The Suicide House

 I’ve continued my binge reading and listening to murder mysteries by Charlie Donlea. There may be only two books left that are available in audio format. My last read was The Suicide House, a story that takes place at a successful high school college prep boarding program. The campus is large and beautiful, and the teachers also lived on campus in a building that provided them with privacy from the students. However, when a train track was built to support a local mining operation, the teachers’ house became undesirable due to the constant noise. But when that structure was abandoned, it became the favorite place for students to use when they wanted to get away from the very strict rules that were a part of their academic program. Party on!

 

But then there was a series of deaths in the old teachers’ house and on the nearby railroad tracks. In the second book in the Rory Moore/Lane Phillips, Donlea further developed those characters. It was Rory who had a unique expertise in recreating murder scenes from cold case unsolved crimes. Lane was the one person in the world who understood this obsessional and autistic woman. His support allowed her to do her thing. She simply saw clues that others had missed.

 

This is a good plot and I appreciated learning more about the protagonists. Perhaps this book is not great literature, but it is captivating none-the-less. If this is your genre, you should get to know Charlie Donlea.

The Widow

 The Widow is a John Grisham novel. I think we’ve read and reviewed most of Grisham’s novels and he has generally gotten high praise, if not outright ravings regarding his characters and plots. In this story, an elderly widow, Ms. Eleanor Barnett, walked into a lawyer’s small office with a request to rewrite her will. She had done this recently with another lawyer in the same small town, but she had grown to distrust that guy. In fact, when it seemed she was a woman of great wealth, the lawyer wrote a clause to grant himself a near half-million dollar cash gift at the time of the widow’s death. Simon Latch, the new attorney, had seen his practice slide toward bankruptcy, in part because of his failed marriage, but also because of his gambling debts. The widow’s husband had apparently led a frugal life and left her with about $20,000,000 in stocks for Coca-Cola and WalMart.

 

Desperate to find a way to avoid his own financial demise, Simon agreed to take the case at a rather high fee for the work he would do, and he then avoided thoroughly vetting his client when she did not produce the usual documents with regard to her assets. He was afraid that if he pressed her for the information, that she would just take her estate matters to another attorney. She began to take up more and more of Simon’s time, but he kept on with the expenses that Ms. Barnett was accruing with a promise of a huge payout from her estate. Then she became ill, was hospitalized, and then died quickly under suspicious circumstances. All guilty motives pointed toward Simon.

 

I would rate this as an interesting book, but it’s not one which held my interest to the extent that most of his others have done. I don’t think this novel is Grisham’s best work.

Don't Believe It

 My binge of Charlie Donlea’s books continues. Don’t Believe It is a story about whether Grace Sebold murdered her boyfriend, Julian, while on a Spring Break from their fourth year of medical school. They’ve traveled to St. Lucia with a group of close friends since high school for the purpose of being at the wedding for two of them. It’s Julian’s plan to propose marriage to Grace, and Julian chose the most romantic spot, high on a cliff overlooking a beautiful white sandy beach and the Caribbean. Julian’s body was subsequently discovered in the water and he had obviously fallen from the cliff. Grace was accused of having pushed him off, and there was significant physical evidence that tied her to the crime 

Although Grace constantly protested her innocence, claiming that she had not even gone to the planned rendezvous with Julian, her statements were not deemed to be credible. She was provided with local council who was thought to be inadequate to the task, and Grace was convicted of murder. She had been in jail for 10 years when filmmaker Sydney Ryan chose to focus on this case for a television series. She discovered some inconsistencies in the original investigation. The St. Lucia Department of Justice was uninterested in reopening the case for fear that it would hurt their vital tourism business, and the U.S. Department of Justice was uninterested in looking bad because it meant they had ignored a U.S. citizen who needed their help. In the face of danger to herself, Sydney was determined to carry through with her investigative efforts despite the resistance she faced..

 

The plot was exceptionally well written, and I did not see the last-minute shifts in the story until they actually occurred. This is another good and entertaining murder mystery novel from Donlea. I have become a fan, and my binge reading/listening to his stories will continue.

Some Choose Darkness

 Some Choose Darkness is the fifth Charlie Donlea novel I’ve read/listened to in a very short time span. His books are available on Libby and the wait for them has not been too long. He typically writes about psychologically damaged women, both the people hunting for clues about an old murder as well as those who have been the victims. The subtitle of the book is A Rory Moore/Lane Phillips Novel, Rory being the protagonist in this good story. She specializes in forensic reconstruction of cold cases, finding clues that others have missed.

 

In this story, her father was an attorney of a client he had taken on early in his career, a serial killer who was convicted and imprisoned for only one of the women he had been suspected of killing. Rory’s father, she discovered to her own horror, had continued his relationship with “The Thief” and had taken on responsibilities that were far beyond a typical attorney-client relationship, including managing his wealth and then paying himself for services rendered from that fund. Her father was terrified that although The Thief had never been paroled, he was coming to the end of his 30-year prison sentence and was about to be released. His anxiety increased until he had a heart attack and died.

 

Rory had graduated from law school and was listed as being on her father’s staff, she had never practiced law. Rather, she had quietly left that scene and limited her legal work to reconstructing crimes. However, as she studied the victims of old crimes, she became emotionally disturbed by the effort. At the start of this story, the emotionally fragile Rory had just returned from 6 months off work as the result of the trauma she felt by the nature of her work. She was not prepared to take on her father’s cases, and given the short timeline to the prisoner’s impending release, something her father had successfully stalled for some years, the judge would not allow Rory to refer the case to some other attorney.

