Jack Silkstone: PRIMAL Vengeance

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PRIMAL Unleashed with a Vengeance!
This is a no holds barred action thriller that pulls no punches. It is full of plot-related violence and is not for the faint hearted. Sit back and enjoy a fast paced action-filled fantasy ride about the adventures of a "Robin Hood" group that steps in to solve major problems when there is no help around from other sources.

PRIMAL Unleashed started the series about the PRIMAL group of privately funded military, logistics, and communications specialists from many countries  and backgrounds who come together to solve otherwise insoluble problems throughout the world. It was always going to be hard for Jack Silkstone to write a sequel to match the original, but to a considerable extent I think that he has succeeded.

This time Silkstone chooses an area of recent conflict, Sudan and the recently independent South Sudan, where a bloody tribal war has been sponsored by the Chinese interests to help them gain control of vast oil reserves in South Sudan. All of the major characters are larger than life but mostly believable. Your old favourites from Unleashed are there - Aden (with his casual Australian approach), Mirza the skilled former Indian Special Services operative, and the beautiful but dangerous Saneh, a former Iranian Intelligence officer.

PRIMAL sets out to help the local tribal militia of a South Sudanese area close to the border to fight back against the fearsome Chinese suported Janjaweed militia from the north. In a small village in South Sudan we meet Tess, an American Doctor at a primitive local health facility, Garang, a former American soldier born in Sudan and Jonjo, a local teenager who has known local violence all of his life.

I enjoyed the first book so one clicked immediately I knew that the sequel had been released.

Diana Hockley: The Naked Room

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Fast paced, page-turning well written thriller
The Naked Room was one of my best surprise reads this year. Diana Hockley has created a fast paced page-turning thriller with as many twists and turns and ups and downs as playing snakes and ladders on a roller coaster.

Who would imagine that a plot based around the players in a Symphony Orchestra would make for a great thriller. This tight knit group of people quickly get ensnared when the orchestra's talented young solo pianist, Ally Carpenter, disappears.

We are introduced to Detective Sergeant Susan Prescott who realises that it is a race against time to find the young musician, who may have been kidnapped and be in mortal danger. The story swirls around the love affairs and both the good and strained friendships within Ally's family, close friends and musical collegues. The Carpenter family's long kept secrets are central to the plot and slowly get exposed and tested.

I thoroughly recommend this book as an easy but challenging story to keep your interest through to the end. It is extremely well written as Diana unfolds the story like peeling an orange to find a new unexpected slice under the skin. I really liked her use of mostly first person chapters which leave you in suspense at the end of each chapter as the plot moves to another person or time.

I am looking forward to reading Diana's next book, The Celibate Mouse, which also features Detective Sergeant Susan Prescott. I am on tenterhooks to find out the story behind the title - especially as Diana tells us in her author blurb that she used to run a Mouse Circus. The mind boggles! A search of You Tube for "mouse circus australia" will give you an insight into this amazing carnival type act.

Diana Hockley: The Celibate Mouse

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Another well written Australian thriller
This thriller is based in a small Australian country town which has been dominated  for many years by a large dysfunctional but close-knit family. The mystery starts when someone starts to kill off some family members and attack some outsiders. Is it a family member and why does that person turn to murder?

Detective Sergeant Susan Prescott (who played an important but secondary role in Diana Hockley's first excellent book, The Naked Room), has just arrived in town to recover from a broken second marriage and the death on duty of a close colleague.  While Susan tries to keep out of the case she is dragged into it when she is attacked. The arrival of her first husband Detective Inspector David Maguire (who she has not seen for many years) who is assigned to the case inexorably drags her further into the chase to find and stop the murderer before he kills again.

The description of the town's dynamics was memorable, as was the skilfully crafted range of characters both from the strange dysfunctional family and Susan's own family, especially her identical but very different teenage twin girls.  The plot was well crafted but sometimes a bit complex to follow.

