A KILLER IN THE WIND by Andrew Klavan *****

I really was into reading this one, it was a burning page turner. Hard to put down or fall asleep when I desperately wanted to finish reading it.

It's about a cop named Dan Champion who doesn't realize he has a past he's blocked out. He has a girlfriend but has a preoccupation with another female but he's not sure why.
I can't say too much about the novel because that would be giving away a lot and you want to read this to get the most out of the tension and edge of the seat stuff.

Suffice it to say, there are murders, pursuers, killers, fires, trashed apartments. Two lost and almost forgotten orphans find each other in their adult lives and all hell is breaking loose around them. Very suspenseful and original. Liked it enough to recommend buying it if so incliined. Very good reading.

SEVERE CLEAR by Stuart Woods ****

This probably should have been read by me before the other book I reviewed but it doesn't really matter much. Stone Barrington always has someone to screw, there is a lot of that going around. Mostly beautiful people, rich, arrogant and ambitious.

So Stone is opening a new hotel in his dead wife's memory called the Arrington and the president, his wife and the president of Mexico are having a meeting there to sign something or other. In the meantime bombs are being built and delivered by terrorists, some of which are related. These guys get jobs in the hotel or rooms and a trunk is delivered before the hotel security is warned about potential bomb threats so they never see that one.

So the story moved along quite well, not a nail biter but basic good story with one actual personality. A girl who wants to play piano probably had the most personality of anyone else in the book. The rest are like the author positioning bodies for things to happen to or for them to solve stuff. I still have no idea what anyone looks like.

Do any of the plastique bombs go off and destroy millions of people and some wealthy land owners in Bel-Air or is Hollywood safe from disaster? I thought it was ok, but I think Woods does too much gratuitous sex, too little of people personalities and a lot of shifting scenes. I would like to know who Stone likes, why, what's so appealing blahblah, same for the other people. No real motivation that I can see. If I saw it at a yard sale or the library I'd pick it up.

COLLATERAL DAMAGE by Stuart Woods ****

I sort of liked the book, it wasn't a thrilling page turner and the characters are somewhat similar personality-wise not very well rounded out TO ME. But the action and premise were interesting, a terrorist female, Jasmine Shazaz is running around wreaking havoc in cities by setting off bombs and no one can find her. Once they spot her no one can catch her.

So Holly Barker and her lover Stone are on the case with their other cop friends, all mostly likable and similar. I'm not sure what anyone at all looks like I don't think any descriptions were put out there except for the luxurious surroundings of the famous restaurants they ate at and the accommodations where they slept. Very well depicted but not the people, the things.

Mostly a chase and bombs going off, Jasmine hiding with her allies and people getting killed by shooting or bombs. No one is really described or their lives explained leaving you to think of them all as little barbie dolls put there for a sole purpose of being blown away.

I thought it had potential to be much better. More personality for the people involved, likes, dislikes, hopes, dreams, desires. It seemed more like a story skeleton than a completed novel. That's JMO.

JOYLAND by Stephen King *****

Your typical S.King murder novel. It's written to fit into a series of "Hard Case Crimes" which is equivalent to "True Romance" type novels. Mostly formula written with a crime to solve or be solved. This one has a college age kid, Devin, getting over an almost girlfriend with whom he's never felt up or had sex. He's mooning over the relationship while working at a ferris wheel and funhouse type job with other wierd characters.

There is a little esp involved with a fortune teller and a child with MD. He gets involved in this childs life and with his mom for a very short time but she saves his life when the serial killer has Devin trapped on the ferris wheel ready to kill him.

There are many murders attributed to this guy after a friend of Dev's does some research about murders happening around carnivals so the killer does a little traveling around to mix it up. Very involved, hard to put down and keeps you guessing and wanting to read more. It's a small book (for a King novel) and you know the end is near but you'll be guessing the entire time who is who and what is what. Have fun with this one and take your time to make it last. Worth the money.

KNOCK OUT by Catherine Coulter ****

Very good novel, hard to put down. People with telepathic powers, a child as well as others in her gross family are trying to kidnap the child at the same time some 2 other people are trying to kill one of the FBI agents.

I thought the second part of the novel with the 2 teen killers was a little over the top but I suppose it filled pages and she somehow connected a relationship between the killers and the little girl's family. It was the most useless part of the storyline.

Meantime Sherlock, Savitch, Ethan are all FBI crime fighters in and out of trouble getting shot or shot at. If an FBI agent is shot they're not doing a very good job of protecting themselves or others. They should be SMARTER and more outwitting of their sociopathic killers which in this case they seemed evenly matched mentally.

Otherwise a page turner, keeps you interested and I liked it most of the time.

DREAMS AND SHADOWS by C.Robert Cargill*

Reading along thinking I was reading one story, next chapter I'm whisked away into some other story, then again and again. It seemed at first to be a bunch of short stories, then by IDK chapter 7 or whatever you go back to the first story. 

Someone kidnaps kids and replaces them with monster babies. WHY? Pointless. So they can raise the normal chidlren? Why not give the monster babies to the monsters raising the normal babies and leave them where they are? The entire premise of the book is stupid. BUYBYE. Done.

NANO by Robin Cook *

Well what a disappointment this was. I rushed thru the novel because it was a fast paced action about nano technology and China's involvement trying to steal it like they steal everything esp. patents, developed by other countries.

So Berman, a guy who owns Nano, hired Pia a dangerously curious scientist who is developing technology with nano robots. She finds out the guy is actually working on Chinese prisoner volunteers who are cut up in pieces while their body parts are thriving in a tank. This of course freaks her out, she keeps learning more and more disgusting things as her boss becomes more and more obsessed with owning her.

So the conclusion was a flop. Pia was kidnapped, her mafia dad is trying to find her in the "pipeline" of woman who are bought and sold in the underground market. The ending is that Berman signed over everything he owned FREE to the Chinese thinking he was earning money but he wasn't. Then Pia at the end of the book is still missing in action.

THERE IS NO ENDING. THE END.

Actually in the next book, Cook writes Pia is still MIA. I still didn't like the ending.

ROOM NO. 10 by Ake Edwardson **

Boring boring boring between somewhat interesting. I can never tell if the investigator "Winter" in like Scandinavia is going back in time to another murder or sticking to the future murder. I never know, he just runs back and forth from past to now randomly.

Lots of weather reports, descriptions of crap that has nothing to do with the story. Very in depth details about the cops involved, shit I don't care about. Not my type of mystery. Didn't really like it.

DELUSION IN DEATH by J.D. Robb ***

Futuristic novel about being a cop. This one has a killer unleashing a new virus that makes people hallucinate and kill each other, like in bars and restaurants and so on so he can climb the corporate ladder. Prettly simple premise.

I'm not finding that most novels are written with each word contributing to the final outcome but I guess forensics are easier in the future. You find a hair and boom got the owner. Not bad as a story line and not great for me. So so.

LUCKY STUFF by Sharon Fiffer **

Personally I would suggest you skip it. This book is really a very short story with a lot of b.s. written to make it appear to be a book. It's full of nonsense that doesn't propel the story any further. So much crap to read for no reason.

Some guy comes back to town and he has bad memory loss from his childhood. No one ever finds out if he paid their tab or not, wasn't part of the story line, but his spending sure was. So who cares? No one ever even heard of him, he's a nobody who does nothing in the story but go into a memory trance now and then. The lead character Jane is a ditz.

My advice? There are other books to read, don't waste your time with this. Every word in a novel should propel the storyline forward, not in this book it doesn't. Leaving unimpressed.