Book Synop:

The three girls have been inseparable best friends since the third grade — Josie, the athletic one; Perri, the brilliant, acerbic drama queen; and Kat, the beauty, who also has brains, grace, and a heart open to all around her. But their last day of high school becomes their final day together after one of them brings a gun to school to resolve a mysterious feud. When the police arrive, they discover two wounded girls, one so critically that she is not expected to recover. The third girl is dead, killed instantly by a shot to the heart.

What transpired that morning at Glendale High rocks the foundation of an affluent community in Baltimore’s distant suburbs, a place that has barely recovered from an earlier, more comprehensible tragedy. For the shell-shocked parents, teachers, administrators, and students, healing must begin with answers to the usual questions — but only if the answers are safe ones, answers that will lead back to one girl and one family and absolve everyone else.

For Homicide Sgt. Harold Lenhardt, this case is a mystery with more twists than these grief-stricken suburbanites are willing to acknowledge — and the sole lucid survivor, a girl with a teenager’s uncanny knack for stonewalling, strikes him as being less than honest. What is she concealing? Is she trying to protect herself or someone else? Even the simplest secrets can kill — and kill again if no one is willing to confront them.

Simply exhilarating!  Laura Lippman’s To the Power of Three kept me on the edge of my seat.  It takes a special book for me to want to “cheat” and sneak a look at the ending.  I am never one for much self-control so I must admit, I looked.   But I still read the whole book.  At some points I thought the story was a little disjointed with it flashing back to the girls past.  And admittedly, those parts didn’t keep my interest as well as the present. Lippman does an excellent job of getting into the high school girls’ heads. It’s all very believable and some parts had me a little choked up.

To the Power of Three isn’t a traditional mystery where the reader can figure out the who, what, where and why. She crafts it so well that while you know the who, you can’t begin to guess the road that led to Perri, Josie and Kat’s fateful meeting in the girls’ restroom. I can’t wait to read What the Dead Know!

Book Synop:

A violent ghost in a world where spirits are rarely mean-spirited is a clue to a deeper mystery in this engrossing dark fantasy debut from comics-writer Carey. Felix Fix Castor is an itinerant exorcist who (like a certain famous group of Hollywood ghost-evictors) alternates between dispatching spooks and doing stage magic at ungrateful children’s birthday parties. When he’s summoned to end a haunting at London’s prestigious Bonnington Archive, he finds a vengeful specter with a blood-veiled face that resists methods for extirpating the usually docile dead. When Castor begins probing more deeply, he quickly finds himself harassed by a ravenous succubus, a belligerent fellow exorcist and a slimy Eastern European pimp.

Mike Carey’s The Devil You Know intrigued me…after I was able to slog through the first 80 pages. At page 20 I was scratching my head. At 40 I was getting mildly annoyed. By 60 I was ready to throw the darn thing up against the wall. But by 80 I was hooked. I typically don’t give a book that long to gel for me. But since this was my first book in months that I sat down to read and since the last few months had been so impossibly crappy, I thought I might have been projecting my feelings onto the book.
A part of me feels that The Devil You Know could have been edited better. it was very dense. Lots of description, lots of ironic internal dialogue, but, that’s the main character, Fix. It’s how he is. A little over the top. A smartass who is inside his head — a lot.
The story was intriguing once the plot actually settled down and began moving. Fix is an exorcist. A good one, who has made mistakes in the past. One mistake in particular has transformed his best friend into a half demon lunatic and Fix suffers from this — boy does he suffer. Anyway, he’s been brought in to get rid of a ghost, but slowly he becomes intrigued as to why the ghost is there and as he investigates the story behind her death, his life becomes more bizarre.
Carey did a wonderful job with the dialogue. Fix has a great personality. He self-deprecating and a little condescending. The other characters were…ok. I liked his friend Pen and I was definitely intrigued by Rafe/Asmodeus but the people that were integral to the actual storyline at the building where the ghost haunted were a little stereotypical and/or a bit annoying. I liked the paranormal mixed in with London landmarks and British humor. I think this might be a solid start to an intriguing mystery series. But I will have to read Vicious Circle in order to get a solid feel for this author.
If the prose could be tamed a bit and the extraneous information strategically taken out, then I will stick with Fix.

