McNally’s Dare, by Vincent Lardo

Archy McNally, the dashing Discreet Inquirer who works for his lawyer father, is back with another Palm Beach murder mystery to solve.  Archy is one of the guests at the annual Tennis Everyone! charity event held by Malcolm MacNiff at his estate when one of the event’s waiters, Jeff Rodgers, is found murdered in the pool.  Rodgers had boasted to friends that he would be coming into a large sum of money.  Was he, perhaps, blackmailing Lance Talbot, a wealthy young man Rodgers knew as a child?  Talbot has been in Switzerland since he was ten but has returned to Palm Beach to claim his inheritance after the death of his grandmother.  MacNiff is the executor of the grandmother’s estate and he hires Archy to investigate the murder and any connection there might be to Lance.   Lending a nice assist to Archy’s investigation is Dennis Darling, a magazine reporter in town doing a story on the Palm Beach jet set.  The mystery this time around is rather slight but the delightful series regulars are in fine form.
 

A Place of Hiding, by Elizabeth George

Next to P.D. James (long may she live and write!), Elizabeth George is my favorite female British novelist.  I know, I know, she is actually American but you wouldn’t know it from the wonderful series she has going featuring Inspector Thomas Lynley of Scotland Yard.  In this latest in the series, Lynley makes only a cameo appearance. The main action focuses on two of Thomas’s friends, forensic scientist Simon St. James and his wife, Deborah.  Long ago and far away, Deborah spent some years in California and her best friend there was China River.  Now, China has been arrested for murder on the small island of Guernsey in the English Channel.  China and her brother, Cherokee, had been hired to deliver architectural plans from California to Guy Brouard, Guernsey’s richest and most famous resident.  China and Cherokee had been invited to stay at Brouard’s estate for a few days and while they were visiting, Guy was found murdered.  All the initial evidence points to China and the police have locked her up.  Cherokee, who also knew Deborah in California, shows up on her London doorstep and appeals to her to help him investigate Guy’s death and find the real killer.  Deborah can’t refuse him but when she tells Simon of her plans to go to Guernsey, he decides to go along and help with the investigation, feeling Deborah and Cherokee are out of their depth.  Once on Guernsey, they will have their hands full sorting out Guy’s complicated life and any number of family members and islanders who might have wanted him dead.  I enjoyed this book a lot.  The Guernsey setting was interesting and the focus on Deborah and Simon St. James made for a nice change in the series.
 

The Teeth of the Tiger, by Tom Clancy

In Clancy’s latest, Jack Ryan has left the presidency and he’s off somewhere writing his memoirs.  Before he left office, however, he set up a deep black independent agency called Hendley Associates in suburban Maryland.  Run by Ryan’s friend, former U.S. senator Gerry Hendley, the company looks like a low-key investment firm but its mission is to gather information on terrorists, locate them, and quietly eliminate them.  The firm's newest employees are Jack Ryan, Junior and his twin cousins, Brian and Dominic Caruso.  Jack, Jr. will be analyzing data on terrorists and the twins, one a former FBI agent and the other recruited from the Marines, will be doing the wet work.   Sounds like the makings for a good book, doesn’t it?  Well, it just never took off for me.  In most of his previous books, Clancy was a genius at marrying technical military and spy information with terrific suspense drawn from several or more plot lines that came together for a great finish.  This one has the technical stuff but no suspense and no climax.  I can only give it a Gentleman’s C—and that’s taking into account Clancy’s past good work.
 

The Lake House, by James Patterson

My favorite James Patterson book is When the Wind Blows and I still fondly remember being taken totally by surprise with its terrific premise. There is now a sequel to it.  In Wind, we met six young kids who had been genetically engineered to be able to fly.  Led by the oldest girl, Max, they had escaped the sinister secret Colorado facility where they had been raised.  With the assistance of Frannie O’Neill, a veterinarian, and Kit Harrison, an FBI agent, they returned and destroyed the facility.  The Lake House opens with a custody battle between Frannie and Kit and the biological parents of the kids.  The kids want to live with Frannie and Kit but the judge awards custody to the parents.  Meanwhile, another sinister research facility, known as The Hospital, has set up shop in Maryland.  Dr. Ethan Kane runs the place and he wants the bird kids—and he will have them at any cost.  This was an ok sequel that was saved by the winning characters, especially Frannie and Max.
 

Angels and Demons, by Dan Brown

With the success of The Da Vinci Code, Brown’s publisher has reissued his first book featuring Robert Langdon, the Harvard professor of religious symbology.  The book begins with Langdon being sent to Switzerland to meet with Maximilian Kohler, the head of CERN, the world’s largest scientific research facility.  One of CERN’s top scientists, Leonardo Vetra, has been found murdered with the word ‘Illuminati’ branded on his chest.   The Illuminati is a secret scientific society that has battled the Catholic Church down through the centuries.  Vetra and his daughter, Vittoria, had succeeded in producing antimatter.  Its potential as an energy source is enormous but it is also very unstable and even a small amount could explode with the force of a nuclear bomb.  Vittoria, Langdon, and Kohler discover that a sample of antimatter has been stolen and will explode in twelve hours if it is not returned to a special holding compartment.   As they are pondering the theft, they receive a phone call telling them that the antimatter is hidden in the Vatican and will explode at midnight, destroying the Vatican and most of its hierarchy, meeting there to elect a new Pope.  The caller provides one tantalizing clue from the Illuminati’s past, a clue that will challenge all of Robert’s expertise and send Vittoria and him to Rome to embark on a frantic search for the antimatter.  I thought The Da Vinci Code was terrific and this was almost as good, filled with interesting facts, great suspense, and a likable lead in Langdon.
 
 
 

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