The Thirst by Jo Nesbo

The Thirst: A New Harry Hole Novel by Jo Nesbǿ; translated from the Norwegian by Neil Smith --- 462 pages

The eleventh in Nesbǿ's series of police thrillers featuring his obsessive, alcoholic, self-destructive detective Harry Hole, is another tightly wrought tale of obsession and vengeance.

Harry has a new life now with the woman he loves; a new job as an instructor at the police college, training young police officers; he's climbed out of the wreckage he'd made of his life and found a fragile, precarious happiness. 

But unfortunately, a serial murderer has begun targeting women who use an online dating service called Tinder to meet men. But the killer has more in mind than just murder; he's using his victims to attract attention. And Harry begins to suspect it's his attention the killer is seeking. 

Nesbǿ is one of the best known and most popular writers of Nordic Noir. 

Click HERE to read the review in Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to watch an interview with Nesbǿ on Youtube.

Click HERE to read an interview with Nesbǿ from the UK Independent.

Golden Prey by John Sandford

Golden Prey: A Novel by John Sandford --- 392 pages

John Sandford writes a mean and lean thriller,  and his latest, Golden Prey, combines his signature style with a new job  and new possibilities for his hero, Lucas Davenport.

Davenport has worked a variety of jobs in his law enforcement career, from beat cop to detective, to Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigator, to politically savy troubleshooter for the Minnesota governor. But when Davenport thwarts an assassination attempt on Presidential candidate Michaela Bowden during a campaign stop at the Minnesota State Fair in 2016's Extreme Prey, he's rewarded with a job as a Deputy United States Marshal.

He's a Deputy U.S. Marshal with a special portfolio and clearly future President Bowden has plans for him, but pending her election Davenport can pick and choose what he wants to do.

Book 27 in the series sets Davenport on the track of Garvin Poole. Poole's been out of circulation for a while, holed up with his girl friend and living off the proceeds of his last job in an affluent Dallas suburb. But now he's been recruited by an old friend who's targeted the local operation of a Honduran drug cartel in Biloxi, Mississipi.  Poole and his pal get away with millions of the cartel's profits, leaving behind five dead bodies --- four of the cartel's local operators and a six-year-old gril who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Carelessly, Poole left some DNA at the scene, so now the authorities know he's involved.

Davenport starts with Poole's family in Nashville. Even though Poole left home long ago, it's possible he's maintained some kind of tenuous contact with them. But Davenport is one step behind the drug cartel, who have hired their own enforcers to get back their money and make sure no one else tries to imitate Poole's heist. Once again, Davenport pits himself against antagonists who will stop at nothing.

Click HERE to read the review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from the Twin Cities Pioneer Press.

Click HERE to read the review from the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

The Hanging Tree by Ben Aaronovitch

The Hanging Tree: A Rivers of London Novel by Ben Aaronovitch --- 292 pages

Book Six in the Rivers of London has been a long time coming but is definitely worth the wait. Our hero, London Police Constable Peter Grant (apprentice wizard of the Metropolitan Police's Falcon Squad under the command of Superintendent Nightingale) gets seconded into a drug overdose case in the exclusive Knightsbridge neighborhood of London when it turns out one of the suspects is the daughter of the formidable Lady Ty, Goddess of the Tyburn River.  Peter's interest ticks up when he finds cause to suspect that the Faceless Man, nemesis of all practitioners of the order of Sir Isaac Newton, is involved in the crime. With side forays into Peter's current relationship with Beverley Brook, another of the Rivers family, his new police partner Sahra Guleed, and tantalizing glimpses of his former partner Lesley May (now gone over to the dark side), and Peter's running commentary on police procedure amid the dizzying diversity of modern London. Plus the usual blend of explosions, buildings collapsing, sudden fires, flash floods, riots and weird bollocks that follows Peter wherever he goes. 

If you are not familiar with the series, then go back and start with  Book One. Highly recommended to all fans of snarky British humor, police procedurals, magic, folklore, fantasy, and the history of London neighborhoods.

Click HERE for a review from tor.com.

Click HERE for a review from Speculative Herald.com.

Deadline by John Sandford

Deadline: A Virgil Flowers Novel by John Sandford --- 388 pages

John Sandford latest Virgil Flowers police thriller is a really great fun read. There's plenty of action, lots of earthy Midwestern humor, and Sandford juggles three different plot lines and makes it look easy.

Asked to describe the book, Sandford said: "Sort of a dog-napping, meth-chasing, mutiple murder investigation in which most of the bad guys belong to the school board." He confesses that when he worked as a newspaper reporter himself, the assignment he dreaded the most was covering a school board meeting. Having worked briefly as a reporter myself, I can entirely sympathize with him on that.

