Copyright 1999 by Jonathan Kellerman. Published by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Yes, another book review. I have been doing a lot of reading because (1) it is a pandemic so what else is there to do? (2) my vision, with glasses, is really clear after my cataract surgery making reading a pleasure again and (3) my To Be Read pile had grown out of control – up to 26 books at one point recently. I like to keep that pile under 10. I have been feeling a lot of pressure to reduce the pile.

So I have been reading a lot. I finished this book – nearly 500 pages – in less than a week. This reduces that To Be Read pile to 22 so more reading ahead.

The star in this book is Alex Delaware, a child psychologist and sometimes police consultant. This is #13 in the long-running series of Delaware books, #36 being published just this year. His sidekick in these books is Milo Sturgis, an LAPD detective. Milo is gay, but his gayness is only briefly mentioned in this installment.

Alex is invited to consult on two murders that are puzzling the LAPD – a young waiter who was cut in half and stashed in the trunk of a car and a 30-something psychologist who was also stuffed into the trunk of a car, but not bisected. In both cases the eyes had been mutilated. So similarities – mutilated eyes, stuffed into cars – but not much else to link the cases. So Alex and Milo start by trying to learn about the victims. The psychologist in particular is interesting in that she is a blank slate – a house devoid of pictures or amenities, a job at a hospital for the criminally insane which she took, inexplicably, after a successful stint as a researcher. Seems like a big step down to Alex. Why would she make that career move? Well, it turns out that she had a weird fascination with one of the inmates there – Ardis Peake, a low-IQ guy who slaughtered an entire family some 16 years prior. And it gets really weird when it is reported that Peake, the day before the psychologist’s murder, predicted some details of her demise. “Bad eyes in a box” – arguably a good description of her mutilated corpse in the trunk of a car.

Unraveling this mystery makes for a good story. And I won’t be giving too much away if I tell you that the plot spans 16 years. There is a lot of psychology talk – not surprising – and a whole bunch of red herrings (including the title – you will see what I mean). It is a good story up until the end which stretches credulity. There are also some coincidences that are hard to swallow and not a lot of twists. So a good story. But not a great one.

6 out of 10.

Copyright 2015 by Smart Blond, LLC. Published by St Martin’s Press, New York.

This is billed as #3 in Scottoline’s “Rosato & Denunzio” series. Well, she must have reset the counter after Denunzio became a partner because there are a whole bunch of Rosato books that precede this one.

For those of you not familiar with Scottoline’s barrister heroine, Bennie Rosato, let me make the introduction. She is a tough-as-nails Philadelphia lawyer who runs a law firm that is nearly all female. She has taken on a token male flunky and also employs a male investigator, but all the lawyers are female. As a result her stories are strong on estrogen and things like feelings and relationships. You know… chick stuff. This sometimes seems overdone and can make me, as a male reader, feel like I am left out of the joke. But Scottoline is a skilled writer and some of her plots are quite interesting.

Like this one.

In some of her previous books, all romance and sex was the province of her younger colleagues. Bennie herself seemed asexual and left me wondering, whether she, as a tough woman running an all-female business, might be a closet lesbian. Sure, she had a boyfriend, but you know how that goes.

Well, I don’t have to wonder anymore. She is a full-fledged heterosexual who both falls in love and falls in bed with a man in this book. But the nascent romance is nipped in the bud by tragic events and they break up within a week after meeting. The disrupting events involve the families of two teen boys who were jailed for a middle school scuffle, a simple conflict that didn’t seem to justify incarceration. And it is later discovered that the judge was benefiting financially from throwing innocent youngsters into jail Judicial corruption which ruined many lives.

Fast forward 15 years. Bennie volunteers to defend a young man accused of murder. He is one of the young men involved in the middle school scuffle. The victim is the other. Because her lost love interest is the uncle of the victim, they are thrown together again, in a not very romantic way, on opposite sides of a murder trial.

See the opportunity for conflict? That is what this book is all about – unimaginably intense conflict, tragic loss and hope for redemption. I would call it “gripping” as it really grabbed me.

