Mr. Mercedes

 

By Stephen King

Bill Hodges is a retired police detective. But he can't forget about the biggest crime he was unable to solve. A person drove a Mercedes Benz into a crowd of people gathered at a job fair, killing several. The police found the car and its owner but the woman who owned the car was not the person who committed the crime. She was pretty much hounded by the police and eventually killed herself. 

Then Bill gets a letter in the mail from someone claiming to be the killer. Instead of turning the matter over to the police, Bill starts an online correspondence with this person, hoping it will lead him to the one who got away.

This was an OK read. I sort of felt a bit sorry for the killer who had not had a happy life. Just a young person, but a lot of misfortune has left them twisted inside, full of anger at the world. 

There were parts of the story I didn't care for like the gruesome scene where the killer's mom accidentally ingests poison meant for someone else. And the death of Bill's new found love interest. That seemed unnecessarily cruel to me. 

I also felt the story was way too long. Over four hundred pages is too long. I swear writers these days all have word diarrhea. Or else editors have given up trying to rein in authors, especially successful authors like King.

For another opinion, check out this review by Publishers Weekly.

One to Watch

 

By Kate Stayman-London

Bea is a plus-size fashion blogger who enjoys watching a reality show, Main Squeeze, where a person looking for love is given a line-up of attractive possible matches from which to choose. But one evening Bea is rather struck by how similar all the candidates are, slim, attractive and hard to distinguish from one another. So she writes a blog about it causing a backlash against the show and a serious drop in its ratings. 

The show undergoes a change of management and the new producer comes to Bea and proposes she should be the next candidate looking for love. Bea only agrees if they provide a range of men who are more representative of average folks, not the perfect paragons the show usually features. They promise and Bea goes into seclusion as the show starts filming, which is the usual procedure for those kind of game/reality shows. 

But filming the first show, where Bea is introduced to the group of young men she is supposed to date and get to know over several weeks, she is displeased to see that all the men are the typical gorgeous hunks that Main Squeeze is known for, except for one pudgy fellow. The men were not told that they would be wooing a plus-size woman and the show producer failed to tell Bea that the men wouldn't know she wasn't the typical model-thin female the men would be expecting. But all of the men stay, except one man who quits in disgust. It later turns out that he instructed to do so by the producer, for the shock value and for ratings.

Bea suffers through it all, going on group dates where she overhears some of the men laughing at the idea of them dating a fat woman. Eventually, though, the candidates are whittled down to five men who seem really fond of and interested in having a relationship with Bea. What no one knows though is that Bea is still madly in love with a man she has known and loved for a very long time, a man who bedded her once then left her to marry someone else. How can Bea find a new love when she can't stop thinking about the old love?

This was an OK read. It's in the modern style where the story includes website chats, blog excerpts, podcasts and emails inserted into it. This is something I've encountered in the past and I've decided I don't much care for it. It adds very little to the flow of the story, I think. And I also found Bea's final choice to be kind of a jerk and a cold fish. 

Here is a review by Publishers Weekly.

Skeleton Man

 

By Tony Hillerman

Back in the 1950s, two airplanes collided over the Grand Canyon of Arizona. Over a hundred people died in the crash and debris and human remains cascaded over the northern stretch of the Grand Canyon near the confluence of the Colorado River and the Little Colorado River. This story is based on that real disaster.

So in the story, a man aboard the plane had a briefcase full of cut diamonds handcuffed to his wrist. His remains were never found, but tales of a detached arm with a handcuffed case attached circulated throughout the local area. The man had a fiancée and one of the diamonds had been cut to his specifications and he intended to give it to his fiancée for an engagement ring. His fiancée was pregnant and they were looking forward to a happy life together. However, his wealthy parents were opposed to the marriage and when the baby was born after his death, his family refused to acknowledge the baby and cut her out of his will.

Fifty years later, the daughter has come to the Grand Canyon area, determined to locate either the diamonds or her father's arm & its attached case. Because tales of diamonds have reached her ears, raising her hopes that she can finally prove she is her father's legitimate heir and exact her revenge on the people who treated her mother so meanly.

Cowboy Dashee's relative tried to pawn a large diamond for $20.00 that the police believe he got in a robbery of a trading post.  Cowboy's relative, Billy Tuve, has a story of having been given the diamond by an old man down in the canyon in exchange for an army surplus trenching tool. In order to clear his name, Cowboy wants Tuve to take himself and also officer Jim Chee down into the canyon where he encountered the old man. Billy doesn't want to because it is a sacred site for his people but he finally agrees and the three of them are joined by Chee's fiancée, Bernadette.

But the dead man's daughter is also on the rim of the Grand Canyon. She had hoped to get Tuve to guide her into the canyon but she ran afoul of the man hired to stop her from reaching her goal. So now five people are all in the canyon looking for the old man, the diamonds, the briefcase and the arm, but without Tuve, who managed to slip away and disappear.

This was an OK story. Not a lot of action for most of the story, but it picks up quite a bit in the last third, with the two groups of people in the canyon hunting for the same treasure. At the end, Chee and Bernie get married and go to live in his shabby old trailer down by the river. Hillerman giving Jim Chee a long delayed happy ending.

Here is a review by Publishers Weekly.

The Grand Sophy

 

By Georgette Heyer

Charles Rivenhall inherited a large fortune when his great uncle died.  Which was fortunate for his parents because his father, Lord Ombersley was a gambler and a spendthrift and his careless ways had put the family into serious debt. Charles took over the family finances from his father and pretty much became the boss of them all, including his mother, his father and his several siblings. 

