Extinction

By Douglas Preston

Douglas Preston dives into Jurassic Park territory with “Extinction.” It is ironic that Michial Crichton’s long-awaited book “Eruption” also just came out. After Crichton’s death in 2008, there has been much speculation regarding his unfinished works and what would be published. With the help of James Patterson, “Eruption” is finally available.

“Extinction” provides the next step up from the Jurassic World concept and takes you to a place that makes you simply shake your head in shock. The book starts out with a double homicide on the grounds of the Erebus Resort. The Resort is located in a 100,000-acre valley in the Colorado Rockies. Guests come to view the de-extinct species that the scientists of Erebus have brought back with genetic manipulation including woolly mammoths, Irish Elk, and giant ground sloths. A billionaire's son and his new wife decide that Erebus would be a perfect location for their honeymoon, but they are immediately murdered in the Erebus back country by what is assumed to be a gang of eco-terrorists. Colorado Bureau of Investigation Agent Frances Cash partners with county sheriff James Colcord to track down the perpetrators.

The newlywed couple’s death appears to be a beheading, but the heads and bodies have disappeared. Cash and Colcord work with Erebus’ security staff and search and rescue people to try to find the bodies. While the science is important in this novel, it is at its heart a mystery novel where Cash and Colcord work to discover why the couple was murdered. What is actually taking place is much more complex than either could have imagined. What Erebus is doing is mind boggling and digging into the truth is dangerous in unexpected ways. Needless to say, long before the truth can be uncovered, many will die.

This novel held my attention from start to finish. I liked Cash and Colcord and their work relationship. Big money and science play important roles in this novel which is a thriller and a mystery novel and a warning.

Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s latest Agent Pendergast novel comes out in August 2024 and is called “Angel of Vengeance.” This is the 22^nd book in a series that has remained fascinating and unusual throughout the series. I will be placing a hold on this and look forward to seeing what trouble Agent Pendergast will be heading into.

 

“You Can Die”

By Rebecca Zanetti

Rebecca Zanetti is a prolific author whose works include paranormal romance, romance, and romantic suspense. I’ve only read her Laurel Snow series which I’ve enjoyed. This is the third book in the series which came out first in audio and paperback in 2023 and won’t be in hardcover until September 2024. The fourth book in the series comes out in Oct. 2024.

Laurel Snow is an FBI Special Agent who has gained fame for bringing serial killers to justice. Her own father is a serial offender whom she hasn’t seen in years and is trying to find. Her half-sister is a sociopath who insists that Laurel should stop bringing serial killers to justice and instead join the fun of being one.

Laurel recently opened an FBI office in the Pacific Northwest, specifically in Genesis Valley. Just as she’s settling down in her new location, a series of deaths takes place. They are all men who are found near churches, charities, and counseling centers. All have valentine’s day candy shoved down their throats. When her father is attacked in the same way, the case becomes very personal. While all the dead men appear on the surface to be upstanding citizens, it doesn’t take long to discover that there are secrets hiding under the surface.

Laurel’s love interest is Huck Rivers, a Captain in the Washington State Fish and Wildlife division. While Laurel is an analytical, critical thinker, Huck runs on gut instinct. Laurel has always had problems connecting with people and Huck’s personality offsets some of that distance and helps her connect.

This is an enjoyable, lightweight series to run through. I enjoy the connection between Hank and Laurel. I like seeing her rebuild her life and work into something important despite her insane family.

Order or place on hold at your library or on Libby “You Can Kill” coming out in October.

 

“A Step Past Darkness”

By Vera Kurian

 

Vera Kurian’s first novel “Never Saw Me Coming” was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 2022. Her follow up is even better with surprising twists which include a horror element, a dangerous cult, and a group of students who find out that secrets cannot always be kept.

 

The gripping danger stems from an incident in 1995 in a lovely, suburban town when a group of high school students decide to throw a party in an abandoned coal mine. Obviously, nothing can possibly go wrong with that idea!  But since humans seem to be very good at making terrible decisions, the party goes on and disaster ensues for six classmates who witness a shocking event that they keep secret for 20 years. They go so far as to agree to never speak of the crime that happened and to leave town and never speak to each other.

The six are Maddy, a devout member of the local megachurch; Kelly, the bookworm next door; James, a cynical burnout; Casey, a loveable football player; Padma, the shy straight-A student and Jia, who is starting to see visions she can’t explain. While 20 years have passed, Jia’s visions and the murder of Maddy drives Jia to break the pact by calling everyone originally involved back to Wesley Falls to end what is beginning to tear the town apart.

Much of the novel deals with the group of six teens. They are all well-developed characters and interact to each other in positive ways. Events from the 90s come up to orientate us to the time which this was taking place. Eventually they find that many of the town’s problems seem to swirl around the town’s megachurch called “Golden Praise.” The church has a dangerous cult-like hold on the citizens to the point that the church’s leaders are those townspeople with the most influence. Others in town who are not in the church are called burnouts. The elite high school girls are called the “Circle Girls” and wear necklaces with small gems that relate to a church hierarchy that Jia and her friends must uncover.

