In her stunning follow up to the 2006 best seller “Shiver,” Lisa Jackson has proven that there’s room for a little romance amid all the death and depravity. Absolute Fear is part of the Bayou series, which includes, “Hot Blooded, Cold Blooded, and Shiver.” The plot line is in depth and complicated yet developed simultaneously with the characters, in such a way that Absolute Fear stands on its own. This book has it all, child abuse, scandalous behavior within the church, unethical medical practices, sex, murder and mayhem. Having enjoyed this novel on every conceivable level, I have added all three previous titles to my list of must reads.

Absolute Fear opens three months after the ritualistic murder of Roy Kajak and the attempted murder of Eve Renner. Eve, still suffering from amnesia, returns to New Orleans. That very day, Cole Dennis was set free. It seemed like a life time ago that she had met Cole at her fathers farm house. A hot shot attorney that successfully represented Dr. Renner after his patient committed suicide. There was a part of her that had never been convinced that he had tried to kill her. On the night of her return, this belief would be tested, when Cole appears at her door.

They had to find a way to trust each other and work together. The irony of this uneasy alliance is yet another twist leading the reader deeper into the story. Everything that was happening was related to the asylum, where her father had been the head psychiatrist. As an adult she had heard rumors about Our Lady of Virtues and the horrors that occurred there. Now  in order to regain control of her life she would have to go back where it all began. Because somewhere in the midst of that crumbling building were the shattered pieces of her memory. The key to the murders wasn’t the only secret Our Lady held. Oh no, there was more, much more. The subtle innuendos quickly place the reader into a frenzied state of near panic. Frantically reading as quickly as possible in hopes of finding a calm place to slow down and breathe.

Unspeakable madness had once been perpetrated behind the walls of Our Lady of Virtues - and he intended to revive that madness, just for Eve. She would pay for her sins, he would make sure of that. Then he would be deified, his god had said. The “Reviver” is a sick, twisted, ritualistic murderer. The tattooing, cryptic clues and murders are all part of his elaborate revenge. He knew they were all so blinded by sin that they were unable to interpret that which he had written in blood for all to see? He wouldn’t just spell it out for them - and yet that is exactly what he had done. As the true nature of his actions and extent of his manipulations are revealed, the skillfully coded clues scattered throughout become crystal clear.

Absolute Fear is an Absolute Best Seller! Lisa Jackson has continued her series, while creating a novel that stands tall on its own merit. Jackson’s ability to explore the inner workings of this characters depraved mind is an astonishing literary feat, that should not be overlooked. Successfully delivering to the reader a fright filled journey into the dark recesses of a madman’s desires, while maintaining a relationship filled with explosive passion places Lisa Jackson in the company of the best! This book has the perfect mix of secrets, lust and murder to keep readers coming back again and again. And with the door left open at the conclusion, we can hope that there will be another installment.

Happy Reading!RJ xx

Dead On is a thrilling, intellectually fearless novel that seamlessly blends horror, mystery, and the paranormal, to deliver a fast paced, provocative and highly entertaining read.

Ann Yang hoped to escape the ugliness of her divorce and start over in the quiet Pennsylvania suburb of Doylestown. Settling into her job as Medical Examiner, with renovations to her house underway, she was putting the past where it belonged... in the past. However, that notion is short lived as a ruthless killer begins to hone his sinister craft in Ann's backyard. When bodies are discovered, obviously staged, the killer's one-of-a-kind signature placed beneath the tongue, taunting police, Ann finds herself in the middle of a madman's reality. With her colleagues unaccustomed to high profile crimes and mystified by the murders, Ann calls on close friend and retired FBI profiler, Tony Cole for assistance. Together they follow the clues from Pennsylvania to New Orleans, only to find themselves wrapped in an unending enigma of impossible to answer questions.Adding yet another dimension to this multi-layered story is the discovery of an old diary that immediately captures Ann's attention and captivates her unusual abilities of perception. Dating back over a hundred years, the time worn pages reveal intimate details surrounding the disappearance of a young girl, which remained unsolved. Could this be related? Are the hypnosis induced visions of being murdered in past lives clouding or possibly shaping reality? The one thing that is abundantly clear this psychopath has Ann squarely in his sights and she has unwittingly become the ultimate pawn in a high stakes game of cat and mouse.

