Famous Last Words by Gillian McAllister #BookReview #TuesdayBookBlog #WomensCrimeFiction

A Suspenseful Domestic Thriller with Shocking Twists, Unravel the Deception

Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Book Blurb:

From the author of Reese’s Book Club Pick and New York Times bestseller Wrong Place Wrong Time comes an addictive thriller about a new mother’s world upended when her husband commits a terrifying crime. How well does she truly know the man she loves? And what danger does she face if her entire life has been built on a lie?

It is June 21^st, the longest day of the year, and new mother Camilla’s life is about to change forever. After months of maternity leave, she will drop her infant daughter off at daycare for the first time and return to her job as a literary agent. Finally. But, when she wakes, her husband Luke isn’t there, and in his place is a cryptic note.

Then it starts. Breaking news: there’s a hostage situation developing in London. The police arrive, and tell her Luke is involved. But he isn’t a hostage. Her husband – doting father, eternal optimist – is the gunman.

What she does next is crucial. Because only she knows what the note he left behind that morning says…

My Review:

There’s nothing like an all out race that slams at 150 mph into a wall. Sorta what this novel does as the beginning is both a shock and thrill ride.

New mom Camilla didn’t have a particularly restful night and hoping for a little help getting ready for her first day back to work discovers her hubby’s note. Harried and a little resentful, she manages both herself, the baby, and the house and gets to her own job. Before she can get settled down, however, the police are asking to speak to her.

Famous Last Words by Gillian McAllister — Famous Last Words – UK cover

There is an apparent hostage situation in London. She’s thinking hubby is a hostage, but no, they inform her, he is the hostage taker.

Whoa! Switcharoo! Not what the reader expects and it’s a great hook. With two POVs, hers and the hostage negotiator, things progress swiftly until the whole premise hits that proverbial wall. The hostages are killed and Luke manages his escape.

Part II, left without the rug underneath, the reader is now a hostage as well—hanging onto the storyline simply because you have to know the how, why? Cam insists he’s innocent. But in the face of everything, including damaging videos, does she really still believe it can’t be him? If it IS him, WHY?

What follows after that mad scramble into incredulity are the personal back stories and struggles with Cam and the negotiator, Niall, who with the death of the hostages now has those deaths and failure laid at his feet.

AH! Then Part III kicks in and the pace picks up again, but that middle part definitely slows and chills the narrative. In the meantime, some seven years have elapsed, it’s old news, and her life may be changing with a new romance. She decides it’s time to have Luke officially declared dead.

Now the hitch in the giddy-up. Oops. Maybe not. Truth to say, she might always love Luke. If it’s him, trying to reach her—she must know.

Yeah, those twists. It’s possible you also figured out a few things, stretched your imagination. Great characters. I found Niall particularly engaging and empathetic. Still, there’s a whole story yet to reveal denouement. A surprising departure from most plots, tension filled, suspenseful. If you enjoy thrillers, you’ll enjoy this one—even through the slower part. 4.5 stars

I read Wrong Place Wrong Time and I’m still experiencing vertigo from that one. This one pushes disbelief and also leaves you tilted. The author looks so innocent in those author photos, hard to believe these plots come from that mind.

Many thanks to my local library for the opportunity to read and review this book. The thoughts expressed here are my own.

Rosepoint Rating: Four point Five Stars

Book Details:

Genre: Women’s Crime Fiction, Domestic Thrillers, Women’s Psychological Fiction
Publisher: William Morrow
ISBN: 978-0063338449
ASIN: B0D3CH5FZS
Print Length: 332 pages
Publication Date: February 25, 2025
Source: Local Library

Title Link(s):

Amazon-US | Amazon-UK | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

The Author: Gillian McAllister

As you find me, it’s winter 2025 and my new novel is Famous Last Words, a thriller with a marriage at its centre. It asks the question: what would you do if your husband is caught up in a siege in central London? Only, the police tell you he isn’t one of the hostages: he is the gunman… I hope you like the answer!