Book Synop: (from Amazon) Regulars at Nadia’s nature lodge don’t ask what she does in the off-season. And that’s a good thing. If she told them, she’d have to kill them. She’s a hit woman for a Mafia family. Tough and self-sufficient, Nadia doesn’t owe anyone any explanations. But that doesn’t mean she always works alone. One of her contacts has recruited her in the hunt for a ruthlessly efficient serial killer cutting a swath of terror across the country. The assassin is far too skilled to be an amateur—and the precision of the killings is bringing the Feds much too close to the hit man community for comfort.

To put an end to the murders, Nadia will have to turn herself from predator to prey as she employs every trick she knows to find the killer. Before the killer finds her…

Exit Strategy (Nadia Stafford Series, Book 1) is my first read by Kelley Armstrong. I’ve got her one of her paranormal books sitting on my TBR pile, but I’ve yet to pull it out. I was intrigued by the idea of a female hitwoman. Especially since she used to be a cop. The plot was well paced and I enjoyed the peak into the life.

Nadia has a mentor, Jack, who confused me a bit throughout the book. Jack doesn’t share much of himself, yet it’s obvious that he cares about Nadia. But there’s something so aloof about Jack that I’m not sure I’m rooting for him yet. Another man that might be part of Nadia’s picture is another hitman named Quinn. I really liked him. He was fun, rather open and jovial.

The ride to capture the rogue hitman who has now crossed the line into serial killer was fascinating. How do you catch someone who knows all the ins and outs like you do? This was a pretty solid first book, even though I expect even more characterization in the second one.

In fact, in the second one I’d like to see more of Nadia on the “job” for the mafia. I’d also like to see a little more of her “personal code” in a manner of speaking. I want to understand why she’s taken on this life (and it’s not just for the money). According to KA’s website, she’s contracted for only two books so far in this series — depending on how they sell. Well, I know I’m eagerly awaiting the next one!

Synop: (From Amazon) Plucky, bumbling New Jersey bounty hunter Plum is reunited with her two-timing lawyer ex-husband, Dickie Orr, while doing a favor for the mysterious, sexy Ranger. But when Dickie disappears from his house leaving behind only bloodstains and bullet holes, Plum becomes the prime suspect in his alleged murder. Determined to clear her name, Plum and her on-again off-again Trenton cop boyfriend, the irresistible Joe Morelli, uncover Dickie’s ties to a shady group of men involved in everything from money laundering to drug running. And when Dickie’s jilted business partners decide Stephanie holds the key to the $40 million they believe Dickie stole from them, she’s in for a wild ride. With the author’s usual cast of eccentric side characters—everything from a taxidermist with a penchant for bombs to a grave-robbing tax man—Evanovich proves once again that Stephanie Plum and her entourage are here to stay.

Lean Mean Thirteen (Stephanie Plum Novels) had me laughing as per usual with Evanovich’s crazy series. LMT doesn’t really cover any new ground with Stephanie, Ranger and Morelli. It’s still that crazy triangle I love to watch unfold. I’m a Ranger fan myself but overall I’m just terribly jealous that between the 2 men, Stephanie has it all!

I don’t know where Evanovich comes up with her wacky FTAs but I always have a good laugh at Stephanie’s crazy pursuit of them. This time we get to see this taxidermist who makes exploding roadkill. And of course Stephanie gets herself into deep doo with some very bad guys that are out to find 40 million dollars.

These books are such a wonderful, light read. I have to be careful reading them in public because I don’t want those “what’s wrong with her” looks when I burst out laughing. I am starting to get a touch impatient with the love triangle but I know that if Steph ever picks just one, well, the series will be over. If you love the series, you’ll love LMT.