Category: Books-Fiction

Book 4 of 2014 – Plainsong – Kent Haruf

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PlainsongAt the beginning of his novel Plainsong author Kent Haruf provides a definition of Plainsong

the unisonous vocal music used in Christian church from the earliest times; any simple and unadorned melody or air

And that is just what Haruf’s 2000 novel Plainsong (and Book 4 of 2014) is the simple unadorned story song of a period of time in the lives of seven main characters living in the fictional town of Holt, Colorado. These characters are: the Guthrie’s, schoolteacher Tom Guthrie and his two boys, Ike Bobby who are nine and ten years old respectively, the pregnant seventeen year-old Victoria Roubideaux,Raymond and Harold McPheron, and Maggie Jones.

The story chronicles a time in their lives from the fall in the year the Victoria discovers that she is pregnant to the spring when the baby is due. During those months these characters and their lives intertwine in ways as they face problems and situations like one would find in any small town in America. Tom and his boys are dealing with a wife and mother who is so despondent that she spends her days in her room and eventually leaves their family. Victoria, after she discovers that she is pregnant is thrown out of her house by her mother. The McPherons are two elderly farmers who have spent their entire lives, alone together on their farm 17 miles away from town. Maggie Jones is a school teacher at the same school as Tom, is dealing with a father slowly sinking into dementia. Victoria after being thrown out by her mother turns to Maggie, Maggie takes her in,but things don’t work out because of her father she turns to the McPherons, who in turn take Victoria in. One of the treats of the book for me was the development of the relationship between the McPherons and Victoria,from the early days when they explained futures and pork bellies to her, to the buying of her crib and to their worry when she leaves.

Once again this is a book that I am reading as part of my attempts to read more deeply and get more out of a book than just a good story. As such I’ve read several of the available book club study questions, which I again struggled with, however, I did look at some study guides which spoke about the themes of the book. Two of them stood out to me one was the loss of innocence, which certainly applied to Ike and Bobby, Victoria and also the McPhesons, who were innocents when it came to having a woman around particularly one who was seventeen and pregnant! The other was family which I think is certainly a strong theme in the book! At Barnes and Noble’s website I found this quote in a piece about Kent Haruf!

In a 2000 interview about Plainsong. “What I want to suggest at the end [of the book] is that at this point, at least this day and this point in their lives, all these people have found a place in a small community — it may even be an extended family — in which they can connect with other people and find solace and communion.”

So I have to wrap this up now and get to work at Target. If you’ve read the book and would like to add a comment, please do, and if not give it a read while I move on to Eventide!

Books 3,4 and 5 of 2014 Part 1 – Let the Great World Spin – Colum McCann

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Let the Great World SpinA few days ago at Socialstudious I wrote a post about Books 3 and 4 for 2014. Those two books are Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann and Plainsong by Kent Haruf, neither of these books are anywhere close to the type of books that I normally read. The genre that I normally read is reflected in the title of this blog. But last month after reading The Road Out by Deborah Hicks. A book about her attempt as a teacher to give a group of at risk adolescent girls a way to see their lives reflected in literature, and realize that there may be hope to attain their dreams, I thought hey am I missing out by not reading literature. So i decided that this year I would read at least one book a month that is considered literature. For the other books (I read about 3-4 books a month) I would include one history and.or political book, and one mystery or thriller. With that being said, because I have been on hiatus from work, due to lack of work, I have finished in addition to the two books already mentioned  a third book Theodore Roosevelt and the Assassin.… which I will write about shortly.

But let’s get back to Let the Great World Spin, which won the 2009 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction and the 2011 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, one of the most lucrative prizes in the world.

