Dead on Arrival

       


Review of Dead on Arrival by Lori Avocato


Overview from www.barnesandnoble.com: Romance – and murder – is in the air!

Medical insurance fraud investigator Pauline Sokol likes to keep her feet firmly placed on the ground, but her new undercover assignment has the aero-phobic ex-nurse flying high and her stomach lurching! Compelled by her convictions of right and wrong, she takes off in order to ground a land-and-air ambulance company that’s been doing some rather creative billing, and needs to crash and burn before they soak the insurance company for more.

Pauline’s insides do a real loop-de-loop when the company’s owner is found dead, and Pauline starts to receive threatening phone calls. Suddenly the air feels safer than the ground! If Pauline (and handsome, irritating, fellow investigator Jagger) doesn’t solve this case soon, even a jolt of electricity from the sexy helo-pilot-paramedic ER Dano won’t be enough to revive her. 

My Review:

Part Chick-Lit, part Mystery, Dead on Arrival is funny, romp through one of the cases of Emergency Services worker and Insurance Fraud Investigator, Pauline Sokol. As an RN, her expertise is apparently in demand in the fraud investigation business and this time she’ll be working as an RN for an ambulance company along with her partner-in-crime/mentor, Jagger, in an effort to uncover who is committing fraud with a side of murder.

This one reminded me of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plumb series in that we have an amateur female detective trying to solve a case without the assistance of the police and it is funny but, for the most part, that is where the similarities end (except for the two, make that three, hot guys that she is trying for and the humorous tone).

Our protagonist, Pauline Sokol (not sure what nationality that name is), is desperate to prove to Jagger that she is improving her detecting skills and that she can handle this case by herself but she can’t seem to get totally out from underneath his shadow and expectations. We hear her thoughts as she relates how proud she is that she thought of this or that on her own so I can only assume that in previously novels she had to be told what to do.

Currently being in the medical field myself, I found the details somewhat interesting though I don’t think anyone who is not in the field would find it too boring. I never thought too much about the billing side of things before though and Pauline’s justification to her family that her investigations are important because insurance fraud raises the rates for everyone else made sense. And then you add in a murder and things get a whole lot more dangerous, and interesting.

Meanwhile Pauline’s wisecracks and weak hormones kept me laughing along with the strange cases she encounters in the ambulance rides with “Buzz Lightyear” and “ER Dano.” But when Pauline begins falling for ER Dano even though she has him on her short list of potential suspects will she be able to do the right thing and keep her personal feelings out of the case?

This case as told through Pauline’s eyes was both interesting and entertaining too. I loved some of the other characters as well, especially Pauline’s mom, Stella.

The only downside to this story is some of the profanity was a bit much at times for me and there were some typos. Plus, we are told two times about the time before the story took place when Pauline went out of town and her mother replaced all her underwear with thongs. It was funny the first time, the second time was overkill. Still, a good, lighthearted read.


Contains: profanity (including a couple of f bombs), sexuality, and psycho patients

 

The Puppet Queen

       


Review of The Puppet Queen by Mira Zamin


Overview from www.barnesandnoble.com: After Selene's homeland falls to the Pari curse, she is forced to must contest for the throne by her insidious fiancé. When rivalries threaten to plunge the country into civil war, Selene must fight through magic and malice—her family's fate hangs in the balance.

The Puppet Queen is a young adult fantasy retelling of Sleeping Beauty infused with the folklore of the Middle East.

My Review:

The story this week is a retelling of the classic Sleeping Beauty tale but from the point of view of Sleeping Beauty’s sister, her twin sister. Selene, our main character, is the mischievous twin of the future sleeping beauty. She is constantly venturing outside when she’s not supposed to and getting into trouble.

One day she convinces her sister Auralia to go out with her. That’s when things start to get crazy. Some men from the palace follow them and summarily escort Auralia back to the palace. When she arrives back Selene wonders why her parents, the Emir and Emira of Aquia, never cared when she left the palace on her own but are obviously worried about her sister venturing out.

It is then that she is told the story about the Pari curse that was placed on her family. The night she (and her sister) were born lightning struck their sacred tree and the blame was placed on Selene since it happened at the exact moment that she came out of her mother’s womb. A Pari queen came to her parents but since Selene was somewhere else at the moment, she saw only the one child and assumed that this was the one responsible for the damage to their tree.

Her father tried to reason with the Pari queen but to no avail and Auralia was cursed to hurt her finger on a spindle which would usher in death for everyone in Aquia. The curse was later adjusted by the djinn so that they would only sleep and then only until Auralia’s true love released them with a kiss.

