The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

The Lost Symbol, the long-awaited breathless mystery following The Da Vinci Code, should be a boon to Washington, D.C, tourism, although I expect that the guides at the Capitol building are already weary of fielding questions about the masonic symbols strewn about the building, and indeed the town. Alas, although I was gripped by the [...]

Just Take my Heart by Mary Higgins Clark

A young widow and assistant prosecutor with an ambitious boss takes on a suspiciously-acting man who appears to have killed his soon-to-be ex-wife — and wins the trial, although she has her doubts on his culpability. Meanwhile, a serial murderer is planning her demise. There’s a gratuitous transplant story to boot, but it does not [...]

The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly

The Scarecrow is a thriller about an evil computer system administrator who tortures and kills women after using his position to spy on them. Will the heroic newspaper columnist, recently laid off but still working his last couple of weeks on the job, be able to catch him before he gets caught in the vilain’s [...]

They don’t play Stickball in Millwaukee by Reed Farrell Coleman

In They Don’t Play Stickball in Milwaukee a college student vanishes and his uncle, a private investigator, goes looking for him in a small Northeastern college town to encounter a drug ring, bodies everywhere, and a young woman who inexplicably throws herself at him, giving rise to hot, ridiculously gratuitous sex scenes when he really [...]

Soul Patch by Reed Farrell Coleman

Soul Patch is another Moe Praeger mystery, this time set in New York, but once again revisiting long-ago crimes. This time the story is a complicated mob and corruption affair that left me at times confused and others simply not interested. Still there’s an interesting cast of characters, most of them hopelessly dishonest (and many [...]

Redemption Street by Reed Farrel Coleman

Redemption Street is a mystery that stars Moe Prager, a retired New York City cop, private investigator, and owner of a wine shop who travels to the Catskills to find out the truth about a fire in the sixties that killed a couple of young women — but are they really dead? In the process [...]

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

What a lovely book! The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is a mystery based in a country house in England inhabited by a motherless family that includes a precocious 11-year old girl called Flavia who maintains a chemistry lab in the ample almost-castle where she lives, has a good understanding of her remote, [...]

The Associate by John Grisham

The Associate tells the story of a fresh graduate of Yale Law School who is blackmailed into taking a job at a New York business law firm (he had wanted to work for a non-profit organization in Pennsylvania) against the threat of revelations from a college accessory to rape charge. The author paints an oppressive [...]

Where are you now? by Mary Higgins Clark

Where Are You Now? is a creepy tale of a young man who abruptly disappeared years ago but calls faithfully each Mother’s Day. When his sister decides to investigate his disappearance young women turn up dead or missing and her brother appears to be the culprit, causing her mother to bemoan this new twist, but [...]

Dashing through the Snow by Mary Higgins Clark & Carol Higgins Clark.

Are you ready for an entertaining, over-the-top, not too strenuous mystery with Christmas themes generously slathered all over? Then grab Dashing Through the Snow and a good cup of tea and don’t think too hard about how unrealistic the plot can be. There are lottery winners, trust fund babies, villains with a good heart and villains with a [...]