The book opens on  an August morning  in 1974, with a man perched atop the north tower of the Twin Towers in NYC. People stop and stare wondering what he is going to do, will he jump, or parachute from the tower. Soon they realize that he is a tightrope walker and he is going to walk a tightrope between the towers!!The tightrope walker though never named in the book is based on the famous walk of Philippe Petit.  The world then spins in time and place and the reader is in Ireland, where he meets the Corrigan brothers, John and Ciaran. When the reader first meets John (called Corrigan through the rest of the story because  John just does not fit him) as a youth, he has given away is blanket to a homeless man. Throughout the rest of his life this is what Corrigan does helps those less fortunate than himself. The world than spins again and Ciaran is on the way to New York City to join his brother which had joined a religious order and was working in NYC.When Ciaran arrives he finds his brother lies in the Bronx and provides care for the hookers who work under the Major Deegan Expressway and help at a nursing home! Ciaran eventually finds a job tending bar and tries unsuccessfully to  get his brother to move. On the same day as the walk, the world spins again and this spinning affects the lives of all the protagonists of the book. In total the novel is to though the individual voices of eleven people whose lives all intertwine on that fateful day.The characters include Claire and Gloria who are members of a group of mothers grieving over the loss of their sons in the War in Vietnam. Tillie one of the hookers that works under Deegan, Adelita a nurse at the home where Corrigan works and others. They like the tightrope walker move through life on a tightrope only theirs is a little lower but with one wrong move the effect can be just a deadly.

I’ve probably  already written enough about the book and should now just close. It is a great book, duh, if it wasn’t it wouldn’t have won all those awards!

Now, the reason that I’m reading literature is so I can learn to read more deeply and get more out of everything I read. But since this is my first attempt, when I went to read some of the book club guide questions, I had trouble answering them. So if there is anyone out there who has read the book and partaken of any reading group studies of the book,who would like to provide some of what they got out of the book I’d be most appreciative!! You can leave a comment here or at the Me, Myself, Music and Mysteries Facebook page! More to come about Books 4 and 5!!!

P.S. Currently I have started another fine piece of literature – The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson – so if anyone would like to read along and explore it with me let me know!!

Book 3 of 2014 – The Road Out: A Teacher’s Odyssey in Poor America!

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The Road OutYears ago  I was moved by Death at an Early Age Jonathan Kozol’s award-winning book chronicling his first year of teaching, and the plight of poor children in the Boston school system. Forty plus years later, I am moved again this time by Deborah Hick’s book The Road Out (Book 3 of 2014) The Road Out chronicles Hicks attempt to give several at risk girls in the Cincinnati school system a road out, through a top quality literature education. For several years Hicks conducts a special literature class for these girls in trying to give them something that they didn’t have hope and dreams, Dreams about where they could  go and what they could be, by using the power of the written word. Seven girls Blair, Alicia, Adriana, Jessica, Elizabeth, Mariah,and Shannon. Seven girls growing up on the wrong side of the tracks in Cincinnati.Children whose parents and grandparents came from the hills of Appalachia to the industrial centers of Ohio, to chase the American dream only to have that dream crushed.They watched their jobs be shipped out of the country, have the factories close, and their communities turned into ghettos with rampant unemployment, and drug use particularly Oxycontin…

As I read this book, I said damn, children in America should not have to live like this. They shouldn’t have to watch good mothers descend into the black hole created by prescription drug use, and then join the women standing on the street with other who sell their bodies for the drug they crave. Or worse yet, get pulled out of class because their mother was found dead of a drug overdose. And then have to face a school system that does little except teach to the test. I asked myself, knowing the answer, who stole the American Dream? W/hat did we do to get to this point throughout our great land that once was a beacon of hope throughout the world!! This thought has led me to Hedrick Smith’s book appropriately titled Who Stole the American Dream!!

But Hicks stepped into this world determined to give these girls something that she felt she never had growing up a first-rate education and a chance to live their dreams. Through literature she had these young girls, who struggle in their regular classrooms, examining their lives, finding themselves in the pages of many books, and then writing about their lives and dreams. They even produced their own magazine! She had them thinking and dreaming about attending college and creating a better life for themselves. As I read the book I started to think about my reading and education. I tend to read only for the story and rarely think about what deeper message the book may contain. The mysteries and many of the thrillers that I read have a single character be it Dave Robicheaux, Cork O’Connor, Mitch Rapp, or earlier in my reading days a Dirk Pitt battling evil. Is that because I am an only child???  Throughout my lifetime, I have shied away from literature especially classic lit!  The result is, I don’t think I’ve ever analyzed literature the way that Hicks had these girls analyzing the books they were reading, looking for connections to their lives in the story, identifying with the heroine. So I was off to the library, first I picked up How to Read Literature Like a Professor. I figured any help I can get on deeper reading is a plus!! Then I picked up Plainsong by Kent Haruf. I had already put Let the Great World Spin on my Kindle. Neither of these books are my typical read, but maybe they can provide some insight into the world around me!!