Of course the plot goes on but I will leave the rest for you to read. And it is really a great story worth reading. I loved the character of Selene and how she grows in the novel. Even when her mother is asleep Selene uses her words, and those of other family members to guide her in her quest to remove the curse and rule Aquia.

First, she must fight against an abusive husband and learn to rule in her own right. Later she goes up against his cronies as well as the other Emirs and Emiras in Ghalain with only the help of a few trusted friends as well as the djinn who have helped her family before. She will soon find a way to break the curse, find her sister’s true love and become the woman she was destined to be.

If there is any downside to the story, it would be the lack of editing. Several times I was jarred out of the story by typos and other errors that could have been prevented by the author hiring a good editor. However, it was not enough to make me stop reading. So as long as you’re not too bad of a stickler for these kinds of things and you like Fantasy, you should enjoy the story.

Contains: mild language, violence

Cry Wolf

Review of Cry Wolf by J. Carson Black


Overview from www.barnesandnoble.com: Laura Cardinal: Packs a SIG Sauer P226 9mm. Investigates homicides in small towns that have limited resources. Brings justice to murder victims--and to their killers. Laura’s job description: Criminal Investigator with the Arizona Department of Public Safety. But maybe it should just say “Troubleshooter”.

Tell me no lies.

Laura and her aspiring-film-director partner, Anthony, catch a homicide case where nothing is as it appears. When pathological liar Sean Perrin is found dead in his car at a trailhead in scenic Madera Canyon, he leaves behind a skein of lies and half-truths that are impossible to untangle. From violent death in a sordid motel room to a high-end prostitution ring in Las Vegas, Laura and Anthony follow Sean’s trail across a landscape of broken dreams and convincing lies—until they confront the true evil behind the mask.

My Review:

This week’s review comes to us courtesy of a Nook book that I bought for .99 cents which features twelve mystery/thriller novels. The first one was Don’t Know Jack which I reviewed a few weeks ago. I enjoyed Cry Wolf by J. Carson Black much more.

It was also one of a series, though strangely, the last one instead of the first one. It seems like most of the cheap or free books on the Barnes & Noble website nearly always feature the first book in the series.

Our protagonist on this one is one Laura Cardinal, homicide detective for some police department near Tucson. Her blissful Saturday with her man is interrupted by the call to duty when Las Vegas resident Sean Perrin gets himself murder in nearby Madera Canyon.

She and her partner, Anthony, a screenwriter in training, must now unravel the mess of lies that Mr. Perrin has told about himself. For example, was he really a Navy Seal? Did he really have a model for a wife? Well, you get the idea.

It turns out that at least some of Mr. Perrin’s stories were true but which one got him killed? While searching for the answer which seems always just out of reach for Laura, she has to contend with the occasional appearances by her former, deceased, mentor, Frank. He points her in the right direction but he can’t solve the case for her.

This story seemed short to me but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. I appreciate how the author wisely didn’t load it down with a bunch of crap just to make it longer. The ending was different from what I expected but not unlikely, as were the characters.

I recommend it as a great read for summer, light and entertaining. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to enjoy this one.

Contains: some language and sexuality

The Dressmaker

       


Review of The Dressmaker by Kate Alcott


Overview from www.barnesandnoble.com:  Tess, an aspiring seamstress, thinks she’s had an incredibly lucky break when she is hired by famous designer Lady Lucile Duff Gordon to be her personal maid on the Titanic. Once on board, Tess catches the eye of two men—a kind sailor and an enigmatic Chicago businessman—who offer differing views of what lies ahead for her in America. But on the fourth night, disaster strikes, and amidst the chaos, Tess is one of the last people allowed on a lifeboat.

The survivors are rescued and taken to New York, but when rumors begin to circulate about the choices they made, Tess is forced to confront a serious question.  Did Lady Duff Gordon save herself at the expense of others? Torn between loyalty to Lucile and her growing suspicion that the media’s charges might be true, Tess must decide whether to stay quiet and keep her fiery mentor’s good will or face what might be true and forever change her future.

My Review:

“Not another Titanic story,” was my first thought when I began to read this one. To me, the Titanic is only slightly behind the Holocaust as the most overdone topic among authors who write Historical Fiction.

The question is: How can the author do justice to yet another story about these horrible tragedies without seeming repetitious or trite? The answer in my opinion is that it is very difficult to do this and was the reason for my hesitation in reading this book. In fact, if I hadn’t paid for this one, I might not have continued.

Our main character is Tess Collins, a headstrong girl who, thanks to her mother’s encouragement, is determined to succeed in the world and rise above her “station” to something great with her life.

