First Family, by David Baldacci

 Willa Dutton, niece of the President, has just celebrated her twelfth birthday with a party at Camp David hosted by the First Lady.  That should earn her something to Twitter about.  Later that evening, however, she is kidnapped from her home in a deadly attack that leaves one family member dead and another injured.  Willa is a favorite of the First Lady, Jane Cox, and Jane is devastated by the abduction.  Not relying entirely on the Secret Service or the FBI, she hires Sean King and Michelle Maxwell to assist in finding Willa.  Sean helped Jane in the past and he and Michelle are former Secret Service agents now operating their own detective agency. They aren’t above bending and sometimes breaking the rules if the situation warrants it—one reason they are former Secret Service agents.  And, it looks like this case will require all their cunning—especially with a kidnapper who feels he has nothing to lose. While working the kidnapping case, Michelle is also coping with the death—possibly by murder—of her mother.  Sean and Michelle are likable sleuths and this was an enjoyable addition to the previous novels featuring these characters.

Road Dogs, by Elmore Leonard

 In Leonard’s latest, he brings together three characters introduced in previous novels.  Jack Foley, supposedly America’s most prolific bank robber, is serving a thirty year sentence in a Miami penitentiary.  While there, he meets and befriends Cundo Rey, a Cuban prisoner.  Cundo has plenty of money and he hires a crackerjack lawyer who gets Foley’s sentence reduced to three months. Cundo is also due to be released and he and Jack end up in Venice, California, where Cundo owns several million dollar houses.  Enter the lovely and scheming Dawn Navarro, a dubious psychic who has been living in one of the houses waiting eight years for her boyfriend Cundo’s release from prison.  Dawn would like to use handsome Jack to help her bilk wealthy widows but Jack isn’t too keen on the idea.  No matter—Dawn has several other capers in mind, all illegal.  This was a terrific crime read with three very entertaining main characters.  You’ll love the wonderful dialogue that Leonard is justly famous for.

Long Lost, by Harlen Coben

 Myron Bolitar is a sports and entertainment agent who dabbles as a private eye with the help of his staff and his good friend Win Lockwood, a multi-millionaire. Long lost is Terese Collins, a former anchorwoman Myron had a fling with ten years ago.  Terese has resurfaced in trouble and she begs Myron to meet her in Paris.  Myron obliges but as soon as he gets there he narrowly avoids being abducted by a gang of men who have told Terese they are holding her ex-husband hostage.   Myron and Terese enlist the aid of Win and the three decamp to London, one step ahead of the French police, who want to arrest Myron.  London is where Terese lost her young daughter in an auto accident—or did she? DNA matching the daughter has been found at a recent crime scene.  This was an entertaining addition to this sort of quirky series.

Shanghai Girls, by Lisa See

 It’s 1937 and well-to-do single Shanghai sisters Pearl, twenty-one, and May, eighteen, are having a good time in the city called the Paris of Asia.  Sometimes they go clubbing with friends and sometimes they pose for artists painting advertising, calendar, and poster art. Things are swell--until daddy loses all the wealth of the family gambling.  Desperate for money, he arranges for Pearl and May to marry the sons of a San Francisco businessman in return for a payoff.  Pearl and May are not happy about the prospect of being sold into marriage—but then the Japanese bomb Shanghai and moving to the United States is suddenly a little more palatable. Until they get here.  This was an enjoyable book but I thought the best part was the depiction of their lives in Shanghai before the girls ended up in the US.  That section was so interesting and I wish it had been longer—but the rest of the book was good, too. 

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