But back to Hicks and the girls. One of the books that she had the girls read and analyze was Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison. Several of the girls immediately identified with the book just based on the title!

“I’m  a bastard!” said Alicia.

“I’m a bastard” echoed Mariah “I’m  bastard. “I’m proud to f…in’ say it, I’m a bastard”

You know my only cousin that is not a bastard,” said Alicia, “Is the baby that Margie is carrying right no, ’cause her and Xavier are married. That’s my only cousin that’s not a bastard.”

Remember these girls are pre-teens and early teens! Anyway, here’s what Allison writes about the book…

“The Road Out is a terrible wonderful read – terrible for the hard painful lives that it shows so closely and wonderful for the sense of hope and purpose that comes through so powerfully”

While Carol Stack the author of All Our Kin and Call to Home writes:

“A wrenching extraordinary tale. The Road Out is not a story of victims but a story of passion and literacy. With authority and vulnerability, Hicks uncovers unexpected insights and offers new ways to bring a love of reading along with hope into the far corners of urban life on the margins”

Both of those quotes sum up my feelings about the book better than I can! So check it Out! In closing the last thing it did was piss me off even more at the politicians who cut taxes for the rich and cut needed services for the poor and children like these girls who are living on the edge through no fault of their own!!

Book No 1 for 2014 – Cut to the Bone – Jefferson Bass

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cut to the boneSo I finally finished book No. 1 for 2014, Cut to the Bone by Jefferson Bass. Cut to the Bone is the 5th book in Body Farm series, which features the exploits  of forensic anthropologist Bill Btrockton. The character of Bill Brockton is based upon the life of the real life director of the Body Farm at the University of Tennessee, Dr. Bill Bass. Bill Bass is half of the writing team that creates these great novels. The other half of the writing duo is journalist, writer and documentary film maker Jon Jefferson.

While this is the 5th book in the series, it is actually a prequel to all the books. The story is set in 1992, when Bill Brockton, head of the Anthropology Department at Tennessee, was in the early stages of setting up the Body Farm at UT. In the story, Brockton and his assistant Tyler Wainwright, are called in to help police in determining, who the bones found at an old mining site belong to. Brockton and Tyler quickly decide that the bones belong to a young girl, who appears to have had a hard life. But when the police ask how long her body has been there, Brockton doesn’t have an answer for them. In fact the last time he work with this police department he only missed the age of the bones by a hundred years!! So Brockton decides that Tyler’s dissertation should revolve around using the life cycle of blowflies to determine the rate of decomposition of  the human body. Now while all this is happening in and around Knoxville. Bill is also called to help in the brutal murder of a prostitute. But when the method of cutting up the body matched a case that Brockton worked on a few years earlier and then more bodies start piling up that also match Brockton’s cases, it seems that Brockton and company are on the trail of a serial killer who may have his sights set on Brockton and his family!!

Like all the past novels, Cut to the Bone is a fast paced you don’t want to put it down read! The nice part of the book is that the reader are introduced to characters like Brockton’s wife Kathleen, his graduate assistant Tyler, and of course the infancy of the Body Farm! This novel really didn’t have as much of the forensic science in the story, as the other books in the series.  But the development of the character of the serial killer, Satterfield  was good and the tension built up over the last pages was another plus for the book. So all in all Cut to the Bone is a fine addition to the series, now I think I would still start with Carved in Bone, just to get to know Bill Brockton,  first  he’s a great character both in fiction and in reality!!