The characters while sharply drawn are as fluid as the ink of this phenomenal author's pen. The expert use of dialogue brings the characters to life and delivers a disturbingly delicious reading experience. Although a quick read, Kelly spares no punches when it comes to complexity, depth and suspense. Palpable tension builds as the story speeds, almost recklessly toward the shocking but satisfying conclusion.

Ann Kelly's tantalizing debut novel is well researched, intelligently portrayed and delivered with unbridled passion. The subtle clues embedded throughout keep the reader involved and guessing, without preemptive spoilers. The mystery within a mystery allows Kelly to simultaneously develop multiple angles, cleverly weaving an intricate web of murder and mayhem, past life regression and brilliant detection. Dead On is an absolute knock out! Happy Reading!RJ McGill

Editor's Choice Award Winner!DIY Los Angeles Book Festival Runner-upNominated for Agatha Award for Best First Mystery NovelFilm rights optioned by Gold Circle Films

Some crime books are all about the psychological insights into both evil and good minds (and all the grey areas in between); some address current issues in society (Ian Rankin springs to mind); some are just romances dressed up as crime novels - most of the tension in the will-they-won't-they scenarios. Then there are the Whodunnits.

I don't read Whodunnits very often - they're out of fashion, and possibly something you grow out of. But reading Dead Water by Ngaio Marsh, I felt like I was back to being a 13-year-old discovering Agatha Christie - consequently a comforting read. I'd forgotten what it was like to have a fixed number of suspects, and to be playing a guessing game: chapter 6 - it was definitely the Major who done it. Chapter 8 - why does no-one suspect Patrick? Is the author throwing us off the scent? Chapter 9 - got it! Mrs Barrimore! Chapter 10 - oh I don't know...

An old-fashioned read, with a lot of the mechanisms of the plot showing through, but nevertheless I found it a good antidote to all the technology, relentless realism and psychological profiling of modern crime novels (to say nothing of the gore and violence, also spared us here). There's some good characterisation - Emily Pride and Miss Cost in particular - and even, to my delight, the obligatory Poirot-style ending where all prime suspects are gathered in a room and forced to listen to the smug detective spin them a tale, before revealing he knows exactly Whodunnit.

And best of all, not a gimmick in sight (hence the title of this review, in case you were wondering).

It is difficult to tell from the cover image but Fell vol. 1 Feral City is a graphic novel collecting the first eight issues of Fell. If you are a reader of graphic novels you certainly recognize the name, Warren  Ellis, a British author "well known for sociocultural commentary."

Fell: Feral City is a hard-core noir graphic novel. Richard Fell (Rich) is a police detective recently transferred "across the bridge" to Snowtown from an unspecified city. We don't learn the reason for his transfer in this volume but apparently it was a matter of accept the transfer or be fired. From what we learn about Fell here it is easy to surmise that he did something out of a sense of justice rather than what was politically expedient.

Snowtown is a feral city, blighted, decaying, randomly violent, inhabited by people with nowhere else to go or who don't care to go anywhere else. There is one police precinct with three and a half detectives to take care of all of Snowtown. One detective has no legs which accounts for the half.

Soon after arriving in Snowtown, Fell finds Idiot's Bar, run by a Vietnamese woman named Mayko. Mayko and Rich talk and she starts to fill him in on Snowtown. Like the meaning of the tag painted on buildings all over Snowtown, an S with X over it. Mayko tells Rich, "You put it up, you belong to Snowtown. If Snowtown knows who you are, it won't come and get you."

