BEYOND The ICE LIMIT by Preston & Child *****

Right from the beginning you get hooked. There are a couple people meeting to go on a secret mission involving aliens under sea. Why they ended up in the ocean which is their specialty for life I don't know..sort of coincidental from the start.

This Eli Glinn was on a previous mission in the same area and were transporting a huge meteorite someplace in a ship the Rolvaag when it sunk but the revisit the scene due to some type of activity underwater. When they get there the first message they can decipher is "Kill me" so they're very disturbed by this before they even encounter the thing growing underwater that looks clear with a huge mouth and perhaps they can see it's brain. This underwater alien, they figure was responsible for the first ship sinking.

So they keep going down to check it out and eventually realize from their equipment that it's growing and sucked in a water craft with one of their pilots inside. What was left was everything minus the brain-less body. This was a curiosity and took them awhile to put together what exactly this alien life form had done and what is was going to do. They brought back a section of one of the 'roots' and eventually the ship is overrun by what that does when broken into pieces, crawling into air ducts.

I'm not going to give anything away. Read the book it's really good, a page turner I didn't like putting down. Lots of action, horror type stuff and perfect for Halloween reading!

S IS FOR SILENCE by Sue Grafton ***

Well this was in the 'buy a book' sale at the library. I paid about a buck for it, I don't think I already read it. Anyways, I had just finished a book where the author has the lead character go back to the 1950s to solve an unsolved murder and then I get this stupid book with the same story line. We must go back to the 1950s to solve this story too.

Some girl wants to find out why her mommy disappeared when she was like 5 yrs old, wants to know why she hated her and left her behind. Well her married mommy (regularly beaten) was a slut who screwed everyone wearing pants so of course that leads to jealousy and murder DUH. Who doesn't know that? The kid obviously. So Kinsey driving back and forth and round and round taking notes figures out who the killer is but not before he goes after her.

Not giving anything away but not one of the better novels she's written. There were a lot of men with
"G" names and women names "Violet, Daisy," little flowers ready for picking. There still are a ton of people and when the killer was ID'd I actually had no idea who he was or what he did it or why he killed mommy. Not a clue. Jealousy? Money? What?  Leaving confused.

THE WIDOW by Fiona Barton ***

The writer switches back and forth from "widow" to "newspaper writer" to "husband" to "cop". It's not as confusing as the years that jump back and forward in time like Back to the Future. Not an easy thing to follow when you just want to read a freaking good book.

So this person Jean is NOT a widow until the last chapter or two. There is a missing child in the neighborhood and she suspects her husband, as does the general population. He gets into court but gets out for some reason, like maybe NO evidence??? Ya think?

No real murder you take part in, no scenes with husband and kid, nothing. Just badgering by the newspaper writers, one of whom takes over Jean by sequestering her in a hotel room so no one else will get the story and mousy little "widow" goes along for only so long.

Eventually we find the child's body etc. Way later than I wanted to read, I mean I went thru about 300 pages or so to get to something NON repetitive and interesting and it lasted over one cheap chapter. If you like mysteries or murders or anything out of the ordinary you won't like this book. It's too tame and boring in most places, aside from the peat and repeat.

Rent it or don't read it. Either way you're ahead of the game.

ACCEPTABLE RISK by Robin Cook *****

Always a scare reading Robin Cook and his medical stuff gone awry. This time it's primarily about the Salem witch episode and how the rye fungus acted to cause hallucinations and other weird behaviors.

Starts off with a nurse, Kim who is related to one of the people tried as a witch. She keeps diving into the old paperwork in the attic and cellar until she's prompted to find a relic that was left behind by her ancestor Elizabeth. When she finds it she's shocked.

Meanwhile her boyfriend is a scientist and with a few others they open a lab in her extra roomy barn and instead of waiting for testing results they decide to all take various amounts of the drug themselves. This was the same rye fungus used by Elizabeth to bake the bread that caused hallucinations in the children of Salem. So it gets quite gory in some parts towards  the end which is expected.

I liked the story, the people were almost real to me, most of them anyway. The drug developed from the fungus is believable and most if not all our medicines are derived from plants or fungus anyway so that part is real enough to be scary. I liked it and would buy it, actually did at a library sale.

EXTREME PREY by John Sandford *****

An Alex Delaware story. This is a page turner and you have a hard time putting it down. Lots of action as Alex is on a quest to protect and find anyone aiming to harm a Gov running for President.

He has to question people and has suspicions about the deaths following along behind him. He works with other agencies as a free lancer for now and does a pretty good job of sorting out the killers and at the last minute the method of their killing the governor.

I like it and I would buy it.

