4th of July Review

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(More customer reviews)Wow, what a story! There is a reason why James Patterson sells millions of books and great mysteries like 4th of July are the reason why. In the fourth installment of the popular Women's Murder Club series, Lieutenant Lindsay Boxer (the head of San Francisco Police Department's Homicide Division) is fighting to save her career after she is accused in a wrongful death suit, and at the same time struggling to help solve a series of grisly murders that have shaken the small town of Half Moon Bay, where she has retreated to chill out while on administrative leave from the SFPD.
As the story unfolds Lieutenant Boxer is hot on the trail of a couple of suspects that she and her partner believe are responsible for a recent string of seedy motel murders. Turns out the suspects are two very youthful teenage siblings, and in the process of apprehending these two, Boxer is forced to use deadly force to defend herself and her partner. When all is said and done, Boxer's partner is critically wounded and unconscious, Boxer herself has been hit twice, a 15 year old girl is dead, and her 13 year old brother is paralyzed for life from the neck down. Was it a legitimate use of deadly force? Not in the minds of the parents it wasn't. And the media has already found her guilty without the benefit of trail!
In Half Moon Bay someone is killing local residents in a gruesome fashion reminiscent of an unsolved homicide from Lieutenant Boxer's earliest days on the force. She is supposed to be laying low in the sleepy little seaside resort, gearing up the trail of her life, but when the killing starts, she finds herself hard pressed to remain disinterested and unengaged. Before long she is swept up in the investigation and a target for murder herself!
A great weekend read. The chapters just fly by! Also recommended are the other three stories in the Women's Murder Club series: 1st to Die, 2nd Chance, and 3rd Degree. Be the first on your block to collect all four books!

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Open and Shut Review

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(More customer reviews)in town. Rosenfeldt worked in marketing for Tri-Star pictures before trying his hand at screenplays, and this, his first novel. He has a smooth, confident style and a hero steeped in courtroom shenanigans. Like Coben's hero, Myron Bolitar, Andy Carpenter is a sports nut and a smartass, but a loveable one. Like Koontz's heroes, Andy is hung up on his Golden Retriever, Tara, and much of the charm and humor of the character comes out in his frequent references to her.
Carpenter's first story (I say first, because the book cries out for a sequel or two or thirteen) involves an appeal in a case of capital murder. His case is tangled in his past with his beloved father, and his feeling that there is more than meets the eye to his dad's request for him to defend a man that he, himself, had convicted. Tangled with the defense of his client, Willie Miller, is Andy's own broken marriage and his attempt at reconciliation after he's already fallen in love with someone new.
The plot to prove Willie's innocence is less than original, and a little shallow, but the witty repartee and diarization style of writing adopted by Rosenfeldt is charming and breezy. Many small humorous passages will make you laugh, even though the scene is serious. Carpenter's explanation to Miller of why he will probably still lose the trial..."suppose Dinky University's football team goes down to Florida State and loses ....but the game doesn't count because FSU's water boy wasn't eligible....Dinky is still Dinky". Carpenter's rants against DNA, his soliloquy to the Yankees and his betting contests with his father, courtroom antics such as the stunt with Kevin's cousin -- all are irreverent and totally New Jersey in their origin and humor.
It's not a great novel, but it ranks as a great and entertaining first effort, and Rosenfeldt will have a terrific career if there are more like this to come!
Read it, enjoy,laugh!

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Third Degree: A Novel Review

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(More customer reviews)Greg Iles latest novel, THIRD DEGREE, is a harrowing thriller that takes place over the course of an afternoon. Lauren Shields teaches a developmentally disabled class at the elementary school. Her husband Warren is a doctor. One morning she wakes up and finds Warren frantically searching the house for something. In fact, he's been searching all night. He says it has something to do with an IRS audit of his business. Lauren has problems of her own. She's pregnant, and the baby probably isn't Warren's. For the past several months, She's been having an affair with Danny McDavvitt, a war hero and a kind man who has marriage problems of his own. Danny wants to leave his wife for Lauren, but can't for fear that his wife will get custody of his autistic son. Warren's office is also under investigation for Medicare fraud, and Warren's partner, Kyle Auster is devious and amoral.
You throw the above beginnings of a plot into a a 12 hour period, and you get this novel. I glanced at a few reviews, and many negative reviewers seemed to dislike the story as not a traditional Iles novel. Iles is a great novelist and one of the few out there that constantly change genres. He started out with World War II novels, then moved onto standard thrillers. He wasn't afraid to try new things, like Footprints of God (a sci-fi look at the nature of religion) or Dead Sleep (a novel all Steven King fans would love). Iles has tried this before. His 24 Hours spanned a day. He's trying it again in this character driven thriller. If the entire novel is compressed into a day, then what keeps the pages turning? Iles introduces a desperate man in Warren and a confused wife in Lauren, thows in a couple of kids and then keeps adding characters who have parts to play in the drama. We miss out on character development, although Iles does add just enough backstory to let us know what is going on.
I liked this book because I like Iles, and I trust that he knows what he is doing even as he tries to tell a different type of story. The book has some weaknesses as well. Telling a story over a 12 hour period means you lose a lot of characterization. The decision to cheat on your spouse and potentially destroy a marriage is not one entered into lightly, yet the relationship between Lauren and Warren gets neglected in the format of the novel. Why did she cheat? Why did she feel the need to cheat. What did she ever see in Warren in the first place.
Don't worry, by the end of the novel, Iles has resolved most plot threads and even offered and explanation for Warren's sudden erratic behavior. He also tries to explore some themes such as marriage, family and forgiveness, but never really offers any answers. By reading the reviews, it is obvious some fans were disappointed in Iles' latest effort. Not me. I found it quick and easy to read, and highly suspensful. The only negative is that there weren't really any sympathetic characters to root for. They weren't all truly evil, but when your heroine is an adulterer who refuses to tell her husband who she is sleeping with, there isn't much room for sympathy. Overall, I recommend to all Iles and thriller fans. Just know you are getting something different, and be thankful that Iles is one of the best authors around and very capable of pulling it off.


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98.6 Degrees: The Art of Keeping Your Ass Alive Review

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(More customer reviews)Excellent book on survival. I am glad someone finally divides "SURVIVAL" from "Wilderness Living Skills" I would venture to say that most people that provide bad reviews of this book are looking for texts in Wilderness Living Skills. There are other books for that. I use 98.6 for a text book in our Search and Rescue Team training. In reality most victims succumb to hypothermia in survival situations other than trying to catch fish with a shoe string and a safety pin. It is reality at its best, presented in a humorous fashion.
Ted Fisher, Vermilion County Search and Rescue

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Cody Lundin, director of theAboriginal Living Skills School in Prescott, Arizona, shares hisown brand of wilderness wisdom in this highly anticipated newbook on commonsense, modern survival skills for the backcountry,the backyard, or the highway. This is the ultimate book on how tostay alive-based on the principal of keeping the body's coretemperature at a lively 98.6 degrees.

In his entertaining and informative style, Cody stresses thata human can live without food for weeks and without water forabout three days or so. But if the body's core temperature dipsmuch below or above the 98.6 degree mark, a person can literallydie within hours. It is a concept that many don't take seriouslyor even consider, but knowing what to do to maintain a safe coretemperature when lost in a blizzard or in the desert could saveyour life. Lundin delivers the message with wit, rebellioushumor, and plenty of backcountry expertise.

Watch naturalist Cody Lundin on "DualSurvival" as he uses many of the same skills and techniquestaught in his book: 98.6 Degrees: The Art of Keeping Your AssAlive.

As seen

in the

10-part series
"Dual Survival"

on

The Discovery Channel!

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