The chapters are short, perhaps 26 pages of mostly seven or nine panels. The eight chapters show Rich acclimating to Snowtown, working cases, and developing a relationship with Mayko. By the end of volume one we know the kind of detective Fell is. He cares. Snowtown is now where he lives and he intends to look after the other people who live there.

I would like to say a few words about graphic novels, particularly to those of you who haven't looked at one. I'm not a hardcore reader of graphic novels but I picked this one up because I read about it on Will Wheaton's blog, WWdN: In Exile - you might remember Will as Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The New Generation - and he wrote good things about it. I really like the crime genre, particularly noir, and my local comic shop, Comic Cubicle, had it in stock. Graphic novels are interesting on several levels. There is the collaboration needed. You have the writer, the illustrator, and the letterer. All contribute significantly to the work. Obviously you need a good story to begin with and from what I see in Fell, Warren Ellis can write a cracking good one. The illustrations provide the descriptive elements that would otherwise have to be put down in words. A single page of nine panels would take several pages of text to describe. But it isn't just the pictures, the uses of different color washes can do an amazing job setting a mood. Take the panel where Rich first sees Idiot's Bar, the street is in shades of grey but Idiot's Bar is lit in warm sepia tones. There is a small box of text that looks a bit like a post-it note that reads "Oh thank God." There is a tremendous amount detail and feeling in that one panel. You get Rich's state of mind and the likelihood that Idiot's Bar is going to become a place of refuge for Rich. The letterer not only has to provide the text but let us know who is taking and the sequence in which each character speaks. Skillfully done, you get the impression of rapid back and forth dialog like you see often in cop shows such as Law and Order.

If you are a fan of gritty noir police stories and are curious about graphic novels, I recommend Fell. Actually, I would recommend Fell as a terrific graphic novel under any circumstances and would like to buy Will Wheaton a beer for bringing it to my attention.

Reviewing detective novels is difficult. How do I convey what a page-turner it is, without resorting to cliches, but also without plot spoilers?

What I love about Elizabeth George, though, is not just her ability to spin a gripping tale, but her characters. All of us who read through series of police procedural novels, with the same detective and trusty sidekick, do so because we love to revisit those characters we've come to know and love. It's a little like watching a soap opera. EG is also blessed with convincing psychological insight into a wide range of personality types. I find myself believing in all her characters, particularly by this point in the series, when it's easier to forget that she's made the annoying error of having her main character be a member of the aristocracy (typical American view of the English!).

In this story, Lynley and Havers take on the investigation of a high-profile kidnapping case, which takes Havers to Wiltshire while Lynley stays behind in London. Add to these two story strands the perspectives of the parents of the kidnapped child, and 600 pages flies by. The strands come together well for a - what is it they say? - 'Thrilling denouement'!

Leading Lady by Heywood Gould, Five Star Publishing, 2008, Hardcover $25.95

http://www.heywoodgould.com

Reviewed by Tony Scaduto

So here comes Heywood Gould again with another exciting tale. Gould, author of "Fort Apache, The Bronx," "Boys From Brazil" and other novels and screenplays, now gives us a super-charged story full of bad guys, a lot badder guys (among them rogue Feds, Russian and Albanian mobsters and locally-grown mafiosi) and a not-that-bad bad guy you can come to love and root for. Jerry Lang, by name.

Lang, a thief practically from when he was a toddler, usually steals on demand. That is, he gets an assignment from a fence, mentor, whatever, to rip off a bit of property that someone else covets.

This time it’s a valuable piece of art, and he and his "leading lady" – Gloria, a very lovely, erotic head-turner whose role is to distract any man who might get in Jerry’s way – head off to work.

But things go wrong and Gloria vanishes and most certainly has ended up buried in the Bronx or some other god , awful place and Jerry himself almost gets the final push to Hell but ends up in jail for a couple of years. (I’m really not giving much away: Gloria is disposed of in the first few pages.) From this point on Jerry lives with one major motivation.

Revenge.

Revenge drives the tale, and it’s like watching a Nascar event. Fast, dangerous, sexy.

