The Shape of Snakes, by Minette Walters

This is the second book I've read by Ms. Walters and I really liked it.  The action begins in late 1978 in a lower middle class street in dispirited, strike-plagued London.  One of the street's residents, Mrs. Ranleigh, finds fellow resident Annie Butts dying in the gutter.  Annie smells of alcohol and it looks like she fell into the street and was hit by a car.  Mrs. Ranleigh (we never learn her first name) doesn't buy this, though, because she knows that Annie, the only black resident, was despised by some of her neighbors on the street.  Getting no help from the police, Mrs. Ranleigh sets out on a twenty-year quest to find the truth about what happened to Annie.  Even when she and her husband go abroad to live in Australia, Hong Kong, and South Africa, she continues her search for information pertinent to the case.  Leap ahead to 1999.  Mrs. Ranleigh has returned with her family to a transformed 'Cool Britannia' and she is ready to finally put all her information into play to avenge Annie's death.  This book kept me totally absorbed and it was both interesting and different the way much of Mrs. Ranleigh's patient research was presented through letters, documents, email, and even photographs interspersed through the chapters.
 

Hemlock Bay, by Catherine Coulter

I really enjoyed Coulter's last book, Riptide, so I couldn't wait for her latest.  Well, it was a little disappointing.  It gets off to a good start with husband and wife FBI agents Dillon and Sherlock Savich trying to apprehend a vicious pair of kidnappers holed up in a barn in Maryland.  In the capture, one of the kidnappers is killed by Dillon and the other is arrested.  Meanwhile, in the town of Hemlock Bay on the west coast, Dillon's sister, Lily, has crashed her car into a tree and the consensus is she tried to commit suicide.  Dillon and Sherlock fly to Hemlock Bay and they soon discover that someone has been trying to kill Lily.  But, for what reason?  Does it have something to do with a valuable collection of paintings left to Lily by her grandmother?  While they try to get to the bottom of this mystery, the captured kidnapper escapes and vows revenge on Dillon.  The makings are here for a great suspense novel but I had a lot of trouble with one of the plot elements giving supernatural powers to the kidnappers and a subplot involving something called the Ghouls wasn't explained to my satisfaction.  I would have enjoyed the book a lot more if an editor had nixed the supernatural elements.
 

Money, Money, Money, by Ed McBain

When it comes to police crime novels, nobody does it better than Ed McBain with his '87th Precinct' series.  In his latest, detective Steve Carella is investigating the death of a young woman who was literally thrown to the lions at the city zoo.  Because part of her ended up in the 88th Precinct, Carella is assisted by obnoxious Fat Ollie Weeks of that precinct.  Fat Ollie isn't Carella's favorite person but he does end up saving Steve's life--twice.  In the course of their investigation, it soon becomes clear that the woman's death involved smuggled drugs, counterfeit money, and a bungling burglar.  McBain is so smooth and talented that he is able to effortlessly tie everything together with a very topical subplot of a terrorist attack on Isola--the fictional city that stands in for New York in the series.  It's always great fun tagging along with McBain's detectives on their interesting cases.
 

The Smoke Jumper, by Nicholas Evans

There's nothing like a good love triangle to make for an entertaining novel.  Julia Bishop meets and falls in love--or maybe like--with Ed Tully, a musician, in Boston.  In addition to being a musician, Ed is also a smoke jumper and he spends the summer months fighting forest fires in Montana.  Julia works for a youth program that helps troubled teenagers by sending them on western camping trips.  Not long after Julia and Ed meet, she is introduced to Ed's best friend, Connor Ford, when she and Ed travel to Montana for the summer.  Connor lives on a ranch and he is also a smoke jumper and a talented photographer.  When Connor and Julia meet there is an instant mutual attraction but, respectful of Ed, they don't act on it.  The summer goes well until a forest fire brings about a tragedy that will change the rest of their lives.  This is Nicholas Evan's third novel and he is shaping up to be one of my favorite authors.  I loved The Horse Whisperer and The Loop and his latest is every bit as good with winning characters and interesting settings.
 

Tell No One, by Harlan Coben

Tell no one that Dr. David Beck is a young physician working in a poor section of New York City.  Tell no one that eight years ago his wife, Elizabeth, was brutally murdered and David was seriously injured.  Tell no one that he and Elizabeth had been childhood sweethearts who never fell out of love with each other and her death has left David devastated.  Tell no one that he has never remarried and his work is his life.  Tell no one that David is muddling through yet another long day at work when he receives a mysterious email message that he thinks could only have come from his dead wife.  Tell no one that as David seeks an answer to whether Elizabeth is still alive after all these years, he finds himself suddenly being reinvestigated by the police for her murder and before he knows it, he's desperately running for his life.  Tell no one that this is a terrific suspense novel filled with great action and plot twists that will leave you breathless.  Tell no one until you've first gotten your hands on this book and read it for yourself.  Then, you can let the secret out and tell someone.

 

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