As to me, otherwise, I am the author of these novels:

Everything But The Truth (2017)
Anything You Do Say (2018) called The Choice in America
No Further Questions (2018) called The Good Sister in America
The Evidence Against You (2019)
How To Disappear (2020)
That Night (2021)
Wrong Place Wrong Time (2022)
Just Another Missing Person (2023)
Famous Last Words (2025)

My most popular novel is probably Wrong Place Wrong Time, which was selected for the Radio 2 book club and was the Reese’s Book Club August ’22 pick. It debuted at number 4 on the Sunday Times Bestseller List and number 2 on the New York Times Bestseller List.

When not writing (which is basically never), I can be found walking my dog Wendy and parenting my small toddler. The best moments of my day always are the first sip of my coffee, the moment I step into the bath at night, and my son telling me he loves me. And that rare thing that happens only once a year – a novel idea.

Happiness is a Reading Buddy

The Twelve Dogs of Christmas by Susan Wiggs – #BookReview – #TuesdayBookBlog

Book Blurb:

The ultimate holiday gift from New York Times bestselling author Susan Wiggs: a delightful novel about a Christmas transport of rescue puppies that’s guaranteed to warm readers’ hearts.

Brenda Malloy wants nothing to do with Christmas ever again. Last year, Brenda and her husband rushed their beloved dog Tim to the emergency vet on Christmas eve. The good news: Tim survived after the vet cleared the obstruction–a pair of women’s lace undies. The bad news: the undies were not Brenda’s.

A year after the breakup, Brenda has put her life back together. She’s trained for a marathon, is writing a children’s novel, and she’s found purpose and healing as a volunteer with a dog rescue organization in Houston, Texas. The rescue partners with a program in Avalon, New York–a small, snowy town deep in the Catskills. Now Brenda is arranging the transport of rescued dogs from Houston to Avalon—just in time for a merry Christmas with their forever families. Brenda’s friends worry about her driving a van two thousand miles with twelve dogs in crates, but she shrugs off their concern. How hard can it be? She knows the way, and she’s just looking to escape the Christmas overload for a while.

But a blinding snowstorm, an escaped mutt, and a life-saving encounter with Adam Bellamy—a single dad and paramedic—means Brenda has to stay in Avalon longer than she planned. As she drops off each precious pup at their new homes, some of the comfort and joy of the season begins to creep up on Brenda despite her determination to avoid the holidays. Perhaps you can bring Christmas into your heart after all…if you have the right furry friends to guide the way.

My Review:

Yes, this time of year, it’s understood there’ll be sweet Christmasy winter-time romance stories, dripping with sentiment, and time-honored storylines. Add in twelve dogs and it’s bound to be a winner.

Brenda Malloy has been soured on Christmas—there’s been more than one tragedy with that timing—and she views each coming Christmas with a sinking heart. Brenda, however, has an outlet that she’s found satisfying revolving around a dog rescue. So far, her biggest challenge is the paperwork involved in gleaning good applications and pairing them with appropriate dogs looking for their furever homes.

While being an advocate for the doggos, she generally works out of her home. This year she’s been volunteered to help drive twelve dogs (including her own) to the northern regions for placement in time for Christmas. The trip went beautifully until the winter storm hit just outside of their destination resulting in a serious accident with her co-worker in the hospital and one canine escapee.

As luck would have it, the eye-candy paramedic (Adam) who rescued her is also the recipient of one of the dogs intended for his son—he’s divorced. Also, luckily, his mother is another recipient and she is very well to do, advocates in her own way offering bath and bedroom quarters while Brenda waits out the storm and their van is restored to serviceable.

Lately, I can’t seem to avoid romances, some of which have gotten quite steamy. This one stayed more generally G-rated while Brenda fought her ideas of the north, the weather, the town, and her attraction to the EMT. She managed to connect with the recipients of the dogs and deliver them to almost all the right people, finding one slight mismatch that she resolved well. The reader is treated to a little info regarding the dogs and the homes they went to and for about the first 75% or so of the book, I thoroughly enjoyed.