And this is a pretty sexy book. Chapter One introduces us to Jerry’s leading lady with a warm, tender and glowing post-coital description of her body, her near-perfect bone structure and just how Jerry feels about her: He truly loves her. It’s afternoon, with the theft of the artwork planned for that night, and they’ve made love mostly because if the caper turns bad he wants his last memories to be of Gloria’s essence.

The dialogue is smart and droll; nothing flashy, but it will instantly hook you. Four pages in, just after Jerry and Gloria have made love, he explains the final details of their upcoming heist that he’s been asked to pull off by a fence/scammer/rotter from whom he’s long taken assignments. He discusses their place in the pecking order of who gets paid how much and why the top guy gets the most and why Jerry and Gloria, the "heavy lifters," get the least. "How do we go up to the next level?" Gloria asks. Jerry’s wry response: "Get different parents."

A touch fatalistic, and yes, Jerry grew up in a rough and tumble crummy neighborhood, but he makes no excuses and no apologies. Jerry is not exactly a good guy but the guys he is up against are so much worse. Of course, the score goes south and the rest of this post-modern noir detective novel is a cat and mouse tale of revenge and counter-revenge peopled by some pretty interesting characters. Gould is able to make a character come alive with just a few words. For example, his description of a big, beefy bouncer: "He had three chins, only two of them shaved."

The cast of characters include a sly and crafty mafia boss surrounded by mostly loyal but dim goons and a coked-up lieutenant impatient to step up and depose the boss so he can sit at a table in an Italian restaurant with the other Dons in $4,000 silk suits. The scariest villain and Jerry’s most formidable foe is the corrupt and mega nouveau-riche Russian oligarch who has the goods on some important American politicos and can therefore command and receive protection and favors from secret U.S. Army operatives working under the auspices of a shadow government agency.

But the story is really about the Leading Lady, beginning with Gloria and ending with her replacement, Letitia Hastings: actress/lap dancer/actress but, finally, Jerry’s true Leading Lady. She’s beautiful and smart and talented, but most important she steps up and prevails. It’s a pretty dark novel – definitely noirish – illuminated by the faint glimmer of Letitia’s moral center.

Murders, double-crosses and more, straight to an explosive and chilling ending.

What do you get when you combine a curious cobbler, a dead florist and Benjamin Franklin Washington? An amateur sleuth mystery novel over-flowing with entertaining characters that will keep you guessing and occasionally giggling.Fulton Moon is a shoe repairman who takes on side jobs from time to time as a Private Investigator. It is one of these so called “side jobs” that leads Moon into the Chicago underworld and sets in motion a series of unfortunate events. When Lucinda (Lucy), the purported battered wife of flower shop owner, J. Arthur Mathews comes to Moon seeking protection and a means of escape, he is at first, reluctant. With undeniable video proof that the businessman murdered local florist, Russell Armstrong, Moon advises her to go to the authorities. However, because of her husbands powerful connections, she is convinced fleeing is the only option.Moon could never have anticipated that his efforts would result in blackmail, kidnapping and much worse. From five star restaurants to murder, Moon bumbles his way through avoiding both serious injury and jail time. What started with a plea from a battered wife will serve as a permanent reminder that first impressions are not always trustworthy and one should never judge a book by its cover.JD Webb captures the readers imagination and never lets go! I look forward to many more mystery adventures from this new author.

Happy Reading!RJ xx3Rs-Real Reader Reviews

Wow.

Any trendy genre is doomed to become desperately uncool in time. Take cyberpunk, bless it. That self-consciously wired sci-fi stepchild ended up making the journey from envelope-pushing early-80s edginess to nothing more than fodder for mid-90s straight-to-video stodge. But hey, it's not cyberpunk's fault. It heralded the age of information overload, but now that we're sliding down the infolanche for real, it can seem as naive as a 1950's World's Fair. A lot of its concerns - style tribes, virtual reality, post-apocalyptic dystopias - seem laughably dated.

