Howdy, Michael here,

Finishing up the new KD Thorne thriller. Currently trying to settle on a title. Hydroelectric dams are being targeted by ransomware attacks, and KD and Blunt have been tasked with finding the hackers and getting the insurance companies’ money back.

In the meantime, here are a couple of July reading suggestions.

Just read Slow Horses by Mick Herron. This is a British thriller that features a group of washed-up MI5 operatives who’ve been, in theory, banished to pushing paper in hopes that they will quit the service.

It’s been made into a TV series on Apple TV. I haven’t seen it, but my brother says it’s good. I have, on the other hand, read the book. Read it mostly in one sitting. (It’s that good once it gets going.) After Herron sets up the premise of the kidnapped kid who’s going to be beheaded, the plot is a labyrinth of false trails and broken desires that careen to the very end of the story, as the MI5 agents try to sort out who the kidnappers are and where they’re holding the kid.

Also read The Fifth Grave by Jonathan Latimer (1946). Some of you may recall that I’m a big fan of old-school, hard-boiled crime thrillers. I’d not heard of Latimer previously. This book contains the casual sexism and racism of this time period. With that caveat in mind—

Private detective Karl Craven has come to Paulton, Missouri, to separate a young woman from a cult. He discovers his partner’s been murdered, and he immediately gets on the wrong side of the local crime boss. And those are just his opening problems. Femme fatales, crooked cops, and the cult itself round out the cast he has to navigate to solve his partner’s murder, save his client, and stay on the right side of the law. Nicely plotted.

This book was originally released in 1941 as Solomon’s Vineyard. This is the uncensored, original version where the language is even more explicit. It’s currently $0.99 (US) on Amazon.

Happy reading!

Making good progress on KD Thorne book 3, although I don’t have a title yet.

If you’re looking for a summer read (or a winter read if you’re in the southern hemisphere), I’ve read two excellent crime thrillers.

The first, Five Decembers by James Kestrel, won the 2022 Edgar Allan Poe Award for best mystery. This crime novel, which takes place during WWII, follows police detective Joe McGrady as he tries to solve a gruesome murder on Hawaii and gets trapped in Asia during the war while tracking down the killer. This book is excellence from start to finish. Don’t want to say too much because I don’t want to spoil any of the plot twists.

Also read Billy Summers by Stephen King, which was recommended to me by a Readers Group member. Most everyone has read a Stephen King book. This one is a crime thriller with a tiny supernatural reference to The Shining about three-quarters of the way through. King is still at the top of his game.

Billy Summers is a hit man who only kills bad people, but on this outing he ends up in a complex plot where he doesn’t know what’s really going on until it’s too late. Lots of suspense, action, and complex backstory make for a first rate read as we discover the limits of who Billy is and what he’s capable of.  Very enjoyable.

Happy reading!

Happy Thanksgiving to all my US friends. Hope you have a safe and fun-filled gathering.

Still working on the new KD Thorne thriller—tentatively titled Murders at Mercy Creek. Five twenty-something friends have been murdered in Mercy Creek, Iowa. One of them was an undercover FBI agent investigating drug and gun smuggling down Interstate 35 from Iowa to the Mexican border. Police corruption may be involved, so KD and Blunt have been tasked with running a parallel investigation. Hope to release it in January.

Meanwhile, two books of interest—

Recently finished The Last Mona Lisa, by Jonathan Santlofer, which was one of People Magazine’s best books of summer. Luke Perrone, a struggling artist and art professor, is tracking down information about his grandfather, who stole the Mona Lisa in 1911. Was the genuine Mona Lisa returned to the Louvre or was it replaced with a forgery? And why did his grandfather steal the painting in the first place?

Perrone’s journey takes him down a rabbit hole of theft, forgery, and murder as he travels from Florence to Paris to New York following the trail that leads to the last Mona Lisa. A fast, fun read.

Also read The Blackbirder (1943) by Dorothy B. Hughes. She wrote a number of crime novels, starting in the 1940s, and was an important influence on the genre. This is one of the earlier ones, told from the point of view of a young woman on the run from Nazi spies in the US during World War Two. We only know what she knows, and she’s constantly misinterpreting what she sees and consequently being manipulated by bad players. Still, she manages to find her way clear by the end.

Read this book because I’d read a later book by Hughes, In a Lonely Place (1947), about a screen writer who might be a murderer, which was made into a movie starring Humphrey Bogart. Loved the movie. The book is quite different from the movie, and, I think, better. If you were going to read one Hughes book, this would be the one.

All for now. Happy reading!