DARK HARBOR BY STUART WOODS

3-1/2 STARS Highly Enjoyable!

This book is part of a 12 part series by Stuart Woods. If you have ever read any of his books you will enjoy this one. Dark Harbor brings us the perfect mix of intrigue and swift suspense that legions of fans have come to expect from the author.


This book features our hero Stone Barrington.

Meet Stone....

Stone is an urban sophisticate, hanging out at Elaine's (A trendy Resturant) in New York with his friends. Wealthy by inheritance, Stone lives the life; a Manhattan townhouse, private plane, lots of women. Oh yes, he practices law too, but not so often that it interferes with his dodging bullets or rescuing the women he loves from the clutches of evil. Stone also spent 14 years on the NYPD, but had to retire when he was shot in the knee.

One day Stone is at Elaine's with his friend, NYPD Lieutenant Dino Bacchetti when another friend, CIA agent Lance Cabot shows.

Lance starts asking Stone what he knows about a man named Dick Stone. Stone explains that Dick is his cousin with whom he has not seen in many years. Suddenly Lance tells Stone that his cousin Dick and his family are dead in an apparent murder/sucide.

My! Would you believe that just the other day, Stone received a sealed package from cousin Dick with instructions that it be opened only in the event of his death. This is obviously an appropriate time to open it. Surprisingly, Stone has been named executor and left a house in Dark Harbor, Maine.

Now it turns out that cousin Dick was a bigshot in the CIA and was about to get a huge promotion. Lance Cabot asks Stone to help investigate Dick's death.

And we're off to the races. Stone goes to Dark Harbor (in his own plane, of course) and begins to poke around. Why it looks like cousin Dick, his wife and daughter were murdered! But by whom on an island with only a few hundred permanent residents? Could it be a revenge plot against the CIA? Well, there are bunch of other retired CIA officers living on the island too . . .

But there's Dick's brother as well, who has been disinherited. And now bodies start popping up all over the place. One of the CIA retirees bites the dust as does a local teenage girl.

At every step Stone knows he is being watched by Dick's family-and one of them just may be a killer.

I'll not reveal any more so as not to impair your enjoyment of this delightful book.

This book is an easy read. The characters are surprisingly robust and the plot has lots of surprises. This is a great read for the beach, a rainy afternoon, a long flight or any time you just want to enjoy a master of the police procedural at work. The author brings a very special, very enjoyable flavor to the art of mystery. It's light, but certainly not offensively so and it's definitively fun to be in the company of Stone Barrington and his friends.

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Until Next Time!

Arianna :)

Source: http://mysteries-r-us.blogspot.com

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MURDER LIST BY JULIE GARWOOD

** 2 STARS (Not Really a Mystery!)

I must admit I was kind of disappointed in this book. I bought this book on the way to the airport and simply purchased it based on the title , "The Murder List". With a title like that I assumed it would be a murder mystery....WRONG! This book is a romance novel.

Meet Regan Hamilton...She is an air-head drop dead gorgeous Heiress and philanthropist who is absolutely perfect.

One day Regan is persuaded by her two friends to become involved in their amateur investigation of a con-man, who runs popular self-help seminars. They are convinced he murdered a gullible milionairess for her money.

The three women attend one of the con-man's seminars and participate in a "cleansing exercise" geared to rid them of their anger. Participants are asked to make a list of people they really don't like and wish they could murder. Regan is shocked but plays along. They are then asked to burn their lists, which is symbolically supposed to cleanse them of negative feelings. Unfortunately, Regan is unable to burn hers, because her cell phone rings and she walks outside to answer it.

After the seminar, she leaves the conference center and is attacked by a strange man on the way to her car. While trying to escape she drops her phone, and her seminar "murder list".

Soon afterward, the first person on her list dies, an apparent suicide. Then another one has a fatal heart attack. When Regan goes to the police to report the attack, as well as her perceived connection to the murders/deaths, Detective Alec Buchanan is assigned to be her bodyguard.

Of course, Alec Buchanan is an absolute hunk who falls in love with Regan. Unfortunately, this is where the murder mystery takes a back seat to the romance storyline. The rest of the story revolves around the developing romance of Regan and Alec.

As you can probably guess our hero Alec saves Regan's life and they live happily ever after.

