The President's Lawyer by Lawrence Robbins

 Any courtroom thriller that addresses friendship, loyalty, ambition, and just how hard it is to separate home life from work will usually find an audience. John Grisham’s been making a career of it. This 2024 novel is the author’s first. And ‘they’ say, write about what you know. Dr. Google tells us that Robbins is an accomplished trial and appellate lawyer who has argued a couple dozen cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Safe bet that he will give this story considerable authenticity. 

We follow Rob Jacobson, a noted Washington, D.C., litigator who gets quite the case dropped in his lap. He’s been asked to defend his childhood friend who just happens to be one Jack Cutler. That’s as in former President Jack Cutler who stands accused of murdering Amanda Harper - a former White House lawyer and Cutler’s mistress. Yeah, this case will garner its share of public attention. But Rob has known Cutler since childhood. And Rob has a complicated history with Jack and Amanda. How so? Rob had once been romantically involved with Amanda. Makes this case painfully close to home.

Of course, Rob believes Jack to be innocent; hell, Jack passed his a lie-detector test. Rob knows this will be a career-defining case. Like many (most?) politicians, Cutler is equal parts a powerful ego, a volatile temper, a history of serial infidelity, not to mention, some disturbing sexual predilections. As Rob investigates Cutler’s past, he discovers behaviors that will make Cutler a less than sympathetic defendant. Rob is stuck between his oath to the bar or loyalty to a man he has known for most of his life. 

Rob's jumps into the trial as any attorney would: examine the evidence, question witnesses, investigate potential other suspects al while preparing for the impending media circus. Flashbacks reveal the depth of their friendship as well as differences in the big four traits of elected officials: personality, privilege, ambition, power. In the courtroom, damaging evidence snowballs against the former President. So much so that Rob has to wonder if his lifelong friend could really be a murderer.

If you like the back and forth of the courtroom, this book is right up your alley. Robbins clearly understands the courtroom. Exchanges involving jury selection, evidence, cross-examination, and trial strategy seem entirely convincing.  The pace is fast and (for one who has never seen the inside of a courtroom) utterly convincing and authentic. 

A book like this is told basically in two parts: the investigation and the trial. The trial crackles with realism. The investigation, less so as Robbins takes great pains to tell the reader (as well and Rob and Jack) what all is, and will be, happening from the legal side. We are left with competing loyalties driving the story and from over to cover, it’s quite a compelling read in addition to being a well-presented anatomy of a murder trial. 

If you think that Grisham is the best at legal thrillers (and he may well be), he’s got some competition from Lawrence Robbins who has the legal chops and expertise to be a worthy competitor.

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All Secrets Die by Andrew Watts & Dale M. Nelson

Get settled down for a fast-paced technothriller focusing on cybersecurity, espionage, and the consequences when technology falls into the wrong hands. Published in 2024, we follow CIA officer Colt McShane as he confronts a threat capable of exposing virtually every secret in the world.

Catastrophic security breaches release highly sensitive information is released. CIA operations are compromised and data from governments and organizations around the world suddenly becomes available and vulnerable. The attacks are the result of Archon, a techno-terrorist organization that has developed technology that can beat any level of encryption (sounding very James Bond-ish?). The successful instruction of financial institutions, intelligence agencies, governments, and private citizens could throw all international system into chaos.

It’s up to Colt McShane to stop the threat. He plans to infiltrate Archon, capture one of its leaders to force Archon to pony up a way to disable the technology. When Colt reaches his target, the man is suddenly assassinated. Looks like someone else is hunting Archon's leaders. Someone else is interested in controlling or destroying the same technology.

The further Colt digs, he comes across one Ava Klein, a mysterious operative of a covert organization called Trinity. Together, they must unravel the various competing intelligence agencies, terrorists, law enforcement, and enemies all of whom with unclear motives including people within his own government.

A story like this is tough. How to make juggling all those ones and zeros a compelling serious physical threat. Hacking as a tool is less background detail, but now becomes a serious weapon, an unsettling threat to global digital security.

Colt and Ava rush through international locations to combine traditional espionage with artificial intelligence, quantum computing, cyberwarfare, and political manipulation. Plenty of tension, action, and technology.

