C. J. Box, Long Range, Joe Picket Series Book 20 (2020)

I haven't posted any books since last September because of my health and just couldn't find anything that would get me excited about reading.  I would read during lunch at work but like I just said, everything seemed blah, and no excitement to really write anything about what I was reading and just couldn't write anything about what I was reading, which now I can't remember much of what I read.

But yesterday I changed.  I had to go someplace that I thought would require me to be left alone so I loaded the newest C. J. Box book, Long Range and I had to force myself to put it down.  One thing I love about about Box and hate it when a lot of other authors do is when they use too many paragraphs or pages to describe what is happening without getting into characters or the story.  Too many writers seem to add too much fill to a book by describing what is happening at that moment and time.  Box spends the 1st chapter describing 3 seconds, talking about the flight of a bullet.  Long Range, hence the title.

Box really brings Joe Picket to life, and between Cassie Dewell and Joe Picket he has 2 of the best book series out there.  Every book he writes you think this is the best in the series which only a few writers can accomplish.  So if you haven't read any Joe Picket novels, get Open Range, the first in the series.

All I have to say about this book is that it makes me happy that I started reading again.

The Guilty Pleasures of Reading Crashing Heat, by Richard Castle(?)

We all read books to satisfy our guilty pleasures, and for me, one of the series I read is the Nikki Heat series written by the TV characters on the TV show, Castle.  Richard Castle is a fictional character that writes a book about a fictional character named Nikki Heat, and Jameson Rook, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author.  "Crashing Heat" is the 10th book in the Nikki Heat series.  I really used to enjoy that series but it seams Castle jumped the shark tank when he separated from Kate Beckett, a fictional detective on the NYPD.  But this is about the book series, not the TV series.

Tom Straw is the ghostwriter of the Richard Castle novels.  These novels are sometimes over the top about a ruggedly handsome writer and yes, in this book he refers to himself that way about a half a dozen times.  These books are hammy, lovey-dovey and the police almost always get there man or woman, sometimes it might take the next book but they're like the Canadian Mounties, they do get the bad guy.

"Crashing Heat" starts out a little slow but 4 or 5 chapters later Jameson has become the lead person of interest in a murder case where a student where Rook was recruited to teach a semester at his old Alma Mater, is found naked in his bed and naturally she is dead.  This book has probably the least amount of action out of the other 9 books in the series but because of my guilty pleasure, I really enjoy the series.  ABC canceled the series after season 8, but the books keep coming.  If the books keep coming I'll still read them.

Crashing Heat by Richard Castle,

Book 10 in the Nikki Heat Series

The Bitterroots, by C.J. Box, Cassie Dewell Series Book 4

I'm no longer going to count this as a "Highway Quartet" series.  These books after the 1st 1-1/2 books are all about Cassie.

The Lizard King killed her mentor and Cassie has killed the Lizard King twice.  Okay, maybe just once but now he is dead.  After being humiliated and then vindicated by lousy planning by a county DA, Cassie is fed up with being a cop and becomes a PI in North Dakota and Montana and now she is becoming successful.  Cassie is now being called in for a favor by a defense attorney.  

Blake Kleinsasser has been accused of rape and the evidence is pretty solid.  Defense attorney Rachel Mitchell is calling in a favor and just wants to make sure the D.A. in the county the crime committed did his job.  Cassie is set on the fact that Kleinsasser is guilty and goes to Lochsa County to meet with the Sherrif, the former attorney, the raped girl, and her family.  Starting with checking into her hotel room, Cassie feels resistance, and this resistance is coming from the founding fathers of the county, the Kleinsassers'.

For me, Cassie Dewell never was quite as good as the Joe Picket series, Boxes other series.  The Bitterroots is just as good as any of the Picket books written. I'm giving this a 9 of 10, but it could easily be a 10 of 10, it's just that good.

The Bitterroots, by C.J. Box, 
Cassie Dewell Series Book 4

Fatal Promise by Angela Marsons, DI Kim Stone Series Book 9

Fatal Promise starts with DI Kim Stone getting medically release after breaking her leg at the end of her last book, Dying Truth.  Now she has to go back to work and deal with the death and replacement of one of her teammates.  Her team, Bryant and Stace, had been temped out to other squads and under-used, but now it's time for a new case and a new team member.