Diana Hockley has shown us again that she can write an absorbing and entertaining Australian thriller.  I am still not sure that I really understand the title - maybe it is a bit too clever for my ageing brain to comprehend.

Brett Battles: Every Precious Thing

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A bit like the Camel Club - amateurs to the rescue
This was an innocuous mystery that reminded me of David Baldacci's Camel Club - a group of amateurs led by an experienced operator who is no longer in the security business trying to solve a mystery on their own.

Logan Harper is  a retired security specialist who now operates a car repair business. He is asked to find Sara who has mysteriously disappeared without reason, leaving her husband with her daughter. When Logan tries to track her down he finds that the more he learns the less he knows or understands. Almost by accident he gathers a group of old fogies to help him with the search.

While the plot is clever it is not that challenging, with only a moderate amount of action. It was an OK read but not a memorable one.

Charlotte & Aaron Elkins: A Dangerous Talent (An Alix London Mystery)

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Entertaining but not challenging mystery
The art world is a mystery to me so this mystery about the art world was a good but not a challenging read for me. It features Alix London, an up and coming art consultant, whose a father who served time for art forgery and fraud.

While Alix is still hurting from what happened to her father, she is still working in the field he helped her to know and love - art appreciation and restoration. Out of the blue she is asked by Chris, a dotcom millionaire, to assess the authenticity of a a very expensive painting she is planning to buy. They travel to Santa Fe to check out the painting at a gallery owned by a long-time friend of Chris. Within a few hours of their arrival an attempt is made on Alix's life and Chris's gallery-owning friend is murdered.

They are immediately suspicious of an apparently wealthy art investor who had been seen with the gallery owner that afternoon. They do not know that he is an undercover agent from the FBI Art Fraud Squad following up several sales of forged paintings from that gallery.

Alix is convinced that the painting is forged but cannot substantiate her feelings. I trying to find out more, Alix and Chris they are nearly killed in a major auto accident.

I found the book to generally be an easy reading mystery but was not as challenging or tightly written as the mysteries I normally read. From the ending it is clear that we will see more adventures of Alix London as an art consultant.

Melissa F Miller: Irreparable Harm (Sasha McCandless #1)

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Sasha McCandless - new legal thriller heroine
In her debut novel Melissa Miller introduces us to a new legal thriller heroine - Sasha McCandless - who is different to most fictional lawyer heroines because she has the self-defence skills to protect herself from attack.

Sasha has just completed 8 years of long and arduous hours of her legal apprenticeship and is close to the holy grail of a partnership in a large legal firm. She endures 6 days a week at the office (with little time for a social life), rising before dawn and getting home in time to fall exhausted into bed.  To cope with the pressure, to save time in the morning she sleeps in her jogging gear, grabs a quick cup of coffee and starts her morning exercise run to daily Krav Maga self defence practice.

One of her law firm's biggest clients is a major airline where one of their planes inexplicably loses all pilot control and crashes into a mountainside. During urgent legal damage control to avoid costly class actions from families of passengers killed in the crash, Sasha and her team quickly become suspicious about whether the crash was accidental and further crashes may be planned.

Her fears are confirmed when she is attacked to prevent her completing her investigations. Using her self-defence skills, she inflicts severe injuries on her attackers. From then the race is on to prevent a further crash, helped by her loyal staff and an Sky Marshal who is also convinced that the crash was not an accident.

While some of the action is over the top and unbelievable, this is a page turning and mostly satisfying action thriller .

I enjoy legal thrillers immensely but wonder why a profession that to me is next on the boring list to accountancy can generate so many fictional investigative and action heroes. Maybe it is because the US legal system is played like a football game that it is possible to make fantasies about the match play and create fictional legal theatre.

Because some of the character development is patchy and some action unbelievable, my basic rating is 3.5 stars. But as this is a pretty good first novel and I am keen to read more about Sasha's later exploits I have upped this to a 4 star rating.