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Winter Counts by David Heska Wambli Weiden

Y’all know I like crime thrillers. Also like stories set in the American west, especially those that feature Native Americans. Winter Counts is centered on the Rosebud Indian Reservation (in South Dakota). The primary character is Virgil Wounded Horse mixed-race Lakota) who works as a vigilante or “enforcer.” Familiar with the Longmire story lines? Virgil is akin to Hector. 

Crimes on the reservation typically are neglected or subject to a complicated web of tribal and federal jurisdiction limits. When local or federal law enforcement fails, the locals call on Virgil to deliver justice denied.

Reservation issues tend to revolve around property crime, minor assaults, weed, and alcohol. Until heroin starts to find its way in. His fourteen-year-old nephew, Nathan, gets involved with the heroin and is hospitalized after an overdose. Being Nathan’s guardian, (after the death of his sister) Virgil sets out to find the source and how the drug is entering their world. A former girlfriend, Marie Short Bear, re-enters Virgil’s life and gets pulled into the search for the bad guys.

The investigation leads Virgil well beyond the reservation into Denver where he uncovers connections between different criminal organizations. Tracking the trafficking routes, Virgil uncovers connections to reservation politics, tribal power, and the chance that people he knows the reservation contact where he has to confront these outside threats but also his own history of anger, grief, and alcoholism (his own ‘winter counts’) that cloud his own feelings and judgements about his Lakota identity.

The Lakota tradition of winter counts involves pictorial records of significant events remembered from year to year which for Virgil are a metaphor for personal and collective memory that have shaped his life. It all descends on Virgil as he tries to stop the drug trade while dealing with his relationship with Lakota traditions and his own community.

I liked the way Weiden weaved a fast-paced thriller with a thoughtful presentation of Native American life. The reservation is more than a backdrop for the mystery; it is a central character to the story, like the way Pelecanos makes Washington, DC a critical character. On the reservation, systemic injustice, poverty, addiction, racism, cultural identity must be balanced with Lakota resilience, humor, and tradition.

An interesting book. Not perfect. A few secondary characters could’ve been fleshed out more and some of the plot could be paced better. But don’t let that detract anyone from picking this up. Pretty sure I’ll be checking back in with Virgil. All in all, an impressive 2020 debut effort.  

And it checks all my boxes: crime thriller, western, Native American. 

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The Collaborators by Michael Idov

Michael Idov is an established espionage author with special interest in stories based in and around Latvia that involve the CIA, Russian politics, international finance, and cybercrimes. Quite a collection of topics, right? 

The Collaborators (2024) is a contemporary espionage thriller novel that follows two unlikely souls whose tasks eventually converge. Ari Falk is a disillusioned young CIA officer and Maya Chou is a wealthy, troubled twenty-three-year-old born of a Russian-American billionaire father who apparently committed suicide.

The CIA has tasked Ari to Riga, Latvia. His cover is that of a media investor. His job is to support Russian opposition journalists trying to uncover and publicize the activities of bad actors in the Kremlin. His most important asset is Anton Basmanny, a Russian blogger with viral videos that expose corruption among the power elite of Latvia. Anton is abducted following a suspicious diversion of his flight. Ari sets out to determine who ordered the flight to divert and whether Anton is alive. Anton’s abduction gets connected to the suicide of billionaire financier Paul Obrandt. 

Maya refuses to believe that her father killed himself. While investigating his business affairs, she finds evidence that his death is connected to something much larger. Eventually, these two investigations, despite differences in motivations and backgrounds, each quest is destined to intersect. 

Ari and Maya sift through wealthy Russian businessmen, intelligence agencies, political influence operations, and historical events. The investigation skips through Riga, Istanbul, Berlin, Marrakesh, and Moscow; flashbacks gradually reveal the connections between historical relationships and the current conspiracy. In the end, the reader sees this as more that an espionage tale, but a look at how the post-Soviet Russia developed its own political and financial system and the role played by Western governments. 

This seems authentic primarily due to Idov’s personal history with this part of the word. His experience as an editor and screenwriter creates a believable world of intelligence operations, media manipulation, oligarchic wealth, and contemporary Russian politics. Ari is no Bond or Borne. He’s intelligent but also tired and uncertain of the masters on both side of the game. 

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Maya plays well off Ari due to her lack of espionage experience. She goes off half-cocked adding both humor and emotional tension. I will say that this is complicated and layered with all its speaking parts, timelines, and conspiracies. 

Betting many will find this intelligent and entertaining with believable characters, sharp political commentary is a modern view of espionage where social media and finances can be every bit as powerful as humint and weapons. Just keep a notepad nearby to keep track of details.

