The Texas Job Mysterious Book Report No. 481 by John Dwaine McKenna As The Texas Job, (Poisoned Pen, PB, $15.99, 416 pages, ISBN 978-1-4642-1570-4), by Dallas journalist and Spur Award-winning author Reavis Z. Wortham begins, it’s 1931. The Great Depression is in full swing and one of the greatest oil discoveries in American history has just been made in the northeast corner of the state, as a young Ranger
Thunder Road Mysterious Book Report No. 480 by John Dwaine McKenna Thunder Road, (CamCat Books, $24.99, 384 pages, ISBN 978-0-7443-0497-8), the debut effort of author Colin Holmes, is a genre-jumping, rock-n-roll kick-ass, action-adventure novel that begins with some cattle rustling and a gun-fight, then roars off into a private-eye crime novel before ending with a bit of sci-fi for good measure. It begins in 1947, on a ranch near
Vital Lies Mysterious Book Report No. 479 by John Dwaine McKenna Vital Lies, (Thomas & Mercer, $24.95, 404 pages, ISBN 978-1-5420-3104-2), by award-winning screen-writer, producer and author Daniel Pyne is a spy-thriller that begins with a flashback to December 3, 1990. In East Berlin, at the Hohenschönhausen Prison, a young twenty year-old American woman named Aubrey Sentro stumbles toward freedom after being imprisoned and tortured for more than a
The Runaway Mysterious Book Report No. 478 by John Dwaine McKenna Master of hard-boiled crime fiction and award-winning writer Nick Petrie takes bad-assery to a whole new dimension in his newest (the seventh) novel featuring a PTSD-stricken U.S. Marine veteran named Peter Ash. The Runaway, (Putnam, $27.00, 400 pages, ISBN 978-0-525-53550-8), begins in rural Montana, where an orphaned, neglected, victimized and beautiful teenaged girl named Helene Johansen impulsively ditches
Red Burning Sky Mysterious Book Report No. 477 by John Dwaine McKenna Red Burning Sky, (Kensington Books, $27.00, 288 pages, ISBN 978-1-4967-3294-1), by Tom Young is historical fiction from the pen of a master of military thrillers. It takes place in Yugoslavia during the summer of 1944 and tells the little known story of Operation Halyard, the actual, and incredible, rescue of more than 500 downed allied airmen
Sierra Six Mysterious Book Report No. 476 by John Dwaine McKenna Best-selling author, and a favorite of ours, Mark Greaney, has hit it out of the park with his newest “Gray Man” novel. Number eleven in the series, it’s a blockbuster in which the high octane action starts immediately and never stops. Sierra Six, (Berkley Press, $28.00, 528 pages, ISBN 978-0-593-098999-8), features Court Gentry, the aforementioned Gray Man—who’s a
City of the Dead Mysterious Book Report No. 475 by John Dwaine McKenna City of the Dead, (Ballantine, $28.99, 336 pages, ISBN 978-0-525-61858-4), by Jonathan Kellerman is his 37th book featuring the duo of LAPD consulting psychologist Alex Delaware and Los Angeles Police Department Detective Milo Sturgis—now a Lieutenant, and an openly gay homicide investigator—whose solve rate is “close to 100 percent.” The novel opens with the body of
The Matchmaker: A Spy In Berlin Mysterious Book Report No. 474 by John Dwaine McKenna The Matchmaker: A Spy in Berlin, (Pegasus Crime, $25.99, 352 pages, ISBN 978-1-643313-865-7), by Paul Vidich, opens in 1989 and life, as she knew it, is about to change forever for an American woman named Anne Simpson. She’s living in West Berlin, speaks several languages, works as a translator at the Joint Allied Refugee
The Yards Mysterious Book Report No. 473 by John Dwaine McKenna Told from three alternating points of view, The Yards, (Mysterious Press, $25.95, 308 pages, ISBN 978-1-61316-235-4), by A.F. Carter, is hard-boiled crime fiction at it’s best. It takes place in the imaginary mid-western city of Baxter, where the last of four meat-packing plants is on the skids and failing. It’s closure will leave the already troubled area where
Find Me Mysterious Book Report No. 472 by John Dwaine McKenna Hope Miller is the name adopted by a young woman who doesn’t know her real identity . . . or where she came from. She was found fifteen years ago, in a wrecked and stolen SUV, unconscious and severely injured. The woman who discovered the accident in a remote area just outside of Hopewell, New Jersey, is Lyndsay