There are 35 new thrillers out this month.  Sooo many books, so little time.

• Hell Gate by Linda Fairstein
• Once A Spy by Keith Thompson
• Live to Tell by Wendy Corsi Staub
• Dead Reckoning by Ronie Kendig
• The Cold Room by J.T. Ellison
• The Dragon Factory by Jonathan Maberry
• Hush by Kate White
• Drink the Tea by Thomas Kaufman
• City of War by Neil Russell
• Freeze Frame by Peter May
• Scandal On Rincon Hill by Shirley Tallman
• Never Look Away by Linwood Barclay
• The Secret Of Excalibur by Andy McDermott
• A Covert War by Michael Parker
• Miles To Go by Amy Dawson Robertson
• Veracity by Laura Bynum
• Plaster and Poison by Jennie Bentley
• Wild Laws by Jim Michael Hansen
• Werewolf Smackdown by Mario Acevedo
• Blood Vines by Erica Spindler
• The Cost of Love by Drue Allen
• Forget Me Not by Vicki Hinze
• Frame Up by John F. Dobbyn
• No Chance by Christy Reece
• False Mermaid by Erin Hart
• Touch of Evil by Colleen Thompson
• The Gray Man by Mark Greaney
• The Savannah Project by Chuck Barrett
• Legion by B.J. Kibble
• Silver Guilt by Judith Cutler
• Spring Break by Kayla Perrin
• The Twain Maxim by Clem Chambers
• Rum Point: A Baseball Novel by Rick Wilber
• The 24th Letter by Tom Lowe
• Grey Matters by Clea Simon

Genre:  Thriller

Rating:  3.5 WaterTowers (Action packed adventure seeking the Templar treasure)

This was an ARC sent to me by Robin Burcell.  It is in stores now.

“The Bone Chamber” is the second in the Sydney Fitzpatrick series.  In a normal world, I much prefer reading series in order, and in this case I probably should have. Although some information is given on Sydney’s exploits in book 1, I still feel as though I do not know Sydney as well as I should.

That said, and if you read this blog you know that I love the Templar / Vatican / Mason, genre (ala Dan Brown, Lewis Perdue, et al).  ”The Bone Chamber” adds another exciting possible solution to the hidden treasure of the Templars.  Very cool.

Special Agent Sydney Fitzpatrick is an FBI forensic artist teaching a class in D.C., and looking forward to Thanksgiving with her family in the Bay Area, when she is interrupted by her boss and Special Agent Zachary Griffin with an urgent request.

Griffin asks Sydney to recommend a good forensic anthropologist.  She does:  Dr. Natasha Gilbert.  A good friend of hers, and she lives in D.C.  How handy.

Griffin assumes Sydney will work with Natasha to develop a sketch of a dead person so they (a super secret agency called ATLAS) can identify who it is.  The body has no face (it was removed by taking off a pyramid shaped mass of skin from the face….and the fingers).

Sydney and Natasha meet.  But Natasha is unusually jumpy.  She has just returned from an archeological dig and fears she may have been cursed.  As it turns out…she was.

Because before Sydney and Natasha could start on the identification….Natasha is hit by a car and killed.

Griffin hurriedly grabs Sydney and hides her away to complete the sketch, and to keep her safe.  Once she is done, Griffin immediately knows who the person is (he knows her and so did Natasha…they were on the dig together).

From this point on, Sydney is involved if only because of her own curiosity.  She refuses to give up trying to find out who the person is and why Alessandra was murdered. Sydney’s FBI investigative skills come in handy as she quickly finds information that Griffin has not.

With this information in hand, she flies off to Italy to investigate more.  Griffin follows.

In Italy, the search for the hidden Templar treasure intensifies and the danger for all involved similarly intensifies.  We find out that the world is in danger since the treasure may also hold plagues that have been dormant for thousands of years. Fearing that these microbes could be made into biological weapons, Griffin has the safety of the world on his shoulders.  He has to succeed, but, there are others who also want to find the treasure.  And they will kill without hesitation (and cut off your face for good measure).