At the novel’s start, Tess makes a rather impulsive decision to leave her job as a mostly maid but part-time seamstress in some stuffy upper class English household to take a job on the Titanic. Unfortunately when she arrives at the docks, she finds out that all the positions have already been filled but knowing that she can’t go back to her old job (and doesn’t want to), she starts begging the families of passengers to take her on board with them as a nanny. Not surprisingly most of them want nothing to do with the haggard and desperate young women that they see in front of them.

But then fate intervenes when she spots the famous designer Lucille Duff Gordon saying goodbye to her sister and preparing to board the ship with her husband. Having admired her for years, Tess, of course, listens to her conversation where she laments the fact that the maid that was to accompany her on this trip has backed out at the last minute.

Tess immediately volunteers herself even though it means she is putting herself back into the servant business that she was trying to get herself out of. Hoping it will lead to a position as a worker in Lucille’s office stateside, she has no qualms about accepting; even when she finds out she will have to call Lucille “Madame.” But Madame’s temper and the sinking of the ship are only the beginning of her problems.

The verdict for me was that I liked it but I didn’t love it. What kept me from loving it was the love triangle situation. I am getting rather tired of those situations in stories and in this one in particular I really didn’t see why Tess had to choose at all. She was young and determined in the beginning and then it all seems to fall by the wayside when she meets these two guys.

Also, I didn’t really like the ending. It gives only a hint of what is to come. I like that it is not sappy at least but somehow I still felt it needed more. It seemed to be rather abrupt.

Positives were some of the characters. I liked Tess, though I liked her more in beginning. I also really liked the Pinky character who was one of the few female reporters of that day, working for the New York Times. She seemed exactly like the type of woman who had the guts to do what few women of her day would do and yet we see the heart beneath the persona as well even if we don’t always like her tactics. I think she was my favorite character in the whole book.

Contains: some language and violence

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

       


Review of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain


Overview from www.barnesandnoble.com: Perhaps the best-loved nineteenth-century American novel, Mark Twain’s tale of boyhood adventure overflows with comedy, warmth, and slapstick energy. It brings to life and array of irresistible characters—the awesomely self-confident Tom, his best buddy Huck Finn, indulgent Aunt Polly, and the lovely, beguiling Becky—as well as such unforgettable incidents as whitewashing a fence, swearing an oath in blood, and getting lost in a dark and labyrinthine cave. Below Tom Sawyer’s sunny surface lurk hints of a darker reality, of youthful innocence and naïveté confronting the cruelty, hypocrisy, and foolishness of the adult world—a theme that would become more pronounced in Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Despite such suggestions, Tom Sawyer remains Twain’s joyful ode to the endless possibilities of childhood.

My Review:

I decided this week it was time to return to a classic and one that I’d actually read before. It has been a while since I have read it however. I thought that I probably wouldn’t remember a thing. When I sat down to read it the only memory that came to mind was the episode of whitewashing the fence but as I read on I was amazed at the things that came back to me. The segment where Tom and Becky are trapped in the cave, for example.

On the other hand there were characters that I had forgotten about entirely such as Sid, Tom’s “half-brother.” I didn’t remember Tom having a half-brother let alone anyone named Sid. Of course he doesn’t play a huge role in the story but he is in there quite a bit.

The story itself is told in a more episodic way that reveals his character. He is a young boy, growing up in the South, who likes to have adventures and doesn’t mind getting into trouble to do it. Yet he also has a conscience.

Along the way Tom discovers “great law(s) about human action,” such as, “in order to make a man or boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.” (p. 18) And towards the end, his journey brings him to the brink of adulthood as Twain tells us he must end the tale hear least it become the tale of a man instead of that of a boy.

Other than forgotten characters, this pass through The Adventures of Tom Sawyer also brought to light the vast amount of superstitions that Tom and his friends placed great stock in. Some of them seemed downright silly but at the same time interesting. Although Twain tells at times that some of them are just childish beliefs, I couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps the South wasn’t more superstitious than I had previously guessed, especially in the past. Anyone from the South have any thoughts on this? Just wondering.

I do recommend this one but I wonder how many people will need my recommendation since most have probably already read it. For whatever its worth though, here it is.

Don't Know Jack

       


Review of Don't Know Jack by Diane Capri


Overview from www.barnesandnoble.com: It’s been a while since we first met Lee Child’s Jack Reacher in Killing Floor. Fifteen years and sixteen novels later, Reacher still lives off the grid, until trouble finds him, and then he does whatever it takes, much to the delight of readers and the dismay of villains. Now someone big is looking for him. Who? And why? Hunting Jack Reacher is a dangerous business, as FBI Special Agents Kim Otto and Carlos Gaspar are about to find out. Otto and Gaspar are by-the-book hunters who know when to break the rules; Reacher is a stone cold killer. Reacher is a wanted man, but is he their friend or their enemy? Only the secrets hidden in Margrave, Georgia will tell them.

