I’m starting to think they’ll let just about anyone publish a suspense novel these days. Apparently some readers must be gobbling them up like candy. I thought I’d read this one because it sounded exciting. World War II! British Intelligence and American OSS! Pilfered Nazi Gold! Unfortunately, this was nowhere near as interesting as it…
The spine of Since You’ve Been Gone reads “fiction” and it is clearly billed as a work of suspense, rather than the hybrid called “romantic suspense.” While it does contain a romance, the story’s focus is not on the love story but on the main character’s efforts to save a kidnapped child. Rebecca Ryan has…
I gave this book a C. For page-turning suspense and police procedure accuracy, the book certainly deserves an A. For the problems I encountered in not having read its prequel, the issues I had with the female protagonist, as well as its over-the-top heartbreak, this book deserves an F. So, C is the median grade,…
A common complaint about much of the suspense being written today is that it’s too gory. Serial killers abound and each crime is described in excruciating detail. Nothing is too gross or detailed. Enter Alex Kava. She has written a serial killer novel that has relatively few scenes of gore and mayhem. And though I’ve…
I’m told Iris Johansen used to be a romance novelist. You wouldn’t know it from her latest effort, Final Target, which falls clearly into the suspense genre. It contains a minor romance subplot, but no one would mistake it for a romantic novel. It excels as a suspenseful read with pulses pounding and pages turning,…
I can sum up the theme of Bitter Harvest pretty easily: “Greed is bad and will not go unpunished.” It’s a good moral, but in this case, it’s not delivered with much subtlety or style. Michelle Tyler is living a quiet and happy existence when the book begins. She has her own business and a…
While this book kept me turning pages, it was more out of curiosity than intense interest. The mystery was intriguing (until it was revealed) and I wanted to see whodunnit, but other than that, Delayed Diagnosis sort of died on the table. Dr. Rhea Lynch has been away. She and her fiancé broke up and…
If you pick up Mesmerized looking for romantic suspense, you won’t find it here – this is a good, old-fashioned spy novel. By the time I’d finished about a third of the book, I realized that the male and female protagonists had only met once – very briefly – and hadn’t exactly fallen deeply in…
Ever read a book so compelling that you dropped everything to sneak in a few pages? A book with a tight plot, a few interesting characters and a rewarding knock-your-socks-off climax? Well, after struggling though all 622 meandering pages of From the Corner of His Eye I can confidently say that this is so not…
This book is not a romance. It is a mystery with a romantic subplot. It is dark, gritty, the villain is truly evil yet sad and sympathetic at the same time, and it is a definite page-turner. So don’t pick up Bone Cold just before bedtime. Harlow Anatasia Grail was considered a Hollywood princess. Daughter…