Reading right now:

            Loren D. Estleman’s “Alive!” This is the third book in the Valentino mystery series. Valentino is a film archivist who once more gets himself in hot water by trying to uncover Bela Lugosi’s screen test for “Frankenstein.” It seems that there are others trying to find the screen test and some are willing to kill to get it. Estleman has written 70 books and won a ton of awards.

On hold right now?

            Ridley Pearson’s “Choke Point.” This is the second in a series which revolves around a private security firm called Rutherford Risk and its two hired guns: Grace Chu, a forensic expert, and John Knox, a combat vet. In “Choke Point,” they are hired to find and shut down a sweatshop in Amsterdam which enslaves young girls as laborers. Pearson was once a singer/songwriter in a rock band. Now he writes exciting adventure books for adults and some great ones for kids too.

Other Mysteries of Interest:

            Scott Britz-Cunningham’s “Code White” and Christoph Spielberg’s “The Russian Donation” are new medical thrillers recently available. While Robin Cook and Michael Palmer are two of the best known writers of medical thrillers and two who are still writing traditional medical thrillers, most of the new mysteries that revolve around medical issues tend to be forensic in nature. If you like a little medicine (either forensic or other) in your thriller try these books: Colin Cotterill’s series starring Dr. Siri Paiboun who is a coroner, many of  Daniel Kalla’s books are medical in nature including “Blood Lies,” Gil Snider’s “Brain Warp,”  and Steven F. Havil’s series with Dr. Thomas Parks which starts with “Race for the Dying.” Everyone knows about Kathy Reichs, Tess Gerritson, and Patricia Cornwell’s forensic thrillers, but there is also the Eisenmenger-Flemming forensic series by Keith McCarthy (which started with “A Feast of Carrion,” Jefferson Bass has written the Body Farm series,  Alex Grecian is writing the Murder Squad series with “The Yard” being the first in the series which includes a forensic pathologist Dr. Bernard Kingsley, Benjamin Black’s Quirke series with Quirke running the Pathology Department (“Christine Falls” was the first in the series), Peter May’s Enzo files series, and Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter series.