Both the case and the team member are from previous books. One is a Doctor from the Spades, one of the graduates for the Heathcrest Acadamy, the private school for Dying Truth (Book 8) and the addition of Penn, a detective from the team that Kim had worked with a couple of books ago.  Penn is an excellent data miner, just like Stacey.  Penn's biggest problem is that Stacey and Kim look at him as replacing Dawson, not as what or who he is.

Stacey is on her first case running solo form a missing persons case from when she was on loan and things are not smelling right for her.  It's up to her to find a 15-year-old girl with medical problems, with friends and her father that don't really care that she is missing.

Going back to the Doctor, he is found dead in a wilderness area with very small clues.  More people are found dead and clues lead us to a father and son.  Now Kim has them all wrapped up but there is still doubt because everything is just too easy.

So do Stace and Penn put their differences aside?  Can Kim overcome her feeling that Dawson's death was her fault?  Can Kim justify making Penn leave her team?  Do Kim and Stace solve their cases?

After Dying Truth, Fatal Promises was not quite as good, but I think it's because Dying Truth was just that good.  I'm going to rate this 8 of 10.  It's still a great book.

Fatal Promise by Angela Marsons,
DI Kim Stone Series Book 9

Dying Truth by Angela Marsons, DI Kim Stone Series, Book 8

Angela Marsons likes to write on current social problems and includes them into her DI Kim Stone investigations.  This time Stone is called out to a private school to try to keep a suicide from happening, but she arrives too late.  As she prepares to leave the scene, it is now not her case, she gets a gut feeling and goes to check out where the girl had jumped off the roof of the school.  With Kim Stone, you have to check off every box and this case didn't add up. Following Keats' autopsy, she discovers that the girl's injuries do not match how she had supposedly died.  She had been murdered.

It turns out there's a secret in that school and people are willing to kill to keep it.  A couple of deaths later, an attempted murder, and investigating prior mishaps the team learns about secret societies and peer pressure at the school, not only with the students but with the teachers and parents.

Marsons supprises us with heroic death of a team member at the end of the book, and now the others have to learn how to cope with that death.

This is one of the best books in the series, I'll give this a 9.5 out of 10, with this being the first half point I've given.

Dying Truth by Angela Marsons, 
DI Kim Stone Series, Book 8

Broken Bones by Angela Marsons, Book 7 in the DI Kim Stone Series

In Angela Marsons' 7th book in the DI Kim Stone, we find Stone's team broken up.  Not disassembled but divided up into two teams, Kim and Bryant, per the DCI's instructions, and Stacey and the overprotective Kevin, see the last book for more details.  Stone and Bryant start looking into suspicious deaths in prostitutes and Stacey and Kevin work on the death of a man found frozen to death in a snowbank. 

While this was a good book, I found it a little different than previous Marsons books where Stone was the main character in almost every chapter, to where we were bouncing around between teams in every other chapter.  Both stories were good and Marsons' always good for her twists in the plot.  

Broken Bones goes between prostitution and how some people find themselves in that field by being forced into it, then it gets into human trafficking, slavery, and bonded service.

This could have been easily 4 or 4-1/2 stars but I think just too much was happening in this book, so I rate it 3-1/2 stars.

Broken Bones by Angela Marsons,

Book 7 in the DI Kim Stone Series

Broken Souls by Angela Marsons, Book 6 in the DI Kim Stone Series

This is the sixth book in the DI Kim Stone series. The prologue starts with the suicide of a teenage boy that has to stop what he is doing to write a letter to his mother to let her know it is not her fault. This part is pretty simple, but Marsons can make simple things into big things. Next, we find DI Stone in a field where she has been called after Doctor A, a forensic archeologist professor that had been called to a field site to dig and has found a human bone. The one bone turns into many bones and foul play is suspected.

All this sets up a very thought-provoking book, hitting on basically any kind of hate crime imaginable, and then some. In a crime thriller series, rarely does a fictional story make you think about things that have affected you, or someone close to you, as this book does. This book puts the small groups of people that hate anybody different and how they go out and hurt these people. Hopefully not as bad as in this book, but with us living in the instant news era, we do see these hate groups too much.