The Patriarch

 

The Patriarch is the 8^th book in the Bruno series by Martin Walker, narrated by Robert Ian MacKenzie. I’ve reviewed the first seven books in the blog and I expect that I’ll get to the 9^th book whenever my reading queue gets short enough to go there. In this story, there is a further evolution in the ways that Brun is an unusual police officer, the chief of a one-man force in a small fictional village in rural France. Although he has gotten offers to move to Paris where he would be likely to get promotions, he has grown to love the quiet life in this small town, the populace of which Bruno intends to protect. This single man continues to be involved with available women, and in this case, it leads to a complication in the investigation of a crime. Like in past stories, his work leads to him having significant injuries.

An old man from North Africa, who fought on behalf of France in the war with Algeria, was murdered, and the investigation led to new information of one of Bruno’s lifelong heroes, a WWII flying ace, Marco Desaix, the patriarch who becomes accused of hidden and highly suspicious activities against France. Meanwhile, Bruno continues to demonstrate his incredible gifts as a chef and a wine connoisseur. It’s another successful story from the author.

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Hotel Angeline: A Novel in 36 voices

 I’ve never read a book quite like Hotel Angeline before, and I bet you haven’t either. The subtitle is “A Novel in 36 voices.” Robert Dugoni, one of my favorite authors, lives in Seattle which he described as a particular rich community for both writers and readers. In the foreword by Nancy Pearl, it is asserted, “No two people read the same book, even when it appears to be identical, with the same author, same cover, same publication date, and same pagination." She quoted Paul Auster, “The one thing I try to do in all my books is to leave enough room in the prose for the reader to inhabit it. Because I finally believe it’s the reader who writes the book and not the writer.” Dugoni and Jennie Shortridge were planning to attend a month-long arts festival in Seattle, and they looked for a way to make it more fun for the writers by writing a book together, six authors per day, six days in all. So, 36 authors agreed to participate. There was very limited instruction and structure for the authors, but the intent was for each author to build on what had been written before. Included in the effort was a nonprofit group founded by Dugani called Seattle7Writers.

You might imagine that there were unexpected changes and twists in this story, but the authors had a beginning, a middle and a satisfactory ending. The content was more for young adult reading that being an adult thriller. At any rate, if you’re intrigued by this effort to write a book in such a format, then have at it. It is kind of fun, but if it was not for the structure of the writing, I probably would have panned the content.

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Beyond Reasonable Doubt

 Robert Dugani is as good a courtroom drama writer as Grisham, and he demonstrates that talent in Beyond Reasonable Doubt, published in 2024. This story might remind you of the Elizabeth Holmes conviction for fraud which occurred in 2022. She had been found guilty of massively overstating what her new medical technology could do, and she misled her investors to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. However, I found Dugani’s story as being even more compelling than the real life drama of Ms. Holmes. The fictional CEO Jenna Bernstein also claimed that her new medical technology would be a great boon to medical science and to humanity. She claimed “the Link” would allow the development of cures for a wide range of human diseases. The technology might have eventually achieved the status of which Jenna dreamed, but it needed years more testing and research before it could be used safely, and she could not wait for that to happen.

Jenna was the CEO of Link, but her function was to be the primary fund raiser, and she was adept at getting very wealthy people to believe her pitch in the amount of hundreds of millions. Although not in love with Sirus Kohl, but she did love his money. They began a romantic relationship which they tried to keep a secret. Normally, a principal investor and a CEO would refrain from having such a relationship because it would not go well with other investors and the Board of Directors because of the increased chance of fiduciary irregularities.

Five years earlier, Jenna was involved with a similar scheme. When Eric Wei, her chief science officer was about to inform the investors that their technology was not as advanced as Jenna was claiming, he was murdered. Jenna was the number one suspect, but her trial for the murder was handled by the masterful Patsy Dugan, “The Irish Brawler.” He convinced her jury that they could not convict her because there was reasonable doubt. The Prosecutors were flabbergasted that Patsy had been able to get such a verdict, and the prosecutors never believed in her innocence.