The HATCHING by Ezekiel Boone ****

If you're already afraid of spiders then you don't want to read this book. Some kind of alien spider has overtaken countries a bit at at time until everyone panics and atomic bombs go off. These spiders are hunters and eat people, they also send threads into the air to fly around and go other places which is actually a bit to swallow but anyways that's what they do.

The army can't stop them, even scientists end up getting in trouble with them. There are also breeding spiders (inside animals and humans OF COURSE) and perhaps more trouble in the future.

So I can see where this can be exaggerated to some extent but the extent to which this is written is a bit overwhelming and somewhat unbelievable. I know we have cans of spider spray around here someplace and geez you can't even step on them before you're consumed by a pack of them? Even when others are being attacked? I don't get how they overtake hundreds of people so fast they can't be stepped on or squashed or sprayed individually to die. Why can't they be brushed off and stepped on? If everyone did it? WTF?

In the RW there are also sticky traps that can catch them if they walk across it and I'm sure there can be quickly developed poisons to end the b.s. but in this story forget all that. Alien spiders. So that's about that. I would get it at the library.

The TRAP by Melanie Raabe ***

The best thing about this book is that it's a fast read. Some girl Linda who is agoraphobic is a writer and about 10 yrs ago her sister Anna was murdered. She recognizes who she believes is the killer (she saw his face right as she discovered sis's body) so she lures the investigative reporter to her home so she can trap him either by DNA or a confession.

She scares the crap out of him and he proves it wasn't him because he was in Afghanistan during the time this murder was committed. I'm not going to reveal the real killer you can figure that out yourself before half thru the book. Sister is sooo beautiful and self indulgent she can lure away Linda's boyfriends any time she chooses.

So Anna embodies everything Linda would rather be than herself. Even as a published writer. I thought the book was fast paced, large type on small book. Easy to read and figure out connections between everyone. Basically well written BUT at some point when she holds a gun at the supposed killer she has no clue about confessions gotten under duress DO NOT amount to a confession. Duh.

MOST WANTED by Lisa Scottoline ****

This was a fast paced read. Story is about woman getting sperm donor cuz idiot husband hasn't got any (he blames her to his parents). So she's knocked up and sees a serial killer on TV that looks identical to her baby daddy.

She is a teacher on leave for the summer so she finds an almost retired lawyer to help the "donor" because he seems so sincere she believes  in his innocence. I heard that 95% of those in jail are innocent. But anyways, she gets him a lawyer, works with the lawyer and goes around sticking  her nose into everyone's business.

I won't blow the ending for you but I have a comment. This other knocked up woman who used the same sperm donor as our heroine Christine (nice catholic name there) goes and tells the guy in jail all about how she is knocked up by donor 3316 and thinks it's him. He then "assumes" Christine is knocked up (he knows this by what....telepathy?) and tells her that he is donor 3316 but reality is that he has no personal knowledge Christine is pregnant. She isn't even showing yet. She doesn't tell him she's knocked up. She just decides he's innocent and goes looking for the real killer or a way to prove his innocence.

That's all I got. If I had to read it again I would but get it at the library. Her husband is a real stick in the mud trying to hinder her or degrading her work and he never really improves in my opinion. I'd divorce the bastard.

8th CIRCLE by Sarah Cain ****

To begin with this had a ton of people (Danny Ryan, Conor, Beth, Beowolf, Michael Cohen, Linda, Andy, Alex Burton, Sean McFarland, John Novell, Tommy Ryan) in the first 15 pages you had to learn all their names because they were pretty much all the people in the story and a lot were related.

In one part of the story the protagonist Danny Ryan (who seems to be related to everyone) gets into bed with a corpse and had no idea she's there. Like yeah ok....sure lady. Not to mention some nitwit who got his mail accidently and kept it until the last chapter of the book and during the entire novel Danny had no idea why people were being killed, his dog was killed, he was threatened because of paperwork, videos etc that the nitwit neighbor girl kept holding onto until last chapter.

I thought the book had a fair/good story line, I didn't like everyone being related by marriage or whatever, it seems like everyone has known each other for 30 yrs YET didn't know each other at all. That was kind of bogus. I think we all know Dante's Inferno and that's what the title is referring to. I guess sexual perversions, snuff films, killing children that aren't missing....that kind of crap. It was ok. I would get it at the library.

UP COUNTRY by Nelson Demille **

Well this book is 700 pages so it takes a really really long time to read. I read between other books due to it being one of the most boring POS I ever read. This guy goes to Vietnam and you have no idea why until probably page 699.

I didn't like the character, or his girl friend he met somewhere along the line. All you are reading thru most of this is where he was when he was in the war as opposed to where he is now and what he's seeing. Boring. Lots of descriptive narrative and I could easily take 500 pages out of this crap. Too many towns, names, boring descriptions of places and I hated it. Now if you fought in Vietnam you might enjoy it but I wasn't there and this was a futile attempt to read about it.