Steve Gannon: A Song for the Asking (A Kane Novel)

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Song for the Asking - a powerful and emotional performance
Steve Gannon chose a powerful subject for his first novel - the effect of a dominant father on his family - and showed his considerable skills as an author. It is a testing read with emotional and physical child abuse, strong language and rape, but with an underlying theme of family love and togetherness. It is definitely an adult novel.

I found this book after seeing the sequel - Kane - promoted as a freebie. As soon as I started that book I knew that I had to read this book first to understand what had happened to Kane in Song for the Asking.

Dan Kane is a homicide detective in the LAPD who is rough, tough, and mostly successful. He brings his street strength philosophy home to his family of 4 great kids, and his wife (a classical chellist) whose lives he tries to  run like a Marines' boot camp.  While they all basically love him, they live in constant fear of his ridicule and power over them and consider themselves part of a "screwed-up family".

As in most families the siblings have different personalities.  Tommy, the eldest  has the athletic and physical skills of his father; his younger brother Travis has the artistic skills and sensitivity of mother and is potentially a prize-winning classical pianist. Ali, the only daughter is also artistic and in her early teens has already had a short-story published. The youngest brother, Nate, is overwhelmed and dominated by his father.

Kane tries to mould them into his ways, hurting all of them in the process but cementing them together in a way that he will probably never understand. Despite all this pressure they become a close family who believe "Kane's stand together, no matter what".

While part of this book is a police procedural about Kane's life in the LAPD this is really only background to Kane's personality and how it impacts on his family. The key element is the way his family handles stress and tragedies, and, when faced with the ultimate test, whether the family (and more importantly Kane himself) have the ability to cope and adjust.

The book has a couple of memorable lines that I have indexed because they are meaningful to me and show the word skills and sensitivities of the author and his devotion to classical music (his wife is a classical pianist and he promotes classical music locally).

"When you read, there are no limits; with a book you can bring vistas and textures and emotions to life that have a meaning to you and you alone" AND "Although music can be many things, in its truest incarnation, at its deepest core, music is the power to command emotion."

I gave this 5 stars because of these great lines and a fine and emotional performance by Steve Gannon in a first novel. The other books in the Kane series are also highly recommended (check them out via the author list).

R F Delderfield: God is an Englishman

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God is an Englishman is Victorian historical fiction at its best
I recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in the world changing developments in commerce and industry in England in the mid/late 19th Century. I have always been fascinated by tales of the Industrial Revolution when English entrepreneurs, inventors and innovators changed life from an a rural/agricultural system to a modern industrial society in a matter of generations.

After a military career, Adam Swann returns to England in 1858  with an intense ambition to build his fortune in the fast changing and extremely competitive world of Victorian commerce. Swann soon meets his soul-mate, Henrietta, the high-spirited daughter of a local mill owner and they set out to build a family business under the Swann name. Along the way they share challenges, setbacks and eventually an immense fortune.

As now, the secret of Swann's success is building an efficient and competitive business that is ahead of its time and is essential to the success of others. Swann sees that while  railways  are a fundamental part of the game-changing industrial revolution, they cannot always provide door to door delivery. He sets up an extensive and complex country-wide network of horse drawn transportation to take materials and goods between the railhead and factories up and down the country, sometimes on appalling roads and gradients.

Henrietta, as well as being a wife and mother to an ever increasing brood of small Swanns, is the financial wizard who helps Adam to succeed. While the business is essentially a family one, much of its success is due to finding the right staff in the right place and giving them every incentive to perform and develop the business.

This is a fascinating and outstanding novel about exciting times in economic and social development throughout Victorian England. The next novels in the series - -  [[ASIN:B003L203B0 Theirs Was the Kingdom (Swann Family Saga)]] and [[ASIN:B003L203GA Give Us This Day (God Is an Englishman)]] - - bring the younger Swanns into the business and they face the next challenges as the face of road freight transport changes from horse drawn to motorised delivery.

