Anxious People by Fredrick Backman (2020) Atria Books

The story of a desperate would-be bank robber who unintentionally takes hostages and feels trapped in a play written by someone else.  A local policeman is determined to figure out who the robber is.  He’s conflicted ever since as a child he could not prevent a young lady from jumping to her death from a bridge.  His partner, who is also his father, interferes mostly by questioning everything his son does.  A wealthy lady who was also present at a suicide she could not prevent at the same bridge, goes to apartment showings, and is trapped in the situation.  Another couple also goes to apartment showings on the pretense of looking for an investment.  And another couple, two women, one who is pregnant, also are at the showing.  And an old lady, who seems to know where everything is in the apartment.  All turns out quite unexpected.

Win by Harlen Coben (2021) Penguin

A mystery in a wealthy family.  Twenty years ago, Patricia Lockwood was kidnapped when her family’s home was robbed of valuable art, and held for months, then managed to escape.  None of the artwork was ever recovered, until now.  A piece is found in the home of a recluse who has died and Win Lockwood, Patricia’s brother was called to identify the piece.  Now he wants to know where the other pieces are and will go to great lengths to find out, in spite of being warned off, even by his father.

Book: Beast in View by Margaret Millar (1956) Random House

This is a tightly woven psychological thriller that surprises all the way to the last sentence.

There is a limited cast and limited locations, which lent itself to becoming an episode of the Alfred Hitchcock Hour..  This book got the Edgar Award in 1956 and is considered on of the 100 best mystery novels of all time.

Mrs. Millar is an excellent craftswoman and all of her fiction is worth reading.

Holiday in Death by J.D. Robb (1998) Berkley Press

Eve Dallas, recuperating from a wound suffered in the previous volume, has to go after a killer who is using the Twelve Days of Christmas as a theme for killing people.

Who wouldn't open their door to Santa Claus, bearing gifts?

King's Mountain by Sharyn McCrumb (2013) MacMillan

A historical faction on the events leading up to the battle on King's Mountain where the American Whigs fought British Loyalists under the command of a Major Ferguson.  The narrator of the story is a man who founded Sevierville in what is now Eastern Tennessee and who later became the first governor of the new State.

Force of Nature by Jane Harper (2018) Pan MacMillan Australia 

Five women go on a team building hike in the Australian bush - only four return.

Federal Police Agent, Aaron Falk wants to find her because she is the whistleblower on a case he is building against the company where she works.

The story's tension is built through the landscape and the discordant personalities of the women.

Will searchers find the woman?  Did one of her coworkers do something to her?  Did she really leave on her own?

The story is dark in a dreary environment.  Like Harper's book, The Dry, Falk has his own demons to deal with while he methodically goes about solving the case.

Burn Bright by Patricia Briggs (2018) Penguin Random House 

Bran Cornick, the Marrok, or leader of the North American werewolves, is out of town and unreachable.  Charles, his son, has been left in charge and Anna, his wife, an Omega whose presence can calm the wolf inside someone who is having trouble with control, are given an emergency that threatens not only wildings, but the entire pack.Someone has captured one of the wildings, one who is married to a high elf and living in seclusion in the mountains in Montana.  When Charles and Anna go to see what is wrong, they find their captured werewolf in a cage and are ambushed by other werewolves with a witch gun and rifles.  Rather than let their captive escape, they kill her.  The elf’s response is to cause earthquakes as he takes his own life.

There is a traitor in the pack.

Leah, Bran’s mate, makes assignments to check on the other wildings and pairs Charles with another wolf, Sage, and pairs Anna with Asil, the Moor.  Each of these have their own history.  This is part of what makes the series interesting to read.  There are no flat or cardboard characters in the world of the story.

Every book in the series is a page turner and I watch for more stories by this excellent storyteller.

Angels and Demons by Dan Brown (2000) A Corgi Book

Robert Langdon is at it again.  The professor is called early in the morning and invited to Cern in Switzerland.  There is an extraordinary jet waiting for him that gets him to Cern in an hour out of Boston.  There he is asked to look at a dead man because of what happened to him.  He was murdered and branded with a Illuminati done as an ambigram; it can be read upside down or right-side up.As usual there is a beautiful, vulnerable, and strong woman at his side throughout the story.  In this case, she is the victim’s daughter.  There is also a memorable directory of CERN, and the key players in Rome as they prepare to elect a new Pope.

Brown certainly leads the story with almost constant rising action, never letting Langdon have a moment to relax.

The Dead Town by Dean Koontz (2011) Bantam Books

The fifth and final book in Koontz’s Frankenstein series.  Like the rest of the series, the story is set in our timeline.  Victor Frankenstein is still alive and wants to take over the world.  Deucalion, Frankenstein’s creature, plans to stop his creator.

