Split Second

It's finally here, Split Second by Catherine Coulter! It was well worth the wait too.
In this newest installment of Catherine Coulter's FBI series, Savich is caught in the middle of a shoot out at a local convenience store where he went to to pick up a few items. The owner Mr. Patil, is shot and injured. One of the shooters is apprehended while the other got away.
Meanwhile, Agent Lucy Caryle is dealing with the recent death of her father. Shortly before Joshua Acker Caryle's death he proclaimed that Lucy's grandmother stabbed her husband to death. Lucy and the rest of her extended family were lead to believe that her grandfather had just up and left one day without any warning or future communication. One day shortly after her father's death, Lucy is summoned to the family's attorneys' office and given a ring and a letter from her long lost grandfather. This leads her to discover the real truth behind her father's well kept secret and the reason her grandfather left her the ring.
To add even more adventure to this mystery, Savich and Sherlock are dealing with a female serial killer who they discovered is the daughter of Ted Bundy! Kristen Bolger has been murdering young women for quite some years. She disguises herself as a young man, hangs out at local bars, drugs a young woman, and then "escorts her home" where she murders them. Savich and Sherlock certainly have their hands full with this killer!
You won't want to put this book down. Cuddle up in a big comfy chair, grab this book and indulge yourself with a great page turner! Let us know what you think!

Never Look Away

Bestselling author Linwood Barclay never disappoints. Never Look Away is a thrilling read with many twists and turns.

David Harwood, a newspaper reporter, goes to an amusement park with his wife Jan and their son Ethan. All of a sudden David and Jan realize Ethan is missing. While Jan runs off to find security, David finds Ethan sleeping in his stroller nearby, but now Jan is missing.

When the police get involved the mystery becomes deeper, and David realizes he may not have known his wife at all.

Faithful Place by Tana French

Faithful Place is a poor neighborhood in Dublin, Ireland. Frank Mackey is a nineteen year old guy waiting for his girlfriend Rosie. They plan to leave Faithful Place and elope to England, but Rosie never shows. Frank is confused and heart broken thinking Rosie changed her mind. So he decides to leave Faithful Place without her to get away from his alcoholic father and his critical mother. Twenty two years later, Frank receives a call from his sister saying that someone found Rosie's suitcase behind a fireplace in an old abandoned house. Reluctantly, Frank goes home to get to the bottom of the mystery of Rosie's disappearance.

I listened to Faithful Place, hoping to get an earful of the Irish brogue, which I did.

What I'm Reading Now: Drood by Dan Simmons

In Drood, Dan Simmons speculates about the last years of Charles Dickens’ life, beginning with the Staplehurst rail crash in 1865. In the crash, the train Dickens was traveling in fell off of a bridge that was being repaired. While he was unharmed, he never full recovered from the trauma of the incident. Since the accident, the only novel he ever finished was the already in-progress, Our Mutual Friend, which he rescued from the crash. His final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, was never completed before he died, and has since become the inspiration for this and many other novels.

Drood is narrated from the point-of-view of Dickens’ real-life friend, author, and opium-addict, Wilkie Collins. Dickens takes Collins into his confidence to tell him about a spectral figure named Drood (who had been traveling in a coffin) that he spotted in the aftermath of the train crash. According to Collins, Dickens becomes obsessed with Drood. He ventures with Dickens into London's seedy underground in an attempt to find him, and to figure out what he was doing at the crash site.

As a narrator, Collins is delightfully unreliable. The reader never knows whether what he says is an accurate account of events, or one of his drug-induced fantasies. It is known that the real Collins suffered from paranoid delusions due to opium use.

Now, I’m not much of a Dickens fan, ever since I had to read A Tale of Two Cities when I was a junior in high school. But the speculative nature of the book appealed to me. Simmons doesn’t quite have the Victorian style down, so it’s not as daunting to a contemporary reader. In addition, not having read much Dickens did not hinder my understanding of Drood.

At 784 pages, this could easily become a doorstopper of a book, and the pacing at times is quite leisurely. However, you get pulled right in by the tension between Dickens and Collins (who clearly envies his friend's success) as well as by the mystery and intrigue surrounding Drood. If you're looking for a book you can sink into and stay for a while, give this one a try.

Readalikes:

The Dickens work that inspired this novel is of course, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Also of interest is the short ghost story, The Signal-Man which was likely inspired by the Staplehurst train crash, and is probably based on the Clayton Tunnel crash in 1861.

Wilkie Collins' most successful novel, The Woman in White, is considered to be one of the earliest mystery novels.

The Last Dickens by Matthew Pearl is a mystery about an American publisher who is waiting for the latest installment of The Mystery of Edwin Drood. After the man he sends to pick it up is murdered, he takes it upon himself to investigate the suspicious circumstances.