Many modern novels jump back and forth between characters and this novel does that with all six of its main characters as we get to know them as teens in the 90s. That takes up a lot of time and thus it takes a while to really jump into what is going on in the town itself. Once everyone is back in Wesley Falls, the novel jumps into high gear and becomes a top rate thriller. I love the idea of a coal mine being a major setting since I can really imagine that kids in the town would be intrigued with exploring something that they are told to stay away from. The social interactions of the residents of the town are of importance and controlled by the church’s influence. The book has many twists and turns and surprises. Just read it and don’t read the many reviews that I feel give away far too much. Just read this triller and enjoy the ride.

 

“Only If You’re Lucky”

by Stacy Willingham

It’s interesting that I managed to read two books in a row about friendship. Perhaps we all need to think about our friendships and what brings us to develop the friendships we have and what keeps those friendships healthy. I’m pretty sure that at some time in everyone’s life they develop a friendship that is unhealthy. A friendship that perhaps brings out the worst in us. That occurrence isn’t just about the other person. It’s about both people. Very often we try to heal our lives through others. We expect others to be our strength or to fill up the hole that loss or pain from childhood has left us with.  In the case of this book, Margot goes to college and replaces her dead friend from high school with a girl whose hold on her is life changing.

Margot is drawn to Lucy in what becomes an unhealthy and life altering friendship. The book goes back and forth between “before” and “after” a certain big event that everything is leading to. That event changes everyone and everything.

Margot starts out her college life as a shy, young, damaged girl from a small town only to meet Lucy who is always the center of attention, exciting, and dynamic. Margot becomes part of Lucy’s group of friends and ends up moving off campus with them in a rental house. While Lucy’s influence would probably be enough to change Margot’s life, the fraternity boys from the house next door complicate her life even more.

Margot finds herself changing. But there are things happening that keep her from totally embracing Lucy’s influence. Sometimes it seems that her past and present are coming together in disturbing ways. When a young man whom she suspected of injuring her dead high school best friend joins the freshman class at her college and moves next door, her life truly starts spinning out of control. The unhealthy relationships and holds the characters have on each other leads not just to pain for many of the characters, but to the death of some as well.

I love books that drive me to read as fast as possible to find out where the plot is going and what is the motivation behind the actions of each of the characters. This was a really fun and fascinating read.

Willingham has only written two other books, both good reads to go back to if you haven’t already read them. They are "A Flicker in the Dark" and "All the Dangerous Things."

The next book on my reading list is “A Step Past Darkness” by Vera Kurian.

 

 

Pretty Little Wife (2020)

The Replacement Wife (2021)

The Last Invitation (2022)

  

Darby Kane may not be destined to win a Pulitzer Prize for literature so don’t start reading her books with that expectation. (Although you never know.) What you can rely on when you read one of her books is that her books are just fun to read. Her domestic fiction is personal filled with betrayal by those who should love you the most and whom you should love without reservation. Anyone could be plotting against you from your wife to a husband, to family members, to friends. Many of her characters lack a moral compass to say the least. You may read her books and say this is too complex or too over the top and think that no one would act the way her characters act. At that point you turn on the news and some father just left his baby locked in a car while he went in to work for 8 hours. Or a women killed her kids because they were just too much trouble. Thousands of people gamble away their futures every day while living in a dream that they will get rich with this behavior. Let’s face it, people do crazy well in real life and Darby Kane does crazy well in her books (which is a lot less damaging).

The Engagement Party (2023)

I’ve read all of her books and enjoyed her form of domestic fiction with twisty plots and crazy actions. I hadn’t gotten around to her last book “The Engagement Party” and finally picked it up and got caught up in the crazy. Honestly who doesn’t know that when you go somewhere on vacation that only has one entrance and exit which is covered by water half the time that nothing good is going to come of that?

The vacation is organized as an engagement party where a group of old friends can get back together to celebrate one of their own getting engaged. The friends knew each other in college and experienced the horror of having on graduation weekend a student (Emily Hunt) go missing only to be found floating in a river. The police decide that the death was linked to another student who died by suicide and close the case.

Immediately you get the idea that these so-called friends are tied together by the secrets they have held and the lies they’ve told to hide those secrets since that incident in college. Even though 12 years have passed, the guilt and shame have not. It seems that more than one person wants this group to reveal the truth about Emily’s death and the trap is set on this isolated vacation hide out. Finding the truth isn’t easy and has to be forced out through threats, violence and death.

As tension ramps up in the book, the group finds a dead man in the trunk of a car with a note that says, “Time to tell the truth.” Of course, a storm covers the only road out with water leaving them stranded and wondering who will be the next to die and which one of them was driven to kill.

This book is just fun. There is a ton of tension and a constant desire to know exactly what is really going on. The characters are a mess of guilt and fear. They all have their own secrets and have told lies for so long that it seems impossible to tell the truth. On the surface, they see themselves as friends, but none of them really are friends.