Then, I’m not sure what happened. While the first two-thirds was well-paced, well-plotted, and engaging, the last third got gooey, bogging down with the romance (her refusal to accept an insta-love), with a drop in reading level from adult to adolescent.

Well, grrrr….

Undaunted though and because I enjoy books about dogs, I’ll look for other novels by this author. In the meantime, if a simple romance with predictable storyline is your jam, you may very well enjoy this one.

I received a copy of this book from my handy dandy library that in no way influenced this review. These are my honest thoughts.

Rosepoint Rating: Four Stars

Book Details:

Genre: Friendship Fiction, Holiday Fiction, Christmas Holiday Romance eBooks
Publisher: William Morrow
ISBN: ‎ 0063253518
ASIN: B0BSFRMS2R
Print Length: 254
Publication Date: October 17, 2023
Source: Local Library

Title Link(s):

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

Susan Wiggs - author — Susan Wiggs – author

The Author: [Amazon] I like to believe I am the person my dogs think I am.

I phone my parents every day, as they are elderly and adorable, and they read me stories every day of my freakishly normal childhood. I was a writer before I learned to read, by creating scribbles on paper and dictating the stories to my saintly mother. You can see examples here: https://plus.google.com/u/1/photos/104585203815605467940/albums/5587379107269629729?banner=pwa&partnerid=pwrd1.

Untold eons later, I still read and write everyday and I’ve gotten very good at it. I live in a ridiculously gorgeous place in the world–an island in Puget Sound, Washington where we have a lot of the same flowers you grow in the UK. But bigger slugs. Much bigger slugs.

I have lots more to tell you, so please join me on Facebook and check out pictures of my dogs and tell me what’s on your mind. https://www.facebook.com/susanwiggs

[Goodreads] Susan Wiggs‘s life is all about family, friends…and fiction. She lives at the water’s edge on an island in Puget Sound, and she commutes to her writers’ group in a 17-foot motorboat. She serves as author liaison for Field’s End, a literary community on Bainbridge Island, Washington, bringing inspiration and instruction from the world’s top authors to her seaside community. (See www.fieldsend.org) She’s been featured in the national media, including NPR’s “Talk of the Nation,” and is a popular speaker locally and nationally.

According to Publishers Weekly, Wiggs writes with “refreshingly honest emotion,” and the Salem Statesman Journal adds that she is “one of our best observers of stories of the heart [who] knows how to capture emotion on virtually every page of every book.” Booklist characterizes her books as “real and true and unforgettable.” She is the recipient of three RITA (sm) awards and four starred reviews from Publishers Weekly for her books. The Winter Lodge and Passing Through Paradise have appeared on PW’s annual “Best Of” lists. Several of her books have been listed as top Booksense picks and optioned as feature films. Her novels have been translated into more than two dozen languages and have made national bestseller lists, including the USA Today, Washington Post and New York Times lists.

The author is a former teacher, a Harvard graduate, an avid hiker, an amateur photographer, a good skier and terrible golfer, yet her favorite form of exercise is curling up with a good book. Readers can learn more on the web at www.susanwiggs.com and on her lively blog at www.susanwiggs.wordpress.com.

Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter – #BookReview – #TuesdayBookBlog

Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Best Mystery & Thriller (2015)

Book Blurb:

Sisters. Strangers. Survivors.

More than twenty years ago, Claire and Lydia’s teenaged sister Julia vanished without a trace. The two women have not spoken since, and now their lives could not be more different. Claire is the glamorous trophy wife of an Atlanta millionaire. Lydia, a single mother, dates an ex-con and struggles to make ends meet. But neither has recovered from the horror and heartbreak of their shared loss—a devastating wound that’s cruelly ripped open when Claire’s husband is killed.