Thus, Jenna was never convicted and she went free. In the next five years, Patsy’s alcoholism advanced to the point he could no longer do courtroom work, so when Sirus was found shot in the back of the head as he was about to release the information about her fraudulent sales pitch. Jenna asked for Patsy to defend her again, but given his still active alcoholism, she ended up with Keera Dugan, Patsy’s daughter, a young attorney. Keera had worked with the prosecution previously, but she left that work to cover for her deteriorating father and his criminal defense firm. Jenna and Keera had a long history since they had gone to the same schools while growing up. Keera knew Jenna was a liar, a woman who could not be trusted. She decided to take Keera’s case for a number of reasons as explained by Dugani.

It was the courtroom issues that were the meat of this book about a most complex matter. The arguments between Jenna and Keera were exceptionally well written. Meanwhile, Patsy entered an alcoholic rehabilitation program. The trouble that Patsy’s disease had on his family, on his relationship with his daughter, and the impact of that on his courtroom abilities were beautifully written.

I’ve given you enough information, and I’ll conclude that by writing that the story was excellent, and the book gets my strongest recommendation.

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The Patriot’s Daughter by Brittany Butler

 This was unusual for me as you’ll see below.

Ava Anderson is a young and ambitious CIA case officer chasing two threads. First is her specific assignment (which she thinks is a bit beneath her) while also exploring just what happened to her CIA career officer mother who disappeared off the grid when Ava was a teenager. As mom was  a Russia specialist, Ava is convinced that her mom in alive and living the life of a turncoat from the CIA to the GRU. No matter what her bosses assign, Ava always has her senses attuned to clues about her mom.  

The story open with a barrage of of Russian cyberattacks creating widespread confusion and division within the cyber security ranks of the US. Part of Ava’s assignment is to find out who is behind the operation. Ava is sent to infiltrate Russia’s foreign intelligence service, where she focuses on Konstantine, an SVR officer whose past is somehow connected to her own.

The book’s success hinges on believing Ava is the agent she thinks she is. We are supposed to believe that this (for all intents and purposes) rookie case officer has the smarts, skills, and wisdom to sideline her personal family grief to focus on the task at hand. Personally, I thought her actions far exceed her limited intelligence experience. Each scenario seemed more outlandish than the previous. I didn’t buy most of her personal/professional relationships hard to fathom. Some might find this premise a plus, others (Iike me) weren’t all that convinced. The storyline just seemed so ambitious that I abandoned the story. I usually enjoy CIA thrillers, political conspiracies, and family mysteries. This just wasn’t my cup of tea.

ECD

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Silent City by Alex Segura

Prepare for a gritty crime thriller in the vein of the mid-20^th century pulp; the first novel in the Pete Fernandez mystery series.

Pete Fernandez is a struggling newspaper drone whose life has fallen apart. His fiancée has bolted, his career is heading south fast, and the recent death of his father has pushed him deep into the bottle of the demon drink. For some reason, a coworker thinks Pete is the perfect person to find his missing daughter. A simple missing person case leads Pete into murder, drugs, a mysterious hitman, and secrets connected to his father’s past.

Pete is no conventional confident detective. He is troubled, usually reckless, and quite unsure of himself. On some levels, his flaws make him believable and adds emotional depth to his investigation. The case becomes an unexpected opportunity for Pete to regain a sense of purpose in his personal and journalistic life.

This Miami is quite different from what greets visiting tourists. Its neighborhoods, bars, crime, drugs, and the darker parts of the city are on full display making the city a critical hot, tense, and unpredictable character. This Miami feels authentic and lived-in. Kind of how George Pelacanos makes Washington, DC central to his street stories.

Segura does manage to keep things a little light with frequent references to songs and musical references that colors Pete’s mood and personality in various shades of noir. Yeah, the various subplots may be a bit derivative, but I didn’t care.  

Looking for something noir-ish, colorful, and entertaining? Give Silent City a go. Pete’s a fun and sympathetic protagonist running around amongst the less than touristy depths of Miami. A good read for lovers of detective stories, journalist/ bumbling investigator turning over an urban underbelly to find that missing young femme fatale.

ECD

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Nothing Left To Lose by Danny Singer

 

Remember when Malaysian Air flight 066, on a flight from Kuala Lumpur enroute to China, just up and disappeared from air traffic control? The resulting long, massive, and expensive search found nothing.  Prepare for a retelling of that episode. In this reimagining of that flight’s outcome, the passengers have not vanished. It was all planned. The passengers signed up for the flight as a part of Project Lazarus, a secretive scheme intended to give people desperately in need of a ‘reboot’ the opportunity to leave their old lives behind and start all over again. Think of this as a variation of Fantasy Island. ‘De plane. De plane.’