I can't go much further discussing the book unless I start giving out spoilers, and with most of my reading, these books have been out a few years and already discussed. This series for me has become a must-read series. Angela Marsons is turning out to be the Queen of research for her books. I really appreciate the time and quality of her writings and the journey she takes me on when I read her books.

Broken Souls by Angela Marsons,

Book 6 in the DI Kim Stone Series

Thoughts From Dead Souls by Angela Marsons

Dead Souls by Angela Marsons is really hitting me close to home.  Being born in the deep South, Alabama, I came to age when desegregation was hitting the South.  I remember going outside as a kid and finding flyers for KKK meetings littering the streets of our quiet neighborhood.  I remember miniature KKK comic books also left in the gutters for kids to find, making KKK members almost superheroes.

I remember the first black kids in my all-white school and couldn't get over how shy they were.  It took years for me to figure out they weren't shy, they were scared to death.  I remember being in the High School band where there was no racism, or so I thought.

I remember living in OKC, OK at 21 and making best friends with a Kickapoo Indian, attending pow-wows and learning their customs at these events.  I practically lived with them and watched how they were treated, and how some of their family reacted.

I remember moving to California and when visiting back in Alabama being asked how I could live around "all them Mexicans".  This was from a family member.

I was lucky not to have had racist parents, even though most of my peers were and I became racist at a young age through osmosis, I don't think I ever hated a group of people but I did do things that were hurtful.  I later found out that if you put yourself in the melting pot you could overcome and become to embrace the people that impacted my life, and many of these people I grew to love, my teachers, schoolmates, bandmates, and friends and learned how to correctly judge people.

Dead Souls is about racism, hate, and nationalism in the UK.  It's a work of fiction but I'm sure there's a lot of truth in it.  Marsons really brings to life the worst in people with her thrillers.  Marsons also brings out the best in people with her thought-provoking fiction.  

Dead Souls halfway through is a great book.

Blood Lines by Angela Marsons, Book 5 in the DC Kim Stone Series

This is another great series that I've got a love for.  Have you ever read a book and hated the fact that you couldn't read it faster.  For me, this is one of those kinds of books.  DI Kim Stone is thrown into another investigation and also being attacked by a Psychiatrist she put in jail in an earlier book.  Both of these 'chases' make a great thriller.  On one end you know what Dr. Alexandra Thorne is up to, well not everything but enough to know she's playing her mind games on anyone she comes in contact with, and on the other end is a set of murders that has Kim going frantically trying to find and stop the murders and murderer.

With Angela Marsons' storyline twists and the emotions she brings out in her characters this has become an extraordinarily great series.  I had another book in line to read next but now I want more DI Kim Stone.  This is one of the good things about finding a series after it's been released for a few years.  If you want more, you just read the next book.

I rate this 9 out of 10.

Blood Lines by Angela Marsons

Book 5 in the DC Kim Stone Series

Lies Sleeping by Ben Aaronovitch, Book 7 in the Peter Grant / Rivers of London Series

I think I'm going to have to start taking notes when I read this series.  Peter Grant is one busy guy, between all his magical friends of the rivers, the faes, underground people, his work, and his family, I don't see how he finds time to search for the Faceless Man.  But that's what this book is about, the scheming of the Faceless Man and Peter Grant's attempt to bring him to justice.

I'm not into spoilers, so that's why my reviews are short, plus this book has been out a while and lots of reviews have already been written on Lies Sleeping.  Also, this isn't the type of book that makes you reflect on your life or make you stronger.  It's just an entertaining read.  Other than that all I can say is that for Urban Fantasy, this is one of the best going right now.  With this book, I've caught up with the series and all 7 books in this series were great reads.  Now I have to wait for November for the next book to be released.  It looks like the next book in Urban Fantasy I'm waiting on is Fallen in the Alex Veras series by Benedict Jacka.

I'm open for suggestions on anybody else's favorite Urban Fantasy series they enjoy.

I rate this 8 of 10.

