Book Reviews: Dark Spies by Matthew Dunn; and Dog Beach by John Fusco

Brief reviews of two excellent thrillers:

Dark Spies (Spycatcher #4) by Matthew Dunn
To be published October 7, 2014; William Morrow

I've enjoyed all Dunn's Spycatcher thrillers. The action is superb though a bit violent in parts but the plot is excellent. 

Intelligence operative Will Cochrane is hunted by his former bosses, the CIA, for having disobeyed orders on a mission, even though he did so to save the life of another CIA operative under fire.  There is more going on, however, and Will is determined to find out what, as he risks his life to get back incognito to Washington D.C. and the mysterious Project Ferryman files. 

I rated this 4.5 stars on goodreads
I received a review ARC/galley from the publisher. 

Dog Beach by John Fusco
Published September 9th 2014 by Touchstone
Genre: action, thriller

Story of an aging Hong Kong stuntman being chased by the Chinese triads in California reminds me of Jackie Chan, who could play the part if this were a film. This thriller set in Malibu is written by a screenwriter who has written the sequel to "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."

I rated this 4 stars on goodreads. 
I received a review ARC/galley  from the publisher.

The Stone Wife by Peter Lovesey

 First Chapter, First Paragraph is hosted by Bibliophile By the Sea. 

The Stone Wife

The Stone Wife (Peter Diamond #14) by Peter Lovesey
To be published September 16, 2014; Soho Crime
Genre: crime fiction, police procedural

First chapter, first paragraph:"Will somebody start me at five hundred?"
A card with a number was raised near the front.
Thank you. Five-fifty. Six hundred. Six-fifty. Seven. Seven-fifty at the back. Eight."
The bidding was keen by West Country standards. Morton's auction house in Bath was used to lots being knocked down almost at once. This had a sense of energy even though the faces were giving nothing away. (from an advance uncopyedited edition; final copy may differ)

Book description: At a Bath auction house, a large slab of carved stone is up for sale, but  three masked robbers shoot and kill the highest bidder, a professor who has recognized the female figure carved in the stone as Chaucer’s Wife of Bath. The masked would-be thieves flee, leaving the stone behind.  Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond and his team are assigned to investigate, and the stone is moved into Diamond’s office so he can research its origins. The carving causes such difficulties that he starts to think it has jinxed him. (publisher)

Based on the opening paragraph and the book description, would you keep reading? 

Book Review: Nightmares Can Be Murder

Title: Nightmares Can Be Murder: A Dream Club Mystery by Mary Kennedy
Published September 2, 2014; Berkley
Genre: mystery, cozy

"Fire is an important element in dream work," Ali said. "It's open to interpretation, but it can mean passion, love, or danger." (ch. 10)

 Publisher description: 
Business consultant Taylor Blake has returned to Savannah, Georgia, to help her sister Allison turn her dream of running an old-fashioned candy store into a reality. Allison is also interested in dream interpretation and invites Taylor to her Friday night Dream Club, where members meet once a week to share and analyze their dreams.

When a local dance instructor, Chico Hernandez, is found dead in his studio, and the murder scene has an eerie resemblance to one of the dreams shared at their meeting, Taylor can’t help but be intrigued. And when her sister, who was briefly involved with the dance teacher, becomes the prime suspect, Taylor and their fellow club members can’t be caught napping. It’s up to them to dream up a solution to the murder before Allison faces a real-life nightmare.

My comments: I was interested to read about some of the possible meanings of dreams, such as being lost or dreaming of significant persons. I thought it was clever to combine dream analysis and meaning with a cozy mystery, having a "dream team" of ladies discuss the details of a murder case and give their interpretation as well as reveal what their own dreams may tell about the case.

This is a new mystery series featuring the Dream Club of ladies in Savannah, Georgia. It comes with a brief dream symbol guide. You can't go wrong reading this cozy!

Thanks to the publisher for a review copy of this book for their book tour.

Dog Beach by John Fusco: First Chapter

 First Chapter, First Paragraph is hosted by Bibliophile By the Sea. 

Dog Beach

Prologue 

He is running, eight stories up on a rusted crossbeam, when he feels it, that thing entering his bloodstream, the rush he secretly calls the Creature. The timer on the explosives - 280 pounds of M112 demolition charges - is beeping down the count.....(continues)

Chapter 1: Palm Springs, Magic Hour 

 Louie Mo sat in the passenger seat, peering through tinted aviators at the big hotel. The car, a beat-up Chevy Impala, smelled of cigarettes, aftershave, and a Supreme Croissant. 

"Shit, this mother's hot," Dutch caid, clawing the Styrofoam cup. "If I spilled it on me, I could sue Jack in the Box for ten mill."  

Louie glanced at her, the girl he usually just called Driver, but his mind was still fixed on the Marriott. "Too many people sue," he said in his broken English. 

I used the opening of the Prologue and the First Chapter to give you a better sense of the novel and where it might be going. I like that it's set in Palm Springs, Ca., a place I'd love to be, when it's not too hot.

Publisher's book description: Leaving a successful career as a stunt double in Hong Kong to escape the Chinese mafia, Louie Mo makes his living in Los Angeles as a hired knee-breaker. When Troy, an aspiring director, agrees to direct a film for producer Avi Ghazaryan, Avi's sketchy investors hire Louie to scare Troy into finishing their movie. Troy recognizes Louie Mo as the stunt man he once was, though older and with more aches and pains, and begs Louie to take the lead role in a movie. 