An unusual premise, right?  Singer takes the true story a vanished aircraft and develops it into a complex story about people desperate enough to want to abandon their identities, fortunes, and previous lives and begin again. James is a former MI6 officer, Truman, a conspiracy theorist who believes the plane didn’t crash. It was intentionally diverted and all the passengers survived. Then there are all the passengers each with own stories and reasons behind wanting to effectively commit suicide only to reborn on their own terms entirely devoid of personal history.

The real question is can one truly escape the past. Project Lazarus offers its recruits just that: escape . . . but the passengers must keep up the charade. Changing your identity doesn’t necessarily mean changing who you are. An interesting take on the thriller genre.

The story seamlessly jumps between locations, characters, and timelines to learn the motivations of everyone from the captain, flight attendants, to some of the passengers (author can’t detail all the passengers; too many). The large cast and frequent flashbacks can be difficult to follow. Just know that going in and you’ll be fine.

I’m betting that most will find Nothing Left to Lose to be a thought-provoking thriller with a uniquely original premise that combines mystery, international intrigue, and emotional character. Deal with the overlapping and intersecting passenger plots and you’ll be rewarded with lots of questions without having political enemies setting the agendas.

ECD 

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The Same River Twice by Wiley Cash

Full disclosure: this book is based in the rural surroundings of Wilmington, NC, about a 2-hr drive SE of the Raleigh area where I live. That means I’m partial (biased?) that it’ll be an interesting story. And having reviewed here an earlier Wiley Cash book (A Land More Kind Than Home), I think this’ll be a must-read book.

Same River Twice is a contemporary Southern novel about race, class, family history, and just who should tell stories about the past. Our story begins when human remains are discovered on the grounds of Bennett Place, a former rice plantation built primarily on the backs of enslaved people. The property’s new owner hopes to transform it into a historic landmark celebrating his own family’s heritage.

Aaron is a successful Black writer/university writer in residence who returns to the property because his family history is connected to the land. His grandfather once worked there, and Aaron is also searching for answers about his father’s disappearance.

Three complicated characters become intertwined by the discovery. 1. Jessica is a newly minted PhD in archeology struggling with enormous student-loan debt. She accepts a job managing the historic site and is now somewhat dependent on the wealthy benefactor. The discovery forces her to confront an ethical dilemma: protect her employer’s interests or pursue the truth about the remains? She must balance her historical scholarship vs. powerful people who want to control the plantation’s narrative.

2. The new owner pulls Kevin, the local DA, into the situation. He too is balancing two roles: public official and his own complicated family history. What he learns forces him to confront uncomfortable truths about race, power, and the legacy of the past. The novel also draws Kevin’s family and teenage daughter Amelia whose limited life experiences offer a more contemporary outlook on Southern life and the pressures faced by young people.

3. Aaron is the third character.  

All drawn together because a skeleton dug up by the renovation crew has conspired to  force these southern characters to face universal unresolved relationships in the South.  Cash encourages us to see the remains not as museum trinkets. Rather the remains teach us about how the past can impact modern truths.

‘They’ say history is written by the winners of conflicts. In this case, who owns this narrative? No one really owns history or is allowed to interpret it with all its flaws and imperfections. Don’t expect any real black and white (figuratively speaking) resolution to Wilmington's secrets.

The primary three perspectives allow Cash to show us how race and class shape these three divergent characters. Or maybe not. Regardless of what a reader takes from the book, expect to benefit from this thoughtful Southern novel and whether the past should just stay buried.

ECD

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Head Cases by John McMahon

If you love Apple TV’s espionage series Slow Horses (early in it’s 5^th season), this just might be your next read. Slow Horses is about British MI agents who’ve screwed up on the job, but not so grievous to get fired. Mostly considered incompetent. They get kicked downstairs to Slough House, hopefully to get so bored that they’ll quit or get killed on the job. If you have access to Apple TV and haven’t seen it, turn on Season 1 Episode 1 for no other reason than to see how the Slough House supervisor (played by Gary Oldman) is introduced and report back.