Lies Sleeping by Ben Aaronovitch

Book 7 in the Peter Grant / Rivers of London Series

The Hanging Tree by Ben Aaronovitch, Book 6 in the Peter Grant / Rivers of London Series

In the sixth installment of Peter Grant / Rivers of London series, we find Peter a busy guy.  First, he's looking into an overdose that is connected to one of the River's of London's family, Lady Tyburn, next he's looking for a stolen book penned by Sir Isaac Newton himself, and then his hunt for The Faceless Man.  I really enjoy his new partner, Sahra Guhleed.  She brings a non-magical presence to the series, even tho this is not the first book she's been in, she does play a bigger part.  One thing we've found out about Peter is that wherever he goes, destruction is sure to follow, even if it's Harrod's.

Aaronovitch is giving Peter more and more, with less Thomas NIghtingale's supervision, which makes for more action, mistakes, and destruction.  Okay, maybe not mistakes but lots of damage.  All the key players are back and the search for all the baddies is growing.

I'm rating this 3-1/2 stars, but it's still a great read.

The Hanging Tree by Ben Aaronovitch,

Book 6 in the Peter Grant / Rivers of London Series.

Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch, Book 5 of the Peter Grant (Rivers of London) Series

This has been the best of the series for me as of late.  Peter Grant is on his own, with the exception of Beverly Brooke, his new girlfriend.  Peter has been sent on assignment from Falcon to help search the disappearance of you pre-teen girls and since this has the Falcon call sign attached to it, that means the Folly is involved and magic is in play.

Peter is now in a small village surrounded by cleared woodlands and is tasked with being attached to one of the families of the missing girls and has the help of Dominic, one of the local policemen assigned to watch over him.  Nobody wants magic around, and with the media coverage that meant Peter had to be at his best at concealing the magic.

The book is great, it really starts to define Peter, as a man, as his job as a policeman, and as his position as an apprentice at the Folly.   Aaronovitch doesn't disappoint us with his storytelling, the research he does of the area and the history of the area the book takes place in.  Aaronovitch pulls out a lot of probably his personal tastes and adding knitting them into his books.  I love Kobna Holdbrook-Smith's storytelling of the audio-book.  He really is the voice of Peter in this first-person magical mystery tour.  I've said before, if Urban Fantasy is one of your likes then this must be added to your TBR list.  But I know a lot of you have already read these.  So now onto The Hanging Tree.

I give this 9 of 10

stars, but of the first 5, this is the best so far!

Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch,

Book 5 of the Peter Grant (Rivers of London) Series

Broken Homes by Ben Aaronovitch, Book 4 of the Peter Grant (Rivers of London) Series

Broken Homes takes our special task force members into the 1960's concrete architecture of London, putting Peter and Leslie 20 plus stories up doing undercover work to find "The Faceless Man".  The architect of this particular building turns out to be a suspected magician that fled Germany before WWII and designed this building with a special feature that nobody knew about. 

Aaronovitch does a lot of good research for his books so he can tackle his subjects and themes of his books with strong knowledge.  All I can say without spoilers is that this book leaves you like a batter facing that aging pitcher that puts a 100+ fastball over the plate and the batter just watches it with his mouth wide open.  Not that slow curveball but a fastball that just makes you wonder where that came from.  Really a great ending and a what will surely be a great subject for the 5th book, Foxglove Summer,

I rate this 4 out of 5 stars.

Broken Homes by Ben Aaronovitch,

Book 4 of the Peter Grant (Rivers of London) Series

Whispering Under Ground by Ben Aaronovitch, Book 3 in the Peter May Series

AFTER you read the book, you REALLY get the title.  Whispers Under Ground starts up with young Abigail making Peter Grant take her out to look at a ghost.  Peter brings along his friend and fellow Constable Leslie May with him to be led to the train tunnels from his home neighborhood to see the ghost and watches it get run over by what they can only describe as the Hogwart's Express thus the start of our underground adventure.  Next, we get a dead American student found on the tracks of the Tube, which the murder weapon has the vestigium, or the trace imprint that magic leaves, and that brings Constable Peter May and his master of magic DCI Thomas Nightingale into the case.  We also get Constable Lesley May back into the book after her unfortunate attack in the first book.