Ok so now I just went to the Jefferson Bass website and I see there is another prequel Jordan’s Stormy Banks a novella! I guess I have to go pick that up at Amazon…..it’s only 99 cents!! sounds good to me!!

 

A Tap on the Window – Linwood Barclay

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A Tap on the Window - Linwood Barclay

 Several years ago, well to be a little more accurate back in 2007 I read Linwood Barclay’s first Zack Walker novel Bad Move  That book came to mind when I read the first line of Book 34 for 2013 Barclay’s latest thriller A Tap on the Window 

The Story

A middle-aged guy would have to be a total fool to pick up a teenage girl standing outside a bar with her thumb sticking out. Not that bright on her part, either, when you think about it But right now, we’re talking about my stupidity, not hers.

The narrator is Cal Weaver, a private investigator who lives in Griffon, New York. Weaver makes the decision to pick up the girl, who identifies herself only as Claire, only after she recognizes Weaver and says Cal’s son Scott was a friend of hers

. See Scott killed himself by jumping off of the roof of a furniture store in town, after taking a hit of X. The first thought going through Cal’s head is that Claire may be able to provide him some information that will help his quest, which is to discover who supplied the X to his son only two months earlier.

Soon Cal’s words ring true as he is drawn into a plan hatched by Claire and her best friend Hanna that leaves both girls missing and Cal’s life a mess!

Not that his life hadn’t been a mess before that. After Scott’s suicide Cal and his wife Donna’s marriage has been on the rocks as Cal can’t give up his quest to find out answers surrounding Scott’s death, and Donna deals with the loss by spending her time trying to draw the perfect portrait of Scott, Claire turns out to be Claire Sanders the mayor’s daughter.

The mayor is in a battle over the use of excessive force that seems to  be prevalent on the force.Oh by the way, Cal’s brother-in-law Augie, is the police chief!!

My Thoughts

Like all of Barclay’s books the pages turned fast on this one, as I tried along with Cal, to figure out first where Hanna and Claire were, who they were pulling their scam on, and what does any of this have to do with Scott’s death??

Overall, the plot of the book twisted and turned and the final resolution of the various interwoven storylines was not what I expected.

The book was a little darker than Barclay’s other books, and lacked some of the humor, that I thought was coming based on the first few lines of the book!

iWebsite
Orion Books
Amazon
Wikipdianks

Linwood Barclay

About Linwood Barclay

Linwood Barclay continues to be a prolific author, releasing new, critically acclaimed thrillers annually. Known for his high-octane plots and relatable characters, his recent work has solidified his status as a master of contemporary suspense.

Visit the Linwood Barclay Page

If you like standalone Mystery/Thrillers…….

Here are three Authors whose books might enjoy:

Charlie Donlea
Charlie Donlea
Michael Koryta/Scott Carson
Riley Sager
Riley Sager
  • Charlie Donlea — tightly plotted thrillers often built around cold cases, missing persons, and strong female leads, with twists that keep coming
  • Michael Koryta / Scott Carson — blends crime, suspense, and sometimes the supernatural, with a darker tone and strong atmosphere
  • Riley Sager — modern psychological thrillers with big twists, often centered on isolated settings and unreliable pasts

Book 33 for 2013 – James Rollins – The Eye of God!

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The Eye of GodWith all the music listening and writing this week, I totally forgot to write about Book No. 33 of 2013, James Rollins The Eye of God. I have been a fan of Rollins’ Sigma Force novels since I read my first Map of Bones in 2005, and have enjoyed Rollins blending of science, history and of course a lot of action into 9 terrific reads!! It’s interesting as I write this that characters that first appeared in Map of Bones play a central part in this latest novel.

Like Harlan Coban’s Six Years this book is also a quest well actually it is several quests rolled into one action packed story. The most important quest is to find the satellite IoG2 which was studying dark energy surrounding a comet that is approaching the earth. While IOG2 (Eye of God) was preparing to perform and experiment evolving the transfer of dark energy back to its sister satellite IOG the satellite became unsteady and crashed to earth before its crashed pictures of the earth were transfer to the command center where Jada Shaw an astrophysicist  whose theories of dark energy were being proven correct and Director of Sigma Force Painter Crowe were watching. The pictures showed a destroyed eastern coast of the US and more amazingly they were dated four days in the future!! So began Sigma Force’s quest was first to find the satellite whose final resting place was somewhere in Mongolia and then find out what the hell was going to happen and can it be stopped!!

