Talk about timely! With publishing schedules being what they are, Meg O’Brien probably wrote Gathering Lies at least a year ago and yet it brings together two of the most widely reported events in recent history: the television show Survivor and the earthquake that just occurred in the Pacific Northwest. As suspense goes, this one…
In Lisa Gardner’s The Third Victim, she delves into a topic that is extremely current and always heartbreaking: school shootings. Bakersville, Oregon is a small town with all the charm and peace a small town has to offer. Their police department consists of Sheriff Shep O’Grady, two full time officers and some volunteer officers. Rainie…
Taylor Smith makes the jump from paperback to hardcover with this novel, and I’m not really sure that this was the best story for that. You’ll find a lot of suspense here, as the plot moves right along, but it borders on the unbelievable. Mariah Bolt, introduced in Smith’s previous novel, Guilt By Silence, is…
Iris Johansen became one of my favorite suspense authors with The Face of Deception and The Killing Game. Both kept me on the edge of my seat with intricate twists and turns. The Search is scaled back a little in the intricacy of plot, but it is a still a good follow-up to her earlier…
Sacred Trust by Meg O’Brien is not a romance novel. It is a novel of suspense in which a woman discovers that the peaceful world she thinks she lives in is filled with violence and hatred. This is not the sort of thing I usually read and that probably influenced my review, but I’ve tried…
Sometimes when you read a lot of historicals, a contemporary suspense novel can be like a breath of fresh air. When I picked up All or Nothing, that’s what I was hoping for, because I enjoyed Elizabeth Adler’s last book, Sooner or Later. Unfortunately, this latest offering is a little more average. The suspense portions…
“Let’s say that my character is a house of many rooms,” says Michael Florio, the anti-hero of this thriller. Although I had heard raves about this book and knew of the level of suspense in the story, I wasn’t prepared to be as engrossed as I was – for the first two-thirds of the book,…
The mysterious cover art and all the effusive cover blurbs on this novel might have you thinking that you’re in for a dark, intelligent, suspenseful read. Well, forget it. Gayle Lynds ain’t no John LeCarre, and Mosaic is pure froth. Julia Austrian, a beautiful concert pianist, is afflicted with psychosomatic blindness. One night, just before…
Forget Me Not is an intriguing contemporary suspense novel with gothic overtones, reminiscent of Mary Stewart’s books such as The Moon Spinners and My Brother Michael. Although the plot is somewhat predictable, multi-dimensional characters and a subtle building of tension sustain the reader’s interest. Complex and bittersweet family relationships are explored here as a woman…
I miss romance writer Iris Johansen; some of her romances are on my all time list of favorites. This book is not a romance by any definition. I don’t believe it even falls under the category of romantic suspense. There are romantic elements, but at it’s heart, this book is a psychological thriller. The focus…