HARD EIGHT by Janet Evanovich ****

It's easy fast reading with some comedy involved. Beach type reading or before falling asleep. The thing is that once you've read one of these Stephanie Plum novels you've pretty much read them all. The only thing changes is the 'trouble' factor.

The CARETAKER by Thomas William Simpson ****

The plot was very good, I liked it but of course one of the main characters has a fling with someone bent on revenging this family.

I'm not giving things away but some of it is quite unbelievable with an interior passageway and spying on the people living in the house. Who the fk builds a hidden passageway to watch people? Like one in a billion.

On page 272 the author  believes it's possible to blush whenever the guy wants to. That's a rare talent and it reminds me of the lady who writes about calico cats. She thinks the males exist. They do not- one of her males knocked up a female another impossibility because the males IF THEY EXISTED would be infertile. So what the fuck? This guy cannot blush on cue I call "pants on fire".

This is a yard sale find, dated from the 90s. It's suspenseful and the husband is a stupid moron who cheats on his wife with his caretaker never even realizing she's a HOOKER. So good for him and all the diseases he now has.

The story is fast paced and coherent. Wasn't a dud and is good reading if you can find it.

R IS FOR RICOCHET by Sue Grafton ****

Picked this up for 50 cents at a yard sale, wasn't sure if I'd read it but I didn't. The story centers mostly around a) she gets laid & b)a girl named Reba who just gets out of jail and creates all kinds of havoc that Kinsey allows. She allows her to 'command" her to leave her purse behind and duh Kinsey has no idea why. WHY?? Cuz dummy Reba wanted to sneak back and steal 25 thousand bucks. Takes a genius.

She quotes a sign "Tattoos & Piercing done while you wait" which is a well known stupid thing about you have to wait any frigging way if they're tattooing unless you have removable body parts.

It took me a really really long time to read for some reason. I think I had a busy 2 weeks and didn't get much opportunity to read. There are a lot of names and situations to remember and when you're falling asleep sometimes you need to re-read some pages to keep up.

I thought it was ok, not one of her best but good reading anyway, nice book to take to the beach with you.

The BROKEN WINDOW by Jeffery Deaver ****

This was a quick read but a long one. There are a lot of narrative pages, some not really necessary to the storyline.

What I'm perplexed by is that Lincoln Ryme calls his girlfriend, Ameilia Sachs - Sachs. If that were my boyfriend I think I would insist he call me Amelia, or Ame or anything but my last name. I also am really not fond of new guys I meet calling me "babe" or "honey" because it's an obvious 'tell' they don't want to remember your name-they are serial daters.

The story line is a large data mining company has a killer in it's midst and Lincoln and his pals have to figure out which employee it is. The data is very expensive-in this story you wouldn't want these companies to know EVERYthing about you. They know where you are by your phone, where you've been by street or home cameras and can get this information without permission of the source. When you see the list of stuff they have on Amelia you'll be shocked. They (big brother) is truly watching you. Scary stuff to think about, they want your buying habits, food habits, routines, everything. And it's not hard to find-supposedly.

Like the story, lots of characters to remember from page to page but if Lincoln would call the female screwing him by her first name I'd be happier.

SUSPECT by Michael Robtham *****

Picked this up at either yard sale or thrift store. I liked the book a lot, it had a lot of mystery thrown in and red herrings. You aren't sure if the protagonist psychologist Joe is guilty of something or not. He has to pretty much figure out who the killer is and prove it because the killer set him up to be the perp.

It's was a unique idea, I liked reading it, I had trouble putting it down. The characters are well drawn out and there was enough narrative vs dialogue. Was a good read.

CHAOS by Patricia Cornwell ****

As per usual we have Kay, Lucy, Benton the entire family. Lucy and her girlfriend or wife had a transplanted kid who turns out not to be anyone they really know.

So the villain of the story, Carrie, has befriended Kay's sister and has been causing deaths with a pal of hers in town. She electrocutes her victims "somehow' and that's Kay's job to investigate and she finds other previous deaths that are similar and OF COURSE Carrie is out to kill Kay who finds the family in the backyard with her and OF COURSE she saves the day. Yay.

So typical Cornwell story full of a ton of descriptions about the day, the weather, the surroundings, the morgue all sorts of wherever the hell she is. If you've always liked her writing then I'm sure you'll be entertained again. Fast read, easy to keep up with characters unless she throws in some name at the end who was a bad guy.