Meanwhile in Italy those characters that previously appeared in Map of Bones Rachael Verona and her Uncle Vigor a priest were about top embark on their quest, which also involved saving the world, but involved another priest Father Josip a priest that Vigor thought was long dead. Josip sends Vigor a skull and the Book of Thomas bound in human skin. The message hidden in these artifacts was clean to Vigor and it pointed to the end of the Earth in FOUR DAYS. So they set off to find Father Josip and a quest which also involves Ghengis Kjan and Attila the Hun!! Mongolian, eh??

And finally former assassin Seichan now in a quasi-relationship with Sigma Force Commander Gray Pierce is on a quest to find Seichan’s long-lost mother. It is a quest that has taken them to the underworld of Macau, China. Only when the trio Seichan, Gray and Kowalski meet an informer who is going to tell Seichan about her mother turns out to be someone who wants to capture and sell Seichan (a large bounty is on her head due to her past) All hell busts loose and Seichan ends up in North Korea and Gray’s quest becomes her rescue!!

Ultimately, as you may have guessed all the quest come together and become a race to save the world from the destruction that was witnessed. The final resolution ties all the threads up in a whirlwind of action.

As always the characters are vividly drawn and while some characters are absent like Monk’s wife Kat and Lisa Painter’s love interest there are new members introduced including the aforementioned Jada Shaw and Duncan Wren who has magnets in his fingers that pick up minuscule oscillations and vibrate in the presence of an electromagnetic field!! and maybe in the presence of dark energy!!

So if you are like me and enjoy books that teach you stuff …. like Attila’s murder, and Genghis Khan’s mother’s birthplace and the quest for Genghis’ tomb, and blends that with cutting edge science and plenty of action, you’ll love The Eye of God… is it a little hard to follow and have a little too much happening maybe, is the action a little over the top with too many bodies, maybe. But the bottom line is that when you turn the last page… you learned something and had a great time doing it!!!

Here’s a cool trailer about the book! And if you’re already a fan of Rollins you can listen to an interview here

Will Trent Collides with Grant Co in Unseen – by Karin Slaughter (Will Trent #7)

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Will Trent in Unseen by Karin Slaughter

September was a slow reading month (I listened to more music than mysteries. However, I’ve still been reading and yesterday finally finished Book 30 for the year Karin Slaughter’s latest Will Trent book Unseen.

Unseen is the seventh book in the Will Trent series couple that with the six books in the Grant County series and that makes a total of thirteen great books by Karin Slaughter!!

 

The Story

In  Unseen the  Grant County series and the Will Trent series continue their collision course, as Sara Litton and Lena Adams, come face to face for the first time since the surprising conclusion to the final book in the Grant County series. Beyond Reach.

The story opens with a deadly attack on Lena and her husband Jared in their Macon Georgia home. . Lena takes out two of the assailants and is stopped short of taking out a third by Wiil Trent a Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) agent working undercover in Macon. Jared is Sara’s stepson so she quickly heads to Macon at the request of Nell  Jared’s mother. Soon the lives of Sara, Will and Lena are entwining and creating havoc in all their lives!  The action careens through flashbacks from present events to a failed drug bust that Lena had headed!!

Final Thoughts

As always the story functions on two levels first on the events that occurred prior to and after the drug bust and the attack on Lena and Jared,and on the second level how the events affect the lives of Sara, Will and Lena. The case nearly destroy Will and Sara’s relationship, and forces both Lena and Sara to relive a period of their lives, that they would both rather forget!

Now the question is whether you can read this novel without having read any of Slaughter’s other works. Yes, you can but I don’t think you’ll enjoy it as much as you would if you had read Beyond Reach, So if you are new to Karin’s work do yourself a favor and read that one first. But at a minimum read at least one, then you’ll only have twelve more to go!!

