Book Review: Coded Justice

Avery Keene is back! The fan-favorite former Supreme Court clerk has finally gone out on her own, securing a prestigious position at a high-end law firm in Washington, D.C., where she is about to earn real money and get her life in order after a tumultuous run working as a clerk on the Supreme Court. With her reputation preceding her, Avery is quickly tasked at her new job with becoming a corporate internal investigator.

Her new client is Camasca—a mega-tech firm that's on the forefront of developing a new integrated AI system poised to revolutionize the medical industry, particularly by delivering vastly improved health care to veterans. The AI potential is breathtaking, but some disturbing anomalies have plagued Camasca in early testing—including the mysterious death of a Camasca engineer. Avery and her colleagues, Jared, Ling, and Noah, find themselves on a journey to determine whether the anomalies are mere technical glitches, or something much more concerning.

Book Review: Rules of Deception

Dr. Jonathan Ransom, a surgeon for Doctors Without Borders, is climbing in the Swiss Alps with his wife, Emma, when she falls into a hidden crevasse and dies. Twenty-four hours later, Jonathan receives an envelope addressed to his wife containing two baggage-claim tickets. Puzzled, he journeys to a railway station only to find himself inexplicably attacked by the Swiss police. Suddenly forced on the run, Jonathan's only chance at survival lies in uncovering the devastating truth behind his wife's secret life.

Rules of Deception by Christopher Reich was published in July of 2008 by Anchor Books (a division of Penguin Random House). It had two sequels: followed by 2009's Rules of Vengeance and 2010's Rules of Betrayal.

Book Review: 1st Case

Genius programmer Angela Hoot has always been at the top of her class, but now she's at the bottom of the FBI food chain—until her first case threatens everyone around her. Angela's graduate school days at MIT come to an abrupt end when she uses her hacking skills on another student's computer. Yet her mentor, Eve Abajian, arranges a new beginning for her—as an intern in FBI's Boston field office.

Her new supervisor, Assistant Special Agent in Charge William Keats, one of only two agents in the Northeast to make his rank before the age of thirty, sees in Angela a fellow prodigy. But Angela's skills come with a natural curiosity, which is also a dangerous liability. With little training, Angela is quickly plunged into a tough tracking murderous brothers who go by the Poet and the Engineer. When Keats tells her to "watch and listen," Angela's mind kicks into overdrive. The obsessive thinking that earned her As on campus can prove fatal in the field.

Book Review: Zero Hour

Ex-FBI negotiator Eddie Virgo is doing hard time for taking the law into his own hands. But now the Bureau needs him back. Virgo is offered an early release if he agrees to work one last job. Stacy, the daughter of wealthy senator Daniel Donovan, has been kidnapped and Virgo needs to negotiate her release. Seems easy enough. But when the kidnapper makes an impossible demand, Virgo is catapulted into a deadly race against time.

Teaming up with LAPD detective Jennifer Accardi, Virgo leads the hunt for Stacy and realizes he has stumbled on a sinister plot which threatens to compromise national security. Now, up against a lethal combination of ruthless gangsters and powerful DC players, Virgo is looking at some pretty long odds. But he’ll do whatever it takes to free Stacy from the sadistic psychopath who is holding her.

Book Review: Dead Even

Sara Tate is a lawyer in the Manhattan D.A.'s office. Due to budget cutbacks, she's in danger of losing her job and takes on a case meant for another prosecutor. Sara's attorney husband, Jared Lynch, also gets involved in the case--on the side of the defense. Sara is soon informed that if she loses, Jared will be killed. He receives a similar threat. In a battle of roller-coaster emotions and shocking betrayals, Sara and Jared must face the unthinkable truth: No matter who wins--one of them may die.

Book Review: If Something Happens to Me

For the past five years, Ryan Richardson has relived that terrible night. The car door ripping open. The crushing blow to the head. The hands yanking him from the vehicle. His girlfriend Ali’s piercing scream as she is taken.

With no trace of Ali or the car, a cloud of suspicion hangs over Ryan. But with no proof and a good lawyer, he’s never charged, though that doesn’t matter to the podcasters and internet trolls. Now, Ryan has changed his last name, and entered law school. He's put his past behind him.

Book Review: The Night Shift

It’s New Year’s Eve 1999. Y2K is expected to end in chaos: planes falling from the sky, elevators plunging to earth, world markets collapsing. A digital apocalypse. None of that happens. But at a Blockbuster Video in Linden, New Jersey, four teenage girls working the night shift are attacked. Only one survives. Police quickly identify a suspect who flees and is never seen again.

