No Mercy

I recently read a positive review of Joanna Schaffhausen's new book No Mercy (#888).  It's a follow-up to The Vanishing Season, which featured the same main characters, Ellery Hathaway, a female police officer, and Reed Markham, an FBI agent who had rescued Ellery from a serial killer who preyed on young girls.  Although you can read No Mercy without having read the first book, I did often feel like I had just been dropped in the middle of a story I would have understood better if I had all the requisite background.  This gritty sequel still manages to pack a number of punches.

Ellery is off the job as a police officer following the events of The Vanishing Point, attending mandatory group therapy sessions for survivors of violent crime.  She still hasn't come to terms with what has happened to her, so she copes by investigating the backgrounds of her fellow victims.  Investigating isn't enough when Wendy Mendoza begs her help to find the rapist who has torn apart her life, nor for the middle-aged arson victim who lost her toddler son in a furniture store fire a quarter of a century before.  Ellery soon realizes she needs help in running down clues and background so she calls in a favor from Reed Markham, who has stepped in before to aid her.  It's clear that the pair are rattling the right cages when Ellery and Reed are both warned to stop digging into the crimes.

I particularly liked the Boston setting of this book.  It was easy to visualize the neighborhoods and the characters Ellery and Reed come across.  I will have to go back and read The Vanishing Point, though.  Ms. Schaffhausen dropped a big reveal at the end of No Mercy which makes it clear that another book about these two will be coming in the future.  I'd like to be prepared when it does.

The Guardians

I don't usually read John Grisham, but my husband brought The Guardians (#887) home from the library and pointed out that the protagonist here was both a lawyer and an Episcopal priest.  That was enough to hook me.

Cullen Post found his true calling in working for the fictitious Savannah-based Guardian Ministries.  Like the more widely-known Innocence Project, this tiny non-profit works to free prisoners who are wrongly convicted.  It takes the group a long time and lots of digging to decide whether or not they will take on a case, but once they do, they dig in.  Cullen currently is working on six cases, but his major focus here is on the murder of a lawyer in the small town of Seabrook, Florida.  Quincy Miller was tried and convicted for the murder, but the evidence is sketchy at best.  The more Post pokes, the more he stirs up facts someone wants to stay buried.  Thread by thread Post untangles a web that was woven tightly to deceive.  Powerful people with a lot of money plan to keep the murder pinned on Quincey.

I did find this a worthwhile read, filled with interesting characters. I would recommend it to anyone who likes courtroom dramas.

The Last Odyssey

James Rollins' latest Sigma Force thriller, The Last Odyssey (#886) is out in March.  It begins in ice and ends in fire with the reader convinced that there is no way out of danger for the "good guys".  Here Rollins has mined some fascinating material from Homer's Iliad and Odyssey to plausibly locate some of the actual locations Homer describes in his ancient poetry, proving that there could be fact at the core of what later scholars labelled as myths.  Or do they all?  That's what drives the plot of this fast-paced action novel as Sigma Force pursues a cabal of ruthless unknowns bent on discovering and using the Gates of Hell for themselves.

Sigma is involved when the archaeologist daughter of a US Senator is kidnapped from a newly discovered ship from the Middle Ages found marooned in a glacier in Greenland.  The discovery hasn't been publicized, so why did a group of commandos speaking Arabic show up there?  The pursuit is on to Rome, to the Mediterranean, and on to Turkey and back again as those holding Dr. Elena Cargill try to retrace the route Odysseus took on his voyage home with her unwilling aid.  Each stop is seemingly more dangerous than the last, and the members of Sigma Force can't be sure of who is friend or who is foe as loyalties shift and they try to stay one step ahead of Elena's kidnappers.

I always appreciate the mixture of fact and fiction Rollins uses, both scientific and historical.  His exploration of the ancient world here was particularly appealing to me, but you don't have to know anything about Greek mythology to enjoy the ride here. As always, Rollins separates out the truth from his imagination at the end of the book and encourages the reader to learn more on his or her own.

