The Girl Who Lived Twice by David Langercrantz, The Millennium Series Book 6

I really enjoy the Millennium Series and The Girl Who Lived Twice, in my opinion lives up to the Stieg Larsson story that he started.  The Millennium Series follows Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Bloomquist, two people from different ends of all spectrums but always manage to find pain and trouble.

Lisbeth is set out to get revenge on the Russian Mafia and kill her sister, Camilla.  Bloomquist is set out to do nothing.  He's in a rut and just wants to holiday at his lake home.  At the same time, a homeless man dies, and nobody pays any attention to him, except for one person.  Langercrantz weaves these stories into a tale of political corruption and the criminal underworld and does it at the pace of the Larsson books, a little slow but always entertaining.   A very good book.

I giving this a 7 of 10 ratings.

The Girl Who Lived Twice by David Langercrantz,
The Millennium Series Book 6

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

One Good Deed by David Baldacci

I really like David Baldacci, and me being a reader that likes series more than stand-alone books, I still had to read this book.  My only problem is that I got into reading Angela Marsons and had to put this off a couple of weeks after it came out to read.

The first thing I have to say is do the audiobook. The book takes place in 1949 and if you like old 50's drama movies then this will be perfect for you.  It reads just like one of those old movies.  All the "Now see here's" and the women talking tough and then going all mushy.  I bet Baldacci did a lot of research watching these old movies. 

Then there's the way women are portrayed in this book;

Brooks nodded. “I am convinced, Mr. Archer. She has nothing to worry about from me. It was a terrible thing for her to endure. Even more so for a young woman. They are very delicate.”

Archer’s gaze at the man sharpened. “You married?”

Brooks looked surprised at the question. “Well, yes.”

“You work, and your wife stays at home?”

“She has no head for matters outside of the home.”

“You might be surprised about that, Mr. Brooks. I mean, I don’t see much logic behind men being the breadwinners and all except it’s just the way it’s always been, and for no good reason. Everybody deserves a fair shake.”

Brooks shook his head and smiled. “A woman’s place is in raising children and keeping the home and assisting her husband. But it’s still important work nonetheless and quite proper for someone with their fairer sensibilities. It’s a hard world out there, Mr. Archer, and men are designed to thrive in that world, not our women. I mean, that’s why they’re referred to as the weaker sex, after all.”

Now before I get into "One Good Deed" I want to say that Baldacci does not have weak women in his books, well, with the exception of this one, and not all the women are weak.  This is the stereotyping of how women were played out in the older movies.  I haven't read books from this period so I can't say about the books, but I'm sure there are loads of the old detective books that are the same way.

One Good Deed is about Aloysius Archer, a survivor of WWII, prison, and tough life in general.  He's got a good head on his shoulders and wants to do right, as long as it keeps himself out of trouble.  Naturally, from judging how I've talked about how the women are characterized in this book, he finds himself surrounded by two women, that can change their emotions like water from a faucet.  One is his parole officer and the other is the mistress of a man that hires him to collect on a debt, which happens to be the father of the second woman.

There is lots of simple intrigues, murders, tough-talking, and even a trial.  The pace of the book is good and if you can picture this book being written 60 years ago instead of released in July 2019, then you might enjoy it.  I did.

f I go on much farther it will just be babbling so read the book.  Listen to the audiobook.  Just don't try to apply anything written in this book to a woman today.

A very strong 4 stars for this book.

One Good Deed by David Baldacci

One Good Deed by David Baldacci at 20% Review

One Good Deed by David Baldacci

The mechanical whoosh and greasy smell of the opening bus doors greeted Aloysius Archer, as he breathed free air for the first time in a while. He wore a threadbare single-breasted brown Victory suit with peak lapels that he’d bought from the Sears, Roebuck catalogue before heading off to war. The jacket was shorter than normal and there were no pleats or cuffs to the pants because that all took up more material than the war would allow; there was no belt for the same reason. A string tie, a fraying, wrinkled white shirt, and scuffed lace-up size twelve plain Oxford shoes completed the only wardrobe he owned. Small clouds of dust rose off his footwear as he trudged to the bus. His pointed chocolate brown fedora with the dented crown had a loop of faded burgundy silk around it. He’d bought the hat after coming back from the war. One of the few times he’d splurged on anything. But a global victory over evil had seemed to warrant it.

I normally don't like overuse of descriptors in sentences, all the adjectives and adverbs get me feeling that there's going to be a lot of fill in this book and less story, but Baldacci makes it work.  Here we meet Aloysius Archer, or as he says, "just call me Archer" as he gets his first steps of freedom after he leaves prison, where they give him a ticket to Poca City, USA,  The year is 1949 and the country is starting to relocate west after post-WWII.

Archer settles in and gets his first job, repossessing a 1947 Cadillac, and this is where the story starts getting good.  Despite serving in Europe during the war and somehow ending up in jail, which hasn't been revealed, we find Archer is an educated thinking man.

Now we find out if this helps Archer, or hurts Archer.