Fifteen years later, in the same town, four teenage employees working late at an ice cream store are attacked, and again only one makes it out alive.

Both surviving victims recall the killer speaking only a few final words. . . . “Goodnight, pretty girl.”

In the aftermath, three lives intersect: the survivor of the Blockbuster massacre who’s forced to relive her tragedy; the brother of the original suspect, who’s convinced the police have it wrong; and the FBI agent, who’s determined to solve both cases. On a collision course toward the truth, all three lives will forever be changed, and not everyone will make it out alive.

Book Review: The Lightning Rod

Archie Mint has a secret. He’s led a charmed life—he’s got a beautiful wife, two impressive kids, and a successful military career. But when he’s killed while trying to stop a robbery in his own home, his family is shattered—and then shocked when the other shoe drops. Mint’s been hiding criminal secrets none of them could have imagined.

While working on Mint’s body before his funeral, mortician “Zig” Zigarowski discovers something he was never meant to see. That telling detail leads him to Mint’s former top secret military unit and his connection to artist Nola Brown. Two years ago, Nola saved Zig’s life—so he knows better than most that she’s as volatile and dangerous as a bolt of lightning.

Following Nola’s trail, he uncovers one of the U.S. government’s most intensely guarded secrets—an undisclosed military facility that dates back to the Cold War and holds the key to something far more sinister: a hidden group willing to compromise the very safety and security of America itself. Trouble always finds her… She’s the lightning rod.

Book Review: All the Demons Are Here

It’s 1977. Ike and Lucy, the kids of Senator Charlie and Margaret Marder, are grown up—and in trouble.

US Marine Ike has gone AWOL after a military operation gone horribly wrong. Now he's off the grid, working on the pit crew of the moody stunt master Evel Knievel and hanging in the roughest dive bar in Montana. His sister Lucy has become the star reporter of a brand-new Washington, DC tabloid breaking stories about a serial killer and falling in with the wealthy, shady British family that owns the newspaper.

As they deal with the weirdness and menace of the time—celebrities, cults, the rise of tabloid journalism, the death of Elvis Presley, the Summer of Sam, and a time of national unease—Ike and Lucy soon realize that their worlds are not only full of compromises and bad choices, but danger. As their lives begin to spiral out of control, they also spiral towards one another. And the decisions they make could mean life and death not only for them—but also their beloved parents.

Book Review: The Devil May Dance

Charlie and Margaret Marder, political stars in 1960s Washington DC, know all too well how the tangled web of power in the nation's capital can operate. But while they long to settle into the comforts of home, Attorney General Robert Kennedy has other plans. He needs them to look into a potential threat not only to the presidency, but to the security of the United States itself.

Charlie and Margaret quickly find themselves on a flight to sunny Los Angeles, where they’ll face off against a dazzling world of stars and studios. At the center of their investigation is Frank Sinatra, a close friend of President John F. Kennedy and a rumored mob crony, whom Charlie and Margaret must befriend to get the inside scoop. But in a town built on illusions, where friends and foes all look alike, nothing is easy, and drinks by the pool at the Sands and late-night adventures with the Rat Pack soon lead to a body in the trunk of their car. Before they know it, Charlie and Margaret are being pursued by sinister forces from Hollywood’s stages to the newly founded Church of Scientology, facing off against the darkest and most secret side of Hollywood’s power.

Book Review: Rogue Justice

Supreme Court clerk Avery Keene is back, trying to get her feet on solid ground after unraveling an international conspiracy in While Justice Sleeps. But as the sparks of Congressional hearings and political skirmishes swirl around her, Avery is approached at a legal conference by Preston Davies, an unassuming young man and fellow law clerk to a federal judge in Idaho. Davies believes his boss, Judge Francesca Whitner, was being blackmailed in the days before she died. Desperate to understand what happened, he gives Avery a file, a burner phone, and a fearful warning that there are highly dangerous people involved.

Another shocking murder leads Avery to a list of names – all federal judges – and, alarmingly, all judges on the FISA Court (the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court), also known as America’s "secret court." It is this body which grants permission to the government to wiretap Americans or spy on corporations suspected of terrorism. As Avery digs deeper, she begins to see a frightening pattern – and she worries that something far more sinister may be unfolding inside the nation’s third branch of government. With lives at stake, Avery must race the clock and an unexpected enemy to find the answer.

Book Review: The Midnight Witness

A young woman is found strangled in a park, and a male journalist has been killed in the backyard of the Royal Hotel in Copenhagen.

Detective Louise Rick is put on the case of the young girl, but very soon becomes entangled in solving the other homicide too when it turns out her best friend, journalist Camilla Lind, knew the murdered man. Louise tries to keep her friend from getting too involved, but Camilla's never been one to miss out on an interesting story. And this time, Camilla may have gone too far...