Do Griffin and Sydney find the secret location?  Do they survive?  Does the world survive?  You will have to read “The Bone Chamber” to find out.

I throughly enjoyed “The Bone Chamber”.  The action was intense (especially the ending), and the characters very interesting and normally flawed (Griffin is afraid of close spaces, and Sydney is afraid of the dark).   The historical intrigue and clues to the hidden treasure, although there, are easier to follow than in other books of this ilk.  Where I usually run to the Internet to find out more about a particular subject,  ”The Bone Chamber” allows me to just enjoy the story.    :-)

That said, I am definitely looking forward to reading the next (and the first) in the series.  Oh, by the way, Robin Burcell is a local author living near Tracy, CA.

You can follow Robin on Twitter:  @RobinBurcell .

OK.  I caught Barry Eisler’s link to his blog entry titled “Paper Earthworks and Digital Tides” where he gives an outstanding synopsis and opinion on the recent Macmillan / Amazon, ah….disagreement, and what the future may hold re:  e-book versus paper publishing.

Here is the link to Barry’s blog, but, I also copied the full text below so you don’t have to jump all over the place.  Whatever appears here (when all is said and done) was approved by Barry Eisler.

Paper Earthworks and Digital Tides by Barry Eisler

Don’t be misled by the self-serving narratives Amazon and Macmillan have advanced following their recent eBooks battle. Amazon’s narrative is “We’re Pro-Consumer;” Macmillan (and paper publishers in general) counter with “We’re Anti-Monopoly.” Neither of these narratives is untrue, but neither addresses the real cause of this war.

What’s happening is this. Amazon is doing everything it can to speed the transition to eBooks because, in a digital world, Amazon’s costs of shipping and storage essentially disappear. Paper publishers are doing everything they can to slow the transition to eBooks because, in a digital world, paper publishers’ high hardback margins essentially disappear.

That’s it. One side wants to improve its profits through lower costs; the other, through higher margins. Everything else is commentary, much of it misleading.

Paper publishing has been around a long time and hasn’t changed much. Think of it as a castle, surrounded by earthworks built out of the high margins publishers enjoy on hardback books. Now imagine digital as a surging tide comprised of two elements: (1) increasingly low-cost, high-quality digital book readers; and (2) lower-priced digital books. Amazon has attacked publishing’s fortifications first by introducing the Kindle, and second, by selling eBooks at a loss. Publishers can’t counter the first strategy (and even if they could, it wouldn’t matter — Apple, B&N, Sony, and plenty of other players are constantly improving and lowering the costs of digital readers). They have found a way to temporarily counter the second, by forcing Amazon to price eBooks no lower than $15, which is what the battle with Macmillan was fought over.

But it was only a battle. In the wider war, digital readers will continue to get better, cheaper, and more widely adopted. As for the price of eBooks, publishers can only control the price of the what Amazon buys from them. If you were Amazon, therefore, and publishers had stymied one of the two prongs of your strategy for speeding the transition to digital, what would you do?

That’s right. You’d speed your own transition to becoming a publisher. This has been happening anyway; all Macmillan has done is provide Amazon with an incentive to do it faster. In the coming months, therefore, expect to see Amazon announce that it’s poached some combination of editors and writers from major paper publishers. It will then publish its own eBooks at whatever price it believes will most effectively speed the transition to digital. Drive the price of eBooks low enough, and consumers’ perceptions of the value of all books will radically change. It’s this changing perception publishers fear. Consumers will buy a $17 hardback if the eBook costs $15. Charge $5 for that same eBook, and $17 for a hardback becomes an impossible sell.

Earthworks are a static defense. Publishers can do a few things to make the walls marginally higher and thicker, but that’s about it. Meanwhile, the force of the digital tide is always increasing. Eventually, a kinetic and ever stronger offense will overwhelm a static, finite defense. Either publishers don’t know this, in which case they’re deluded; or they do know it, in which case they’re just playing for time while their employees update their resumes. Either way, their position is grim. If they want to survive, they can’t just hunker down behind their crumbling walls. They need an offense.

