The Gate House, by Nelson DeMille

 Mr. DeMille has written a sequel to his earlier bestselling novel, The Gold Coast.  Ten years ago, socialite Susan Stanhope Sutter shot and killed her Mafia lover and next door neighbor, Frank Bellarosa.  Due to extenuating circumstances, Susan was not charged with his murder and didn’t go to jail.   Her husband, John, fled the scandal--first divorcing her and then sailing away on his yacht, spending three years traveling around the world.  John, a lawyer, ended up in London and he has been working in a law office there.  When John receives word that a valued family servant and friend, Ethel Allard, is dying, he returns to the Gold Coast of Long Island to await her death and funeral, moving into Ethel’s gate house on the Stanhope estate.  Susan, who had been living on Hilton Head, has also returned and she is living in the guest house of the Stanhope mansion, just up the drive from the gate house.  She and John, who have scarcely spoken in ten years, meet again and realize they have never stopped loving each other.  And they live happily ever after.  Ha—not so fast!  There’s the little matter of Frank’s son, Anthony, who still lives next door and has taken over the family’s Mafia business after his father’s murder.   Will he be out for revenge?  Nelson DeMille is one of my favorite writers but I don’t rank this as one of his very best books.  Still, it was mostly entertaining—buoyed by the terrific humor and witty observations of John and Susan.

Bones, by Jonathan Kellerman

 Alex Delaware, an occasional consulting psychologist for the Los Angeles police department, finds himself working a rather strange case with his good friend, police detective Milo Sturgis.  Selena Bass, a talented young pianist, has been found murdered in one of the city’s nature preserves—after an anonymous caller reports her death.  Her body was readily visible but, later, the bones of three other earlier victims are recovered from the preserve’s marshy pond.  All of the victims have had their right hand removed—indicating a serial killer on the loose.  The three earlier victims were all prostitutes but Selena was not.  She had been employed as a piano teacher to the young son of a very wealthy family.  For Milo and Alex, it’s a vexing puzzle as to how Selena’s recent murder relates to the earlier deaths of the prostitutes.  And, who wanted them all dead?  There’s precious little to go on but Alex and Milo, with the help of an eager rookie detective, will bit by bit put the pieces together that reveal the killer.  This was a nice addition to this first rate series.

The Private Patient, by P. D. James

 The private patient is one Rhoda Gradwyn, a fairly well-known investigative journalist.  Rhoda is single, wealthy, and lives a rather solitary life in London.  She was raised as an only child in a difficult home environment; her father was drunk and abusive and her mother was weak and distant.  During one of her father’s drunken rages, he badly cut Rhoda’s cheek and, with no proper medical attention, it healed very poorly, leaving a disfiguring scar that in many ways has shaped her life.  Now, on her forty-seventh birthday, Rhoda has decided to finally rid herself of the scar by having plastic surgery.  Meeting with a renowned surgeon, George Chandler-Powell, she makes an appointment to have the operation at his clinic at historic Cheverell Manor in Dorset.  The surgery is a success and Rhoda is returned to her room to recover but during the night she is strangled to death.  Enter Commander Adam Dalgliesh and his elite investigators, Inspector Kate Miskin and Sergeant Francis Benton-Smith.  With no apparent motive or suspect, it will be a challenge for the team to uncover the killer.  But the team, sensing that this could possibly be their last case together, is up for the challenge.  Baroness James, eighty-nine and still sharp as a tack, is one of my very favorite authors and her latest mystery is a terrific treat.  Although it reads as somewhat of a valediction, I hope there might be one or two cases left for Adam and his team. 

The Hour I First Believed, by Wally Lamb

 Mr. Lamb is a sloooow writer. This is only his third novel and, apparently, he spent over nine years writing it.  Doesn’t crank them out every other day like some popular novelists seem to be doing lately.   I’ve been patiently—well, not so patiently—waiting for a new novel from Mr. Lamb since I read his last one, I Know This Much is True, and thoroughly enjoyed it.  Caelum Quirk is a fortysomething twice-divorced high school English teacher.  He is now on his third marriage to Maureen, a school nurse.  Caelum and Maureen met and married in Connecticut but they have moved to Littleton, Colorado so Maureen can be closer to her father. The move has seemed to strengthen what had been a rather rocky marriage and they have both gotten jobs at Columbine High School.  All’s well until Caelum gets word that his favorite aunt has suffered a stroke back in Connecticut.  Caelum is in Connecticut tending to his aunt when the Columbine massacre occurs.  Maureen is at the high school during the attack.  She hides and survives the massacre but she—and Caelum—will be forever changed.  Mr. Lamb has taken a tragic event and woven an interesting and engrossing story of how a couple copes, or doesn’t cope, with severe adversity.  A wonderful subplot involving Caelum’s family history made the novel even more enjoyable. Highly recommended. 

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