 

The case that had led to this man’s incarceration had to do with the disappearance of Angela Mitchell, another presumed victim of this killer. It was Rory’s reconstruction of that crime that moved this story line along. Angela’s body had never been found, and Rory began to wonder if she might not still be alive.

 

I have been entertained by this series of books by Donlea, and I’m already nearing the end of another one of his books. You should expect that I’m giving this author a strong recommendation.

The Delivery

 I raved about the first book in this series by Andrew Welsh-Huggins, The Mailman. I read that almost exactly one year ago, so now it was a treat to get an advanced copy of the second book, The Delivery. This clearly has a Lee Child vibe to it. The protagonist, Mercury Carter, has a unique ability to walk into dangerous trouble nearly anywhere he goes. Previously a Fed, he’s now a freelance delivery guy who is proud of the fact that he’s never missed a delivery despite the trouble that it might cause.

 

The plot is comically complicated. As Carter heads to make one delivery, he stumbles on new trouble, that leads to new trouble, that leads to more trouble. There are so many names to keep track of that I found myself getting lost in the matrix of people to whom he was making promises and those who were after him because he kept sticking his nose in other people’s business. Carter is a compelling figure alone, and he’s surrounded by a huge cast of people who are bent, one way or another. The cops, the Feds, multiple bad guys, weapons, drugs, and prostitution are all part of the story. I found The Delivery to be a fun read, so if you in the mood for an adventure, and not a serious murder mystery, then this book is for you.

Twenty Years Later

 Twenty Years Later is the fourth Charlie Donlea novel I’ve read recently, three this month alone. Perhaps, this is his best, and it would be hard to beat The Girl Who Was Taken. I listened to this one in audiobook format which I enjoy on my daily dog walks. The story begins with a recently arrived tv host on a news program called American Events. Like 60 Minutes and Dateline, it is more like a weekly magazine approach than a nightly news segment. In the last couple years, Avery Mason has worked her way up to being a co-host with the long-time very popular male host. When he died unexpectly, Avery was thrust into the job as a temporary host while a more suitable person was sought for the permanent job. However, she killed her new role, one that she desperately wanted to have. Her ratings were hirer than the old host, and she expected to be compensated for that.

 

Avery also had some responsibility for searching for stories when she learned that the ongoing work at the 9/11 Commission result in the unexpected discovery of the new identification of a body fragment in the North Tower. Victoria Ford, on 9/11/01, had been indicted on a murder charge, and she was in the World Trade Center to talk with her attorney at his office on the 80^th floor. She tried going to the roof where she hoped to be rescued, but her attorney and the rest of his office people chose to descend in a stairway. It took the legal folks more than 40 minutes to get out of the building before it collapsed, but Victoria was never seen again. The case against her had a huge amount of physical evidence against her, and given the salacious nature of the crime, it had been a headline news items for the days before 9/11. But the case was never pursued because of the collapse of the building and the absence of the murder suspect.

 

Avery planned to pursue the story about the discovery of the newly-identified person, and the more she learned about Victoria, the more she realized she would get massive tv ratings as the 20^th anniversary of the tragedy neared. However, the reader learns that Avery has her own troublesome history that she has successfully kept hidden for years. She was constantly troubled by thoughts of the deaths of her mother and brother and the criminal past of her father. After completing college with a degree in journalism and then law school, she realized she would never get hired by a reputable law firm because of her father’s crimes, a Berny Madoff like Ponzi scheme crook. She chose to fall back on her degree in journalism and found a job as an investigative reporter on the West Coast with the LA Times. With her disguised identity, she gradually worked her way up the ladder until landing the job with American Events.

 

The plot was brilliantly unfolded, and information about the principal characters was artistically scattered into the story. I found the characters to be fascinating, and until the final pages, I certainly did not see how the author could so skillfully pull together all of the plots and subplots. This one is a good read or a good listen. I loved it.

Cold Zero

 Cold Zero is a recent book by Brad Thor and Ward Larsen, both of whom have been prolific authors. This is literally an action-packed story, filled with suspense on nearly every page, so be prepared not to put this one down until finished. The storyline is about a Chinese scientist who has a masterful program that is somehow hooked into AI, and it is able to disrupt just about anything including plane flights, missel directions, and nuclear armaments. The device, known in translated English as Sky Fire, would clearly give the owner of the device a clear advantage in any military confrontation. However, just as he is completing his development of the device, Dr. Chen Li has decided to defect to the U.S., which would not prove to be an easy task because he is being so closely guarded by his Chinese overseers.

 

The defection is being managed by a CIA person, Kasey Sheridan, and she gets help from Brett Sharpe, a former fighter pilot who has been living a civilian life. They are trying to secretly leave China,but choose a new super luxurious air service, piloted by Sharpe, thinking China wouldn’t dare bring them down. However, Li’s assistant knew enough about the program to make the plane’s two engines seize simultaneously when they were over the Artic, and it crashed onto an ice flow. A few passengers survived, but some were injured and the Artic conditions were brutal. The nearest vessel was a Russian sub, and both the U.S. and China have sent rescue and recovery planes to help which were hours away, so all of the super powers were engaged with the threat of nuclear war underlying the activity.

 

This the Brad Thor you would expect, but without Scott Harvath as the lead character. If this is your genre, you should love this book.