Violets are Blue by James Patterson (2001) little Brown & Company

Alex Cross's partner is found brutally murdered in her own bed.  But he responds to his friend and handler at the FBI, Kyle Craig, telling him about a violent murder of two military personnel in San Francisco while they were out for a run.  They appear to have been attacked by a large animal and then hung, naked, by their heels.  Their blood has been drained, but too little of it is on the ground.

Alex meets a detective, Jamila Hughes, who is sure this is not the first such murder.  The coroner has called in an animal bite specialist who identifies the bites as being from a tiger.  Only tigers devour their prey, they don’t back off after a few bites.

Further investigation in San Luis Obispo, Los Angeles and San Diego leave the detectives with the impression that there are people living lives as though they were vampires – even to the extent of having their incisors lengthened.\

A boy, who has killed his parents and is hiding on a ranch with other kids, bites Alex when he is captured.  The bite makes Alex very sick and while confined to home, his finds a pattern on the east coast and possible suspects.  A pair of magicians.

But as they close-in on the pair of killers, they are killed themselves.  The act takes them back to the west coast and they finally track-down the new killers.  This turns out to have been a war to see who would be known as the ‘Sire’ of the vampires.

When Alex gets home, he is attacked by his nemesis, the Mastermind.  But Alex manages to get the upper hand and discovers it is his friend and handler, Kyle Craig.

Wilderness by Dean Koontz (2013) Bantam

A pre-cursor story of a new character.  We never get to see Addison directly, only through the reactions of other people.  When he was born, the midwife wanted to strangle him as a mercy to his mother.  But his mother held a gun on the woman and made her promise to never tell what she saw.  His own mother can only stand him for so long, before she has to insist that he go outside where she won’t see him.

A hunter accidentally comes upon him hiding in a cave and only sees his eye, then pursues him, trying to kill him, until a hiker surprises the man, entering a dilapidated cottage where Addison is hiding under the floorboards.\

Yet not everything fears the sight of him.  Wolves seem to like him and are willing to follow him, warn him of danger, and even play in front of him.

Where will Dean take us on this journey?

The Bat by Jo Nesbo (2014) Thorndike Press

The Bat refers to an Australian Aboriginal depiction of death.  A Norwegian police detective, Harry Holë, pronounced ‘Holy’,  is dispatched to Australia to investigate the murder of a starlet from his country.  This is his first visit down under and he meets new people, including an aboriginal policeman and a bartender from Sweden.  He’s attracted to her and it leads to the romantic interest in the story.  But people tend to have secrets.  His friend the policeman used to be a boxer, and he knows things he won’t tell other people.  His main suspect is a drug dealer, who won’t tell anyone anything useful.  Even the locals are keeping secrets.

Harry has his own secrets that threaten to take him off the rails.  But the real question is whether Harry will find the killer before the killer finds and kills Harry.

The Witch’s Boy, by Kelly Barnhill (2014) Algonquin Young Readers

Twin boys, Tam and Ned, sons of a woodsman, the only man in the village brave enough to go into the forest, and a witch, who has real magic that she guards and only uses for good, have an idea to go to the sea.  So they build a raft and push it into the river.  Only it sinks and they end-up fighting the river for their lives.  No one goes into the river, but their father wades out and manages to grab one boy, but the other, the stronger one, Tam, is swept down the river.  The one who is saved is near death and the body of the one who was swept away is found at a bend.  He is brought back to his mother.  She keeps him on a cot next to his twin and when the sun goes down, when souls finally are released by the dead, she traps his soul and sews it with magic to his twin to save his life.  She knows she shouldn’t do such a selfish thing with the magic, but she cannot stand to lose both her boys.

The use of magic always has a cost and this cost Ned his voice.  He cannot read and he cannot speak without stuttering badly.  So he tends to stay quiet and away from other people.  But the queen will visit his village and his mother will not let him stay behind.  In the village, the queen has taken sick and everyone wants Sister Witch to come save the queen, which she does, but also sets off events where a bandit can take advantage, not only of the village, but of the entire nation.  He lives in the forest with his daughter and is the bandit king, but also an agent of another king.

