Tag: Mystery Series

Broken – Karin Slaughter – Will Trent and Faith Mitchell In Grant County

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Broken - Karin Slaughter

Broken by Karin Slaughter is the seventh book in the Grant County series. It is also Book #2 in the Georgia Series which features Will Trent and Faith Mitchell. The Georgia Series combines Slaughter’s two series – the Grant County Series with the Atlanta series and together Slaughter’s book list is notable and great!

Broken opens with Sara Linton returning to her home town for Thanksgiving and she is quickly immersed in a mystery

The Story…. from her website:

When the body of a young woman is discovered deep beneath the icy waters of Lake Grant, a note left under a rock by the shore points to suicide. But within minutes, it becomes clear that this is no suicide. It’s a brutal, cold-blooded murder. All too soon former Grant County medical examiner Sara Linton – home for Thanksgiving after a long absence — finds herself unwittingly drawn into the case. The chief suspect is desperate to see her but when she arrives at the local police station she is met with a horrifying sight — he lies dead in his cell, the words ‘Not me’ scrawled across the walls. Something about his confession doesn’t add up and deeply suspicious of the detective in charge, Lena Adams, Sara immediately calls the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Shortly afterwards, Special Agent Will Trent is brought in from his vacation to investigate. But he is immediately confronted with a wall of silence. Grant County is a close-knit community with loyalties and ties that run deep. And the only person who can tell the truth about what really happened is dead.

Final Thoughts

Like all her books the story flies by as you can’t wait to find out what happens, but to me the real beauty lies in the characters that populate her books. These characters are real and face real problems and as you read the books you really feel for the characters as they deal with their disabilities and the consequences of their past actions and shared history.

Karin has a quirky sense of humor and writes a very funny newsletter and is great on Facebook. She is always having contests. The latest contest was  making cupcakes with a murderous theme. The winners are displayed on her website.

While the books can be read out of order. It’s my opinion that it is best to start at the beginning! So check out her work!

Links

Author’s Website
Facebook
Save the Libraries
Amazon
Goodreads

About Karin Slaughter

Karin Slaughter (born January 6, 1971) is an American crime writer. She has written 25 novels, which have sold more than 40 million copies and have been published in 120 countries. Her first novel, Blindsighted (2001), was published in 27 language and made the Crime Writers’ Association’s Dagger Award shortlist for “Best Thriller Debut” of 2001. Wikipedia

Visit the Karin Slaughter Page

Book 23 – Baja Florida

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Baja Florida by Bob Morris is the fifth book in the Zack Chastain series and is Book 23 for 2010. This series is always a fun quick read filled with interesting characters including Zack, former Gator, former Dolphin (well at least I can partially root for him), Zack’s wife Barbara and daughter Shula, and his right hand man Taino Shaman Boggy. Zack’s previous adventures have been chronicled in books with titles like Bahamarama, JamaciaMeDead, and Bermuda Schwartz! Some how most of what Zack does always turns out wrong!

In this installment, Jack’s longtime friend Mickey Ryser, who is dying  pays Zack a visit and asks him to find his daughter Jen, who Mickey has not seen for twenty years and bring her to his island in the Bahama’s. Jen is a recent graduate of the College of Charleston and has set out on a cruise to the Caribbean with friends, only now she can’t be found and it appears that the detective that Mickey has hired is not doing well at finding her, hence the visit and request to Zack. So Zack and Boggy set off to find Jen and bring her to Mickey. Pretty easy huh, well not in Zack’s world!

Like all the books was a short 242 pages and relatively quick read but is a good fast paced story that keeps your interest, with good characters who have developed nicely over the series. There was more Boggy in this book than the last and that’ a good thing!

This is a series that while the characters have developed over the course of the series, I really don’t think that you have to necessarily read the books in order to enjoy them. So pick up the one nearest you, dive in and enjoy!