M. John Harrison couldn't give a toss, though. Good for him.

"Nostalgia and science fiction are spookily close" A A Gill

That's one of the quotes that prefaces this extraordinary exercise in style. It makes a lot of sense, too. Harrison's world is cyberpunk refried and expertly blended into a pulp setting - a setting that cyberpunk has always been magnetically drawn to from the start. The action takes place in a backwater street of a down-at-heel city on a who-cares planet, stuffed full of romantically dissolute lowlifes. Liv Hula manages a bar, but can't pull her life out of the gutter; Vic Serotonin makes a living out of taking slumming tourists to the edge of an indescribable spatial anomaly that landed downtown a generation ago, but he's losing himself in the process; Fat Antoyne hustles for a buck and tries to get loved; Lens Aschemann is the detective who looks just like the older Albert Einstein, driving a 1952 pink Cadillac, who's trying to piece all these lives together. But the centre of the novel is the city Saudade itself, in its desperate, dingy beauty, eerily mirrored in the dreamlike chaos of the anomaly.

And everybody drinks, like there's no tomorrow. For these hoods and whores, maybe there isn't. They're trapped in a future where the only gene-modification you can't buy is a way to like who you are.

This isn't about the wisecracks-and-sharp-hats noir of films like The Big Sleep. It's more like the melancholy cool of Raymond Chandler's original novel, where regret and betrayal is more subtly deadly than a hundred blackjack-armed thugs, and the streets are always slick with rain. Nova Swing isn't about sci-fi whizz-bang gadgetry or cosmos-spanning metaphysics either, although Harrison doles these out with a sort of weary, inspired generosity.

So why isn't this a mere literary experiment? Because Harrison has something to write about. The characters circle each other, desperate to find a meaning in a midnight hook-up, a collar, a brawl. It's about how everything falls apart slowly, how adults betray their child-selves, how love is already on the lam; but how just maybe it's enough to get you off this godforsaken world and into a future which might be illusory, but has to be better than the now.

Make no mistake - Nova Swing sweats style. Even if sometimes the effects are a little laboured, it's all a labour of love. This review may be dull, but Harrison’s prose isn’t. It’s jaded, seductive street poetry.

Inevitably, the detective plot (which is always the loser in the pulp setting, and doesn't even have much what-happens-next attraction here) can't pull us all the way to a showstopping finish. But even this doesn't matter, because Harrison is evoking a mood, a style - a way of living or putting off life - that's as grown-up, thrilling and phantasmagorical as anything else in science fiction.

Sunny Randall, former Boston cop turned private detective, has always been my least favorite of Robert B. Parker's series characters. It's not that she's a woman, it's that I've never found Parker's major female characters remotely convincing *as* women. Interesting, yes. Fun to read about, yes. Believable? Not even close. Parker writing a novel series *as* a woman (Sunny's adventures are told in the first person) is not a pretty sight.

Spenser, as fans of his adventures have long since realized, has no significant flaws. Jesse Stone has a couple: he's a recovering alcoholic, and he can't let go of his serially unfaithful ex-wife, Jen (why is anybody's guess . . . the woman is a walking, talking train wreck). Sunny has enough flaws for any two lead characters--maybe even three. Her mother is a full-blown alcoholic, her sister is a nitwit on the verge of marrying a pretentious jerk, her closest female friend is a basket case who makes Jesse Stone's ex look well-adjusted, and she can't let go of her divorced-and-remarried former husband, Richie. The most stable relationships in Sunny's life are (in no particular order) her gay best friend Spike, her dog Rosie, and her ex-husband's Uncle Felix . . . an amiable old guy even if he *is* a mob boss. One of the recurring problems with the "Sunny Randall" series is that her personal life keeps threatening to overwhelm her professional life, and the psychology keeps threatening to swamp the detection. Both happen here, with a vengeance.

