep the reader guessing right to the very end. There were a couple of good twists along the way, and despite a few flaws, the novel was a fun way to spend a spring weekend. I give it 4 stars out of 5.