Book 19 – The Bone Thief

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So today was not a big music day more a sports day. Go Roy Halladay and Flyers. But I did finish book no. 19 for 2010 The Bone Thief by Jefferson Bass. The Bone Thief is the fifth book in the Body Farm series by the writing team of Dr. Bill Bass founder of the Body Farm at the University of Tennessee and Jon Jefferson. The series  follows the activities of Dr. Bill Brockton and his graduate assistant Miranda Lovelady and others in exploits surrounding the Body Farm.

This book opens with the exhumation of a body involved in a paternity suit. The request for exhumation was made by attorney Burton “Grease” DeVriess who has been on the bad and good side of Bill Brockton in other books! Anyway when the body is exhumed both arms have been surgically removed!  Soon Bill is thrust into the world of black marketing of body parts. The FBI soon asks Bill to help in an undercover sting operation to bring down the dealers!

The plot of the novel also includes a storylines from the last novel Bones of Betrayal as Dr. Brockton deals with repercussions from his relationship with Isabella the librarian! Eddie Garcia the medical examiner who lost his hands after handling radioactive material in the last book is also dealing with that  terrible l tragedy and researching ways to get hands back either through total hand transplants or mechanical hands!

I don’t know if I liked the overall plot in this book as much as the others but still the characters of Bill Brockton and Miranda as well as all the others more than make up for it and while the book did not deal as much with the forensic details from the Body Farm the information presented about the black market for body parts and the development of artificial bones was interesting. Overall it was a very satisfying read and I look forward to the next Body Farm adventure!

Book 16 – Nowhere to Run – C.J. Box

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Nowhere to Run is my 16th read of the year and the 10th book in Box’s Joe Pickett series, which keeps getting better and better. This books opens with Joe in his last week of temporary assignment in Baggs Wyoming. The assignment has lasted a year and Joe will be returning to his wife and family soon. But Joe goes into the mountains to investigate some strange happenings, which include camp lootings, tents being slashed, and an elk butchered before the shooters can even collect it! There was also the case of a female Olympic class runner going for a run into the woods and never coming back! On the hunt Joe runs into two twin brothers Caleb and Canish Grimm, who appear to be the men who butchered the Elk! When Joe asks for their fishing license and gives them a citation for hunting without a license their wrath is taken out on himand he barely escapes the mountain alive, but not before he potentially sees the Olympic runner……and the rest of the book revolves around finding out who the Grim Brothers are and was that really the lost runner!

Like all Box’s books the characters are great from Joe to his wife Marybeth, Marybeth’s golddigging mother Missy. the kids Sheridan, Lucy and April to Nate Romanowski and the Brothers Grim! Coupled with the characters is Box’s great descriptive writing about the beauty of the mountains that form the setting of the story!

The pages in this book flew by and overall it was a very enjoyable read! The series can probably be read out of order because the story stands on its’ own but to get the full effect you need to know Joe and his past! So get busy because you have nine books to go to catch up but it will be worth the trip!

Favorite Series -Joe Pickett

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C.J.Box’s Joe Pickett series has been a favorite of mine since I read Savage Run (Book #2) in 2004. I quickly went back and read book #1 Open Season (which won an Edgar Award for Best First Novel) and have continued from there. From the beginning, I have loved the characters of Joe Pickett and his family. Joe Pickett is a game warden originally living in Twelve Sleep, Wyoming and now Saddlestring. Joe is a kinda’ normal guy living a normal life and correcting the wrongs that he encounters and there have been enough to fill ten books. From his website:

the New York Times once wrote, “…Box introduced us to his unlikely hero, a game warden named Joe Pickett, a decent man who lives paycheck to paycheck and who is deeply fond of his wife and his three daughters. Pickett isn’t especially remarkable except for his honesty and for a quality that Harold Bloom attributes to Shakespeare — the ability to think everything through for himself.”  and Joe Pickett has been compared to Gary Cooper by both reviewers and the actor’s only daughter for his quiet, but determined, approach.