Click HERE to read an interview with John Sandford.

Click HERE to read a review of Deadline from the New York Times.

Click HERE to read a review by a reporter who also covers school board meetings.

Field of Prey by John Sandford

Field of Prey: A Novel by John Sandford --- 392 pages

Field of Prey is Sandford's twenty-fourth novel in the Lucas Davenport series of crime novels. I got a definite sense while I was reading this book that Sandford is getting ready to wind down the Lucas Davenport series, and I was interested to find a recent interview in the Huffington Post (click HERE) that seems to confirm my hunch.

It's been a great series, compulsively readable, but Sandford seems ready to move on to new interests. I just hope he continues to write.

In Field of Prey Davenport and his team in the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension are facing one of their biggest challenges when two randy teenagers stumble on evidence indicating that a serial killer has been murdering women for over twenty years and dumping their bodies in an old cistern on an abandoned farm. The Bureau is working with local law enforcement in the rural county where the bodies were found to try to figure out how so many women could have disappeared without anybody noticing.

The killer has been clever; he's left almost no evidence that could be used to identify him other than the assumption that he must have a local connection since only someone familiar with the area could have known about the cistern. But that's not much to go on. The news media is going wild with the story, and the Governor (who has national political ambitions) needs this case solved fast. But Lucas knows this is not the kind of case that is going to be solved fast. And his biggest concern is making sure the killer doesn't add any new victims to his tally before they catch up with him,

Meanwhile the killer is enjoying watching the media feeding frenzy, and looking for his next trophy, when he notices a tall, rangy blonde, Catrin Mattsson, the investigating officer from the County Sheriff's Department, being interviewed on TV.

I read the book in one sitting and wound up staying up until 1 a.m. to finish it. Sandford is one of those authors who just sucks you in and you can't stop until you finish it. Warning: this book is not for the squeamish.

Broekn Homes by Ben Aaronovitch

Broken Homes: A Rivers of London Novel by Ben Aaronvitch --- 324 pages

The fourth book is Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series of urban fantasy/police procedurals is another winner.

London Police Constable Peter Grant and his mentor, Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale, officially constitute the London Metropolitan Police Specialist Crime Unit aka The Folly. Established by Sir Issac Newton himself, the Folly was the home of the Newtonian School of British Wizardry in the service of King and Country for four centuries, until a cataclysmic World War II battle against Nazi magic decimated the ranks. Nightingale, the sole survivor, carried on alone in the belief that magic was dying out of the world anyway.

Until with the new century magic is making a comeback, and there is at least one renegade practitioner of magic --- the "Faceless Man" --- with no allegiance to anyone but himself on the loose in London. And so Nightingale acquires his first apprentice in the person of Peter Grant, a very 21st century kind of police officer with an attitude towards authority and a demonstrable talent for magic.

Peter and Nightingale are working their way through a list of potential suspects when they are called on an otherwise routine traffic accident that leads them to a faceless corpse. In quick succession, a Southwark Council employee throws himself under a train, a breakin at a National Trust property is tied to the heist of a classic text of German magic, and the suspected burglar is discovered roasted from the inside out. And all these events seem to be linked to the proposed demolition of one of the last of the postwar Council high rise housing projects (designed by a mad German architect with possible ulterior motives) in the Elephant and Castle neighborhood of South London.

The cusotmary showdown at the end gets a twist that will shock and surprise series admirers, but it's clear that Broken Homes will not be the last of PC Grant's adventures, and that is reason enough to rejoice. A great new series, irreverent, intelligent, scathingly funny. Aaronovitch stands ready to inherit the crown from Terry Pratchett for comic fantasy at its finest.

Click HERE to check out Ben Aaronovitch's web site.

Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch

Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch --- 288 pages

This is the second volume in Aaronovitch's urban fantasy series, The Rivers of London, featuring London police constable (and wizard in training) Peter Grant and his mentor, Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale, head of the London Metropolitan Police Special Crimes Unit that deals with the strange and inexplicable.

Peter is assigned to investigate the strange and inexplicable death of Cyrus Wilkins, an accountant and part-time drummer, who dropped dead of a heart attack for no apparent reason in the middle of a gig at a Soho jazz club. The first thing Peter notices when he examines the corpse is the music he hears surrounding the body: the great jazz classic, "Body and Soul." That's called vestigia, and it's a big flashing neon alert that Cyrus' death was supernaturally induced.