I think I picked this up at a yard sale, or church sale or someplace.

The HELLFIRE CLUB by Peter Straub ***

There were so many names in this book it boggles the mind. In one paragraph on page 248 these are the names you should already know by reading this far: Georgina, Lincoln Chancel, Creeley, Driver, Bill Tidy's, Katherine Mannheim, Gingerbread, That's how so many of these paragraphs are written. I also think some of them are sort of difficult reading. I am a constant reader and this book took me an extra long time due to so many similar names: Dick Dirk, Driver, Nora, Norma, Norm, Davey, this also confused the story somewhat. There are more instances but I'm sick of it already.

I'm done reading and what the fuck was it about? I don't really know. Some bitch is looking to find a manuscript that was stolen a very very long time ago and someone named Agnes told Nora that a 'terrible ugly man raped Katherine Mannheim who wrote some crappy book or other that was stolen. Some long dead mistress of Agnes told her she had proof the book was stolen that the mistress made Mr. driver wrote down everything they did and were going to do.

I found it a dragged out novel with pretty much nothing to say other than a manuscript was stolen and a few women raped. Never a punishment going with the crimes.

I wasn't impressed at all but don't let that stop you from trying to sort the entire damn thing out. I did my best and didn't like it even stuck to it until the end. I never knew if I was in the past or present. Time to let his move along.

The MIRACLE STRAIN by Michael Cordy ****

Story is about a geneticist Dr. Tom Carter he invented a machine that can decode the blueprint of man by using something from sharks that has to do with echo location. His wife gets shot for the formula when he was the target. He does a scan on his daughter because after wife's death she had a tumor of the brain and now daughter inherited the same thing.

Now he needs to fix his formula with advanced medical science to save her. A brotherhood thousands of years old may have the secret key to unlocking the formula he already has, he believes they are the original genes of god.

So you have to suspend your disbelief but the story has lots of characters but is very interesting and has real time possibilities.  I thought is was pretty good, buy it or get at library.

The ROOK by Steven James ****

There were a ton of names, at least they didn't get introduced all in one chapter. Most if not all persons are in first person. We're following our protagonist Patrick, or Pat, whatever his last name is I can't find it in 30 pages.

So he was married, wife died leaving a teenager with him. She had some trauma younger and doesn't think of Patrick as her father until later. Meantime she goes off on her own a lot and pretty much deserved everything coming to her and more. Patrick is a wimp FBI agent.

Some people are trying to get a "devise" that uses shark brain material to sonar stuff so the gov't can spy on anyone anytime anywhere with a satellite dish. All the drawings and formulas and inventor go up in smoke but this inventor leaves a clue for Patrick where to find the "device" from which he later removes a critical part so people can steal the device and not use it.

Tessa-his step kid disobeys every thing he tells her and instead of going to live with Pat's mom or whoever she gets a tattoo under age and falls for some scum bucket tattoo artist who takes her to a party gets her drunk and goes about trying to rape her but she sets him up McGyver style so she can escape from him.

Patrick has a partner Lien-hua-I couldn't even read that name. I had no clue how to say it. I just called her Leen. Stupid name anyways. She's afraid of drowning like her sister and the killer likes to torture women by cuffing legs and drowning them in fish tanks. Big ones I guess.

Patrick gets red herring'd all over the place. Fires, kidnappings, dead people, bad cops, you name it. I thought the book was ok written, too many people for my comfort but the story line was a good one. Have read better have read worse. I would get it at the library.

The SCORPIO ILLUSION by Robert Ludlum ****

I really couldn't give 5 stars, it was 5223 pages and a lot of it was kind of boring and repetitive. There were so many characters from so many different "secret" agencies I could barely keep them straight. Some woman with about 4 names screws an agent named Tyrell Hawthorne. Sometimes he's called Tye, or Hawthorne, the author  likes to be confusing like that. Using first names instead of last names when you least expect it and have to find where the original names were put together. It's a nightmare in some cases esp. with the bitch from whatever town lopped her mommy's and daddy's heads off and she becomes determined to kill leaders in 4 countries. She uses other people   "Scorpions" who are a collection of highly placed gov't officials who want to change the way their countries are running and figure killing the presidents off will get this done faster.

That's the basics of the story. I wasn't absolutely committed to finishing it and read other books in between because this was too over loaded with characters, partnerships, conspiracies that I was lost most of the time.

If you're a Ludlum fan you'll like it if not may want to pass. It's 500 pages for cryin' out loud.