The OTHER LIFE by Ellen Meister ****

Story about Quinn, a sort of bimbo who can't decide if she wants her old writer boyfriend or to stick with her husband. She has either an ability to travel to a parallel world in chimney cracks and join her ongoing old life with the writer or she's delusional. She can't seem to live without her deceased mom, don't know how she got to mid 30s without mommy hanging off her every egotistical word.

She has 2 men who love and over protect, dote on her (haha so lifelike) and found out she's pregnant with a girl fetus that has a brain issue so she may die before birth, during birth, after birth or cost the health care system billions of dollars and she won't entertain abortion. Better to have a disabled child with no sense of self.

Not a murder mystery but sounded intriguing. It would really be so much more entertaining if she traveled to somewhere other than another stupid ass relationship. It's hard for me to care about long dead mommy, deformed non-viable baby and her obsession with these men. Maybe it's just that she's so provincial it turns me off. Like really...worse shit can happen to people than losing mom when you're a teen. Also about the baby, should have had the abortion before naming and waiting for all these tests...geez not like she can't get pregnant again and again and again, waffle-head. Lets go over this realistically: Fetus is BRAIN DAMAGED and DISABLED. I'm guessing the "other life" is escapism from her horrific tragic pregnancy. Was hoping for better story line than that. Still not bad for a library book. I continue to read it and am interested in finding out how it ends. I am way too pragmatic to appreciate the "dilemma".

FAT TUESDAY by Sandra Brown ***

Found this at a yard sale it's ca 1997. Murder, kidnapping, cops, bad cops, worse lawyers, hookers, shootings, alligators, Louisiana bayou shacks and stuff like that. Not a bad read but nothing special either. Could have lost a few chapters and been a better read.

NEXT by James Hynes *

Guy is on a plane, disembarks, gets in a taxi. Meanwhile you get all his past about high school, an old girlfriend, the sound of tires on cement, imaginary bombs, every lousy detail of his life past and present. Couldn't finish chapter one. Blah. So much narrative rambling crap- I am done.

TUTANKHAMUN by Nick Drake *

Boring, couldn't finish one chapter. There is a murder so if you have a lot of fortitude and like egyptian history this one's for you.

The INSANE TRAIN by Sheldon Russell ***

This 'mystery' is written in the past (like mid 1900s?) it seems but the author is never specific about what time frame. There aren't many descriptions, a few of some characters but none about locations, towns, houses, or rooms or the train. Have no idea what the train car looked like or how the insane were located in each car. Were beds involved? Were there just seats? Curtains, windows? Food service? Other people aside from the travelers? Who cooked the meals?

Hook (protag) works for a railroad and for some odd reason unrelated to his normal job needs to accompany a bunch of loonies to another location on a train. No idea how many days passed, what day of week, time of day it was. Meanwhile people were being selectively murdered in various methods (unlike other serial killers) and at the end not many motives were explained for each one. Just the murderer had nothing better to do I guess? She was retaliating for the murder of a family member and didn't believe in an insanity verdict. Meanwhile somewhere in the story she states "These are NOT criminals, they are insane" when they were deemed by a jury or judge to be CRIMINALLY INSANE. So....yeah they are criminals... DUH. Or not? Confusing?

Phrases that are bizarre besides almost every character using stupid "GODDDANG":
"I have business to take care of blahblah so I might be out of pocket for a few days."
"I'm not much of a catch for a woman. Some say I'm too quick to drop the hat."
"The railroad isn't happy about putting rip-track up in no hotel."
"And tell Frenchy to lay up when his trick's over."
"Should have packed those journals in the yard."
These stupid phrases are distracting and WTF do they mean and do I care? NOPE.

Wasn't very enjoyable reading for me. I didn't like the stupid phrases, the bizarre off the wall murders without explaining each one, how, why, when, how'd Miss Murderer get it done. Wasn't much of a murder mystery for me. More like hobo-dirty under-the-bridge roughnecks breaking the law with regularity but turn out to be make believe good guys. I wouldn't think ANY of them 'good' in any sense of the term but maybe writer does? Even lead character is an asshole as well as his miserable loose running killer dog. It's readable but puzzling.

WHAT THE NIGHT KNOWS by Dean Koontz *****

Can't go wrong reading DK. Family haunted by dad's past life and evil overcomes the house and strangers all intent on finishing them off. With a golden retriever's ghost of course--he only has a bit part but he's there.