The Swann family saga is only one of several important English family sagas written by Delderfield, including The Horseman Riding By and To Serve Them All Our Days, both of which became popular BBC mini-series.

This is a beloved novel by one of my favourite authors. I first read this book (the first in the Swann family saga trilogy) in the UK the early 1970's when it was first published. I read it again with continued enjoyment over 30 years later and was delighted to see it featured recently as a Kindle Daily Deal so I can now afford to keep a copy with me at all times.

David Baldacci: The Innocent

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Baldacci at his best - a plot to keep you guessing to the end
This is David Baldacci at his best - a page turning action thriller that will keep you guessing to the end. Baldacci is a master story tellers of thrillers that have more twists and turns than a fast paced game of snakes and ladders.

Baldacci introduces us to Will Robie, a larger than life professional killer for the US Government (I wonder why we all get turned on with novels about these hypothetical hopefully non-existent super heros). Robie normally has no problem in killing bad people such as terrorists and major criminals. He plans his work meticulously and always makes  contingency plans for escape if something goes wrong.

This time Robie is worried when  he is ordered to kill a divorced woman who doesn't seem to be a danger to anyone. He  enters her bedroom at night and finds her sharing her bed with her young son.  For the first time ever Robie finds that he cannot go through with the killing. Almost immediately a sniper in a nearby building kills both the woman and her son with a single shot.  To save his life Robie flees the scene and following his contingency plan heads for a local bus station.

At the same time a 14 year old girl, Julie, escapes from an abusive foster home and enters her  parents home only to hear both of her drug addicted parents being murdered. The girl escapes the murder scene and catches the same bus as Robie. When someone tries to  kill Julie on the bus, Robie is there to save her life.  Just as they get off the bus together there is a huge explosion, demolishing the bus and killing all of the passengers. Robie and Julie are not seriously injured and form an alliance to keep their safety.

The plot then changes into top gear with both Robie and Julie getting involved in helping the FBI to investigate the murders and bombing, and Robie's superiors who want to find out what went wrong.  The action is fast and furious and keeps you on edge to the very last page.

Baldacci has built up a unenviable collection of amazing characters over the years. Now he has introduced us to Will Robie, a professional killer who finds he has a conscience. I look forward to meeting Robie in future books.

Jeffrey Archer: The Prodigal Daughter

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An excellent sequel to Kane and Abel
Jeffrey Archer has been one of the world's best storytellers for over 25 years and all of his books have been page-turners for me. This is one of his early stories and a good one.  In part it is a sequel to his wordwide bestseller Kane and Abel but it is mainly about the lives of the children of Abel Rosnovski and William Kane.

At birth Abel gives his daughter, Florentyna, a Teddy Bear named "President" after US President Theodore Roosevelt, whose nickname was "Teddy". Florentyna's first word is not "Daddy" or "Mummy" but "Prusident" - a sign of things to come. At age 11 she makes a pact with her father for him to finance her Presidential campaign if she wins the first major primary for the Democratic Party.

Abel Rosnovski  gives Florentyna every support in her education, including employing a wonderful English Governess who guides her through her early days to give her the strength, personality and skills to become a very successful person both commercially and politically.

The bad blood between Abel Rosnovski and the powerful banker William Kane continues and escalates when Kane's son Richard meets Florentyna.

The latter part of the book covers Florentyna's commercial successes and eventual entry into US politics. Archer displays a detailed knowledge of the US political system. While it is an older book (1982) it is not dated and much of the political action is a reminder of more recent US political events.

As well as being a best selling author, Archer lived an eventful life as a UK Parliamentarian and Conservative Party Chairman and was made a life peer. His career was suspended when he was convicted and imprisoned for perjury. Despite all of these traumas Archer has never lost his great story telling skills.

His latest book - Sins of the Father in the Clifton Chronicles series - still has his magic touch and the ending will keep you in suspense again until he has written the next book in the series.