My new Travelers crime thriller, Grifters’ Hopscotch, came back from the editor yesterday, so I’ve got some tidying up to do.

In the meantime, two crime books I read last month.

As many of you know, I’m a big fan of the Parker crime thrillers, written by Donald Westlake using the name Richard Stark. And there’re still a few I haven’t read, so I picked up Nobody Runs Forever (Parker Novel 22). This time out, Parker gets involved in an armored car robbery where too many of the players want to trust the wrong people, which leads to the police being way too close when the robbery takes place.

Complex plotting that relies on the motivations and fears of the various characters creates a relentless steamroller of action. There’re only two more of these books (numbers 23 and 24), and I’ll be sorry when I’ve read the last of them.

I also read Anarchy of the Mice by Jeff Bond. This is a pulpy thriller that weds larger-than-life characters to our contemporary paranoias about technology, corporations, and government.

In it, anarchists are destroying society by undermining the computer technology that runs our lives. Our heroes—an ex-politician, an ex-Marine, and a divorced mom private eye—start investigating the anarchist group. Eventually they uncover a complex conspiracy involving immoral, power-hungry corporations. This kind of book could just be silly. Instead, clever plotting and careful character development make for a fun, fun read.

Making my final changes before I send my new Travelers crime thriller, Grifters’ Hopscotch, to the editor.

In the meantime, two crime books I read last month.

Read The Riviera Contract (Hayden Stone Thrillers, book 1: 2013) by Arthur Kerns. I usually take author biographies the include FBI or CIA type experience with a grain of salt. The ability to describe the right weapons or a particular inlet on an island does not necessarily translate into suspenseful plotting and an exciting read. But in this case, they do.

This is a 007 sort of romp, where the bureaucrats get in the way of the operatives and the men are a little bit too flirtatious, but Kerns makes it work. Hayden Stone is a retired FBI agent working as a contract player for the CIA. He’s carrying personal baggage in the form of a fresh divorce, and an old flame appears on the scene, and he’s not quite sure if he really wants to continue being an operative. But as the bodies pile up, and the case becomes more dangerous, he finds the will to do what has to be done. Lots of fun. (There is more than 1 book with this title, so be sure about the author.)

I also read The Cater Street Hangman (Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Series book 1: 1979) by Anne Perry. I knew about Perry’s series of Victorian mysteries featuring Inspector Pitt and his high-born wife, and I knew the series was a great success, but it didn’t really seem like my cup of tea. Then Anne Perry passed away and I heard an old interview with her on the radio. Turns out that when she was a teenager, she spent 5 years in prison for helping a friend murder the friend’s mother, which made me think: I’ve got to read one of her books. So I read the first one. I was very pleasantly surprised.

This book is a serious page-turner with lots of realistic detail of London in the late 1800’s, the relationships between and among the characters are compelling, and Perry keeps you guessing as to the identity of the murderer until the very end. Would read another of these.

Happy reading!

Still making progress on my new Travelers crime thriller, Grifters’ Hopscotch, where the Travelers bounce through a series of misadventures until they finally turn the tables on their enemies.

Over the last month, I read two comedy crime books.

First off, Prizzi’s Honor (1982) by Richard Condon. I’d seen the movie starring Jack Nicholson and Kathleen Turner when it came out in 1985, and I always wondered how the book stacked up. Both the movie and book are satires of an Italian-American crime family with broadly sketched characters. The plot is essentially the same in the book and the movie.

Charley Partanna, hitman for the Prizzi’s, falls in love with Irene Walker, who turns out to be a contract hit woman. She has done something to upset the Prizzis, and they want her killed. At the same time, Charley has upset one of his bosses, and he wants him killed and hires Irene, not knowing Irene and Charley’s relationship.

Lots of plot twists and comedic action here as our heroes have to decide whether love or money is more important, though the opening is a little slow by today’s standards. This was a New York Times Notable Book back in the day.

Second, Hot Six (2000) by Janet Evanovich (Stephanie Plum book 6). Every type of fiction requires its own kind of suspension of disbelief. The issue is can you, as a reader, accept the suspension of disbelief that’s required by a particular fiction. For example, I can’t watch romcoms, because beautiful, young people who can’t get a date is just too unbelievable for me to accept.

Here, Stephanie Plum is a bounty hunter. She seems to somehow be good at her job even though she makes absurd, comedic choices. The first couple of pages I thought I don’t know if this is for me, but soon I found myself accepting the world Evanovich creates in these books, and I had a fun, fun time following Stephanie as she deals with her quirky family, friends, and colleagues while she tries to figure out who killed the arms dealer’s son.

Happy reading,

Still finishing up the new KD Thorne thriller, The Hunt for the Ransomware Hackers. Here’s how the description is shaping up:

Ransomware attacks on hydroelectric dams in the US. The power grid disrupted. Downstream communities flooded. Who are these mystery hackers?

The hackers operate in cyberspace, their messages and the ransom money bouncing between countries until their trail disappears off the grid in Eastern Europe.

As National Defense Agency operative KD Thorne and her partner Jeffery Blunt track the hackers from dam to dam, the hackers create a web of misinformation to conceal their identities and hide their stolen money.

Can KD and Blunt cut through the subterfuge and lay a trap to catch the hackers before they rob their last target and disappear with the ransom cash?

Two books you might be interested in–

Recently read The Comedians by Graham Greene (1966). Haiti in the 1960s— the regime of Papa Doc Duvalier and his secret police, the Tontons Macoute. Picture Syria or North Korea today. Citizens being disappeared, government scams, grifters hoping to make their fortune–this novel reads like a thriller, as we follow a British hotelier through his involvement with con artists, patriots, and innocents. He hopes to make a living at his hotel and stay out of prison, but he just can’t seem to mind his own business as everyone around him has their own agenda—some for good and some for pure selfishness. And is he one of the good guys, more or less, or just another selfish grifter taking advantage of those around him? A serious read and well worth the effort.

Graham Greene’s Collected Novels Volume 5, which includes The Comedians, is $2.99 (US) on Amazon today.

Also read Bruno, Chief of Police, by Martin Walker (2008). This is the first of a series of mystery novels that take place in the (fictional, I think?) town of St. Denis in southern France. Bruno is a decorated military veteran who’s taken on the easy job of a small-town cop, only to have the murder of a local WW II war hero fall into his lap. The local color and the scene setting here are excellent, as well as Walker’s ability to capture modern issues such as conflict around immigration and tourism. And I bet you won’t be able to figure out who the murderer is until the very end. I’ll definitely be reading more of these.

Finally, if you’re an Elmore Leonard fan (which I am), his novel Raylan, featuring US Marshal Raylan Givens, is $1.99 (US) on Amazon today.

That’s all for now. Happy reading!