The Peter Grant series a really magical, witty series about the many different magical societies in London and features a young Constable that is assigned to a magical detail as an apprentice.  Peter doesn't always get it right and having Lesley there, now also an apprentice to remind him when he's wrong brings another dynamic to this series that makes it that much better.  Also, the elusive villain from Moon Over Soho, book 2 in the series, is still making his mark.

I rated this 4 of 5 stars, a really good series to get into if urban fantasy is your taste.

Whispering Under Ground by Ben Aaronovitch,

Book 3 in the Peter May Series.

Peter Grant Series Book Binge

Better late than never.  I guess I'm sold on reading the Peter Grant series by Ben Aaronovitch.  I've just started book 3, Whispers Under Ground.  The series started in 2011 and is now at book 7, or 7.5 if you go for the novellas.

Heck, this series has its own wiki, https://follypedia.fandom.com/wiki/The_Follypedia_Wiki

Pretty awesome.

Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch Book 2 In the Peter Grant Series

This series is hitting me like the Dresden series by Jim Butcher and the Iron Druid series by Keven Hearne.  On these two series, I couldn't make it through the first book.  I picked each up about 6 months later and just couldn't get enough of them.  Now that's the way I feel about the Peter Grant series (or Rivers of London).  After reading the first book I didn't know exactly if I wanted to go through with reading more in the series but since I had the ebook and the audiobook on my reader I thought I would read "Moon Over Soho".

Aaronovitch's Peter Grant is a smart, sometimes too smart constable in London that just happens to be an apprentice magician to DCI Nightingale.  Because of this, he has to live in the "Folly" with Nightingale which leaves Grant with a lot of research time between his police duties and his magic lessons.  After investigating the death of a Jazz musician he starts seeing that Jazz musicians are dying off at an alarming rate when compared to other types of musicians.  Grant discovers the reason being "Jazz Vampires".

This is why I am loving this series (thanks Mike Finn) because of Aaronovitch's unexhausted originality and the storytelling by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, who else can come up with Jazz Vampires and who else could sell like Kobna.  One phrase does not make a book, but the originality of this book really makes it a good read.

I rate this an 8 of 10.

Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch
Book 2 in the Peter Grant series

Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch, Book 1 in the Rivers of London Series

Rivers of London is billed as "What would happen if Harry Potter grew up and joined the fuzz".  I disagree.  When Harry Potter grew up he knew there was magic.  PC Peter Grant did not know or believe in magic until he was left by himself while protecting a murder scene while his partner goes for coffee.  While alone he is greeted by what he believes is a ghost.  After the ghost leaves a man walks by and identifies himself as a DCI Thomas Nightingale.

At the same time, he and a fellow PC Lesley May are reaching the end of their probation and pondering and hoping for an exciting assignment.  Lesly gets the job she dreams of, joining a major crime department while Peter finds out he going to be pushing paper for his career. 

Enter DCI Thomas Nightingale, and PC Grant finds himself in a secret investigation department, which consists of DCI Nightingale and now himself.  Their department basically investigates things that go bump in the night.  As Peter is introduced to magic and begins his lessons he learns there is a lot more to Nightingale than meets the eye.

Rivers of London introduces us to a new magical story and Ben Aaronovitch's imagination is magical in its own self.  Aaronovitch takes Peter through modern England and its history to tell this story.  Some parts get a little long but all in all, this is a very solid book and a very good lead-in for a brand new series.  While I am late getting into this series, I will probably catch up with it by the end of the year.

I rate this a 7, and I bet this series gets better as time goes on.

Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch
Book 1 in the Rivers of London Series

Redemption by David Baldacci, Book 5 in the Amos Decker Series

David Baldacci doesn't write bad books, most are pretty good, like this book Redemption.  Baldacci writes his characters very well.  He doesn't spend a lot of time taking paragraphs or pages to describe rooms or the outdoors.  In the Amos Decker series, he doesn't talk about feelings, because Amos doesn't have feelings, so some time is spent on what he should be feeling.

Decker was a college football linebacker at OSU (ROLL TIDE) and during the first American professional football game in which Amos played in, he took a blindside hit and died twice on the field that day.  As a result of his injuries, his brain was rewired, giving him Synesthesia, where in his case he sees trauma or sometimes just normal-seeming people in a color.  Another problem with his brain is hyperthymesia, which is never forgetting something he's seen or read. Like finding the bodies of his wife and daughter, or remembering the good times he had with them, or crime books and crime scenes,  perfectly remembering every detail.

