Below Zero & A Reliable Wife

Below Zero by C.J. Box

Looking at the title of this book you might think it takes place in Antarctica OR you may think it’s about a frozen body but you would be wrong in both instances. The term is actually about reducing debt and reducing your carbon footprint.

Joe Pickett is back—hooray! --in Box’s latest entry. There’s also a reappearance of April who seems to have survived the massacre described in Winterkill.

This is the story of a mobster named Stenko who is dying and wants to leave this earth with no debt. His son, Robert is an environmentalist who wants his father to make peace with the crimes against the environment that he has committed in his lifetime. Both go on a wild spree across the country with a girl named April. Joe Pickett is in hot pursuit (along with the FBI) to capture them.

It was good to read about Joe Pickett again.


A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

A 54 year old gentleman in a remote Wisconsin town advertises in the newspaper for a wife and so this story begins. It takes place in the early 1900’s, a time of decadence and despair.

Catherine Land responds to the ad and a conversation by mail ensues until Mr. Truitt sends her train tickets to come to Wisconsin.

This is the story of two souls who have been ravaged and experienced great sorrows in their lives. Neither one knows the full story about the other. Catherine has had a torrid past and carries it with her into the new relationship. Mr. Truitt has his own secrets and reveals them to Catherine after she saves his life.

Both start their relationships with lies and subterfuge and both attempt to create beauty in their life together.

This is a well-written, engrossing story that you will not soon forget.
Ladybookbug!

Knock Out and Roadside Crosses

In Knock Out our favorite FBI agents are back. Savich and Sherlock are right in the midst of things in this exciting new thriller.

A child with a gift for mental telepathy, a sheriff in the boondocks, and two bank-robbers on the run create two distinct cases in which Savich and Sherlock are involved. The author switches back and forth between the two cases which may seem confusing but in actuality works quite well. It may just be that she has used this method before and I am familiar with it.

Autumn is the child and she and her mother travel to visit an uncle after a family death and are thrown into a strange and unusual cult which wants Autumn (with her highly-skilled gift) to join them. Her mother has other ideas. The second case is about two bank robbers who were involved in a bank heist where Savitch happened to be at the time. They are on the run and the FBI is hot on their trail.

I have to admit I was not immediately entranced by the topic of this new entry but I stuck with it and read it to the end. Having finished it I can easily say it was not my favorite Coulter book, but it was good.


Roadside Crosses by Jeffery Deaver

Kathryn Dance of the California Bureau of Investigation is the lead investigator in the apparent crime spree of a troubled teen who is being attacked on a popular blog because of his role in a fatal car accident.

During the investigation the teen vanishes and Dance becomes frustrated as the killings begin, prefaced by roadside crosses placed by the side of the road.

As if one investigation was not enough, Dance’s mother is arrested for the mercy killing of a patient in her care and Dance has to stay out of it so that the case is not compromised in any way.

In true Deaver fashion, this are mysteries fraught with twists and turns and the reader may find herself switching from one possible perpetrators to another and being surprised when the true murderers are revealed.

Not to be missed.

Lady Bookbug!