Istanbul Crossing is the seventh book by Timothy Jay Smith and the first reviewed in this blog. Smith is a most interesting character himself, and he has obviously incorporated himself and the cast of characters that he has met in his own peripatetic life into the story. The author is an award-winning author who has apparently achieved some fame for his writing skills. This is an important book about trafficking of humans who are seeking to get clear of the Syrian conflicts and other Middle Eastern conflicts of the current time. Desperately seeking safety in his life, the protagonist Ahdaf ..read more

The Mailman by Andrew Welsh-Huggins is his first book reviewed in this blog, but it looks like he’s written at least 13 other crime novels. Given how impressed I was by his newest novel, I have a new author whose works I want to explore. The book is subtitled “A Mercury Carter Adventure.” This is a plot-driven story and Welsh-Huggins drops us right into the middle of the action in Chapter 1. Rachel Stanfield is an attorney in Indianapolis. She and her husband are in the midst of an argument about Rachel’s stepdaughter, 15-year-old Abby, who is not taking care of business with regard to her s ..read more

  Where The Bones Lie is the most recent of several crime novels authored by Nick Kolakowski, but it’s the first one I’ve read and the first reviewed in this blog. This novel will be released early in 2025. It’s really a classic detective thriller that was a page-turner, for sure.   Dash Fuller was the protagonist, and he had a history of working in Hollywood’s underbelly, working for the studios and protecting stars when they got in trouble. Basically, he was a fixer. At the moment the story begins in Los Angeles, Dash is at loose ends, being tired of the dirty work that he was ex ..read more

  Wido’s Walk, is the third book in a series, The Martha’s Vineyard Murders by Raemi A. Ray. I’ve read and reviewed the first two novels, and you can see those reviews in this blog. I continue to give high praise to the author. This story took a bit longer to grab me because Ms. Ray took enough time to fully develop the characters, which turned out to be quite necessary given the nature of the conclusion. I did not figure out who the ultimate villain was until the very end when the author revealed it. The story involved some of the people that we’ve learned about in the prior two novels ..read more

Nick and Nate McClusky. Brothers in arms. Older brother Nick taught Nate to follow him into crime. Mostly robberies.  "When  you walk into a liquor store with a gun in your hand and a mask over your face, you rip the lid off the world. Time does some real Einstein shit. It streches; it shrinks."   Nate ends up in a California prison for a short stint at ‘rehabilitation.’ The prison has a supermax wing for lifers. In solitary is Crazy Craig, the President of the Aryan Steel, the biggest dog in the white supremacy hierarchy of the California penal system. He has a brother in the ..read more

 Tokyo Swindlers by Ko Shinjo is exactly what the title suggests. There are gangs of crooks who are attempting to illegally fake ownership of some of those properties valuable properties in downtown Tokyo and despite significant securities in place to prevent such thefts from happening, very bright swindlers were able to find loop holes and lies that would allow them to gain titles of the very valuable land in downtown Tokyo. The deals are fast moving, ownership only being briefly held, long enough to be sold to unsuspecting people. I think that anyone who is involved in any aspect of t ..read more

  Assume Nothing by Joshua Corin is an excellent YA read. The protagonist is a 15-year-old girl, Kat McCann, but the reader does not learn her name until a little ways into the book. Rather, she introduces herself by the username she uses in a specific AOL chatroom, KMcCann14. The chatroom is a key element in story since it is solely devoted to the mystery writer Carissa Miller who has written numerous murder mysteries which have been solved by the detective fictional detective Adrian Lescher. It’s in the chatroom that Kat meets Dev whose chatroom name is WmbleyLnDet, meant to pay honor ..read more

  The adventures of the crime fighting duo, Dr. Alex Delaware and L.A. Detective Milo Sturgis continue in Open Season. The body of a young starlet is dumped at an emergency room entrance of a decaying hospital in a seedy area of L.A.  She has been drugged and inspection of her social media leads the crime fighters to a likely suspect known for his misogyny and reputation for date rape.  Before the police can question him, he is shot to death with a 308 rifle.  The rifle used in this killing is quickly tied to other crimes and the M.O. is found to be consistent with several ..read more

MRB returns to the Kentucky hills where author Chris Offutt sets his Mick Harding books. Mick has returned home to Rocksalt, KY to help family. His sister is the county sheriff now convalescing after being wounded in her leg in the line of duty. She deputizes Mick (and he then deputizes another Army buddy). Along with a couple others in the Sheriff’s office, Mick takes on the day to day minutiae that waddles through the door – vagrant in a barn (actually a deer), missing pets, noisy neighbors. He's not without skills. He’s former Army CID but wasn’t interested in getting back into law enforce ..read more

This 2023 copyright is quite topical, probably more so than the author realized while writing it.  The title is part 3 of the underlying theme of this book: Nobody Talks. Everybody whispers. Everybody Knows.  Mae Pruett works for a formidable PR firm in LA. She is sort of a specialist in that she is a ‘black bag’ publicist. When a client goes afoul of public opinion (or the law), she dives in deep to find a way to swing public opinion in another direction. She’s a critical piece of “The Beast” that feeds, sucks, manipulates, and coerces public opinion in favor of the client no matte ..read more