Damaged by Alex Kava

Maggie O'Dell, FBI profiler returns in this eighth novel about O'Dell. It opens with the discovery of a cooler filled with wrapped body parts found off the coast of Pensacola. She is joined by a cast of characters including her love interest Colonel Benjamin Platt, Liz Bailey (search and rescue for the Coast Guard), Liz's Dad, Liz's brother-in-law funeral director and the mysterious Joe Black.

Readers are thrust into the pending doom of a major hurricane about to hit the coast. Maggie is called in to figure out where the body parts came from. Col Platt is called to a nearyby military post to determine why soldiers are dying from a mysterious bacterium.

This was a good mystery. The premise was easy to follow, the setting was realistic and the characters were believable.

Worth the read!

Ladybookbug!

Cold Dawn by Carla Neggers

This is the third book in the "Black Falls" Trilogy. We again visit the Cameron family as Rose Cameron, search and rescue expert, discovers a burned body near her home in Black Falls. Nick Martini is also a main character in this segment of the trilogy. He is a smoke jumper who was involved in an arson case in California. The trail leads him to Black Falls in search of a killer.

Having read all three books in this series, I think I can say that this entry was not my favorite. I had to keep stopping through the story to try to figure out who all the characters were. This did not have the intense mystery that I like about this author.

Read it if you must!

Ladybookbug!

Bill Warrington's Last Chance by James King

The main character, Bill Warrington is an old man. Suffering from some form of dementia, he is hell-bent on redeeming himself. He sets off on a cross-country trip with his granddaughter in tow. His children are frustrated and disturbed by the whole thing and set about to try to follow the clues he has sent them to find him.

This is the first entry for this author and though not a book to necessarily write home about, it is an interesting story which could be true in this time of aging baby boomers.

Ladybookbug!

The Hidden by Bill Pronzini

I must admit, I haven’t read Bill Pronzini’s books in quite a while but this one is worth the read.

If you are a mystery buff who loves the howling wind, the rain pouring down a dark winding road, and a serial killer, then you are in for a treat.

Shelby and Jack Macklin decide to give their marriage a jump start and take a friend up on the loan of his coastal cottage for a few days. They have some difficulty finding it, so they enlist the aid of a local police officer. While ensconced in the cottage they encounter some troubled neighbors and are caught up in a brutal winter storm.

While this entry is no Lee Childs or Harlan Coben, it stands up straight as a good mystery.

Ladybookbug!