The Kill Artist,  by Daniel Silva

Daniel Silva's three earlier books have established him as one of the premier authors in the international thriller field.  His books usually deal with spies and terrorists and his latest does as well.  Israeli Gabriel Allon is a retired terrorist hunter now living a quiet, solitary life in Cornwall as an art restorer.  Ari Shamron, the new head of Israeli intelligence, visits Gabriel to talk him into coming out of retirement for one last mission.  Shamron, himself, has been brought out of retirement to run and restore Israel's spy department after it has suffered some embarrassing failures. The mission is to find and eliminate a Palestinian terrorist named Tariq--who plans to destroy the Middle East peace negotiations.  Gabriel at first wants no part of the mission but then he learns that the target is Tariq.  Years earlier Tariq had set off a bomb in a car carrying Gabriel's wife and young son.  Gabriel agrees to the mission and enlists the help of beautiful model and sometime Israeli spy Jacqueline Delacroix.  While they are seeking to find and kill Tariq, he is looking to do the same thing to Gabriel.  The hunters are also the hunted in this terrific read that takes you all over Europe, the Middle East, and North America as these two wily opponents track each other. Great action and memorable characters--can't wait for Silva's next book.
 

Soft Focus, by Jayne Ann Krentz

Beautiful, single, Elizabeth Cabot runs an investment fund.  Handsome, single, Jack Fairfax specializes in taking over small companies in financial trouble and turning them around.  Elizabeth has invested heavily in Jack's latest company, Excalibur, a small high-tech firm.  Excalibur has one product with enormous profit potential--a new crystal still being perfected in the lab.  Before the product can be marketed, though, the single prototype is stolen.  The most likely suspect is Tyler Page, one of the Excalibur scientists working on the crystal project.  Tyler is a film noir buff and he has disappeared.  Since he has been involved in the making of a new independent film, Elizabeth and Jack think it is likely that he will turn up at a film noir festival being held in a Colorado ski resort called Mirror Springs, where his film will premier.  Although Elizabeth and Jack had been involved in a brief affair that ended badly, they decide to join forces and go to Mirror Springs to find Tyler and the crystal before he sells it to another company.  Once in Mirror Springs, their search will lead to murder and put both their lives at risk.  This was a pretty good read and the film festival setting added interest.
 

Driving Lessons, by Ed McBain

This tiny gem of a book can be read in just a few hours--even by a slow reader like me who savors every word and tends to act out the story internally.  On a bright fall day, sixteen-year-old Rebecca Patton is having her driving lesson in the small New England town of River Close when she runs down and kills a pedestrian crossing the street.  Routine accident?  Police detective Katie Logan is always assigned to cases involving female juveniles and she heads up the investigation.  Right at the start something doesn't add up.  Rebecca's driving instructor and school art teacher, Andrew Newell, appears to be either drunk or on drugs but he swears he didn't ingest either substance during the driving lesson or before and no evidence of alcohol or drugs is found in the car.  If Logan can unravel this mystery she can discover if the pedestrian's death is just a tragic accident or something more.  And, something more is what I would have liked with this enjoyable book--I wasn't ready for it to end so quickly.
 

A Darkness More Than Night, by Michael Connelly

Great, great book!  Two characters from previous Connelly novels come together in his latest.  Harry Bosch, the L.A. homicide detective, is involved in a very high-profile murder case.  David Storey, a famous and powerful movie director, is on trial for having killed a starlet he had been dating.  Bosch is the lead investigator on the case and he is a key player in the prosecution.  There is a great deal of pressure to get a conviction after the O.J. fiasco.  Meanwhile, Terry McCaleb, the former FBI agent who specialized in profiling, is enjoying retirement and running a fishing charter on Catalina Island.  Or, is he enjoying retirement?  You'll remember that in one of Connelly's previous books he had to retire with a medical disability after undergoing a heart transplant.  McCaleb's curiosity is aroused when Jaye Winston, an L. A. cop he once worked with, visits him to get his opinion on a murder case she is unable  to solve.  McCaleb is at first reluctant to help but once he agrees he gets caught up in the thrill of the chase--something he discovers he has greatly missed--and he doesn't want to stop with just giving his opinion. Soon, he's investigating the case on his own and he comes to a startling and very disturbing conclusion concerning Bosch.  Could he be a cop who has gone bad?  Connelly is one of my very favorite authors and this is another winner.
 

The Rescue, by Nicholas Sparks

This is the second novel that I have read by Sparks and I enjoyed it as much as the first.  Denise Holton is a young single mother with a four-year-old son named Kyle.  Kyle has a learning disability that makes it very difficult for him to talk or understand what is being said to him.  Denise has moved from Atlanta to a small town called Edenton in North Carolina, where she can work part-time and devote most of her energies to helping Kyle overcome his disability.  During a violent storm, they are in an auto accident and when Denise regains consciousness, Kyle is missing in the wooded area where they wrecked.  Leading the rescue effort to find Kyle is volunteer fireman Taylor McAden, who is fearless in everything except falling in love.  He has been in several relationships but has always broken them off when they became serious.  Could things be different this time with Denise? This book might have been more appropriately called The Rescues because multiple rescues both physical and spiritual take place.  For Taylor, the ones of the heart are the most difficult.
 

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