What would that offense be? The only solution I can imagine is for the major paper publishers to stop selling digital rights to Amazon and other retailers and establish their own well branded and managed online store. It’s probably too late for them to make such a move anyway, but even if it weren’t, the chances that a media industry could do something so radical are vanishingly small. And even if they did manage to pull it off, they’d keep eBook prices high to shore up their paper profits — which is of course what they’re doing now. Piracy would increase, and Amazon would muscle in with its own line of low-cost eBooks. To make it work, publishers would have to radically lower eBook prices and cannibalize their high-margin hardback sales. I’ve never heard of a company managing such a bold move, and I don’t think a publisher will be the first to pull it off. But in a land of zero-cost distribution, with their primary competitive advantage further eroding every day, publishers need to establish their own direct link to consumers. If they don’t, they’ll offer no significant value in the changing ecosystem in which they find themselves, at which point they will become extinct.

I hope I don’t sound unsympathetic. I make a good living selling hardback books through paper publishers and I have many friends in the industry who will suffer as it changes, so on a personal level the transition to digital isn’t something I welcome wholeheartedly. But when analyzing a trend, it pays to set aside sentiment.

I used the word “extinct” above. It’s hard to avoid the imagery the word naturally conjures: dinosaurs, blinking in frightened confusion as they find themselves encircled by new, hungry-looking predators encroaching on the territory that was once exclusively theirs. Dinosaurs had famously small brains. If publishers have an advantage in this regard, they need to start exploiting it.

Those who follow this blog know that I have been resisting e-books.  To me, there is nothing like the smell and feel of a REAL book.  However, progress is progress and I am softening my stance.  Besides the technology is cool.  (See my Technical Blog, TelBitConsulting.com).

This weekend I saw a posting on Facebook by John Gilstrap.  He mentioned that he has just taken his first steps into the e-book world and gave two links.

Since I really enjoyed “No Mercy” by John Gilstrap (click on John’s link to the right).  I figured I’d give his links a try.

Here are the steps I took:

I  downloaded the free Kindle for a PC as per the link John gave on his Facebook entry:   http://tinyurl.com/yja443f

The download and installation went smoothly.

Then I went to “Fresh Kills, Tales from the Kill Zone” link on Amazon and downloaded the e-book ($2.99 is very reasonable).   Here is the Amazon link:  http://tinyurl.com/yznbz55

I had to go back onto the Kindle software to complete the download but once I did that, I had “Fresh Kills” on my computer.  (I hope Amazon got my $$ since I had not gotten an indication that they did.)

The free Kindle user interface and usage is lacking. It was hard to find John’s  ”In the After”.  I could not jump to it, nor were the stories broken up into easily accessible chapters, and the titles are all clumped together.  I went page by page until I found it, then bookmarked it.  That worked.  :-)

I read the story quickly (well, as quickly as I can read).  It was VERY good, about a writer and his wife being held accountable for a past article that caused the suicide of the terrorists father.   4 WaterTowers.  :-)

Summary

Since I sit on the computer all the time, reading a short story on it was fine.

I probably would prefer the Kindle (or Nook..see my intro of the Nook on this blog) since the screen is better for intense reading than my laptop.

OK, I’m changing…I’ll probably get an e-reader at some point but will still buy real books.

There are 28 new thrillers due this month.

See my reviews of the awesome:   “City of Dragons” by Kelli Stanley and “The Last Surgeon” by Michael Palmer  (look to the right and click on the authors link)  :-)

I have “Original Sin” by Allison Brennen in the queue, and “Down River” by Karen Harper.