The disappearance of a teenage girl and the murder of a middle-aged man, almost a quarter-century apart: what could connect them? Forming a wary truce, the surviving sisters look to the past to find the truth, unearthing the secrets that destroyed their family all those years ago . . . and uncovering the possibility of redemption, and revenge, where they least expect it.

My Review:

No, no, and just…no. My third book by this author and I’m thinking might be my last.

It’s 1991 when Julia Carroll disappears. The family doesn’t cope well and the two surviving sisters each grieve differently becoming estranged both from each other and their parents. Unfortunately, a recent disappearance twenty years later draws them back. A teenage girl has disappeared but it appears the murder of a middle-aged man appears to be connected almost twenty years later.

Sometimes I’m not sure how I get myself into these books as I’m usually careful about trigger warnings that include sexual violence, murder, and torture. Other than to figure out how the author was going to pull this one off, I’m not sure why I continued to read.

While there was an occasional humorous, snarky comment, “…but that was largely because he was under sixty and still had a clear view of his feet,” it was honestly pretty awful. I just don’t need that. I find the descriptions of subconscious human mannerisms rather compelling—Slaughter knows how to turn a phrase while painting her prose black.

If graphic horror is your jam, this might appeal. The author does sketch out some dark ideas. I read and then watched the series Pieces of Her last year. Are you a Slaughter fan? Did you catch the TV series? Read this one? Is this one beyond her usual level of violence or is this standard? Last year I thought I might try one more of her novels. This was it.

I received a Kindle copy of this book from my library recommendations that in no way influenced this review. These are my honest thoughts.

Rosepoint Rating: Three Stars

Book Details:

Genre: Kidnapping thrillers, Serial killer Thrillers, Police Procedurals
Publisher: William Morrow
ASIN: B00VES8D6K
Print Length: 548 pages
Publication Date: September 29, 2015
Source: Local Library through Kindle
Title Link(s): Pretty Girls [Amazon]

The Author: Karin Slaughter is the author of more than twenty instant NEW YORK TIMES bestselling novels, including the Edgar–nominated COP TOWN and standalone novels THE GOOD DAUGHTER, PRETTY GIRLS, and GIRL, FORGOTTEN. She is published in 120 countries with more than 40 million copies sold across the globe. PIECES OF HER is a #1 Netflix original series starring Toni Collette. The Will Trent Series is on ABC (and streaming on Hulu in the U.S, and Disney+ internationally). THE GOOD DAUGHTER and FALSE WITNESS are in development for film/tv. Slaughter is the founder of the Save the Libraries project—a nonprofit organization established to support libraries and library programming. A native of Georgia, she lives in Atlanta.

http://www.karinslaughter.com
Facebook http://www.facebook.com/AuthorKarinSlaughter/
Instagram http://www.instagram.com/karinslaughterauthor/
Twitter @SlaughterKarin
https://linktr.ee/karinslaughter

#TuesdayBookBlog

When the Moon Is Low by Nadia Hashimi – #BookReview – #TuesdayBookBlog

– Nominee for Best Fiction (2015)

Book Blurb:

Mahmoud’s passion for his wife Fereiba, a schoolteacher, is greater than any love she’s ever known. But their happy, middle-class world—a life of education, work, and comfort—implodes when their country is engulfed in war, and the Taliban rises to power.

Mahmoud, a civil engineer, becomes a target of the new fundamentalist regime and is murdered. Forced to flee Kabul with her three children, Fereiba has one hope to survive: she must find a way to cross Europe and reach her sister’s family in England. With forged papers and help from kind strangers they meet along the way, Fereiba make a dangerous crossing into Iran under cover of darkness. Exhausted and brokenhearted but undefeated, Fereiba manages to smuggle them as far as Greece. But in a busy market square, their fate takes a frightening turn when her teenage son, Saleem, becomes separated from the rest of the family.

Faced with an impossible choice, Fereiba pushes on with her daughter and baby, while Saleem falls into the shadowy underground network of undocumented Afghans who haunt the streets of Europe’s capitals. Across the continent Fereiba and Saleem struggle to reunite, and ultimately find a place where they can begin to reconstruct their lives.

