May New Popular Books

The following new books have been added this month to the Popular Reading Collection located next to the circulation desk.   These books and any other titles currently checked out can be placed on hold.
See a staff member at the circulation desk for assistance.

 

Compulsion, by Jonathan Kellerman
Death Walked In, by Carolyn Hart
Where are You Now, by Mary Higgins Clark
The Third Angel, by Alice Hoffman
Hold Tight, by Harlan Coben
Zapped, by Carol Higgins Clark
The Miracle at Speedy Motors, by Alexander McCall Smith
Suddenly, by Barbara Delinsky
The Whole Truth, by David Baldacci
Santa Fe Dead, by Stuart Woods
Quicksand, by Iris Johansen



This Month's Great Escapes
by Bill McCleary  



Dark of the Moon, by John Sandford

Sandford, of course, is the very popular author of the ‘Prey’ books that feature Lucas Davenport, a Minnesota state investigator working at the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.  One of his colleagues at the BCA is Virgil Flowers and he takes center stage in this thriller.  Virgil is thirtysomething, has three ex-wives, likes to dress very casually, and is a writer in his spare time.  He has been sent to the small town of Bluestem to investigate the deaths of an elderly husband and wife named Gleason.  As he approaches the town late at night, he sees a spectacular fire on a mountainside.  A large mansion is burning to the ground—and the richest man in town, old Bill Judd, is dead inside.  Virgil was just tasked to look into the Gleason murders but when it’s determined that Judd was killed, too, he decides the cases may be related.  Things get interesting when more violence occurs but the puzzle is why these elderly people have been eliminated.  Virgil, as he digs, increasingly believes it must be tied to some event from the past.  This was an enjoyable offshoot to the ‘Prey’ novels and Virgil is an interesting, likable, character to build a new series around. 


The Race, by Richard North Patterson

Just in time for the 2008 presidential race, Patterson brings us his fictional version of what a Republican primary race could look like in the nasty, hard-boiled politics of our time.  Corey Grace, a moderate senator from Ohio, decides to jump into the race when he sees the other two choices running for the nomination, fellow senator Rob Marotta and Reverend Bob Christy, head of a very conservative group called the Christian Commitment.  Both Marotta and Christy are battling for the religious conservative vote but Grace feels neither can win the general election.  The novel follows the very contentious primary season—with plenty of dirty tricks and machinations from Marotta’s camp, led by his Machiavellian campaign manager, Magnus Price.  The culmination is the Republican National Convention, with no candidate having enough delegates to win on the first ballot.  Let the deal making begin!  Patterson is one of my favorite authors; this isn’t his best book but it’s an enjoyable political novel nevertheless.


The Quickie, by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge

This novel is 357 pages long and retails for $28.00.  However, if you rifle through the pages you will notice print nearly as big as large print books, wide margins, almost double spacing, and an awful lot of blank, white space.  Every chapter begins half way down the page and the chapters are usually only one or two pages long.  What we have is a book that would normally be about 150 pages long that’s been padded to the max to justify the inflated price.  ‘Quickie’ should be referring to how long the book takes to read but it’s actually an illicit assignation between married policewoman Lauren Stillwell and a co-worker, Scott Thayer.  Lauren decides to have the quickie after she discovers her husband, Paul, is having an affair.  Later, Paul ends up killing Scott, not knowing that Lauren is a secret witness to the killing.  Lauren is put in charge of the investigation into Scott’s murder and she spends most of the book discovering very bad things about both Paul and Scott—while she inexplicably tries to keep her fellow cops from discovering that Paul is the killer.  The problem with this book is Lauren could quite possibly be the dumbest, most unsympathetic, and least interesting main character I’ve ever encountered—and that’s saying something.  Luckily, the 357 pages are really probably only a hundred something—but it’s the longest short book I can remember reading in quite awhile.


Book of the Dead, by Patricia Cornwell

Dr. Kay Scarpetta—somewhat of a vagabond since losing her medical examiner job in Richmond—has moved from Florida and set up shop in the historic city of Charleston, South Carolina.  With the assistance of her niece, Lucy, and her colleague, Pete Marino, she has opened a private forensic pathology practice.  Meanwhile, the love of her life, Benton Wesley, is in Boston working at a research hospital—won’t they ever live in the same city, for heaven sake?  But, our action begins in yet a third, city, Rome, where Benton and Kay have come to consult on the death of a young, American tennis star, Drew Martin, found murdered in the Eternal City.  Before she flew to Rome, Drew had been in Charleston, where her coach maintains a residence.  Could her death have a Charleston connection?  As always, Kay and her gang will follow the forensic evidence and solve Drew’s murder but the enjoyment for me is not so much in the crime resolution as it is in simply spending time in Kay’s interesting world.




 

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Revised Apr. 30, 2008

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