The forest is a magical place with nine magic stones, who have awakened because Ned, in order to keep the bandit king from stealing his mother’s magic, has bound it to himself and escaped into the forest.  And the chase is on, the bandit king wants the magic and to become a real king, Ned wants to keep it from falling into his hands and the stones want it released so they can finally move on.

The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith (2014) Mulholland Books

After solving the Lula Landry case, Cormorant Strike has gotten more clients in his detective business.  His assistant, Robin, wants to become a partner, but her fiancé is against it, thinking only of the higher paying job in Human Resources that she turned-down. 

A woman, looking obviously unable to pay, is waiting in the office as a wealthy and pushy client is demanding Cormorant’s time.   The wealthy client is told where to get off, and the evidently pro-bono client is asked to state her case – she wants her husband to be found and returned home to take care of his disabled daughter.  The husband is a writer of minor celebrity who writes in a scathing and demeaning style.

Cormorant visits the writer’s agent, a chain-smoking, hacking woman whom everyone is afraid to approach.  Then he continues to find all the people who have been in contact with the writer over his career.   Finds out that the writer and agent had a very public row in a pub where she told him his latest manuscript was unpublishable.  Cormorant gets a copy of the manuscript, starts reading it and then finds people mentioned, but not named, in the story.  One of these turns out to be the writer’s mistress, who thinks the writer’s wife has set him on her, but hates the writer, calling him bastard.

Finding out that there a house is jointly owned by the writer and a former friend, that has never been able to be sold, Cormorant insists on going there and discovers the writer has been murdered in a scene from the ending of the manuscript.

The police immediately think it is the wife and gather evidence to arrest her.  But Cormorant thinks she’s been set-up and has to prove she’s innocent and can be returned to her daughter.

With a case of everybody has a motive and an alibi, Cormorant must come-up with actual evidence to find the real killer.

Personal by Lee Child (2014) Delacorte Press

The Army Times is an excellent way for veterans to keep up with what’s going on in the service.  It’s also an excellent way to get in contact with Reacher.  That’s how an old General who won’t retire gets Reacher to call his office.  Reacher owes his primary assistant, also a General now, and makes a call.   Even though he’s on the west coast, all the contact needs to do in confirm the location of the rare pay phone that Reacher is calling from and they can pick him up, which they do.  A quick trip to a local airbase and Reacher is on his way back to the east coast, but not to Washington, to Fort Bragg.

A sniper Reacher put away sixteen years ago has been released from prison and while there, he spent his time doing yoga and keeping in shape.  Now, there’s been an attempt on the French President by a world class sniper and the only thing that saved his life was bullet-proof glass.  No one knows which of the only four snipers in the world who could have made the shot did the shooting.  One of them is Reacher’s arrestee.  Reacher found him once, the General thinks he can do it again.  Only he has an unwanted partner, a CIA operative with no field experience that reminds him of the woman he allowed to go to make as arrest who was killed by the target.

The G8 is meeting in London, making a target of eight world leaders in just a few days.  Reacher must eliminate the threat of it being the American sniper who pulls the trigger.

The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall (1994) Yearling NBA

Four sisters and their father go on vacation, but the house they usually vacation in has been sold and at the last second, a house in a different place than they've gone before is available.  There, they find a mansion, but it's not what they're renting, it's the cottage in the far back of the property with a full Victorian garden in-between.  The girls, of course, though they're told not to go into the garden, are inextricably drawn when they discover a hidden tunnel in the wall.  There are other discoveries as well, the oldest girl finds herself attracted to the gardener.  The next oldest, the tomboy, finds a boy her age living in the mansion, who is under the thumb of his mother and her terrible boyfriend, who want to send the boy away to a military school, because his grandfather was a general.  The gardener has rabbits which gets the youngest, shyest girl to come every day just to feed the rabbits. Then there is the other girl, who writes stories based on what she sees and imagines around her.