December New Popular Books
The following new books have been added this month to the Popular Reading Collection located next to the circulation desk.   These books and any other titles currently checked out can be placed on hold.
See a staff member at the circulation desk for assistance.

 

Green River, Running Red, by Ann Rule
Hawkes Harbor, by S. E. Hinton
Light on Snow, by Anita Shreve
Villages, by John Updike
Shoulder the Sky, by Anne Perry
Northern Lights, by Nora Roberts
Shopaholic and Sister, by Sophie Kinsella
How to Talk to a Liberal, by Ann Coulter
A Christmas Visitor, by Anne Perry
In the Night Room, by Peter Straub
The Christmas Thief, by Mary Higgins Clark
Echoes, by Danielle Steel
A Redbird Christmas, by Fannie Flagg
 

This Month's Great Escapes
by Bill McCleary

Kill the Messenger, by Tami Hoag

The messenger is teenager Jace Damon, who delivers packages by bicycle in Los Angeles.  On his final run of the day, Jace is sent to pick up a package from sleazy lawyer Lennie Lowell.  When he reaches the package’s destination, he finds an empty lot—and a big, black limousine after him.  Jace manages to escape and when he makes it back to Lennie’s office he finds the police there investigating Lennie’s murder.  Jace checks the package he was suppose to deliver and finds photo negatives.  Looks like Lennie was involved in a blackmail scheme.  Jace should go to the police but he and his younger brother Tyler have lost both parents and he is afraid they will be split up and put in foster homes.  They have been living in Chinatown with a family that has taken them in and Jace wants to keep a low profile.  Investingating Lennie’s murder is detective Kevin Parker and his trainee Renee Ruiz.  Kevin has been recently demoted and is trying to claw his way back up the ranks.  The smart, easy money is on Jace as the killer—he’s the last known person to see Lennie alive-- but Kev doesn’t think so.  When the big boys in Robbery/Homicide get interested in the case, Kev knows something’s up.  Is Lennie’s murder somehow related to the upcoming trial of famous Hollywood actor Rob Cole for the murder of his wife?  While Kev investigates, Jace is on the run from the real killer—who wants that package and isn’t afraid to kill the messenger to get it.  This was by far the best book I’ve read by Ms. Hoag.  I love a book with a seemingly powerless underdog on the run from bad guys; the suspense is usually terrific—as it was here.  The big surprise for me was Ms. Hoag’s wonderful characters this time around.  She did a bang up job of making them all interesting, vivid, and necessary to a great story with an unexpected ending.


Blindside, by Catherine Coulter

Husband and wife FBI agents Lacey Sherlock and Dillon Savich have their hands full.  They are on an investigative team trying to find a serial killer who is murdering female math teachers in the Washington, DC suburbs.  (Keep your head down, Joyce!)  They haven’t made much progress in the case when they find out that Sam Kettering, the young son of one of their friends, has been kidnapped.  Although he is only six years old, he manages to escape from his kidnappers and he is rescued by Katie Benedict, the sheriff of Jessborough, a small town in Tennessee.  Sam’s father, Miles, a former FBI agent, never received any ransom demands and he is puzzled as to why anyone would want to kidnap his son.  He, Lacey, and Dillon travel to Jessborough to get Sam and help the local police hunt for the kidnappers.  They suspect the kidnappers were hired by someone and have left the area but in the middle of the night they make another attempt to abduct Sam.  Both kidnappers end up dead—taking the mystery of who hired them to their graves.  One of the kidnappers is the brother of the wife of a local minister running a cult-like church.  Could the connection be there?  This novel is billed as ‘An FBI Thriller’ but the thrills were distinctly lacking.  I like Ms. Coulter’s FBI characters and Katie was a nice addition but there was way too much boring conversation and people doing dumb things.  The serial killer subplot never really got going and it just slowed the rest of the book down.  On the plus side, the pages are so thick you’ll feel like you are slogging through it quickly.


Liars and Thieves, by Stephen Coonts

Tommy Carmellini is a former jewel thief and an ace safecracker who has gone straight and now works for the CIA.  Tommy is sent to do guard duty at the CIA’s safe house in West Virginia, where a Russian defector with secret KGB documents is being debriefed.  When Tommy arrives, he finds all the guards have just been killed, along with the defector’s wife and one of the translators.  The defector is either dead or missing but Tommy manages to rescue the second translator and the most important documents from the burning house and they escape.  The defector’s whereabouts had been a very closely guarded secret—but somebody found out and wanted him dead.  Tommy would normally have gone to the CIA for help but the killers appeared to be Americans and he’s not sure whom to trust.  It’s curious that the murders and the fire have been covered up and don’t appear in the press—squelched by someone very high up.  Meanwhile, the killers want the documents and they are after him and the translator.  To make matters worse, he is being blamed for the murders at the safe house.  Fortunately, Tommy has one rock solid friend to turn to—Admiral Jake Grafton.  With Tommy’s criminal contacts and Jake’s military ones, they have a fighting chance to uncover the identity of a former KGB spy—who may now be a high U.S government official.  This was a superior thriller with lots of action, chases, and terrific plot twists.  Great fun.


Melancholy Baby, by Robert Parker

This is the fourth book in the Sunny Randall private eye series.  Parker might have used the plural in the title because we have two melancholy babies.  Sunny is melancholy because her ex-husband, Richie, is getting married again.  Sunny still loves him—she just doesn’t want to be married.  Or, she thinks she doesn’t want to be but she is having some doubts now.  Richie still loves her, too, but he wants to be married.  Into Sunny’s not so sunny life comes Sarah Markham, our second depressed babe.  All her life Sarah has felt that her parents aren’t her birth parents—even though they have repeatedly assured her that they are--and it has had an effect on her outlook and her actions, leaving her rather joyless.  Now in college, Sarah wants Sunny to try to find the truth.  A simple DNA test would answer the question but both parents refuse to be tested, claiming it is demeaning.  Both are decidedly odd ducks.  The father is vague about his employment history—only mentioning that he once worked in radio—and the family seems to be living off some equally vague stock investments.  As Sunny investigates, people she talks to start turning up murdered.  Sarah wants to drop the investigation after she herself is threatened but Sunny thinks it is important for both of them to find out the truth—and the identity of the killer.  While she is investigating, Sunny has also decided to see a shrink—to try to figure out some things about herself.  This being Boston, and a Parker novel, you might guess the identity of the shrink.   I really like this series and Sunny is one of my favorite private eyes.  She’s in fine form here.

  
 

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Revised Nov. 30, 2004

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