My one complaint is that the “smoking gun” in this case was discovered in a video clip the night before Bennie had to mount a defense. This case took 6 months to get to trial. It seems like this information – and its significance – should have been seen much sooner. But a “night before” discovery is more dramatic.

But that is a minor complaint. Overall, the book was very satisfying. And I was very happy to learn that a hard-as-nails lady lawyer can fall in love.

9 out of 10.

Copyright 2012 by Robert Crais. Published by The Berkley Publishing Group, New York.

I have one major complaint about this book and that is the jumbled timeline. There are times when telling a story out of chronological order makes for a better story, but this is not one of them. I found jumping from “6 days after he was taken” to “40 minutes before he was taken” to be very distracting, with no obvious benefit. Seems to me the story could have been told – better – in simple chronological order.

However, it is a damn good story. The initial event is the taking of a young couple by a group of vicious bajadors – men who steal illegal immigrants being transported into the US, then hold them for ransom. The mother of the kidnapped young woman – who was taken quite by accident by being in the wrong place at the wrong time – hires Elvis Cole, the self-described “World’s Greatest Detective,” to find her. He enlists the able assistance of Joe Pike and Jon Stone, two very tough and very smart former elite special forces soldiers. They get the job done, but not before Elvis himself is taken and is nearly murdered.

It is a very good story. But, again, why not tell it chronologically?

This is the 15th of (at least) 18 books in the Elvis Cole series. As always, if you think there is any chance you want to read the series, it is best to start at the beginning. I haven’t done that so I can’t tell you if the 14 that preceded this one are just as good, but it seems likely.

7 out of 10. It would have been 8 were it not for my chronological order complaint.

Copyright 2015 by Columbia Rose Ltd., published by Grand Central Publishing, New York

Let me start by saying that the plot in this book is one of the most twisted, perverse and just downright evil that I have ever read. Since I am a fan of Jeffrey Deaver, the master of twisted and perverse, that is saying something.

I will also give Baldacci credit for pulling things together at the end. A plot that, for most of the book, made no sense and seemed to be rife with red herrings, actually comes together at the end to make sense. Quite an accomplishment, really.

This is #5 in the series of mystery/adventure books featuring my favorite government-sponsored assassin, Will Robie and, eventually, his co-assassin and love interest, Jessica Reel. As it is not the last book in this series, I won’t be giving anything away by telling you that both Robie and Reel survive. But not for lack of trying. Just about everyone else in this book dies. I couldn’t compute the body count, but it runs into the dozens. As the setting for the book is Cantrell MS, a small rural town, I think that a substantial percentage of the population bit the dust. Some of the dead were not residents, fortunately – they were just hired hands which Robie and Reel dispatched with relative ease. They are fully capable of taking on a battalion armed with automatic weapons and barely breaking a sweat. But they nearly meet their maker at the hands of the villain who was armed with a single pistol. Doesn’t seem likely, but it makes for a good story.

The body count begins with Robie killing a bad guy under orders from Uncle Sam. But he also, accidentally, kills a 4-year-old girl. This unbalances him and he is unable to finish his next assignment. He needs to take a break to clear his head. Fortunately his father has been charged with murder in Cantrell MS so Robie heads there to work out his inner demons and, hopefully, help his estranged daddy. He senses that he can’t move forward until he deals with some unresolved issues from his past, one being his father and the other being the loss – and disappearance – of his high school sweetheart over 20 years ago.

It doesn’t take Robie long to make some new enemies who appear to be associated with wealthy casino interests in Mississippi. He doesn’t kill any of the 4 men in this initial encounter, but he maims them and pisses them off enough that they come back in force. His bacon is saved, in this second encounter, by the timely arrival of Jessica Reel. This encounter results in the death of 7 men. More deaths – including the death of a teen girl – soon follow. Meanwhile the FBI appears in town, hot on the trail of a serial killer.

So… random killings in a small town, a possible serial killer, casino-related thugs, a murder charge against his father and the mystery of the disappearance of his old girlfriend (and her entire family). Quite a variety of plotlines. What more could be added? How about some pedophilia?

It is a jumble, for sure. I don’t want to give more of the plot away because it is truly twisted and surprisingly coherent. Pretty satisfying, really.

8 out of 10.