My Review:

I read this as it was chosen for the March-May read for my local library book club, As the Page Turns. With the exception of one book so far, it would not have been my choice. Sometimes that works well, introducing me to a new author that I’ll enjoy reading.

Fereiba must flee Afghanistan with her two children and a newborn after her husband, a civil engineer, is killed by the Taliban. Life has become untenable and she is hoping to seek asylum in England with a relative. There appears to be little relief or safety, however, on the journey fraught with peril through Turkey, Greece, and Italy.

Most of the storyline is told through the eyes of Fereiba, although towards the latter half of the novel, Saleem, her oldest child, becomes the POV. He is in his teens, but short of street experiences which he will be forced to confront the hard way.

It is a graphically realistic narrative, creating the fear, poverty, and hunger, they face on their journey. It’s dangerous and Fereiba is also faced with the failing health of her newborn son as well as the loss of much of the funds they’d allocated for the crossing.

It’s a slow build-up, facing insurmountable odds and solving one problem, only to be faced with the next. Then, suddenly…

It ends.

I thought it was my cell phone Kindle app and looked forward for the conclusion. In looking for it, however, and reading other reviews we all apparently discovered the same. There is no resolution, no conclusion. The writing style is compelling, if somewhat deliberate and drawn out, but the ending left me high and dry. I assume that was intentional, leaving the reader to understand the struggle faced by refugees. And it’s true, we can’t see a happy ending there.

I received a copy of this book from my local library that in no way influenced this review. These are my honest thoughts.

Rosepoint Rating: Three point Five Stars

Book Details:

Genre: Women’s Historical Fiction, Women’s Literary Fiction, Coming of Age Fiction
Publisher: William Morrow (Reprint edition)
ASIN: B00OY3STN4
Print Length: 389 pages
Publication Date: July 21, 2015
Source: Local Library

Title Link(s):

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

The Author: Nadia Hashimi is a pediatrician turned novelist who draws on her Afghan culture to craft internationally bestselling books for adults as well as young readers. Her novels span generations and continents, taking on themes like forced migration, conflict, poverty, misogyny, colonialism, and addiction. She enjoys conversations with readers of all ages in libraries, book festivals, classrooms, and living rooms. With translations in seventeen languages, she’s connected with readers around the world.

Nadia was born and raised in New York and New Jersey. Both her parents were born in Afghanistan and left in the early 1970s, before the Soviet invasion. Her mother, granddaughter of a notable Afghan poet, traveled to Europe to obtain a Master’s degree in civil engineering and her father came to the United States, where he worked hard to fulfill his American dream and build a new, brighter life for his immediate and extended family. Nadia was fortunate to be surrounded by a large family of aunts, uncles and cousins, keeping the Afghan culture an integral part of their daily lives.

Nadia graduated from Brandeis University with degrees in Middle Eastern Studies and Biology. She studied medicine in Brooklyn, New York, and then completed her pediatric residency training at NYU and Bellevue hospitals before moving to Maryland with her husband. On days off from a busy emergency room and after years of avid reading, she began crafting stories that drew on her heritage and the complex experiences of Afghans.

In 2003, she made her first trip to Afghanistan with her parents who had not returned to their homeland since leaving in the 1970s. She continues to serve on boards of organizations committed to educating and nurturing Afghanistan’s most vulnerable children and empowering the female leaders of tomorrow. She is a member of the US-Afghan Women’s Council and an advisor to Kallion, an organization that seeks to elevate leadership through humanities. Locally, she serves as a Montgomery County health care commissioner and organizing committee member of the Gaithersburg Book Festival.

She and her husband are the beaming parents of four curious, rock star children, an African Grey parrot named Nickel who reminds the kids to brush their teeth, and Justice, the hungriest Rhodesian Ridgeback you’ve ever met.

Connect with her on Facebook, Twitter or via her website (www.nadiahashimi.com) to learn more or request a virtual book club visit. She’s quite social.

