Espresso Shot

Espresso Shot, by Cleo Coyle, was a book sale find and number seven in a series of mysteries. The main character, Clare Cosi, is the manager of a coffeehouse and an amateur sleuth who investigates the death of people close to her ex-husband's fiancee.

Since the book was a light mystery, it would have been easy to read; however, the sprinkled profanity, sexual innuendos and heavy-laden barista lingo got in the way of the characters and the plot for this reader. On a positive note, the who-dun-it was a surprise at the end.

Kiss

Kiss, by Ted Dekker and Erin Healey, is more of a psychological mystery instead of the on-the-edge-of-your-seat spiritual warfare thriller this Dekker fan enjoys. However, the book did have some suspense elements and a mystery to solve so it was still a good story.

The main character, Shauna, wakes up from a comma and struggles to regain her memories from the previous six months, including the terrible accident that has left her brother barely alive. As she struggles to sort the good guys from the bad guys, she realizes that recalling those memories may get her killed.

When she discovers through a kiss (thus the title of the book) that the medically-induced comma and subsequently prescribed drugs has brought about an unusual ability, she uses it to search for the truth about her past and the accident before an unknown assassin takes her out.

The Penny

Although The Penny by Joyce Meyer and Deborah Bedford is a work of fiction, Joyce has shared glimpses into the abusive relationship with her father during her childhood through her conferences and television shows. In this book, the main character, Jenny Blake, and her sister Jean endure a similar childhood.

Jenny is convinced her life changed the day she found a penny stuck in hot asphalt and is offered a job at the local jewelry store. She soon discovers the owner, Miss Shaw, harbors secrets of her own and an unspoken bond forms between them. At the same time, Jenny befriends Aurelia and her family where she finds the love of family, hears the voice of Jesus for the first time at the Antioch Baptist Church and witnesses the ugliness of racism firsthand.

The Immortal

The Immortal by Angela Hunt was one of those bargain books on sale. Although it was published in 2000, it used the legend of the Wandering Jew to present the return of Christ and the subject of forgiveness and grace in a new way. The only distraction was the switch from first person, Claudia, to third person, Asher, and back. Thankfully, the story moved along at a quick enough pace to overcome it.

The story begins with Claudia, a jury consultant in New York, who moves to Italy to work for a new global company focused on world peace. She uses her interviewing skills to screen potential employees for the company and hires Asher. After they become friends, Asher tells her that he has been wandering the Earth since Jesus time and believes his purpose is to find the potential Antichrist in each generation and witness to him until Christ's return.

Small Town Christmas

Small Town Christmas was one of Debbie Macomber's 2008 Christmas books and contains two novellas - Return to Promise and Mail-Order Bride - reissued from previous titles.

Return to Promise begins in Promise, Texas with Cal Patterson, a rancher, and his wife Jane, a doctor. When a family emergency calls Jane to California, Nicole, a manipulative character from Cal's past puts her sites on Cal. In Mail-Order Bride, Caroline is tricked into an arranged marriage and ends up in Gold River, Alaska with her new husband, Paul.

Both stories were light, easy reads and fairly predictable with feel-good endings. However, I'm not sure why they were packaged as Christmas stories since neither had a Christmas theme such as her Mrs. Miracle books that have become classic Hallmark Channel movies.

Green

Ted Dekker's Green is part of his Circle Series and he notes that this book can be read first or last as part of that circle. Since I read it last, I had to skim back over Black, Red, and White to understand the circle theory and place Green into the circle's sequence.

Thomas Hunter, the main character, continues to travel between the past and the future with dire consequences to both worlds. In the histories, the fall of mankind keeps good and evil in the spiritual realm. But, in the future world, good and evil can be seen, touched and tasted until mankind once again rejects that reality creating apocalyptic results.

The circle's story continues with the The Books of History Chronicles broken down into two additional series: The Lost Books (Chosen, Infidel, Renegade, Chaos) and The Paradise Novels (Showdown, Saint, Sinner).

Obsessed

In Ted Dekker's Obsessed, the death of a Holocaust survivor provides a clue that seemingly makes Stephen Friedman the heir to an incredible treasure. The story flashes back and forth between the 1940s, where two pregnant concentration camp inmates are tormented, and the 1970s, where Stephen becomes obsessed with learning his mother's secrets.

As a fan of Ted Dekker's books, I agree with some reviewers that this wasn't his best book. The characters make weird decisions along the way and it doesn't have that "wow, I didn't see that coming" ending I've come to expect. But, it did give the reader a chilling reminder of the evil of the Holocaust.