At about the same time, Peter and Nightingale become aware of strange creatures half-human, half-beast, preying on visitors to the clubs and bars of Soho. With the help of Ash Thames, one of the minor gods of the London Rivers, and a beautiful groupie named Simone who keeps turning up in the vicinity of murdered jazz musicians, Peter and Nightingale begin to close in on a renegade wizard, an "ethically challenged" practioner of the magical arts.    Great fun for fans of urban fantasy and the paranormal.

Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch

Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch --- 298 pages

Peter Grant is a young mixed race constable in modern London. He's disappointed his family by flunking out of the advanced science courses that could have led to a university degree and successful career, because he has a tendancy to be too easily distracted by odd little details at critical moments. Now that same distraction could wind up relegating him to a back office job shuffling paperwork instead of the CID assignment he craves. Then he gets involved in the investigation of a seemingly random murder in Covent Garden, by obtaining a key piece of evidence from an eye witness --- who happens to be a ghost.

When the ghost lead pans out, Peter finds himself seconded to the Met's Specialist Crime Unit under the command of Chief Inspector Peter Nightingale, the Metropolitan's expert on matters seelie and unseelie, and the last practicing Wizard in London, of the school of wizardry established by Sir Isaac Newton. (Yes, that Sir Isaac Newton.) Nightingale undertakes to train Peter's supernatural apptitude as his apprentice in magic and criminal investigation.

It appears that the malevolent spirit of a murdered nineteenth century actor is taking over the minds of ordinary law-abiding citizens and orchestrating a series of violent assaults in the neighborhood of Covent Garden. The rampage culminate in a murderous attack on Nightingale that leaves Peter to cope on his own when the spirit commandeers a performance at the Royal Opera House and sends the performers and patrons out rioting in the streets.

As if he doesn't have enough on his plate, Peter also has to mediate a jurisdictional dispute between Mother and Father Thames before it results in a complete breach of the Queen's Peace. Aaronovitch not only knows his way around British Faerie and the history of magic and the occult, but the day-to-day inner workings of the Metropolitan Police, and just how to play one off against the other for comic effect. He looks like an excellent canddiate to join that very select group of writers who write really funny fantasy.

This is the first book in the Rivers of London series of urban fantasies.  Other books in the series are: Moon Over Soho, Whispers Underground, and Broken Homes (due to be published in the U.S. in February 2014).

A rollicking tale recommended to those who enjoy urban fantasy like Jim Butcher's Dresden Files or Charlaine Harris' True Blood (the books not the TV series), Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Aaronovitch has also written a number of award-winning scripts for BBC programs Dr. Who on television and Blake's Seven on radio. He lives in London.

Check out his web site at www.the-folly.com. 

Robert B. Parker's Damned If You Do by Michael Brandman

Robert B. Parker's Damned If You Do: A Jesse Stone Novel by Michael Brandman --- 271 pages

First of all I have to say that it's only because of the wide margins and line spacing that this novel runs to 271 pages. If it was typeset properly we'd be talking about a 100 page novella here.

I loved Robert Parker's novels, particularly the Jesse Stone and the Sunny Randall series. Unfortunately, since his death, Parker's heirs and his publishers seem determined to milk his reputation for all it's worth, as they have published additional titles in several of his series written by other authors. I can't comment on the Spenser novels by Ace Atkins but I can say that this is the third Jesse Stone novel by Michael Brandman (he collaborated with Parker on various film screenplays and the scripts for the Jesse Stone made-for-television films starring Tom Selleck).

This could be made to work, but unfortunately with each successive iteration Parker's original work has been watered down to a pale and predictable imitation going through the motions. Sometimes good things should be allowed to come to an end.

Creole Belle by James Lee Burke

Creole Belle: A Dave Robicheaux Novel by James Lee Burke --- 528 pages

Another sprawling evocation of the tangled heritage of southern Louisiana by the best-selling and award-winning author. Dave Robicheaux and his best friend and former partner Clete Purcel are drawn into another violent confrontation with the corruption that is poisoning both the environment and the remnants of the free spirited Cajun culture of New Orleans and Iberia Parish.

Dave and Clete are getting older, tired and pessimistic about their chances of ever putting right the many wrongs in their past. Both are carrying damage from their wartime experiences in Vietnam and self-destructive urges that have played havoc with their lives and personal relationships ever since. Now Dave finds himself obsessed with the fate of a young woman with her own troubled past who has gone missing, while Clete confronts his guilt and fear over an illegitimate daughter whose horrific childhood has turned her into a hired killer.