Paranoia, by Joseph Finder

Adam Cassidy, 26, is a lowly employee at Wyatt Telecommunications.  Your typical slacker, he does just enough to get by.  Being such a marginal employee, you would think that he would keep as low a profile as possible.  But, not Adam.  As a stunt, he manages to transfer company funds to throw a lavish retirement party for one of the loading dock workers.  How lavish?  Try $78,000.  Some party.  The powers that be are not amused and they threaten Adam with prosecution for the numerous criminal acts he committed.  But, they also give him an out.  Nicholas Wyatt, the company president, has heard a rumor that one of its main rivals, Trion Systems, has a revolutionary product in development.  Nicholas tells Adam that he will drop his prosecution if Adam will go to work at Trion as his spy.  Looking at supposedly twenty years in prison, Adam agrees.  Wyatt arranges for Adam to undergo a crash course to make him look like a desirable, sought-after employee and Trion hires him to work on one of its troubled products.  Now he is in and he must find out everything he can about the mysterious and tightly guarded Aurora project—or be carted off to prison.   At the same time he must also try to survive the cutthroat machinations of the highly competitive Trion workers.  I usually like Finder’s novels but I found Adam to be a really loathsome main character.  It’s not good when you, as a reader, are rooting for the bad guys but I found myself thinking too many times “haul his irresponsible, self-centered, conceited, whiny, lazy derrière off to jail.”  The endnotes mention that the book is in development as a movie.  I hope the actor selected to play Adam demands the character be made a little more sympathetic.  Most of the other characters were pretty unlikable, too.  Still, the book was an interesting novel with a terrific surprise ending and the description of the ruthless business world made me glad I work in education.

McNally’s Bluff, by Vincent Lardo

The circus is coming!  The circus is coming!  Well, not exactly the circus but former human cannonball Matthew Hayes has arrived in Palm Beach with his circus performer wife, Marlena Marvel.  Hayes has sold his carnival for a tidy sum and he is ready to shake up old, staid Palm Beach.  For his first trick, he has an elaborate maze constructed in the backyard of his lavish estate and dubs it the Amazin’ Maze of Matthew Hayes.  To inaugurate the maze, Hayes hosts an elaborate party and, yes, our intrepid investigator, Archy McNally, is one of the guests.  After watching Marlena perform her famous Venus de Milo routine, the guests are paired off in a contest to see which pair can get to the center, the goal, of the maze first.  One couple finally succeeds and reaches the goal—and finds Marlena there dead.  How did she get from the mansion where she performed to the maze where she was discovered dead with none of the partygoers seeing anything?  And, who wanted her dead?  Matthew Hayes hires Archy on the spot to look into his wife’s death—which is ruled a homicide by the coroner.   As usual with Archy’s Palm Beach crowd, there is no shortage of suspects.  But, Archy will get it sorted out.  Now, if only his love life were that easy.

Bury the Lead, by David Rosenfelt

This is the third novel in a fairly new series that features Paterson, New Jersey lawyer Andy Carpenter.   Due to an inheritance and a big lawsuit payoff, Andy is filthy rich and can pick and choose the cases that he takes.  Paterson is currently being terrorized by someone who is abducting women, strangling them, and cutting off their hands.  The unknown killer is communicating with local newspaper reporter Daniel Cummings, who has been passing on what the killer tells him to the police. The editor of the newspaper, Vince Sanders, is a friend of Andy’s and he asks Andy to be Daniel’s lawyer while he is involved with the killer. Andy agrees but he isn’t sure why he is needed.  When a prominent woman running for governor becomes the latest victim and Daniel is found unconscious near the body, he is arrested for her murder.  Evidence linking him to the previous murders is found and suddenly Andy’s new client is on trial for his life.  The evidence seems overwhelming but Andy believes Daniel is being set up. But, who’s responsible?  And, is it all linked to the murder of Daniel’s wife when he was living in Cleveland?  Andy’s got another case that looks all but impossible to win.  This is a nice addition to the series with some interesting plot twists and surprises.  

Trace, by Patricia Cornwell

Dr. Kay Scarpetta is still in southern Florida and still doing occasional work for The Last Precinct, her niece Lucy’s firm.  It’s a few weeks before Christmas and Scarpetta was about to join her boyfriend Benton Wesley for a vacation in Aspen but he has had to postpone getting together because of a case.  With time on her hands, Scarpetta agrees to a request from Virginia’s new Chief Medical Examiner to come to Richmond and consult on the perplexing death of a young girl, Gilly Paulsson.  Scarpetta is curious to see her replacement but when she meets Dr. Joel Marcus she is not impressed.   To be kind, he is an imperious, backwater hack, totally unknown in the profession, and his staff hates him.  Scarpetta’s new state of the art facility is being run into the ground by his incompetence.  Well, you can’t go home again.  Not only is the facility a mess but Dr. Marcus is openly hostile to her.  What has Kay gotten herself into?  A better title for this book might have been Hornet’s Nest but Cornwell already used that title a few years ago for one of her inferior non-Scarpetta novels.  Luckily, she’s not in the hornet’s nest alone.  She has brought along former Richmond cop Pete Marino and together they determine that Gilly was murdered.  The identity of the culprit is a puzzle but what is even more perplexing is that very unusual trace evidence from Gilly is also found on a totally unrelated death that just occurred at Scarpetta’s old Richmond medical office, which is being torn down.  Now it’s personal for Scarpetta and she and Marino jump in headfirst to find the killer.  It might have been unpleasant for Scarpetta to return to Richmond after being fired from her job but for the reader it is a definite treat.  She and Marino are terrific foils, with great support from Lucy and Benton, and it all makes for an entertaining read. 

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