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.