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Blindman's Bluff by Faye Kellerman
LAPD homicide detective Peter Decker and his wife, Rina Lazarus, will be blindsided by a brutal multiple murder in this twisting tale of suspense from New York Times bestselling author Faye Kellerman.
"They say dead men don't talk, but if you listen, they do."
As a lieutenant in the LAPD, homicide detective Peter Decker doesn't get many calls at 3 a.m. unless a case is nasty, sensational - or both. Someone has broken into the exclusive Coyote Ranch compound of billionaire developer Guy Kaffey and viciously gunned him down, along with his wife and four employees.
A well-known figure on both the business and society pages, Kaffey, with his sons and his younger brother, Mace, built most of the shopping malls in Southern California and earned a reputation for philanthropy, donating millions to worthy causes. It doesn't take long for Peter, his trusted detectives Scott Oliver and Marge Dunn, and the rest of his homicide team to figure out that the gruesome killings must be an inside job. Things become even more entangled when they discover that Kaffey's largesse had included organizations that extended second chances to delinquents, many of whom Kaffey had hired for his personal security. But was the job pure murder/robbery or something even more twisted? A developer of Kaffey's magnitude doesn't make billions without making more enemies with blood grudges.
With leads taking the team across L.A., up and down the Golden State, and into Mexico, Decker is plenty busy - and plenty thankful not to have to worry about his wife, Rina Lazarus, getting caught up in this deadly case. Rina is out of harm's way, serving on a jury at the courthouse.
But then a chance encounter with a court translator who needs her help leads Rina into the terrifying heart of her husband's murder investigations - and straight into the path of a gang of ruthless killers. To protect Rina, Decker must find his prey before death unites his two worlds.
A fast-paced tour through the urban landscape of L.A., Blindman's Bluff is a riveting mile-a-minute thrill ride from a formidable master of her craft.
I'm a sucker for a Kellerman novel! I wasn't too keen on the last one, The Mercedes Coffin, but I'm up for another installment!
Bird in Hand by Christina Baker Kline
The accident was just that - an accident. It was dark, it was raining, Alison had two drinks in her, and the other car ran the stop sign. She just didn't get out of the way fast enough. But now a little boy - not her own - is dead, and Alison finds herself trapped under the twin burdens of grief and guilt, and feeling increasingly estranged from her husband...Charlie, who has his own burdens. He's in a job he doesn't love so that Alison can stay home with the kids (and why isn't she more grateful for that?); he has a house in the suburbs and a long commute to and from the city each day. And the only thing he can focus on these days is his secret, sudden affair with...Claire, Alison's best friend. Bold where Alison is reserved; vibrant where Alison is demure, Claire has just had her first novel published, a thinly-veiled retelling of her childhood in South Carolina (which is also Alison's, in a sense). But even in the whirlwind of publication, Claire can't stop wondering if she should leave her husband...Ben, an architect who is thoughtful, kind, and patient. And who wants nothing more than a baby, or two - in fact, exactly the kind of life that Charlie and Alison have...
I'll admit it...not the type of book I usually read, but I just loved the cover. And a little bit of "rut-leaving" is always a good thing. An addition to the old wish list!
South of Broad by Pat Conroy
Against the sumptuous backdrop of Charleston, South Carolina, South of Broad gathers a unique cast of sinners and saints. Leopold Bloom King, our narrator, is the son of an amiable, loving father who teaches science at the local high school. His mother, an ex-nun, is the high school principal and a well-known Joyce scholar. After Leo's older brother commits suicide at the age of thirteen, the family struggles with the shattering effects of his death, and Leo, lonely and isolated, searches for something to sustain him. Eventually, he finds his answer when he becomes part of a tightly knit group of high school seniors that includes friends Sheba and Trevor Poe, glamorous twins with an alcoholic mother and a prison-escapee father; hardscrabble mountain runaways Niles and Starla Whitehead; socialite Molly Huger and her boyfriend, Chadworth Rutledge X; and an ever-widening circle whose liaisons will ripple across two decades-from 1960s counterculture through the dawn of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s.
The ties among them endure for years, surviving marriages happy and troubled, unrequited loves and unspoken longings, hard-won successes and devastating breakdowns, and Charleston's dark legacy of racism and class divisions. But the final test of friendship that brings them to San Francisco is something no one is prepared for South of Broad is Pat Conroy at his finest; a long-awaited work from a great American writer whose passion for life and language knows no bounds.
I've got this one "on deck" and I'm looking forward to getting into it! Check back for my review.
Intervention by Robin Cook
It's been more than thirty years since New York City medical examiner Jack Stapleton's college graduation and almost as long since he'd been in touch with former classmates Shawn Doherty and Kevin Murray. Once a highly regarded ophthalmologist, Jack's career took a dramatic turn after a tragic accident that destroyed his family. But that, too, is very much in the past: Jack has remarried - to longtime colleague and fellow medical examiner Laurie Montgomery - and is the father of a young child. But his renegade, activist personality can't rest, and after performing a postmortem on a young college student who had recently been treated by a chiropractor, Jack decides to explore alternative medicine. What makes some people step outside the medical establishment to seek care from practitioners of Eastern philosophies and even faith healers?
Jack's classmate Shawn Doherty is now a renowned archeologist and biblical scholar at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, whose taste for good wine and generally deteriorating health are taking a toll on his career. He has recently obtained permission for a final dig beneath Saint Peter's, and despite his long-standing grudge against the Catholic Church, begins his research - which eventually takes him to Jerusalem and Venice - only to make a startling discovery with ecclesiastical and medical implications. And when Kevin Murray, now Bishop of the Archdiocese of New York, gets wind of Shawn's findings, he's desperate to keep them from the public. Kevin has strong political ambitions within the Church, but his association with Shawn threatens to undermine them. Kevin turns to his old friend Jack to help protect an explosive secret - one with the power to change lives forever.
Uhh...its Robin Cook....nuff said.....