Links

Author’s Website
Facebook
Save the Libraries
Amazon
Goodreads

About Karin Slaughter

Karin Slaughter (born January 6, 1971) is an American crime writer. She has written 25 novels, which have sold more than 40 million copies and have been published in 120 countries. Her first novel, Blindsighted (2001), was published in 27 language and made the Crime Writers’ Association’s Dagger Award shortlist for “Best Thriller Debut” of 2001. Wikipedia

 

Visit Karin Slaughter Page

Book 29 of 2013 – Caribbean Moon – Rick Murcer

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Caribbean MoonSo Rick Murcer‘s book Caribbean Moon, the first book in the Manny Williams series, has been on my Kindle and iPhone for a long while now. The other day (while I am in the middle of The Templar Salvation by Raymond Khoury) I started reading it and I didn’t put it down until it became book 29 for 2013. You can pickup the e-book at Amazon for 99 cents and I tell you it’s well worth it and a lot more! Murcer has nor always been a full-time writer’ He lost his job in 2008 due to the crashing of the economy. He then sent out over 600 resumes and still was unable to find employment. So  with unemployment benefits waning and savings nearly depleted he decided to become a full-time writer!! From his biography at his website:

I’m an older writer. I started about eight years ago and got the first story I ever wrote, Herb’s Home Run, published in Writer’s Journal. Since then, I’ve been hooked.

I lost my real job two years ago, and after 550 resumes with no luck, decided I was going to make it as a writer, and here I am. Caribbean Moon was a labor of love, and writing it taught me more about myself than I cared to know. (My wife thinks I should keep my mind a secret!)

 

In his quest to become a writer, he defied conventional wisdom about self publishing and took his work to Amazon in e-book form, and there he became a sensation!  Caribbean Moon, Deceitful Moon, and Emerald Moon sold more than 300,000 copies between April and October 2011. Two books  of the books were in Amazon’s top ten for many weeks. He has gone on to become both a New York Times and USA Today best-selling author! Way to go Rick!!

But back to Caribbean Moon  Manny Williams, a Lansing Michigan homicide detective, and a group of his associates, go on a cruise with the newly married son and daughter of his boss Gavin Crosby. But the cruise is anything but a honeymoon because bodies  soon start piling up on the ship, and around the Caribbean. The victims include two members of Manny’s group. The victims mostly women are in most cases are strangled  and their bodies are badly mutilated. The MO is similar to a serial killer, Robert Peppercorn, who the group sent to prison a while back. Can it be Peppercorn committing these heinous crimes? Wasn’t he reformed?? Manny and the gang have to act quickly to end this brutal murder spree and the question soon becomes:What is the objective of the murderer!

The book is a light quick read with enjoyable well-developed characters including: Manny, his partner Sylvia Lee the rest of his co-workers, and of course the killer!! So check it out – I’ve already started the second book Deceitful Moon, which costs a whole $2.99!!.

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Tess Gerritsen – The Silent Girl

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The Silent Girl

Note to Self: DO NOT PUT OFF READING TESS GERRITSEN BOOKS! Which is what I did with her book The Silent Girl, which sat on my bookshelf for a long time before it became Book 28 of 2013!

The Beginnings

I started reading Tess Gerritsen books back in 2003 with The Surgeon, which I absolutely loved!  I quickly went out and read two of her early medical thrillers and then The Apprentice (Rizzoli and Isles #2) another winner,

Since then I’ve read all the Rizzoli & Isles books. Why I put off reading The Silent Girl I can’t say, because once I started I became totally absorbed in the book and rarely put it down until I was finished.