Once again, I need to get busy reading…been spending too much time on the Tracy Virtual Office.  Not really…that is where the $$ are.  :-)

• CITY OF DRAGONS by Kelli Stanley
• FRESH KILLS: Tales from the Kill Zone by various authors
• DEADLY SEDUCTION by Cate Noble
• THE LAST SURGEON by Michael Palmer
• RESCUING OLIVIA by Julie Compton
• LAST SNOW by Eric Van Lustbader
• WAKE UP DEAD by Roger Smith
• THE THINGS THAT KEEP US HERE by Carla Buckley
• MONEY TO BURN by James Grippando
• CEMETERY ROAD by Gar Anthony Haywood
• NO MERCY by Lori Armstrong
• CASE FILE: CANYON CREEK, WYOMING by Paula Graves
• THE LITTLE DEATH by P.J. Parrish
• L.A. BONEYARD by P.A. Brown
• SLOW FIRE by Ken Mercer
• ORIGINAL SIN by Allison Brennan
• DOWN RIVER by Karen Harper
• RAINING CAT SITTERS AND DOGS by Blaize Clement
• BROKEN PLACES by Sandra Parshall
• THE RUNNER by Peter May
• THE TRAITOR IN US ALL by Robert S. Levinson
• IF BOOKS COULD KILL by Kate Carlisle
• THE WOLFMAN by Jonathan Maberry
• EMERALD EMBRACE by Shannon Drake
• JACK: SECRET CIRCLES by F. Paul Wilson
• REQUIEM IN VIENNA by J. Sydney Jones
• XOMBIES: APOCALYPTICON by Walter Greatshell

Genre:  Medical Thriller

Rating:  4 WaterTowers (Terrific!!!)

This is an ARC sent to me, and signed, by Michael Palmer.  It will be in stores Feb 16, 2010.

Before you read my attempt at writing, read the Prologue to “The Last Surgeon” at this link.

PROLOGUE

This is far and away the most frightening, disturbing death (of Belle Coates) / murder scene I have ever read.  In fact, I read it online before I got the book, and could not (and still have not) re-read it.

Dr. Nick Garrity (aka Dr. Nick Fury) is an ex-Army trauma surgeon struggling to overcome Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).  Nick and June Wright both work with the Helping Hands organization in a mobile medical facility.  From that RV they help those who cannot otherwise get medical attention.

Really quickly, Nick’s PTSD is the result of a terrorist car bombing at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Savannah in Afganistan, that killed 28 including his fiancee.  Only Nick and Umberto Vasquez survived, thanks to Umberto’s quick action.  As “The Last Surgeon” opens, Umberto has been missing for 4 years…Nick is still looking for him.

Franz Koller is a mild mannered substitute teacher (like me!).   He knows Chemistry, probably better than the teachers, and loves the flexibility of substitute teaching so he can pursue his other profession:  as an assassin.  Franz is a master of the “non-kill” (killing someone so it looks like a natural, or accidental, death), and loves what he does.   Belle found out.  A secret government organization, Jericho, employs Franz when the need arises.  Very scary guy.

Jillian Coates is Belle’s sister.  She is a psych nurse at Shelby Stone Memorial Hospital.  She also does not believe her sister would kill herself (you need to read the Prologue!) and starts her own investigation.  Starting with the comic books of Nick Fury she found in her sisters apartment (some of which had handwritten Dr., Doctor, written on them), she sets out to find Dr. Nick Fury and her sisters killer.

Unfortunately, her investigation gets the attention of the all knowing Jericho and, thus, Franz.  Her life is in danger.

Eventually, Jillian, June, Reggie (June’s teenage foster child and computer whiz), and Nick team to try to find Umberto, Belles killer, and an ever  growing conspiracy involving ….hmmm, you will just have to read “The Last Surgeon” to find out more.

Michael Palmer is another author that I had not read until now, but, had been on my list.   He is now definitely on my list, and if / when, I get time, I will go back to read his other books.

“The Last Surgeon” is fast, brutal, and intriguing.   A first rate Thriller.

Mark this day on your calendar:  Feb 16, 2010 then head out to your local bookstore and pick up a copy of “The Last Surgeon”.  If you love Medical (or just plain) Thrillers, you will love this book.