Head Cases might be considered the FBI’s version. The main agent is Gardner Camden, an exceptionally intelligent but socially awkward FBI agent who is particularly adept at recognizing patterns, solving puzzles, and connecting pieces of information that other investigators overlook. Gardner in the motor behind the FBI’s Patterns and Recognition (PAR) unit, a small group of unusual and similarly talented agents who are brought in to investigate cases that have resisted conventional police work. They work out of Jacksonville, FL field office because no one quite knows where to put them

Our story begins when the DNA of a murder victim connects the crime to Ross Tignon, a suspected serial killer who was assumed to have died in a deadly fire seven years earlier. Gardner had previously investigated Tignon and suspected him of several murders. To discover that Tignon had survived the fire and was (recently) alive immediately raises troubling questions about the thoroughness of Gardner’s investigation. Then, another suspected serial killer is found dead. The evidence suggests that the two murders are connected. Gardner and the PAR team realize they may be dealing with someone who is deliberately hunting other killers (What? Another book that can trace its basic plot back to Dexter?).

The investigation becomes an increasingly complex personal and dangerous when the murderer begins leaving clues and riddles specifically designed for Gardner to challenge him intellectually. At the same time, the PAR team faces the possibility that someone inside the FBI is providing the murderer with confidential information about unsolved serial-killer cases (shades of Serves Your Right recently reviewed here on MRB). Who can be trusted?  How to protect families and themselves? The FBI is a big organization.

Gardner may be brilliant, but he struggles with ordinary social interactions, making him different from the stereotypical action-oriented FBI hero. His only real human connection is with his young daughter, Camila. The other members of the PAR team are an entertaining ensemble of unique skills.

As police procedurals go, the author combines police investigation, serial-killer suspense, multi-layered puzzles, and some creatively interesting twists to keep the reader guessing. A little more back story might help readers connect with the PAR team.

Head Cases is both entertaining and intelligent that introduces us to an unusual FBI team, puzzling puzzles, unpredictable twists, and memorable protagonist. Give McMahon's Gardner a shot.  

ECD 

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Serves You Right by Orion Gregory

 

Serves You Right is a crime thriller starring Sydney Livingstone, a former professional tennis player who has left the competitive world of sports behind to become a rookie detective in small town-ish Walsh County, Ohio. Sydney is hoping this career change will provide a quieter and more meaningful life while she waits for fiancé/tennis pro to retire. Instead, she finds herself caught in a dangerous investigation involving murder, vigilantism, corruption, and betrayal.

A number of criminals have escaped punishment for serious crimes now becoming targets of a mysterious vigilante known as The Enforcer (shades of Dexter?). Operating partly through the dark web, The Enforcer believes that people who have escaped justice through the legal system deserve to be punished. The vigilante's actions quickly become more violent, creating considerable pressure on the local police department.

Sydney gets assigned to the task force investigating the identify of The Enforcer. One of the central complications is that it appears The Enforcer is getting information from inside Walsh County law enforcement. The only person Sydney is sure isnt’ the inside source is herself. Everyone else on the force is a potential ‘traitor’. This creates a moral dilemma: The Enforcer is committing crimes, but the victims are some bad people in NE Ohio. Sydney must therefore investigate someone who believes they are correcting failures in the justice system.

The situation is complicated when a veteran police officer is stalked and evidence begins to suggest that corruption maybe a core of possibilities within the detective branch. As the investigation develops growing media attention, hidden secrets, suspicious behavior, and increasing body count make the case increasingly dangerous. Sydney must rely on her instincts and evolving investigative abilities while trying to determine whether The Enforcer is an outsider—or someone much closer to the investigation than she realizes

The author ramps up the suspense with each new victim, the attempt to narrow down the insider, and the ‘who’s next?’ question. Gregory continually introduces new clues and suspects, making it difficult to predict who is responsible. Sydney is an able and thoughtfully creative combining the unusual combination of her former athletic career and new life in law enforcement

The novel is not without weaknesses. The dialogue can be slow and formulaic; less convincing than the overall plot. The other thing is her professional tennis background. This is the 2^nd Sydney Livingstone novel, so I don’t know the back story from the first book. I’m under the naïve assumption that a police officer usually spends several years ‘on the street’ before taking the detective’s exam and other qualifications needed to become a detective. It looked to me like she sort of joined the force and rapidly moved up the ladder to become a detective or tested out for detective right out of the academy. She seemed too inexperienced and young to be a detective.  But what do I know.

Overall, Serves You Right is an entertaining mystery thriller that combines police investigation with questions about justice and revenge. Sydney Livingstone is an engaging central character, and the twists help maintain tension throughout the novel. Get past my curiosity about her lack of experience, take her background at face value, and you’ll have an entertaining read.