Book Review: While Justice Sleeps

An explosive secret: When legendary Washington judge Justice Wynn falls into a coma and puts his law clerk, Avery, in control, Avery’s world is turned upside down. Because Justice Wynn had a secret. One that nobody wants to come out…

A life in the balance: As Wynn lies in hospital, Avery begins to unravel a sequence of clues, and realizes the puzzle will lead her directly into danger.

A showdown that will change everything: But how high a price can you put on the truth? And is Avery brave enough to expose the White House itself?

Book Review: The Missing Hours

One moment, Dr. Selena Cole, a consultant on kidnap and rescue operations, is at the playground with her children . . . the next, she has vanished without a trace.

The body of Dominic Newell, a well-respected lawyer, is found on a remote mountain road, blood oozing from the stab wound in his neck.

In the sleepy borderland between England and Wales, serious crimes are rare. Which makes this Tuesday morning, with two calls coming in to the local police station, even more remarkable. Detective Constable Leah Mackay and her brother, Detective Sergeant Finn Hale, soon find their respective investigations inextricably linked. And when Selena reappears alive and unhurt twenty hours later, the mystery deepens.

Book Review: Fake Money Blue Smoke

When former platoon sergeant Matt Kubelsky is paroled from Ray Brook Federal Correctional Institute in upstate New York, he’s surprised to find his ex-girlfriend waiting for him out in the parking lot. An ex-girlfriend he’s spent years pining for after she dumped him and stopped answering his letters. An ex-girlfriend who wonders if her apparently criminally-hardened ex-boyfriend can help her out of some extra-legal difficulty of her own.

During the years Matt was in prison, Kelly Haggerty discovered she couldn’t earn a satisfactory living as an artist, so she turned her artistic talents to counterfeiting foreign currency—and ended up embroiled in an international money laundering intrigue. Now she hopes she can get herself out of trouble with a cleverly-plotted theft and one last enormous score.

Book Review: The Coisters

When Ann Stilwell arrives in New York City, she expects to spend her summer working as a curatorial associate at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Instead, she finds herself assigned to The Cloisters, a gothic museum and garden renowned for its medieval art collection and its group of enigmatic researchers studying the history of divination.

Desperate to escape her painful past, Ann is happy to indulge the researchers’ more outlandish theories about the history of fortune telling. But what begins as academic curiosity quickly turns into obsession when Ann discovers a hidden 15th-century deck of tarot cards that might hold the key to predicting the future. When the dangerous game of power, seduction, and ambition turns deadly, Ann becomes locked in a race for answers as the line between the arcane and the modern blurs.

Book Review: Babysitter

From one of America’s most renowned storytellers—the best-selling author of Blonde —comes a novel about love and deceit, and lust and redemption, against a backdrop of child murders in the affluent suburbs of Detroit.

In the waning days of the turbulent 1970s, in the wake of unsolved child-killings that have shocked Detroit, the lives of several residents are drawn together with tragic consequences. There is Hannah, wife of a prominent local businessman, who has begun an affair with a darkly charismatic stranger whose identity remains elusive; Mikey, a canny street hustler who finds himself on a chilling mission to rectify injustice; and the serial killer known as Babysitter, an enigmatic and terrifying figure at the periphery of elite Detroit. As Babysitter continues his rampage of abductions and killings, these individuals intersect with one another in startling and unexpected ways.

Michael Jackson - Thriller (30th anniversary)

Today (November 30th) marks the thirtieth anniversary of Thriller, the sixth solo album by legendary American R&B star Michael Jackson.

This record was a number 1 seller is so many countries (Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, Switzerland, the UK and the US). It has gone multi-Platinum the world over as well.

For my track by track full review, please click here.

Remembering Michael Jackson

Today (August 29th) would have been the 54th birthday of the late Michael Jackson. His considered by the Guinness Book of World Records as the most successful entertainer of all time. He got his start as a performer in the late 1960's as part of a singing group with his older brothers in Gary, Indiana. Once the brothers were signed to the Motown Record label, their careers skyrocketed.

Whether you are a devout fan or thought his personal life was a bit on the crazy side, there is no denying the music he made over the years will be remembered for decades to come.

Michael Jackson - Thriller

So much has already been said (and can still be said) about Michael Jackson's November 30th, 1982 release Thriller. This was his sixth solo album and without a doubt his most successful. It ranks as number 20 on the Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list and as number 7 in their Top 100 Albums of the 80's list, and it appears on the 1001 Albums You Must Listen To Before You Die list.