Genre:  Mystery

Rating:  3.5 WaterTowers (fun lighthearted mystery)

This is an ARC sent to me by Mary Kennedy.  It was new in stores this month.

My wife could not believe that super manly me (how funny) was reading a pink book! I  took it to restaurants and the Jury Room without the need for a cover (like Perl Programming Made Easy).  Hey…I’m secure.  ;-)

Well…..I read “Dead Air” and it was great!  Every now and then a good lighthearted mystery lifts your spirits (as much as murder and mayhem can), “Dead Air” did just that.

Sidestory:  In an email conversation with Mary Kennedy she told me that her agent sold the book in 24 hours with five words:  ”Frasier Meets Murder She Wrote”.  Since I liked both shows, it was a no brainer for me to read “Dead Air”.  And, how cool is this, a “Lilith” even shows up…

Maggie Walsh, a beautiful, 32 year old psychologist, left New York City for sunny Florida (Cypress Grove) seeking a fresh start with cool job as a radio show host.  WYME’s “On the Couch with Maggie Walsh” is less than a stellar performer (tied for last with “Bob Figgs and the Swine Report”) in a small market.  But Maggie gets her fair share of interesting guests and, one in particular, promises to boost her ratings.

Guru Sanjay Gingi is a well known “New Age prophet” from Miami.  He has written several best selling books and has hoards of loyal followers.  The instant he enters Maggie’s radio world, she feels she is in the presence of a charismatic con man, not a prophet.

During the show, Guru Sanjay helped sooth the psyches of a number of callers and the show was a rousing success.  Guru Sanjay invited Maggie to his conference the next day at the Seabreeze Inn (which happens to be next door to Maggie’s house).

At home that night, Maggie describes her meeting with Guru Sanjay with roommate Lark Merriweather.  Lark, as it turns out, loves Guru Sanjay and would give anything to meet him.  After dinner, Lark excuses herself and leaves the house for the drugstore. Or so she said.

The next morning Maggie gets a call from the station asking if she can cover the early news.  They are short handed because of the big news:  Guru Sanjay was dead.  And it looks like murder.  Yikes!!!

At that moment, handsome Detective Rafe Martino was knocking on Maggie’s door.  It turns out that Lark is a suspect in the murder and there appear to be no other suspects the police are pursuing.   Double Yikes!

Time for Maggie to jump into action and find the killer.

“Dead Air” moves at an even brisker pace from here as Maggie and, later, her mother, Lola an aging (ha…she is MY age!) actress, find several people with motive to kill Guru Sanjay (who we find out is not the nicest guy in the world).

Does Maggie find the killer?  Is it Lark?  Do Rafe and Maggie hook up?  Hmmm, you will have to read “Dead Air” to find out.  :-)

I really enjoyed this first book in the “A Talk Radio Mystery” series.  Mary Kennedy tells me that all three books have been turned in, so I suspect the wait for the next one will be, thankfully, short.

If you want a quick, fun, lighthearted mystery to read, you will definitely enjoy “Dead Air”.   Frasier meets Murder She Wrote indeed.

Parting thought:  Sure glad radio station WYME radio is not located west of the Mississippi.  ;-)

Genre:  Mystery (Miranda rocks!)

Rating:  3.5 WaterTowers

This was an ARC sent to me by Kelli Stanley.  It will be in stores in Feb 2010.

Miranda Corbie, troubled, chain-smoking, ex-escort, Spanish War nurse, part-time Worlds Fair employee, PI, was walking home during the Chinese New Year celebration when a nearly dead Eddie Takahashi crossed her path.

He died with her by his side.  In 1940 San Francisco….a Japanese young man dies in Chinatown and no one cares.  Not the Chamber, not the police.

Miranda cares.

Wanting to find Eddie’s murderer, Miranda starts digging for clues.  But there are those who do not want her to keep looking.  The police for one.   And two people in a mysterious green Olds for another.

Taking on a new case, one that pays, to find the missing daughter of a recently deceased Pickwick Hotel guest, Phyllis Winters, Miranda continues her investigation into Eddie’s death.