And, I disagree with a reviewer that felt this book crossed the line exploring the darkness of evil by portraying characters involved in satanic rituals. Since the "sheer depravity of the deeds" made the reviewer uncomfortable, wasn't that the point? Ted Dekker is known for his confrontations between good and evil so readers that are uncomfortable with spiritual warfare should steer clear of them.

Cry in the Night

Colleen Coble's Cry in the Night takes the reader to Rock Harbor, Michigan (the setting for previous Rock Harbor mysteries) where search-and-rescue worker Bree Matthews and her dog Samson find an abandoned baby in the woods. Bree ignores the objections from Kade, her second husband, takes the baby girl in and continues to search for the baby's mother. But, when her search reveals a strange connection to her first husband's mysterious death, it unravels her faith.

This was another easy-to-read "who done it" story. The characters draw the reader into the setting while keeping the reader intrigued with solving the mystery.

Deceit

Brandilyn Collins' Deceit opens with Joanne Weeks' quest to prove Baxter Jackson killed her best friend and his former wife six years prior. It then follows two story lines with the first one taking place in 2010 and the other in 2004.

In the 2010 story line, Joanne uses her professional skip tracing skills to locate the missing Jackson foster child, Melissa, to help her prove Baxter killed her best friend. The second story line begins in 2004 when Melissa moves in with the Jacksons and discovers that the rich, Christian couple are not as they appear to be on the surface.

It was an easy-to-read mystery; however, some of the scenes moved too slow for the speed reader in me. I also figured out "who done it" so there was no surprise at the end. It was not the suspense thriller I expected, but Collins fans will still enjoy it.

The Sanctuary

The Sanctuary prologue opens in Naples, Italy in 1749 and the circumstances surrounding a book's lost secrets. It then jumps to Baghdad 2003 before moving forward to 2006 in Lebanon and the kidnapping of Evelyn Bishop, an archeology professor. The search for Evelyn, her evil captor, and the mysterious book's secrets is led by Evelyn's daughter Mia, a CIA agent named Corben and a UNESCO worker named Mr. Kirkwood. The trio moves in an out of Lebanon, Turkey, and Iraq while the book flashbacks to other characters in eighteenth-century Italy, France, Portugal and America and takes side trips to the present day arch-villain's lab.

I bought this book at recent library sale because the inside cover said it was a suspense thriller. I was disappointed on several levels. It reads more like a fantasy-mystery, the main protagonist shifts from one character to another, the flashbacks are confusing and the ending was anti-climatic, with the arch-villain committing horrific crimes throughout the book dismissed. I also found the excessive use of adverbs distracting.

Without a Trace

Colleen Coble's Without a Trace is the first book in her Rock Harbor Mystery Series. The story takes the reader on a winding road of search and rescue while it weaves a cast of 'who did it' characters into a small imaginary town on Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

When Bree Nichols' husband and son disappear in a plane crash, she and her search-and-rescue dog Samson begin searching the wilderness for the crash site to recover their bodies. After months of searching, Bree is forced to come to terms with the fact that she may never find them. Then the town is rocked by murder and the murder becomes strangely linked to her husband's plane crash.

Dark Assassin

Dark Assassin, by Anne Perry, is a murder mystery set in the Victorian era of London. Since the book is also written in the dialect of that time and place, it was difficult for this skimming speed reader to follow at times.

The main character is William Monk, a Thames River Police superintendent, who witnesses a couple in a heated discussion fall from the Waterloo Bridge into the icy waters. Monk's subsequent investigation into their deaths uncovers a mysterious connection to the woman's family, her father's suicide and the new sewer system being built beneath London.

To solve the mystery, Monk enlists the help of an eclectic mix of people - Hester, his wife and former army nurse, Orme, a subordinate police officer, Runcorn, a fellow police superintendent, Rathbone, a lawyer, Crow, a doctor to the poor, Scuff, a mudlark (someone who scavenges the river at low tide), and Sutton the rat catcher and his dog Snoot. From the world of the powerful and wealthy to the dark world of sewer tunnels, seedy characters and starving people, impending danger awaits them.

Walking Lazarus

Since T.L. Hines gives away the subject of his book in the title, Walking Lazarus, it is no surprise that the main character, Jude, has died and come back to life. The twist is that it happened three times and seems to have an underlying purpose. Jude has changed his name, moved to a new town and become a recluse near an area where children are disappearing.

As Jude unravels the mystery of his own deaths and the evil lurking around his new hometown, he struggles to hide his identity while being accused of killing children. the book definitely has the one thing most appealing about a good supernatural suspense thriller ... things are not always as they appear while the reader is traveling through the pages of the unknown.

Where Are You Now?

Mary Higgins Clark's Where Are You Now? is the story of a sister's quest to find her missing brother. The sister, Carolyn, has been haunted by her brother Mack's sudden disappearance and mysterious annual phone call on Mother's Day for ten years.