My Review:

Don’t know Jack had me confused. I’d never read any of the Jack Reacher novels ever. I only heard of him through the recent movie that came out with Tom Cruise which I have not seen. After reading this one, I really didn’t want to see the movie either and not just because I am not a big Tom Cruise fan.


I thought, mistakenly as it turns out, that this was the first Reacher novel. According to the Barnes & Noble reviews that I read, that is not the case. No wonder I was disappointed. Guess I should have read them first.


The main characters, Kim Otto and Carlos Gaspar, are FBI agents who have been given the assignment to find Reacher. Their mysterious, and unnamed, boss says that is what he wants. Unfortunately, a local murder in the small town where they are sent gets in the way of all that. Or does it? Could Reacher be the culprit or is his connection with the town of Margrave, Georgia merely a coincidence?

But, spoiler alert here, they never find him. Sorry for that. I don’t usually like to give spoilers in my review but in my mind this was a major downfall of the story for me since I have not read any of the other Reacher novels. The story would probably have been more interesting to me if I had but I didn’t know that going into it.

As you might be able to guess from this, I am not a big reader of thrillers and I don’t believe that I have ever read a Lee Child story before so I guess this snafu was partly caused by my ignorance. Still it would have been nice to have some kind of forward or something that told me that I probably should read Mr. Child’s Reacher series before this one.

It turns out there is something in the parenthesis that says that it is written for Mr. Child and John Grisham fans but it is not exactly the same thing.

Anyway, that problem aside, the story is entertaining. There is something of mystery involved. The main characters are so engaging that we want to know if they will find out who killed a local Margrave cop and why. Was Reacher involved? I won’t spoil that part of the story for you in case you still want to read it but just know going in that it might help to have read at least some of the Reacher stories, or maybe even all of them, I am guessing.


The other plus for me was that although there is some foul language, it is not excessive, not like many other thrillers I have read. There are however some references to the sex trade.


Anyone out there with a different opinion? Any Reacher fans in particular? Let me know what you think.

The Book Thief

 


Review of The Book Thief by Markus Zusak


Overview from www.goodreads.com: It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still.

Liesel Meminger is a foster girl living outside of Munich, who scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement.

In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak, author of I Am the Messenger, has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.

My Review:

I think it would be something of an understatement to say that The Book Thief is a book like no other. Yes, it covers the Holocaust to some extent and life in Nazi Germany but that life is portrayed from the point of view of the underbelly of that society.

We begin with a small girl who essentially becomes an orphan and loses her only sibling on the way to live at a new home. This is where our narrator starts to insert himself in the story. He sees the book thief when he comes for her brother and is captivated by her but not, I think, in a romantic way. As we soon discover our narrator is Death himself, aka The Grim Reaper.

As the years pass, he follows Liesel’s (the book thief) life in between soul collection and later is able to fill in the gaps of her story by reading some of the things she has written.

But when we begin, Liesel is mostly illiterate. She comes to the Hubermanns by car from the train station. Her first car ride ever and she stubbornly refuses to get out. Finally Hans Hubermann, her new foster father coxes her out. This would signal the life-long attachment that would later grow between them while getting close to the wife, Rosa, would be a bit more challenging.

Life would be hard but they would grow to love one another. Liesel would learn to read so that she could read her first stolen book. A tome called “The Gravedigger’s Handbook” that she had taken during her brother’s funeral for a memento; all that she had left of him.

As time goes on the story gets more complicated as we add more characters. There is a small blond boy who wants to be Jesse Owens. The mayor’s wife who provides the book thief with more books to steal. Then there is the man who arrives in the middle of the night putting all their lives at risk.

As the tide begins to turn for Nazi Germany, life at the Hubermann house gets even more and more difficult. Before the changes the book thief’s new family was more likely to die of malnutrition than bombs dropping. Now the man who was living in the basement will have to leave and fend for himself while Liesel and her family wonder how many air raids they can survive. When Death finds her, what will he say to Liesel and her to him? Can she even hope to survive?

The movie based on this book is now on video and I am anxious to finally see it now that I have finished the book. I wonder if they have changed any major plot points. I hope not. Perhaps I will post a review of it later, though I might have to reveal some spoilers in my comparison. In the meantime, I hope you will buy or check this book out at the library. Happy reading.

Contains: language, violence, and book burning