February 2005 Fiction and Mystery Reviews

Metro Girl
by Janet Evanovich

HarperCollins

ISBN# 0-0605-8400-9
Suggested Retail Price: $26.95 or as low as $0.46 from Amazon.com!

Speaking of fluff, We give this one four stars in that category. Alex is an interesting female who has been raised around cars and mechanics all of her life. She loves auto races and could take one of the cars apart and put it back together again. Her brother is a bit of a bad sort, but Alex loves him. When he vanishes in Miami Alex decides to leave everything behind and go look for him. When she gets to Miami she encounters a famous race car driver named Sam Hooker who is, of course, irresistible and instantly attracted to Alex. Together they hunt down the clues that will help them locate the bother. The NASCAR guy tries through most of the book to bed Alex... to the point of boredom. He joins the hunt solely because the brother took off with his boat.

They find the brother and his girlfriend. Then they solve the mystery of why the brother fled. He has been gold hunting, naturally. It's Castro's gold and a lot of fiends want it back, but it went down with a boat in unknown waters. Cuban Waters. The brother has found out where and is hunting for it.

Good guys, bad guys and some really fun Cuban ladies combine to meet and make this an easy read. It's not her best and feels too much like a romance novel for my taste.

Double Homicide: Boston / Sante Fe
by Faye Kellerman, Jonathan Kellerman

Warner Books

ISBN# 0-4465-3296-7
Suggested Retail Price: $23.95 or as low as $0.01 from Amazon.com!

You get two short novels here from these two famous mystery writers. The first one is set in Santa Fe in the art community. Detectives Darrel Two Moons and former Marine, Steve Katz, get called in to investigate the murder of a wealthy gallery owner. Both men find they have history with the murdered man.

Turn the book over and meet Detective Dorothy Breton and Michael McCann. This second story is set in New England during the winter. The contrast of the two settings of the novels is very much noticed.

In the New England story, the two detectives attend a college basketball game one evening. After the game the team is celebrating at a nearby night spot when the star forward is shot dead. Solving the murder is exciting, and brings us to a meeting with a new and charismatic character. Her name Dorothy Breton. She is a detective, black, and the mother of one of the players. She is tough and smart and very likable. I hope the author brings her back in another tale.

Hour Game
by David Baldacci

Warner Books

ISBN# 0-4465-3108-1
Suggested Retail Price: $26.95 or as low as $1.05 from Amazon.com!

Sean King and Michelle Maxwell return with a good, suspenseful story for us. Both of these characters are former Secret Service agents. They encounter a vicious serial killer whose first victim's body found was a discovered in a Virginia woods area. The victim was cruelly murdered. Her watch is missing and there are clues that lead the police to believe that this is a copy-cat mimicking a famous serial murderer from the past.

Meanwhile, the two heroes of the stories have been hired to investigate a burglary of the home of a wealthy local couple. There are more murders and more mysterious clues and copycat methods being used that are reminders of the former famous serial killers. Naturally, the two mysteries seem to be connected in some way.

The murders gets solved by the skills of both of the detectives and their careful methods of searching, investigating and finding any and all clues. Good characters and a good plot.

The Red Queen
by Margaret Drabble

Harcourt

ISBN# 0-1510-1106-0
Suggested Retail Price: $24.00 or as low as $1.65 from Amazon.com!

Barbara Halliwell has just received a grant and a mysterious package of information. The package contains a memoir that was written by a Korean Princess more that two centuries ago. The grant is from Oxford University to go to Seoul to do some studies into the manuscript. She reads the manuscript, which is really a diary written by a princess, in the plane on her way to Korea. It describes a world different from any that Barbara has known, and she is drawn into the tale. There are secrets revealed about the Korean Crown Princess and her family.

Was the manuscript put in Barbara's hands knowing she would have to investigate its truth? This is beautiful and magical tale of a time gone by and a woman of today.

Miriam the Medium
by Rochelle Shapiro

Simon & Schuster

ISBN# 0-7432-4478-8
Suggested Retail Price: $23.00 or as low as $1.33 from Amazon.com!

If its time for a light and easy read, this is the book you have been looking for. Its better suited to be in paperback form, which I advise you wait for.

Miriam has known all her life that she was psychic just like her grandmother. Her mother tried to get her to ignore this gift and refused to let her spend much time with her grandma. On a few occasions, Miriam's father insisted the grandma was entitled to see her granddaughter. On these visits Miriam was given instructions about using her gift unselfishly.

Miriam marries a nice man who has a teenaged daughter. Miriam's husband has inherited his father's drug store, although the business is going broke. In order to help out, Miriam has begun her own psychic telephone line where she accepts credit card payments. She earns pretty good money. Her daughter hates it all. She doesn't have any gift. The neighbors don't like Miriam. They don't believe that she really can see auras and read them.

We readers know that Miriam is the real thing. Her story is all about proving to her family that ESP is a good thing and a helpful gift to have. She goes through a lot of tough spots in her life, and finally proves to her daughter that she really has this gift when she uses it to save her daughter and her scruffy boyfriend. Everything ends well, and the daughter finally finds out what her gift is.

In the Night Room
by Peter Straub

Random House

ISBN# 1-4000-6252-7
Suggested Retail Price: $21.95 or as low as $1.35 from Amazon.com!

This is a sequel to Straub's successful book, "Lost Boy, Lost Girl." We encounter Tim Underhill the writer once again. We also run into the mysterious event of "Slippage" again.

Tim is writing a book, but now he keeps seeing a dead nephew. The nephew died at the hands of a serial killer. Tim is also encountering a character that he has invented in his book. The character's name is Willy Bryce Patrick who is a writer. Willy is a female who writes children's books. Willy believes she is real.

In this very dark novel, Tim and Willy fall in love, but they cannot foresee a future for themselves. Time slips from fiction to reality and on to fantasy, causing some confusion for the reader as well as the protagonists. Not to fear, all will be clear in the end. Phew!