After Carolyn tells Mack she is going to find him on the latest phone call, her uncle receives a mysterious note in a collection plate that says Carolyn must not look for Mack. This cryptic note turns out to be only the beginning for Carolyn. Her determined search leads her right into the path of the serial killer and a confrontation with someone close to her who has been hiding deadly secrets for many years.

Fans will love this quick read while trying to figure out the killer's identity.

Abomination

Abomination, by Colleen Coble, takes you into the mind of Gideon, a tormented serial killer, who uses Proverbs 6 and geocaching to leave clues about the murders.

Proverbs 6:16-19 lists seven things that are an abomination to God: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a wicked heart, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a man who stirs up dissension among brothers.

Geocaching is a game of hiding and seeking treasure using GPS technology. Basically the three rules of the game are: if you take something from the cache you also leave something of equal or greater value, you write about the find in the cache logbook and then you log your experience on the geocaching web site.

In this story, the killer puts one of the verses from Proverbs and the location of a body (the cache) online. However, when one of his victims escapes, he becomes the hunted while continuing to stalk the escaped victim who also has amnesia. Unexpected twists and turns make this read a page turner and the identity of the killer is a suspense-filled surprise. It also brings to light how we all have to guard against the things that are an abomination to God.

Dead Heat

Joel C. Rosenberg's Dead Heat is the fifth and final novel in his geopolitical thriller series. The author's note prefacing the first chapter reiterates that the novel is fiction, but it still makes one wonder about the turbulent world we live in and what role, if any, the United States will play in the end times.

President MacPherson's second term in office is ending, a new dictator is rising in Iraq, Israel is on a urgent quest to complete the Third Temple, China and North Korea forces appear ready to strike and  the world is on the verge of a mammoth disaster. After terrorists attack the United States, Jon Bennett is called upon again to help. But this time he is in a remote Jordanian refugee camp with his wife, Erin, who has contracted a potentially fatal illness.

Although it is a fast-paced, action-packed and thought-provoking read, I add my prayer to the author's that the events stay fictional.

The Last Days

The Last Days is one of  Joel C. Rosenberg's geopolitical thrillers where Jon Bennett, a former Wall Street strategist, becomes the point man for an Arab-Israeli peace plan. With the world watching, Jon and his beautiful CIA partner, Erin McCoy, arrive in the Middle East to meet with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

However, before the historic meeting can take place, explosive events send Jon and Erin underground where they facilitate a peace plan in secret. The plan would harness vast supplies of oil and natural gas and make every Muslin, Christian, and Jew in Israel and Palestine wealthy. But men with evil hearts and the countries that support them want no part of peace in the Middle East and launch assaults aimed to kill all those involved with the peace plan.

The scary part about this fictional story is that you can easily imagine it tomorrow's headlines.

Scream

Scream, by Mike Dellosso, is a thriller that will keep you glued to the pages. The main character, Mark Stone, has his phone calls interrupted by otherworldly screams, the kind of screams that remind him of the weeping and gnashing of teeth describing hell.

When Mark realizes that the people on the other end of his phone calls die shortly after hearing the screams, he begins to search for their meaning. While struggling with his own broken faith and marriage, he receives a phone call from Cheryl, his kidnapped estranged wife. That phone call sends Mark racing to save Cheryl from both the kidnapper and the screams.

A final note from the author points out that while the book was written to entertain, it was also written to challenge us to think about life and death, heaven and hell, and where we will spend eternity. He also gives a call to action: to accept Jesus and then tell everyone about it. A good reminder that the Christian supernatural thriller I'm working on also has that dual purpose.



 

Just Take My Heart

JUST TAKE MY HEART is another entertaining mystery by Mary Higgins Clark. In this story, a famous actress is murdered in her home and her estranged husband becomes the primary suspect, but he is not charged with her murder until two years later.

Once Gregg Aldrich is formally charged, Emily Wallace, the assistant prosecutor, begins spending hours preparing for the trial and she finds herself needing a dog sitter. When a new neighbor offers to help, she gives him a key to her house to take care of her dog and unknowingly puts her own life at risk.

A quick, easy read with some courtroom drama and a few unexpected twists and turns.

A Tendering in the Storm

A Tendering in the Storm by Jane Kirkpatrick is part of her Change and Cherish Historical Series. Although the main character is Emma Giesy, some chapters are written from Lousia Keil's point of view. Since I find switching characters and point of view with chapters distracting, I didn't get lost in the story as I do with those that glide effortlessly between the characters.

However, it is a compelling story about the struggle of a strong-willed German American living inside a religious community and the desperate choices she makes so she can raise her children her way. A good reminder that our way isn't always the best way and may, in fact, hinder the blessings God has planned for our lives.