The Story

This mystery involves Boston’s Chinatown, A severed hand is found in an alley, the body it was formerly attached to is found on the roof of the building next to the alley. The hand was attached to a red-haired woman dressed in black, her head nearly severed from her body.  Two strands of silver hair – not human – are found on her body. The murder pulls her into a mystery appears to revolve around a murder-suicide that occurred nineteen years earlier in a Chinatown restaurant. A cook in the restaurant inexplicably lost it murdering four patrons and a waiter at the restaurant James Fang, James’ wife Iris is a mysterious martial arts instructor who believes that the cook was innocent and now she may be the bait to draw the real killer out! Was that woman found on the roof of Iris; studio an assassin sent to kill Iris?? Jane and Maura set out to discover how all the pieces fit together and what really happened during the night of the murders. Along the way, they are aided by a new Detective Johnny Tam and confront the mysterious Monkey King of Chinese folklore!


My Thoughts

As always the characters are well-developed and believable  and the plot has lots of twists and turns that keep the pages turning. Side stories include an appearance by Julian “Rat” Jenkins  a teenager who had helped save Maura six months previously in the Wyoming mountains. “Rat” has come to spend the week with Maura and a new development in the relationship between Jane’s mom and Jane’s retired partner Vince Korsak! But the most intriguing character in the book may be martial arts teacher Iris Fang!

So check it out and I’ll leave you with these words from The Hartford Book Examiner:

The Silent Girl represents an author at the pinnacle of her storytelling abilities. Gerritsen’s plot is complex and flawlessly executed, with elements of fable ambitiously interlaced throughout. further, she explores her beloved characters in intriguing and meaningful ways. Combined with her trademark knowledge of forensics and razor-sharp dialogue, the result is a page-turner that delivers on style and substance.

Where is Tess’ latest – Last to Die: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel released in paperback in June!!

Post Update 2026

Breaking Point – C.J. Box – Joe Pickett # 13

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Breaking Point- C.J. Box

Book 25 for the year is Breaking Point, the 13 the in C.J.Box’s great series and it’s another good one. I had checked the book out a couple of weeks ago, but I got immersed in two other books and it sat on the shelf. Finally, a few nights ago I picked it up and I don’t think I set it down until I was done! Box can really tell a story with believable characters and suspense that doesn’t let up!

The Story

This story revolves around Butch and Pam Roberson, whose daughter Hannah is best friends with Joe’s daughter Lucy. Butch and Pam set out to build their dream house only to be sited by the EPA for illegally filling wetands, after a year-long battle and skyrocketing fines, two EPA agents set out from the Denver office to deliver a compliance letter to the Robersons, only to end up dead on the Robeson’s property and Butch is the only suspect!! Soon there is a manhunt of epic proportions for Butch who has taken flight to the rugged woods and mountains that surround his home. Joe’s official job is to lead the group chasing Butch, but Joe’s real job to save Butch’s life so he can find out the true story about what happened!!

My Thoughts

While the action and suspense was non-stop and I devoured the book super quickly, I did think that the portrayal of the EPA both from a compliance standpoint and the manhunt was a little over the top. As a wetlands delineator and having dealt with NJDEP for the last 25 years, I thought the whole EPA issue could have been handled quickly. But then again considering the other case The Sacketts cited in the book and the premise of this book is taken from a true story maybe not!! Either way the book is a fantastic read, so check it out!

Comparing Joe Picket to Cork O’Connor

Joe Pickett is one of my favorite characters. He reminds me a lot of Cork O’Connor in William Kent Krueger’s books. Both have been in law enforcement Joe is a Game Warden and Cork an ex-sheriff. Both are good honest men with families. Joe has a wife Marybeth, two natural daughters and one foster daughter. While Cork has two daughters and a son. Both have trusted friends that help them.  Joe’s friend Nate (who makes a small appearance in this book) /Romanowski is just a tad (said with heavy sarcasm) more violent than Cork’s spiritual guide Henry Meloux! Throughout both series the well-developed characters have evolved, the children have grown up,  the families have dealt with typical family problems, and both men have dealt with the gray areas involved in their pursuit of justice!

While I don’t think that you necessarily need to read the earlier books to enjoy this one, I think that once you read it you’ll want to find out more about Joe and his friends, particularly Nate,  Joe’s mother-in-law Missy and Joe’s problems with his vehicles!!! Enjoy!!