Before the deaths, Amos had become a successful detective for the Burlington Police department.  After the deaths, he fell apart, became homeless and became a private detective.  After the first book, he starts working as a consultant for the FBI with his only friend Alex Jamison.

In Redemption Amos Decker returns to Burlington with Jamison in tow to visit his daughters' grave on her birthday.  As he leaves a person walks out from the shadows, a person Amos would never have guessed to show up at the cemetery.  It is the first person he ever put away for murder, a mass murder, Meryl Hawkins.  Hawkins was a man that had received a life sentence with no possible chance for parole.  The facts were stacked so far against this man that it was easy to put this man away.  Hawkins got out of prison because he had cancer with few weeks to live.  A compassionate release.

The man had one request.  That request was to prove that he was innocent.  Decker deems that he got it right the first time but the next evening.  Now his FBI partner has to leave him but Alex able to enlist help from his original partner from that case Mary Lancaster.

In the end, Decker solves the crime, but maybe his life is in jeopardy.  But as I always say, it's an Amos Decker story so by the end of the book Amos lives.

Baldacci writes Redemption and gives us a good story and he's able to make lots of plot twists and turns while he kills off a dozen people and saves some lives in the end.  Baldacci is a lot of talking between characters.  Sometimes he uses 'said' 5 or 6 times in a page, and he does that often.  But don't ask me how not do that,  I just read the facts and Baldacci writes the facts.  That's the arrangement we have worked up between us.  He writes and I buy.

I give this 3 of 5 stars, it's an enjoyable book that will entertain you while you read it.   It just won't be a memorable book.  I won't be re-reading this before the next book comes out.

The Redemption by David Baldacci
The 5th book in the Amos Decker series

Lost Girls by Angela Marsons, Book 3 in the D.I. Kim Stone Series

I finished Lost Girls last night and this series gets better and better.  Usually, I binge read a series when I find a good one but this time I'm going to mix it up.  I actually was going to read another book instead of this one but I didn't have it loaded on either of tablet or Chromebook.  I think I made a great choice resuming the series.

Lost Girls finds us with D.I. Kim Stone being assigned to a case instead of demanding to be put on a case after she was asked to do an initial interview after a parent of a kidnapped girl asked for her by name.  The biggest thing about the kidnapping is that it wasn't one girl but two girls.  Best of friends with families that always did things together.  Marsons takes us on a very journey through this case through Kim's eyes and the result is an easy to read detective story about a D.I. that is like a bulldog and won't let go of anything and while she refuses to get personal, touchy-feely she still takes and makes everything personal. To me, it is really a good series so far and worth reading.

A very good 9 out of 10 read!

Lost Girls by Angela Marsons

Book 3 in the D.I. Kim Stone Series

Wolf Pack by C.J. Box, Book 19 in the Joe Pickett Series

The Joe Pickett series is one of my favorite series I read.  I can never put an order to what my favorites are, but a new Joe Pickett comes out, it is my next read.  Hopefully, none of my other favorites come out at the same time.  That would just be pure hell.

Without getting into spoilers, wolf pack has different meanings other than just being the title.  At the end of the last book in the series, The Disappeared we find Joe fired from his Wyoming warden job by the Governor, but this being a Joe Pickett series, former Governor Rulon sees to it that Joe gets his old job back, along with a scandal for the new Governor and Joe gets a new boss.  He gets his old district back, his old badge number and a new truck and house since his old house had burned down due to arson.  These aren't really spoilers because you learn this in the first few pages of the book.

If you want to know about what the book is about then read the book cover.  Box comes up with things probably no other warden would ever come up against.  One thing about Box is that he is not the best writer you will come across.  Where he excels at is that he is a storyteller, like Craig Johnson.  His books are never too long, never padded with filler that starts to bore you, he just tells a story about Joe Pickett, his family, and friends.  I can't wait until his next book.

If I gave 10's then this would be a 10, so I give this a very strong 9.

Wolf Pack by C.J. Boes

Book 19 in the Joe Pickett series