#TuesdayBookBlog

The Murder Rule by Dervla McTiernan – #BookReview – #psychologicalthrillers

The Murder Rule by Dervla McTiernan

A Reading Ireland Month book

Book Blurb:

For fans of the compulsive psychological suspense of Ruth Ware and Tana French, a mother-daughter story—one running from a horrible truth, and the other fighting to reveal it—that twists and turns in shocking ways, from the internationally bestselling author of The Scholar and The Ruin.

First Rule: Make them like you.
Second Rule: Make them need you.
Third Rule: Make them pay.
They think I’m a young, idealistic law student, that I’m passionate about reforming a corrupt and brutal system.
They think I’m working hard to impress them.
They think I’m here to save an innocent man on death row.
They’re wrong. I’m going to bury him.

His Review:

Law schools across the nation have different academic statuses. Maine has very good schools but they pale to those in Virginia. Hannah Rokeby needs to fill her experience basket and applies for a position with “The Innocence Project” and Professor Robert Parekh. Although the positions have been filled, she is able to coerce the good professor with knowledge of events he would like to keep quiet.

Eight hundred clients were clamoring for assistance from The Innocence Project. One of the cases was “The Dandridge Case.” Dandridge had been found guilty of rape and murder and received a thirteen years to life sentence. His case was coming up for appeal the following week. Hannah wanted to be involved but another of the volunteers had been selected. Hannah devised a way to get her to quit the project.

Dervla writes a compelling tome into the life of a third-year law student. There are many hours spent reviewing the case as originally tried looking for loopholes.

After tricking the other member of a three-person review team into leaving for a job interview, she is put on the review team. She immediately starts investigating the entire case. Circumstances proceed and show that the investigation and discovery techniques leave a lot to be desired. Can the team prove that Dandridge had been unfairly tried and convicted?

Enjoy this book as you find that becoming a lawyer is not an easy task and one’s personal life can get in the way of hours of investigation. 4.5 stars – CE Williams

We received a complimentary review copy of this book from the author and publisher through NetGalley that in no way influenced this review. These are his honest opinions.

Rosepoint Publishing: Four point Five Stars

Book Details:

Genre: Kidnapping Thrillers, Psychological Thrillers
Publisher: William Morrow
ASIN: B0983LWC3J
Print Length: 304 pages
Publication Date: May 10, 2022
Source: Publisher and NetGalley
Title Link(s): The Murder Rule [Amazon]
Barnes and Noble
Kobo

The Author: Award-winning, number one bestseller Dervla McTiernan has established herself as one of the biggest names in crime fiction. Her books have garnered critical acclaim around the world and sold over 400,000 copies in Australia and New Zealand alone.

In 2022, McTiernan returns with her first-ever standalone thriller, The Murder Rule. Inspired by the true story of a young law student who worked at the Innocence Project and eventually uncovered evidence which exonerated a man who had been in prison for 26 years, McTiernan has created an unforgettable, twisty thriller – the must-read novel of the year.

About Dervla:

Dervla McTiernan’s debut novel, The Rúin, is a critically acclaimed international bestseller published around the world. The Rúin won the Ned Kelly, Davitt and Barry Awards and was shortlisted for numerous others. It was on the Amazon US Best Book of the Year list 2018 and screen rights were snapped up by Colin Farrell’s production company and Hopscotch Features. Dervla’s second book, The Scholar, won the International Thriller Award and debuted straight into the Nielsen Bookscan Top 5 on release in 2019, and her third, The Good Turn, went straight to no.1, confirming her place as one of Australia’s best crime writers.

https://dervlamctiernan.com/

Instagram: @dervlamctiernan

Facebook and Twitter: @DervlaMcTiernan

Have a great weekend!

The Bone Bed: Scarpetta Book 20 and Chaos: Scarpetta Book 24 by Patricia Cornwell – #Audiobooks–How long can a good series stay good?

Can an author really only have a few fresh stories to tell in the same series or is one more one too many?