As she learns more….the two cases start to merge.  The Pickwick death turns out to be murder and Miranda knows more about who might be involved than is safe.  Not good.  The people in the green Olds have new orders–kill Miranda–and they almost succeed.

Injured, limping, face battered and swollen, Miranda continues her investigation, a little more carefully now, and with the help (well sort of) of police detective Gonzales.

What Miranda ultimately finds reaches far beyond what anyone can imagine.   You are going to have to read “City of Dragons” to learn more.

1940 San Francisco is a much different place than we now know.  Miranda is a “broad” making it on her own in a world where political correctness does not exist and prejudices, of all kinds, abound.  Melding of Chinese, Japanese, and Italian cultures, San Francisco history,  with old fashioned male and female roles, make “City of Dragons” tremendously entertaining reading.

It took me awhile to become comfortable with Kelli Stanley’s writing style (which is, hmmmm, I suppose “terse” might explain it best).   But once past that, I found myself transported back to the sometimes seedy back streets of San Francisco, fedora on my head helping Miranda find her man (and urging her to quit smoking).

This is the first in a series with Miranda Corbie as the main character.  As such, the details of her life are given to the reader in small doses.  We know she lost a lover, Johnny, in 1937, and that she is very troubled because of that loss.  We know she was a nurse in the Spanish War…in Spain.

“She found him there.  But it wasn’t him.  It was someone who looked like him, but already didn’t smell like him.  Someone who had been too close to a shell.  Too close. To the front.  Too close.  To the cause.  Too close.  To her.

Johnny.”

We briefly meet Miranda’s estranged father and learn a bit about her childhood, but, again, not much.  Needless to say…. I’m looking forward to the next book where I hope to learn more.

If you love a good mystery, a bit of  history, and San Francisco (who doesn’t) go to the bookstore in February 2010 and pick up a copy of “City of Dragons”…you will love it!

Happy New Year!

There are 25 or so Thrillers due out this month.

Click on the Books above to go to the ThrillerWriters web site for a lot more information.  :-)

From ThrillerWriters.org here is the list:

• Watchlist: A Serial Thriller by Jeffery Deaver & 21 others
• Impact by Douglas Preston
• The Sculptor by Gregory Funaro
• Virtually Dead by Peter May
• Eggsecutive Orders by Julie Hyzy
• The Queen’s Governess by Karen Harper
• Dead on Arrival by Jackie Griffey
• Dying Gasp by Leighton Gage
• Dead Air by Mary Kennedy
• Silver by Steven Savile
• Shattered by Joan Johnston
• Cut Short by Leigh Russell
• Gutshot Straight by Lou Berney
• No Survivors by Tom Cain
• Armageddon Trade by Clem Chambers
• Too Hot to Hold by Stephanie Tyler
• Double Black by Wendy Clinch
• Mercy by David Kessler
• The God Machine by J.G. Sandom
• Sleep No More by Susan Crandall
• Burn by Ted Dekker and Erin Healy
• Rogue Threat by AJ Tata
• Among Thieves by David Hosp
• Schooled In Lies by Angela Henry
• Connect the Dots by Denise Robbins

Happy Reading!

Book mark this site and tell all your frends about it.  Cool book reveiws on the way including:

“City of Dragons”, “Dry Air”, “True Blue”, “Ford County”, “Pirate Latitudes”, “Pursuit of Honor” and many more!

Expect about 30 in 2010 (slow reader….arrrghh).

I hope to be getting an ARC of “The Last Surgeon” by Michael Palmer soon.  The book is due in stores in Feb 2010, and I will have the review posted here before that date.

Interestingly, since I love medical thrillers,  I have not yet read Michael Palmer.  But, I have been circling his books like a hungry lion ready to pounce when I had time.  Now I  have time,  and I am looking forward to reading “The Last Surgeon” and finding another new (for me) author to read.

While we are waiting for Feb 2010 to roll around…here is a link to the Prologue.

Enjoy…