Over 200 years have passed since lightning infused Deucalion with life.  Now he must face his creator in a showdown that will either destroy the world or save it.

Dean shows us that people can have faith in each other in the darkest of times.  They can choose to give in to fear, or they can stand-up for each other, their family, and their community.  Even at the ultimate cost of doing what is right.

The writing never drags.  All five of the volumes keep you turning the page.  Reading this book will reveal how and why Frankenstein and Deucalion have survived.  It also reveals how imperfection sometimes is only a mask over a good heart.

I’m hoping Mr. Koontz continues to write such engaging characters in his future titles

Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire (2009) DAW Books

October Daye is a changeling, her Mother is a Daoine Sidhe and her father is human.  She was a licensed private investigator in San Francisco, then she was hit with a curse and spent 14 years as a fish in a pond.  Eventually the curse wore off and she returned.  But she was declared dead and her former partner and her daughter won’t see her, and she lost her license.  She thinks everyone is mad at her and refuses to see anyone else or answer her phone.  But when she does check her messages, a powerful Sidhe has left another curse on her and she must find the fae’s murderer and bring them to justice or die herself.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jamisin (2010) Orbit Books

Yeine is the ennu, the leader of her tribal region of Darr.  They are considered barbarians.  Her mother, though, was the heir of the man who rules the world.  But they were estranged, and her mother has died.  Yeine is called to her grandfather’s city where he informs her that she is to be named one of three heirs to his seat.  She does not like the Sky city or the people of that land, though she is a half-blood of the same people.  These people, the Aerimeri rule with the weapons they made of gods when the gods were enslaved to them.  Yeine discovers that she has been named an heir so that she can be sacrificed in the succession ritual.  But she also befriends the enslaved gods and discovers that one of the original three gods was killed, but a part of her soul was left behind.  In a bargain to save her father, her mother agreed to let them put the last remnants of the goddess’s soul into her baby, Yeine.

Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline

A good example of how it's hard to write a sequel.  Half the book covers how the main character pushed further development of a headset that the founder of the game world designed but did not manufacture, how his income is unimaginable, his money spending is out of control and how he finds a new quest, which one of the founders tells him not to pursue and then he pays someone a million dollars to find the first clue.  This takes place over a decade.  The second half of the book takes place of eight hours.  In that half, a simulation of the one of the founders comes back to 'life', steals the Robes of Anorak back and infects the firmware of millions of players so they cannot log out and risk brain damage or death if the quest he puts forth to the hero is not completed within the time limit so the simulation can be reunited with a simulation of the girl he was never able to woo.  In the end, it turns out that both Anorak and his unrequited love are full uploads of the consciousness of those people.  To defeat Anorak, the founder who warned against the quest, Og, gives up his own life and our hero 'resurrects' him and he 'lives' with his love happily ever after in a computer sent to the stars.  Footnote: there is an element of embryo here that is not explored but could lead to a third book.

Razor Girl by Carl Hiaasen 

She likes to rear-end cars for hire and when the angry driver comes back to yell at her they are confronted with seeing her, skirt hiked-up, panties around her ankles and a razor in her hand, apologizing for shaving while driving on her way to a hot date.  She asks for a ride, then gets the driver to pull over in an out-of-the-way location.  This allows whoever hired her to grab the guy for whatever purpose they had in mind; extorsion, punishment, etc.  Then there’s Yancy, an ex-detective on Key West, trying to get his badge back, working as a health inspector, who’s girlfriend, a medical examiner in Miami is tired of the daily dead and goes to Norway.  Somehow, Yancy and the Razor Girl, Merry Mansfield, so she says, end up together.  Meanwhile there is a duck-dynasty look-alike show, whose main character is booked for a stand-up at a bar on Duval Street.  Merry rear-ended the wrong guy, the actor’s agent, and without proper coaching, the actor tells inappropriate jokes for the area.  He is chased out, only one of his chasers is his biggest fan, ala Misery.  And it gets funnier from there.

The Redbreast by Jo Nesbø

Harry Hole is back in Norway and in charge of making sure the visiting U.S. President is not assassinated.  A tollbooth that should have been emptied has a man standing in it holding a machine gun.  Harry tells his partner to call their liaison with the Secret Service and if it's one of theirs to blow the horn.  He races towards the tollbooth and as the President's motorcade tops the rise where the man has a clear shot, Harry shoots him.  Then the car horn blows.