Patricia Cornwell is coming out with Autopsy, Scarpetta Book 25 late November. I got audiobooks for series Book 20 and 24. Was Book 24 one too many for me?

Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Book Blurb-The Bone Bed

A woman has vanished while digging a dinosaur bone bed in the remote wilderness of Canada. Somehow, the only evidence has made its way to the inbox of Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta, over 2,000 miles away, in Boston. She has no idea why. But as events unfold with alarming speed, Scarpetta begins to suspect that the paleontologist’s disappearance is connected to a series of crimes – much closer to home: a gruesome murder, inexplicable tortures, and trace evidence from the last living creatures of the dinosaur age.

When she turns to those around her, Scarpetta finds that the danger and suspicion have penetrated even her closest circles. Her niece Lucy speaks in riddles. Her lead investigator, Pete Marino, and FBI forensic psychologist and husband, Benton Wesley, have secrets of their own. Feeling alone and betrayed, Scarpetta is tempted by someone from her past as she tracks a killer both cunning and cruel.

This is Kay Scarpetta as you have never seen her before. The Bone Bed is a must-listen for any fan of this series, or an ideal starting point for new readers.

My Review-The Bone Bed

I’m always gratified to see that my reaction to an audiobook generally meets consensus. And this one left me scratching my head. My first novel by Patricia Cornwell, not that I didn’t recognize the name, just that I hadn’t stumbled across one of her (library) audiobooks before.

This narrative begins with an interesting premise: a body is found attached to an endangered leather-back turtle. The body was sent to the bottom using an intricate system of ropes that would essentially dismember the body if retrieval was not precisionally crafted. The leather-back, poor thing, was not in good shape, near drowning.

Then a man is on trial for killing his wife—without the substantiation of a body, and an archeologist is missing. Do all these things really share a common thread? I enjoyed the courtroom scenes and some portions of the technicalities of forensics, but then there is all this other…”stuff” just thrown in. Could we please just stick to the main plot points?

It’s amazing just how long it took to sort all this out, but really, so much is tied up with Kay’s personal life. Does she or doesn’t she have a good marriage? Thank heaven they can agree on the most appropriate red or white wine, otherwise, they’d have nothing in common. Tons of minutia—and what’s up with Marino? ARGH! So much suspicion, possible betrayals. And Kay getting way too big for her medical britches. She drips cynical thoughts about everyone.

This one jerked me around a bit—interest to boredom—chemical names bandied around until the mind is whirling with eighteen syllable words. I liked the storyline. I didn’t particularly like the way it was delivered and got very tired of Kay and her superior, confrontational attitude pretty quickly. 3 stars

Book Details: The Bone Bed

Genre: Medical & Forensic Thrillers, Medical Fiction, Medical Thrillers
Publisher: Penguin Audio
ASIN: B009RFGJX6
Listening Length: 12 hrs 54 mins
Narrator: Kate Reading
Publication Date: October 16, 2012
Publisher: Berkley
Print Length: 513 pages
ASIN: ‎ B0083P1QUM
Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections)
Title Link: The Bone Bed [Amazon]

Book Blurb-Chaos

In the quiet of twilight, on an early autumn day, 26-year-old Elisa Vandersteel is killed while riding her bicycle along the Charles River. It appears she was struck by lightning – except the weather is perfectly clear, with not a cloud in sight. Dr. Kay Scarpetta, the Cambridge Forensic Center’s director and chief, decides at the scene that this is no accidental act of God.

Her investigation becomes complicated when she begins receiving a flurry of bizarre poems from an anonymous cyberbully who calls himself Tailend Charlie. Though subsequent lab results support Scarpetta’s conclusions, the threatening messages don’t stop. When the tenth poem arrives exactly 24 hours after Elisa’s death, Scarpetta begins to suspect the harasser is involved and sounds the alarm to her investigative partner, Pete Marino, and her husband, FBI analyst Benton Wesley.

