Michael Connelly’s protagonist, Mickey Haller (formerly known as the Lincoln Lawyer) was King of the Courtroom when he handled criminal cases. However, he’s sold off the Lincolns and is now located in a warehouse with an internal chamber that is safeguarded against electronic surveillance. Connelly writes, “The cage was a twelve-foot-by-twelve-foot cube of chain link. Across the top was a crosshatch of wires supporting copper mesh that also draped down all four sides of the c

First, you may think that Lisa Scottoline has written a YA book. She has not. This book is written from several POVs, and the first fourteen chapters (99 pages) are from 15-year-old teens (Allie, Sasha, David, Julian, and Kyle). Because it’s written in their voice, it’s an easy mistake. The rest of the book is a mix of the teens and their parents (Linda Garvey, Allie’s mother; Daphne Barrow, Sasha’s mother; Bill Hybrinski, David’s father; Scot Browne, Julian’s father and the

Harlan Coben is a best-selling author whose previous novel, The Stranger, has been the basis for a Netflix series.According to the cover of The Woods (2007, 404 pages in both hardback and softback), this work, too, is coming to Netflix.Coben’s novels have been translated into 45 languages and he’s sold more than 75 million copies of his mystery/thrillers worldwide.He’s on the short list of my favorite contemporary authors. In The Woods, Paul Copeland, prosecutor for the Distr

I’m not sure if Sandra Brown knows how to write a novel without at least one steamy sex scene. She is the counterpoint to John Grisham who probably couldn’t write a sex scene if his life depended upon it. But the thing that gets me about Sandra Brown is that she writes great novels, wonderful plots, believable characters. I’ve read many of her books, and find the blow-by-blow scenes of carnal intimacy to be irrelevant. After I finished a few of her novels, I learned to spot t

Having read and been horrified by Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novels, The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments, I was disappointed by The Heart Goes Last (2015, 380 pages in softcover format). Perhaps my review is biased by my own experience when I was a child. My family was poor, living paycheck to almost paycheck. By that I mean that the money often ran out before the next paycheck came in. So, we’d charge our food at the local grocery store for a day or two until Dad got hom

I’ve been asked why I generally review crime/mystery/ suspense/thriller-type novels. I suppose that my most direct answer is that I enjoy the genre. But these books are also a break from the books that I needed to read during my professional life. Most of those were in the fields of sociology and psychology, although I also taught a class titled “Sociology through Literature,” which was based on “modern classics.” This generation of YA (Young Adult) books also fascinates me b

Brad Meltzer is an interesting author who really knows his stuff. In September, 2006, he participated in a brainstorming session with the CIA, FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and several psychologists to try to figure out new methods that might be used by terrorists to attack the United States. That was quite an honor for a guy who was once a writer of comic books.  But comic books, like Justice League of America and Superman/Batman, were part of a much larger body of w

Although I review mystery/thrillers for the most part, I read a variety of genres. Since retirement, though, mystery/thrillers are my favorites. However, as a former college prof, I do try to keep up with what’s going on with our nation’s youth. So, if you read this column weekly, you’ve read about a few YA novels. I try to choose authors who write well, regardless of plot lines. But it surprises me a bit that most of the YA books that I’ve read have been devoted to the probl