There is no way the book couldn’t make you think about friendship and those we call friends. Many of our friends develop from shared experiences: we work together, we went to college together, we lived next door to each other, and so on. We may have a shared past, shared interests, shared experiences. We hope that our friends are people who love us and would have our backs in difficult times. Unfortunately, we have all been let down by friends and have let friends down. Friendship is complicated like all relationships. I would advise that if you have the kind of friends the people in this book have that you move across the county and block their number.

 

 What the Wife Knew (2024)

Darby Kane’s next book comes out December 10, 2024, and pre-pub reviews make it seem that this may be her best book so far.

 

Reading right now:

“Spirits and Sourdough” is the tenth book in the Magical Bakery Mystery series by Bailey Cates. If you need a break from domestic thrillers, you might want to read this cozy series featuring witchy bakery owner Katie Lightfoot in Savannah. This well-done light murder mystery series has supernatural elements and an excellent reoccurring cast. In this most recent installment, Katie goes on a ghost tour of Savannah only to have a newly dead ghost turn up demanding that her murder be solved.

On hold right now:

There are so many bestselling mystery authors coming out with new books in March that you better start putting holds on all your favorites right now. Harlan Coben’s “The Match” is his second book in the Wilde series. C. J. Box’s “Shadows Reel” is his 22^nd book in the Joe Pickett series. Stuart Woods has “A Safe House” coming out which is his 61^st Stone Barrington mystery novel. “What Happened to the Benefits” is Lisa Scottoline’s latest standalone novel. Janet Evanovich launch’s a new series with “The Recovery Agent” featuring Gabriela Rose as a recovery agent. Jude Deveraux’s fourth book in her Medlar Mystery series is “A Relative Murder.” Fern Michaels latest domestic thriller is “Fear Thy Neighbor.” Phillip Margolin’s fifth book in his Robin Lockwood series is “The Darkest Place.” Jacqueline Winspear’s 17^th novel in the Maisie Dobbs series is “A Sunlit Weapon.” If that isn’t enough for you, April brings two of our biggest mystery authors David Baldacci and John Sandford coming out with new books which no one will want to miss. Baldacci’s “Dream Team” is the third in his Aloysius Archer series. Sandford starts a new series with Letty Davenport.

 

With another New Year here, it’s a good time to mention an author that you may have missed that you simply don’t want to miss. If you didn’t read Darby Kane’s “Pretty Little Wife,” you need to make sure you do so right now. The book is a domestic suspense novel with so many twists and turns that you will stay up all night and call in sick the next day to see what is going to happen next. Now to top it all off, her second book “The Replacement Wife” just came out last month. Which means when you finish the first, you’ll have another great book to look forward to.

 

Reading right now:

“Everything We Didn’t Say” by Nicole Baart is a family drama with a mystery in the background. When Juniper Baker fled from Jericho, Iowa, she left behind a daughter to be raised by her parents and a murdered local couple.  She returns to make amends with her now teenage daughter and to solve the murder of her brutally murdered neighbors. Juniper has been holding a secret, but doesn’t know if releasing her knowledge will help her start again or destroy any hope of starting over.

 

On hold right now:

It’s been five years since Joanne Harris added a book to the St. Oswald series called “A Narrow Door.” It seems the time has come for this boy’s prep school to open it’s doors to girls and to a headmistress. The new headmistress, Rebecca Buckfast, is ruthlessly ambitious. It seems she killed to get the job and may have to kill again to keep her secrets buried.

Noah Hawley’s “Anthem” takes the world’s current insanity to a whole new level. Starting with a pandemic of teen suicide, he makes it personal by following a young man who is trying to recover from his sister’s death and finds himself on a quest to end the pandemic which is somehow tied to a man known as the Wizard. This book is an adventure thriller which goes down the road to redemption. It is more thriller than mystery, but is worth mentioning here because of the times we live in and the impact it is having on reviewers.

In “Find Me” by Alafair Burke, Hope Miller reinvented her life after being in a terrible car accident. She gives herself a name and settles into life in a small town in New Jersey for 15 years. Suddenly her best friend discovers that she has vanished leaving behind only a drop of blood where she was last seen. Her DNA sample matches a blood sample connected to a notorious Kansas murder. Now the hunt is on to find Hope and the truth about what she knows.

Other Mysterious Things:

So many books are being turned into movies or series these days that you cannot even begin to keep up. The 1957 Patricia Highsmith novel “Deep Water” is coming out as a movie with Ben Affleck. Kenneth Branagh is working on turning another Agatha Christie novel into a movie (“Death on the Nile”). Hugh Laurie is directing a limited series from another Agatha Christie called “Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?” A new book called “Argylle” by Ellie Conway is already being turned into a movie.  “Luckiest Girl Alive” by Jessica Knoll will star Mila Kunis is set to come out this year. It looks like there will be so many that this list will grow and grow so enjoy a great mystery book and let’s hope some of the movies are worth watching.