She also enlists the help of her niece, Lucy. But to Scarpetta’s surprise, tracking the slippery Tailend Charlie is nearly impossible, even for someone as brilliant as her niece. Also, Lucy can’t explain how this anonymous nemesis could have access to private information. To make matters worse, a venomous media is whipping the public into a frenzy, questioning the seasoned forensics chief’s judgment and “a quack cause of death on a par with spontaneous combustion”.

My Review-Chaos

Oh good grief. And just when I thought it couldn’t get worse. This one takes forever to get into the whole reason for the plot—a body found on a bike trail. She has 30+ years of experience and by God, she’ll take her dear, sweet time because this is a lady she’d met earlier. She thinks. No, she’s pretty certain. But must not jump to conclusions. Wait, is that a familiar bike helmet? Groan.

Scarpetta is so full of angst it’s annoying. Good grief, how do these people keep a job? Her personal life is crap. Marino is irritating. But this narrative doesn’t worry about adding minutia, there is already pages upon pages of poor Kay’s childhood (it’s a wonder she isn’t a serial killer), her sister and mother. (Husband) Benton is gorgeous, rich, and every woman’s dream which is enough to make any woman nervous. Lucy is pushing anxiety.

I do enjoy the info about the ME’s office and the study of forensics, but no, don’t want to be hit over the head with it anymore than be inundated with chemicals. (And please, don’t keep telling people they can get the formulas for this stuff off the internet.) The interview with the (Fetal Alcohol Syndrome?) twins who discovered the body was touching.

Everyone is anxious, confrontational, hyper. Or is that just the narrator? If I had a problem with the narrator in The Bone Bed, I really disliked this one. The tone, delivery seldom waivers below exaggerated confrontational attitude, whether from Scarpetta, Marino, (UGH! Hated the affected inflection on that character) or one of the other characters thrown in to maintain a heightened level of tension.

In the end, I couldn’t. Just couldn’t. Life’s too short. I turned off my machine. There are other audiobooks. Lots of them. 1.5 stars

Autopsy, slated to release November 30, 2021, is already flagged as a #1 New Release in Medical Thrillers. Will it sign off the series or is the author finished with Scarpetta yet? Even more important—will Scarpetta mellow just a bit? And would I try just one more? I might. But not as an audiobook with the same narrator, unless she also mellows.)

Book Details: Chaos

Genre: Medical & Forensic Thrillers, Medical Fiction, Medical Thrillers
Publisher: HarperAudio
ASIN: B01JGOYA60
Listening Length: 3 hrs 2 mins
Narrator: Susan Ericksen
Publication Date: November 15, 2016
Publisher: William Morrow
Print Length: 483 pages
ASIN: ‎ B01BKD6YY
Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections)
Title Link: Chaos [Amazon]

The Author: In 1990, Patricia Cornwell sold her first novel, Postmortem, while working at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Richmond, Virginia. An auspicious debut, it went on to win the Edgar, Creasey, Anthony, and Macavity Awards as well as the French Prix du Roman d’Aventure prize—the first book ever to claim all these distinctions in a single year. Growing into an international phenomenon, the Scarpetta series won Cornwell the Sherlock Award for best detective created by an American author, the Gold Dagger Award, the RBA Thriller Award, and the Medal of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters for her contributions to literary and artistic development.

Today, Cornwell’s novels and iconic characters are known around the world. Beyond the Scarpetta series, Cornwell has written the definitive nonfiction account of Jack the Ripper’s identity, cookbooks, a children’s book, a biography of Ruth Graham, and two other fictional series based on the characters Win Garano and Andy Brazil. While writing Quantum, Cornwell spent two years researching space, technology, and robotics at Captain Calli Chase’s home base, NASA’s Langley Research Center, and studied cutting-edge law enforcement and security techniques with the Secret Service, the US Air Force, NASA Protective Services, Scotland Yard, and Interpol.

Cornwell was born in Miami. She grew up in Montreat, North Carolina, and now lives and works in Boston and Los Angeles.

Happy Thursday!