For Louie Mo, this chance at redemption might be his last. As his past catches up with him, he teams up with Troy to avoid the bad guys and pull off an impossible film of epic proportions. A fast-paced thrill ride, equal parts dark satire and action novel.

 Based on the opening paragraphs and the book description, would you read on?

Sunday Salon: Fall Books

Welcome to the Sunday Salon where bloggers share their reading each week.Visit The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer; Also visit It's Monday: What Are You Reading hosted by Book Journey and Stacking the Shelves at Tynga's Reviews.

Very hot this weekend after signs recently that fall was near. The flowers and plants are as confused as we are, it seems.

Our garden has been a joy, however. We planted lots of colorful zinnias, asters, marigolds, hollyhocks and cone flowers and the butterflies, hummingbirds, bumble bees, and the occasional golden finch just love it. We also harvested a few giant zucchini, a few dozen hot Caribbean peppers, and some herbs from the vegetable garden.

My reading list has expanded to include these new and soon to be released books:

Crooked River

Death at Chinatown

The Language of Silence

Click on the covers or the blue titles under the pictures for book descriptions. 

Heroes Are My Weakness

Dark Spies (Spycatcher #4)

What are you reading this fall?

Book Review: Remains of Innocence by J.A. Jance

Remains of Innocence

Title: Remains of Innocence (Joanna Brady #16) by J. A. Jance
Published July 22, 2014; William Morrow
Genre: mystery, suspense

Lisa Matchett hasn't seen her penny pinching mother, a hoarder in the worst possible way, in about eleven years. When Selma is taken to hospice, Lisa cleans out the house and discovers her mother's secret.

But others begin to kill for this secret, and Lisa rides with truckers to hide her trail to her brother in Arizona.
Her story later links up with Sheriff Joanna Brady in Arizona who is solving the mystery of Junior, a man found dead at the bottom of a deep cave with the bodies of  pets around him. Was Junior a torturer of animals, and did someone push him to his death?

I loved the two different stories - a suspenseful trip with Lisa fleeing the bad guys, and the mystery of Junior and the dead and injured pets. The separate events come together well and in an unusual way. The plot of this novel is fantastic and as a mystery lover, I really enjoyed the action and the suspense, the detailed investigation techniques that Sheriff Brady and her team follow.... until, that is, I got to the very end.

The ending made me want to have an existential and theological discussion with the author Jance about evil and the nature of evil. The motive she gives for one of the murders was incomplete and that spoiled the book for me. Rating? Five stars for the suspense, two stars for the unsettling and, in my view, unresolved ending to one of the murders.

Synopsis: Sheriff Joanna Brady must solve two perplexing cases that may be tied together. J. A. Jance’s tale of suspense brings to life Arizona’s Cochise County and the desert Southwest's beauty and mystery. An old woman, a hoarder, is dying of emphysema in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. In cleaning out her house, her daughter, Liza Machett, discovers that her mother was hiding a secret. Liza flees dangerous pursuers on a journey that will end in Cochise County, where Sheriff Joanna Brady is embroiled in a personal mystery of her own. A man she considers a family friend is found dead at the bottom of a hole in a limestone cavern near Bisbee.  Are the two disparate cases connected? It’s up to Joanna to find out. (publisher)

About the author: J. A. Jance is bestselling author of the J. P. Beaumont mystery series, the Joanna Brady series, three interrelated thrillers featuring the Walker family, and Edge of Evil. Jance lives with her husband in Seattle, Washington, and Tucson, Arizona.

Thanks to Partners in Crime Book Tours and the publisher for a review ARC of this book. Visit the tour schedule for other reviews.

Library Find: Above the East China Sea: A Novel by Sarah Bird

Above the East China Sea

My latest library find, an historical novel with some magical realism, is set in Japan in the present and right after the war.

Above the East China Sea by Sarah Bird
Published May 27, 2014; Knopf
Genre: historical fiction

Book description: The story of two teenaged girls, an American and an Okinawan, whose lives connect across seventy years by the experience of profound loss, the strength of culture, and the power of family love. 

Luz James, a contemporary U.S. Air Force brat, lives with her sergeant mother at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa. Luz’s older sister has just been killed in the Afghan war. Unmoored by her sister’s death, the desolate girl contemplates taking her own life. In 1945, Tamiko Kokuba is plucked out of her elite girls’ high school and trained to work in the Imperial Army’s horrific cave hospitals. Tamiko finds herself squeezed between the occupying Japanese and the invading Americans. Like Luz, she aches to be reunited with her beloved sister. On an island where the spirits of the dead are part of life and your entire clan waits for you in the afterworld, suicide offers Tamiko the promise of peace. 

Luz tracks down the story of her own Okinawan grandmother and discovers that, if she  allows herself to connect completely, the ancestral spirits will save not only Tamiko but her as well.  

 Above the East China Sea shows how war shapes the lives of conquerors as well as the conquered and is a moving account of family, friendship, and love that transcends time. (publisher)

I'm interested in the magical realism incorporated into the historical fiction of two girls years apart, who somehow manage to connect.  The author, now a columnist and writer, grew up on air force bases around the world.