Heart of Barkness

A new Chet and Bernie mystery is the perfect way to distract yourself if you are stuck at home.  Heart of Barkness (#885) by Spencer Quinn is just the ticket.  Bernie has always been a fan of jazz, blues and country music.  When he hears that Lotty Pilgrim, a country singer with a long ago smash hit "How You Hung the Moon" is playing for one night only in a local dive bar, he takes Chet along for the ride.

After Bernie tries to tackle the young punk who steals the money from Lotty's tip jar, the pair find themselves involved in Lotty's life.  Things are so complicated they're right out of the lyrics of a country hit; controlling men, broken families, secrets that someone is determined will remain secret, and of course, murder.  And why does Lotty refuse to sing her hit song, or even talk about it?  Chet and Bernie are on the trail.

With its usual trademark humor and unexpected plot twists, this one will keep you guessing until the end.  Oh, and did I mention that Chet has a country music song dedicated to him that you can download?  Way to keep things interesting!

The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

The Lost Future of Pepperharrow (#884) is Natasha Pulley's sequel to her amazing first novel, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street (See my post of 9/25/2015.).  Although I enjoyed this historical fiction fantasy, set mainly in London and Japan of 1888-89, for me, it didn't have quite the same impact as that first book, or even her second novel, The Bedlam Stacks (See my post of 9/28/2017.)  Here Keita Mori sees Russia and Japan possibly coming to blows in a potential future, and maneuvers events to produce the best possible outcome.  But for whom?  And at what cost to those around him?

Nathaniel Steepleton is assigned by the Foreign Office to go out to Toyoko to see why the staff at the British Legation claim to be seeing ghosts everywhere since living with Mori has made him fluent in Japanese.  Thaniel travels out to Japan with Baron Mori and their nine year old ward, Six.  On arrival at Mori's ancient home overlooking Yokohama Bay, the air is full of electricity and St. Elmo's Fire.  The new Prime Minister Kuroda has already arrived on the scene with his entourage and it is soon clear that Keita Mori is a prisoner in his own home.  An atmosphere of foreboding hangs over the estate and entire city of Tokoyo as Thaniel takes up his duties at the Legation.  Soon he is investigating missing persons and the cause of the constant electrical storms...

Mysterious goings-on, and great personal danger fill this tale, but I did feel that it dragged on a bit at almost five hundred pages.  Still, a worthwhile read if you enjoyed The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, but it lacks the enchantment found there.  Just my opinion.

Twisted Twenty-Six

Stephanie Plum has come to a crossroads in Janet Evanovich's Twisted Twenty-Six (#883).  She seems to be spinning her wheels, both personally and professionally.  Working for her cousin Vinnie in his bail-bonding business is a dead-end job, spent in the company of many, many unpleasant people for not a lot of money.  Why is she even doing it?  As for her love life, she has a great boyfriend in Trenton cop Joe Morelli, and an exciting occasional lover in Ranger, owner of a high-end security business, but neither of them is the least bit interested in settling down permanently.  Stephanie is afraid she's become...boring.

Not so her Grandma Mazur who marries a former mob boss in an Atlantic City casino.  She's had her hair spiked and dyed a flaming red for a marriage which lasted all of forty-five minutes before her new husband keels over and dies at a slot machine.  Grandma is up to the role of grieving widow, busy spending the money she knows Jimmy Rosolli has left her in his will.  What she hasn't counted on are the angry ex-wives, children and La-Z-Boy mob associates who are convinced Jimmy passed her his legendary keys just before he died, and who will do anything to get their hands on this mysterious fortune.

Keeping Grandma and the rest of her family alive soon becomes a full-time occupation for Stephanie, along with some help from her friends.  After the narrowest of escapes for Stephanie and Grandma, Twisted Twenty-Six ends with a cliff-hanger.  Can't wait to read what happens next!  No wonder Janet Evanovich's books fly off the shelves.  Always a fun read.