Harry followed protocol and the Norwegian government does not want to say it's their fault.  Everyone agrees that the only solution is to treat Harry like he was being heroic and give him a promotion.  When they extract him from his retreat into drunkenness, he understands what's up.  They transfer him upstairs into his new job as an inspector.  He notices that there was an illegal gun sent into the country and he worries that since it is only used by assassins that there is murder that will happen.  His new job has him investigating neo-nazis and he discovers a connection.  The story takes place in two timelines, one during world war ii.  The purpose of the timeline is both a red herring and an explanation of the murderer and the woman Harry falls in love with.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carré

Another Smiley story – in this book, Smiley has been ‘retired’, Control is dead and there is a new group in charge of the circus.  The top man, Percy, does not have the experience to really run the place.  His lieutenants, including one who had an affair with Smiley’s wife, go out of their way to be nice to Smiley, but tell him nothing.  Smiley is suspicious that there is a Soviet mole in the organization, feeding intelligence to a master spy back in Moscow.  The story is tough to get through because of how much negative introspection is involved – whether Smiley or someone else.  You have to read ¾ of the story to find the reference to the title – code names assigned by Smiley and those he can recruit for the possible suspects in the circus.  Eventually the mole is found, it’s the man who seduced Smiley’s wife, and deported to the Soviet Union, others are removed from their positions, Smiley is offered at least temporary command of the circus, and he is reunited with his wife.  The plot drags, though it ties stories together – I’m not so sure I agree it was Le Carré’s best work.

Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool

Abilene Tucker has been sent to the town of Manifest, Kansas during the Great Depression.  She is loosely taken care of by a 'pastor' who also runs a speak-easy.  She loses the compass her father had given her and looks in the one place everyone warned her away from - a house named the Road to Perdition, where a diviner lives.  She agrees to work for the woman in exchange for getting the compass back.  But there is far more to the town and its history than meets the eye.  A man who owns most of the town and its mine gets tricked into selling land that allows the town to buy back its rights.  The book is well written and worth the read.

Hail Mary by Andy Weir

A man wakes up, disoriented, from a medically induced coma.  He is attended by an medical robot in the ceiling of his room.  When he is able to rise from his bed he discovers he has two companions in the room who are desiccated.  He begins to remember that he is on a spaceship.  He is on a mission to save Earth from a disaster.  The sun is getting dimmer.  So are several other stars surrounding Tau Ceti.  But Tau Ceti is not getting dimmer.  He is there to find out why in hopes of applying that same difference to Sol.  He also discovers that he is not alone.  There is another spaceship that has parked itself nearby.  And it has a survivor too.  They’re from one of the other affected stars.  Both civilizations figured out the cause of the dimming and in the process found they could use that to achieve near light speed travel.  Now they have to cooperate to save both civilizations.

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman 

Backman’s masterpiece – almost eight-year-old Elsa loves her grandmother, and her grandmother loves her fiercely.  Her grandmother is an odd duck who tells fairy tales from the land of almost asleep and defends Elsa like no one else.  But her grandmother is sick and dies.  Elsa is given a quest to deliver letters, which she must find to the people who live in her building.  She finds out it really is her building because her grandmother owned it and left it to her.  We meet people who were rescued by the grandmother when they were just children, except for one woman who was rescued after a tsunami killed her husband and two sons.  There is Wolfheart who is a warrior who doesn’t like to fight.  There is Britt-Marie, who took care of Elsa’s mother while her grandmother was off saving other people.  There is a set of brothers who were both in love with the same woman.  There is a family taking care of their grandson while hoping their son gets some help.  And there’s a wourse who is a hero.

The Quick Red Fox by John D MacDonald

Travis McGee is asked by a movie actress to find out who is trying to blackmail her, a second time, over pictures at a party she does not want the public to see.  He agrees and finds himself ‘saddled’ with the actress’ personal secretary.  They start tracking down the other people who were at the same party to find out which were behind the photo-taking.  They go from Miami to a rehab and decide that person is harmless to the situation.  Then they go to New York to check on another red herring.  Then they go to the scene of the crime in California and discover why it was so easy for the photographer to take the pictures from about 100 yards away.  Then they go to Oakland and track down the photographer, and the daughter who helped him.  Only the photographer has been murdered and his assistant has fled town.  They track another member of the party to a ski lodge and discover he is just a braggart but did not know about the photos.  They find another member of the party in Las Vegas, recovering from multiple bad relationships.  Then they hear that she has been killed.  They track down the last member of the party with his wife in Phoenix.  During a horse ride, he is thrown from his horse and dragged.  Only his head has been bashed-in just like the other deaths.  Turns out the man’s wife did all the murders to try to cover up her quest for the man’s riches.

The Animal Under the Fur by E.J. Mellow 

In which we have an assassin working for a secret government agency who has long red hair and lives with her best friend.  Then we have another assassin working for a sister agency.  They are sent to eliminate the same foul underworld boss.  Then they are told they must work together on an assignment to kill a drug lord in Mexico who is selling bioweapons to the highest bidder, since his original customer was killed in the prior assignment.  Only this drug kingpin turns out to be our redhead’s father.