I love reading Koontz but this one has some convoluted ideas atop other convoluted ideas but you can make up your mind about that. Supernatural killing is over my head I suppose. Too much 'taking over' for my likings.

On page 358...."he would pray for....everyone who knew pain, which meant everyone who wore a human face." Animals feel pain as well, tho technically not "who's".

CROSS FIRE by James Patterson *****

Action packed adventure. Alex Cross marries and his arch enemy Kyle is back. Lots of political work stuff, murders, snipers and lots of intrigue. The writing is terse and well done as usual.

The DEAD DETECTIVE by William Heffernan ****

This was pretty good but there were some trouble areas for me. The detective Harry, was killed along with his brother as a child, by their mom, but he was revived his brother not so lucky. So his mom is in jail. Lots of molesting women in the book. He gets a new female partner Vicky, to handle a murder of a ....guess.....female child molester and she's sort of stupid. She works with another detective and gullibly follows along everything he suggests throughout the novel without her own brain intervening.

One cop, Nick, is suspected as the killer so he supposedly kills someone then types up a suicide note (yeah TYPED) explaining the kid he killed was "onto" him and had a big mouth. Then they find that cop dead by "suicide". So why would he defeat his purposes? He would either have A) killed the kid and continued to evade detection or B) kill himself --but both?? Any cop (Harry/Vicky) believes that fiction is an asshole. Mr. Suicide is found with ONE feather on him. So if a feather pillow was used to suppress the gun shot why not a room full of feathers? HELL one??? ONE? Don't think so. Too unbelievable. Writer should use a feather pillow to suppress a gun shot before writing about it. MESS. A down couch looses 10 feathers a day or so. And just sits there doing nothing. If somebody shot it I think it would be irritated enough to bleed feathers all over the place.

The female cop is on a surveillance of a suspects house (Nick the supposed suicide) beginning at 5am then she leaves her post to pee at 5:30 am. Really? Um....women CAN pee in a jar too if necessary ya know. And why didn't she pee before she came on duty? Somewhere near the end Harry HAD to say what a crappy cop she is. But nope. The surveillance was done with two of his bestest cops and Nick still ends up murdered. Why isn't Harry more pissed, confused, upset, angry? IDK. He should have fired them both. And his boss should have fired HIM.

That's it. Done writing on the margins. Not a bad book otherwise, just don't be too logically minded - ignore the above and it's good for entertainment value.

WHEN THE THRILL IS GONE by Walter Mosley ****

I wasn't sure at first I was going to like this because the cryptic messages just trip over themselves one after another. I like the basic story, I like some of the internal stuff but it does grow old before the end of the book. Here's a sample: I was also a predator that lived on the invisible ether of personal information. (whatever that means) Not digital bullshit, I stalked people's souls, took from them their most precious possessions, their secrets...blahblahblah. He does a lot of that self admiration/self congratulatory/philosophy all thru the book. Everyone in the world lies- is his major philosophical outlook. Everyone lies all day long to everyone and ourselves. We never ever ever tell the truth. HUH?

What does "he could see funeral lights going up behind his eyes" mean? Funeral lights? And there's a magic wheel goes round and you always come back to where you started. HUH? So cryptic-weird like that.

It's about a private detective from either Harlem or someplace similar. A woman pays him a lot of money (when she really could have ran away and hid for a year) to protect her or her sister. I'm still not clear on that nor why she was murdered.

The protagonist thinks he's King Stud Muffin. He's married and screws (or wants to) everything moving towards him. He's also such a wonderful person to everyone, doing nice everywhere he goes to almost everyone he meets unless an enemy natch. His wife is also screwing around but sheesh he doesn't consider HIMSELF the problem. Or HIS screwing around. Lotta self delusion going on. He stuffs a woman he just screwed into the home of another he regularly screws and everyone is just hunky dory with that. Right.

The killer is someone not really a major player and for all the fake outs I was disappointed. Basically I did want to continue reading it, it flowed along well but very slowly, I would recommend you borrow it at the library. It's sort of different, not run of the mill at least.

The POSTCARD KILLERS by Patterson+ *****

Needs no explanation or rating from lowly me. Just your Guinness record setting NY Times best seller in action. Detective Jacob Kanon lost his only daughter to serial killers and is after them thru other countries with a semi-reluctant journalist, Dessie for company.

You're swept along with the realistic characters, get frustrated when they do and are anxiously looking forward to the killer's capture. Good one!

What's with all the (predominantly female) co writers? So much blahblahblah on the cover there's no room for artwork. Also who GAS who is tickling what?