Unfortunately, the plot contains little that is original, worthwhile, or interesting. The characters are cardboard caricatures. Not one of them is developed sufficiently to come across as believable. The heroine (Regan)is just too naive - too cutesy, to be as intelligent and creative as the author would have us believe. The villains are not particularly scary!
"The Murder List" just doesn't make the grade.

Although this book was certainly not one of Julie Garwood's best books, she has several books which you may enjoy.

CLICK HERE FOR DISCOUNTS ON JULIE GARWOOD BOOKS

Until Next Time!
Arianna :)

WHISKEY ON THE ROCKS BY NINA WRIGHT ~ FUN

4-1/2 Stars (Great Comic Mystery!)

What a fun, fast paced, read! If you like Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series, you'll love The Whiskey Mysteries, starring Whiskey Mattimoe and her diva dog Abra the Afghan hound.

Meet Whiskey Mattimoe....Still reeling from her husband's death, thirty-three-year-old realtor Whiskey is adjusting to a new life, which includes the embarrassing purse-snatching antics of her mischievious Afghan hound. That's bad for business, but not as bad as having her clients die on her.

When someone turns up dead at one of Whiskey's properties, the Magnet Springs part-time police force-canine officer Roscoe and two cops of the human variety-needs all the help they can get. This quiet lake Michigan resort town is known for its mysterious magnetic fields, not murder, and the locals would like to keep it that way.

Whiskey with the assistance from her loveable but eccentric friends and neighbors, uncovers art theft, forgery, and some nasty secrets about the people who have descended on her quiet town - and now it seems that she knows too much, because someone is out to get her too.

Savvy and streetsmart, Whiskey manages to keep her sense of humor throughout the chaos. She knows she can take care of herself (well, with the help of an exceptionally trained dog), but to survive, she's got to unravel the tangled web of deceit. All this intrigue is not only bad for Whiskey, it's killing her business!

Go ahead and pick up this book at your favorite book store or online to find out how Whiskey gets herself out of this crisis.

If you would like more information on this book, simply click the link below:

Whiskey On the Rocks

Until Next time!
Arianna


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TWO LITTLE GIRLS IN BLUE ~ MARY HIGGINS CLARK

RATING: 4-1/2 Stars (Great Book!)

In a riveting new thriller, the Queen of suspense writer Mary Higgins Clark weaves the mystery of twin telepathy into a mother's search for a kidnapped child, presumed dead.

Margaret and Steve Frawley celebrate the third birthday of their twin girls, Kelly and Kathy, with an afternoon party in their new home, a modest fixer-upper in Ridgefield, Connecticut.

The evening of the twins' birthday party, Steve and Margaret attend a black-tie dinner in New York. When they return home, the police are in the house, and they are told that the babysitter had been found unconscious, the children are gone, and a note demanding an eight-million-dollar ransom had been left in their room.

Steve Frawley's firm, a global investment company, agrees to pay the ransom. The kidnapper, who identifies himself as the "Pied Piper" makes his terms known - on delivery of the ransom, a call will come, revealing the girls' whereabouts. The call comes, but only one daughter (Kelly) is in the car parked behind a deserted restaurant. The driver is dead from a gunshot wound and has left a suicide note, saying he had inadvertently killed Kathy and had dumped her body in the ocean.

At the memorial Mass for Kathy, Kelly tugs Margaret�s arm and says: "Mommy, Kathy is very scared of that lady. She wants to come home right now." More unexplainable occurrences follow, indicating that Kelly is in touch with Kathy. At first, no one except the mother believes that the twins are communicating and that Kathy is still alive. As Kelly's warnings become increasingly specific and alarming, however, FBI agents set out on a search for Kathy.

The novel reaches a breathtaking climax as they close in on the kidnappers, while Kathy's life hangs by a thread.

In delving into the well-documented but still unexplained phenomenon of twin telepathy, Mary Higgins Clark tells a spellbinding tale that takes us deep into the minds of her characters while lifting us to the heights of suspense.

As with all of Mary Higgins Clark's books...this is a page turner from beginning to end.

If you would like to check out this book or any other books by this author simpy Click here for books by Mary Higgins Clark

Until Next Time!
Arianna

Source: http://mysteries-r-us.blogspot.com