Joe moves through life with the help of his beloved wife, Marybeth and his daughters Sheridan and Lucy and helped by his right hand man Nate Romanowski, falconer and man of the land who often appears at just the right time to help Joe. Joe’s life is of-times complicated by his mother-in-law Missy (with several last names due to her penchant for moving up the social ladder through divorce). All of the novels are great Box really creates a great “sense of place” in his novels muc  like James Lee Burke, so that even though I’ve never visited Wyoming, I’ve been there many times thanks to Box. Box says this about his books and particularly about  Trophy Hunt

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My novels include environmental issues that are integral to the modern West.Trophy Hunt is no different. The boom in coal bed methane development in the Rocky Mountains has literally transformed the terrain – and the economy– in ways both good and bad. I was researching the issue for background when something entirely unrelated happened: the discovery of dozens of mutilated cattle in Montana. Remembering the stories of cattle mutilations from my youth, I contacted the lead reporter covering the story and she supplied me with clippings, reports, and extremely disturbing photos. The details of the deaths were eerily similar: no obvious cause of death; faces and genitals surgically removed; no tire tracks, footprints, or evidence near the bodies; and, strangest of all, the bodies were untouched by natural predators. I knew as I leafed through the documents that Joe Pickett would have a new case – one that would test his sense of reality.

While many of the stories stand on there own, I do think that this is a series that deserves to be read in order. So much of the character development and ancillary story lines develop from book to book that if you haven’t read the other books you’ll not get the full effect of the book. If you don’t like to read series books, you can still experience Box’s writing  talent by reading his two standalone novels, the Edgar Award winning Blue Heaven or Three Weeks to Say Goodbye both excellent reads. I can’t wait for the April 6th release of Pickett’s next adventure chronicled in Nowhere to Run. As for you who have never read any you got lots of readin’ to do, but it will be worth the effort!

Dark Tiger – William G Tapply (Stoney Calhoun #3) Book 7 of 2010

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Dark Tiger Book 7 of 2010 – Dark Tiger is most likely the last Stoney Calhoun novel by William G. Tapply. Tapply passed away in July of 2009 after a battle with leukemia.  Tapply is best known for his Brady Coyne series which spanned twenty-six years and twenty-five books.

Dark Tiger is the third book in the Stoney Calhoun series. Stonewall Jackson Calhoun is currently a fishing  guide in Maine and runs a bait shop with his lover Kate Balaban.

Stoney has a past that he doesn’t quite remember, a result of being struck by lightening years ago. Through glimpses of muscle memory and other memory flashes Stoney knows he was a trained agent of some sort.  Now though he runs his bait shop and  occasionally serves as a deputy sheriff when the need arises. Keeping an eye on Stoney is “The Man in the Suit” who knows about Stoney’s past but he’s not telling and every so often pops into Stoney’s life  checking on Stoney’s memory.

As this novel opens, Stoney is told that he and Kate will soon loose their lease on the bait shop and Kate is told her husband Walter, who suffering from MS and  lives in a rehabilitation center will soon be kicked out! Stoney soon figures this is the work of “The Man in the Suit” ,which turns out to be correct. “The Man in the Suit” and his boss tell Stoney they will make everything in his  life OK, if he takes an assignment to go to Loon Lake Lodge in the wilds of northern Maine and solve the murder of one of their agents. The agent was found dead along with a sixteen year old girl in what was made to look like a murder suicide. Only problem is Stoney can’t tell anyone where he is going or why, which does not endear him to Kate! But off he goes. I didn’t think this was a great read, but it was a comfortable one! I enjoy the characters and the story line was ok!

I liked the series and it ended before we learned  the complete story about Stoney’s past and if Stoney and Kate will have a life without the guilt they both feel about their relationship in light of  Kate’s husband’s illness. Stoney, Brady Coyne and William G Tapply you will be missed!