A number of criminals have escaped punishment for serious crimes now becoming targets of a mysterious vigilante known as The Enforcer (Shades of Dexter?). Operating partly through the dark web, The Enforcer believes that people who have escaped justice through the legal system deserve to be punished. The vigilante's actions quickly become more violent, creating considerable pressure on the local police department.

Sydney gets assigned to the task force investigating the identify of The Enforcer. One of the central complications is that it appears The Enforcer is getting information from inside Walsh County law enforcement. The only person Sydney is sure isnt’ the inside source is herself. Everyone else on the force is a potential ‘traitor’. This creates a moral dilemma: The Enforcer is committing crimes, but the victims are some bad people in NE Ohio. Sydney must therefore investigate someone who believes they are correcting failures in the justice system.

The situation is complicated when a veteran police officer is stalked and evidence begins to suggest that corruption maybe a core of possibilities within the detective branch. As the investigation develops growing media attention, hidden secrets, suspicious behavior, and increasing body count make the case increasingly dangerous. Sydney must rely on her instincts and evolving investigative abilities while trying to determine whether The Enforcer is an outsider—or someone much closer to the investigation than she realizes

The author ramps up the suspense with each new victim, the attempt to narrow down the insider, and the ‘who’s next?’ question. Gregory continually introduces new clues and suspects, making it difficult to predict who is responsible. Sydney is an able and thoughtfully creative combining the unusual combination of her former athletic career and new life in law enforcement

The novel is not without weaknesses. The dialogue can be slow and formulaic; less convincing than the overall plot. The other thing is her professional tennis background. This is the 2^nd Sydney Livingstone novel, so I don’t know the back story from the first book. I’m under the naïve assumption that a police officer usually spends several years ‘on the street’ before taking the detective’s exam and other qualifications needed to become a detective. It looked to me like she sort of joined the force and rapidly moved up the ladder to become a detective or tested out for detective right out of the academy. She seemed too inexperienced and young to be a detective.  But what do I know.

Overall, Serves You Right is an entertaining mystery thriller that combines police investigation with questions about justice and revenge. Sydney Livingstone is an engaging central character, and the twists help maintain tension throughout the novel. Get past my curiosity about her lack of experience, take her background at face value, and you’ll have an entertaining read.

ECD 

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The Children Return

 The Children Return is the 7^th book in the Bruno series by Martin Walker. Once again, I chose the audiobook format with Robert Ian McKenzie as the most capable narrator. This book deals with the rapid infusion of Muslims into France which reached about 10% of the whole population. There were perceived problems from widely different angles depending on ones prejudices. An undercover Muslin agent was found murdered, and a young man, Sami, who had grown up in St. Denis. He was probably autistic, but he had always been mechanically gifted. As he grew up, he disappeared from the school system and some years later, was found in Afghanistan. He was thought to have been radicalized and put to the task of bombmaking against the allied forces that had come to Afghanistan. Sami came to the surface when he was trying to escape the Afghan war and return to St. Denis. It was Bruno who helped him get to France. As a young man, Sami was suspected of having been put to work by the Taliban as a highly skilled bombmaker. The allied forces called him “the engineer.” Bruno had to figure out who Sami really was so that he could protect the people of his home town.

I thought this book was a fair and unbiased look into the issues of a largely different but large  minority moving into a country. How much does each side of the immigration question have to adapt. It’s a very good book and I highly recommend it.

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Sunrise

 Sunrise by Tea Obreht was recommended in the 9/13/26 NY Times Book Review. It was described as a clash of the old west and a young woman, Nina Terzic who literally dropped into the story when a small plane she was riding in crashed into a lake in a remote Wyoming forest. I got as far as Day 5, Part 1of this adventure before I chose not to read any more. Nina had apparently been pushed from the plane and there may not have been any other survivors. Mostly this part of the book was a monologue by Nina as she often denies the reality of her circumstances, but then has some moments of lucidity. We hear Nina’s thoughts about her life, her boyfriend Ben, her fears, etc. When she stumbled onto an old ghost town, she found a novel that was being written or had been completed by the author about 100 years earlier. The body of the apparent author lied near the manuscript where she had been trapped in a cellar. Other subplots are initiated, but I got bored with the script, did not find Nina’s musings about herself and her life to be very interesting.

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