Charles is engaged to a worthy but rather cold and very proper woman, Eugenia. Their wedding had been delayed due to a death in Eugenia's family. 

Lady Ombersley's brother arrives unexpectedly at the Rivenhall home in London. He has been in France and now he has to travel to Brazil and he wants his daughter, Sophy, to stay with his sister while he is gone. He describes Sophy as a dear little soul who won't cause any trouble. He also wants his sister to find an eligible suitor for Sophy as he feels it is time for her to be married. 

Turns out Sophy is not quite the demure little miss her father seems to see her as. She is twenty years old and has been without a female companion ever since her governess died a few years ago. And at five foot nine, she is also not a little miss. She has a strong character and is a bit of a force of nature, sweeping all before her. She loves managing things and people and when she gets a good look at the Rivenhall family, she moves to set everything she sees as wrong to right, willy nilly. Good luck to anyone who gets in her way! 

This is probably one of Heyer's most funny and enjoyable stories. I must admit that I don't think I would like Sophy in real life, as she seems a bit mental. I mean, at one point she shoots a friend in order to further her plans for the Rivenhall daughter, Cecelia, who has fallen in love with the wrong man. Sophy certainly is one of Heyer's most unforgettable characters, that is for sure. I wonder if Heyer ever knew anyone like that in real life.

Here is a review by Laurel Ann Nattress on Austenprose.

The Empty Chair

 

By Jeffery Deaver

Book 3 in the Lincoln Rhymes series.

Lincoln, who is quadraplegic, is in North Carolina for a surgical procedure he hopes will restore some of his lost function to his hands. But the local sheriff comes asking his help to find a murderer and the two young women he grabbed. 

Mary Beth McConnell is a college student studying archaeology and doing a little digging down by the river when she was taken by Garrett Hanlon, a sixteen-year-old kid with a reputation as a peeping tom and he is known for having an obsessive interest in insects. In the process of grabbing Mary Beth, Garrett killed Billy Stail, local high school boy, and is also being blamed for the death of a deputy who was injured investigating the murder site. Shortly after taking Mary Beth, Garrett grabbed another, young woman, Lydia Johansson, who had stopped by the murder site to place a sympathy bouquet of flowers.

Lincoln and his team agree to look into the matter and it turns out to be a real rat's nest of complications and betrayal and double dealing where almost no one can be trusted and everyone lies. 

I enjoyed this story a lot. But there is a trend in modern stories where no one is telling the truth and no one can be trusted and everyone is double-dealing. It's a trend I really don't like. It's really annoying to find out the good guys are actually the bad guys. Most of the good guys in this story turn out to be the bad guys, and the bad guys are the good guys. I guess the message we are being given these days is that you can't trust anyone, the age of paranoia. 

But even though I thoroughly dislike that trend, this was still a gripping and exciting story. However, I wasn't familiar with the Lincoln Rhyme character and even though I enjoyed the story, I doubt I will be reading another in this series.

Here is a review by Publishers Weekly.

Hidden Pictures

 

By Jason Rekulak

Mallory Quinn became addicted to prescription pain relievers after being injured in a car crash. She hit rock bottom and overdosed in the back of an Uber and ended up in rehab. Now she's been clean for about a year and a half and is starting her first job in a long time as a full time babysitter for an upper middle class family living in a small, rural town. 

Caroline and Ted Maxwell and their child, Teddy, seem to be a lovely family. Their large house features a full-size swimming pool and a pool house that had been remodeled into an tiny home for the new babysitter. It will be the first time Mallory has lived alone in a long time. It will be a test of her commitment to staying off drugs. 

Of course, things are never quite as good as they appear. Teddy has been drawing pictures, pictures that become more and more skilled and more and more strange over time. In one picture, a man appears to be dragging a woman's body through the woods. In another it looks like the woman is at the bottom of a hole as the man stands above looking down. Teddy claims his invisible friend, Anya, tells him what to draw.

After listening to the local gossip, Mallory becomes convinced that Teddy is channeling the spirit of a woman who vanished back in 1948 who used to live at the house where the Maxwells now live. And the woman, Annie, was an artist who used the pool house as a studio. So Mallory begins looking into Annie's past, helped by her new friend, a local man, Adrian, because she is worried that Teddy is being damaged by Anya. And Teddy's parents just keep dismissing her concerns. But her and Adrian's investigations lead them in a totally unexpected direction. 

This was an interesting mystery/thriller/ghost story. At some point, Adrian and Mallory figure out that the spirit hanging around Teddy communicates by drawing because the spirit doesn't speak English and that Anya means mommy in her language. Which then leads them to a better understanding of the communication they received from her via a spirit board which they had first dismissed as gibberish.

I was totally not expecting the direction the story takes in last part. Frankly, I missed some clues the author gives that reveal the Maxwell family is not what they appear to be. It's always a pleasure to be surprised by the ending of a novel. For quite a while, I was beginning to think the evil doer in the story was actually Mallory, who lies to her new friend Adrian about her past. Which was a pretty good red herring. 

The novel includes Teddy's/Anya's drawings and it really adds a wonderful dimension to the story. They start out as typical little kid drawings but change into skilled artistic images that are just a pleasure to experience. Well done to the artists, Will Staehle and Doogie Horner.

Here is a review by Kirkus.