The plot, on paper at least, is promising. Twenty years ago, a serial killer was terrorizing Boston, shooting his victims in public places and leaving a handful of small coins on their corpses. Sunny's father, a Boston cop, was the head of the task force that searched for him without result. Now, after a two-decade hiatus, the killings have begun again and Sunny's now-retired dad has been called on to consult. He asks her to help, and she (adoring him and eager for his approval) agrees.

In practice, it's all less interesting than it sounds. Solving the actual crimes takes roughly half the book, and feels like its stretched at that. Sunny does very little actual detecting, but she doesn't *need* to do much. The prime suspect practically marches into the story labelled SERIAL KILLER. What detection there is in the story is parcelled out in small doses tucked between long bouts of psychological analysis. Sunny analyzes her relationship with Richie. Sunny analyzes her relationship with Julie. Sunny analyzes her relationship with the suspect. Sunny analyzes her relationship with her father (but seems curiously oblivious to the rest of her family even when she's in the same room with them). Periodically, she discusses all this with her shrink, one Dr. Silverman, and (because the good doctor speaks to her patients like she was being charged by the word) this mostly involves Sunny talking some more. Worst of all, in the last chapter, we get to hear the killer Explain It All (just in case we haven't been paying attention). Feh.

There are, of course, some bright spots amid the torrent of talk and the dearth of detection:

The repertory company of cops that Parker had developed over the years turns out in force for this one, and are used to good advantage. It's especially nice to see Captain Quirk have more than a walk-on role. Richie is as blank as usual, but his relationship with Sunny takes an interesting turn and is actually engrossing for once. There are also a couple of nicely done scenes of escalating tension leading to violence, one relevant to the story and one not. They show that Parker hasn't lost his touch, but they leave you wishing he'd do it a bit more often. They also (weirdly) account for much of the story's humor (something else that I found myself wishing for more of).

Parker is nothing if not a capable craftsman, and on a line-by-line level the book reads well. It'll divert you for the day or two it'll take you to read it, and especially if you get it out of the library you'll still respect yourself in the morning. Parker has done better in this series, however, and *far* better in other series.

When special operations, literary detective, pet Dodo owner, daughter of a chronic time traveler and niece of eccentric inventors, Thursday Next is approached to help capture an evil villain aptly named Hades who’s suspected of stealing a Dickens’ manuscript, she barely thinks twice before saying yes.She soon finds herself in Swindon, her hometown, and a place full of memories, an ex-fiancé and more evil villains.

Jasper Fforde has crammed time-travel, books within books, tons of literary references, extinct pets, cops and robbers, detectives, magic and more into this humorous post-modern* novel. Characters travel on airships instead of airplanes, take vacations into classic gothic novels, join organizations focused on catching meteors and change their name to John Milton. Riots break out between fanatics of conflicting art movements.

This book has everything a lover of reading (especially the classics) could want, and more. It has a lot of what a fan of science fiction might enjoy as well. Devotees of detective novels won’t be disappointed either.

I’d seen the title of this book before someone recommended it to me. I must have known it had appeal to detective novel enthusiasts because I didn’t give it a second thought. When my daughter’s friend, who knew I enjoyed reading about time-travel, recommended it to me I thought I’d give it a go.

Unfortunately I didn’t get into it until well into the second half of the book. I’d mostly been confused by the plot and sub-plots, not to mention the names of characters. I spent a lot of time wondering why Fforde chose to name a police chief Braxton Hicks. And I’d heard the phrase runcible spoon, but didn’t know what it was nor why a doctor would be given that name.

In the end I sort of liked the book. I could see that it was probably really funny to someone who got all the jokes and literary allusions. I do believe that Jasper Fforde is probably a genius – but I’m just not the right person to appreciate it. It did make me want to re-read Jane Eyre though, and that’s a good thing.I plan on reading the second book in this series. I’m betting I like it better, now that I know what is going on, to a degree.

*I’d not understood what post modern meant until I read this book and the "ah-ha" light went on over my head.