This was a fun read. When it comes to the backside of Hollywood, you have to admit that Cheryl Crane, daughter of screen legend Lana Turner, really knows her stuff. The Bad Always Die Twice is a Hollywood murder mystery with all of the fun details that only an insider would know.

Nikki Harper is a Hollywood real estate agent, selling those megamillion dollar mansions in the hills with her partner, Jessica Martin. They are young, pretty, celebrity-savvy girls:

“One of Jessica’s most endearing qualities was that she wasn’t any more impressed by celebrities than Nikki was. Their only difference was that Nikki had grown up with them and Jessica slept with them. The combination of their personalities made them a great team at work.”

Sort of sets the tone for their interaction. Jessica is the pretty, flashy girl who flirts with the gentlemen clients and reels them in. Nikki is less flashy, with a more understated style, and the Hollywood chops to make the deals. And when Jessica is accused of murder, Nikki puts those Tinseltown connections to work.

The real star of the story is Victoria Bordeaux. She is stunningly beautiful, incredibly poised, an old-school screen goddess in the style of, well, Lana Turner. She is also Nikki’s mother. Nikki’s relationship with her mother and her mother’s particular flair for dealing with people are the best parts of the book. Nikki is a great character, with a complicated love life, interesting friends and the sort of foibles that will make her a fun read. Still, Victoria is what will keep me coming back — you can just tell that she’s going to be very involved in whatever Nikki does…and that’s not a bad thing at all.

I was a little wary taking this on — sometimes you suspect that a writer got their contract based more on a celebrity pedigree than their writing talent — but it was a real pleasure. I wouldn’t put Nikki up there with my new detective lady-love, Keye Street, but I would certainly enjoy picking up the next Nikki Harper mystery.

My copy of The Bad Always Die Twice was an Advanced Reader Copy, provided free of charge.

I was really looking forward to reading this book! From the minute it arrived, it sat on the shelf, in the To Be Read pile, and whispered to me every time I walked by. You could tell by the cover that it was going to be racy. There was also the subtitle, “A Novel of Sex & Violence”, to give you a clue. And the publisher — Hard Case Crime. Doesn’t that just sound like it’s going to be a great book? And Lawrence Block’s Getting Off did not disappoint.

This is a novel about a female serial killer, but a woman so interesting that sometimes you forget just what she is. She picks up men in bars, takes them home and has sex with them, then she drugs them and kills them. She takes their money, their credit cards, whatever she needs to pay her bills. When she gets bored, she moves on — new city, new neighborhood, new name. She’s been doing some version of that since she left home (and believe me, her leaving home was a story in itself).

Katherine (at least that’s how she starts out) is a woman on a mission. She has decided that she needs to kill every man she’s ever had sex with. Now for some of us — most of us, I would guess — that’s not a really long list, at least not compared to Katherine’s. There are probably hundreds of men on her list, but since she kills most of them, it’s not too daunting. If only she could find them all…

Okay, this is not a book to leave around for the kiddies to read. There are parts that are downright raunchy. (I consider that a plus.) Of course, if you didn’t figure that out from the cover, this is probably not warning enough. Katherine is a very disturbed person, but yet, I almost found myself rooting for her. (In one situation, I was definitely on Team Katherine, although I think she was Missie by then.) And then, just as you’re almost enjoying her exploits, she does something horrible. Something that you can’t overlook. And you’re a little disgusted with yourself for forgetting that she’s a vicious, disturbed serial killer. How can you not love a book you get that caught up in?

The ending…I wondered where Block was going with this one. I didn’t exactly think he had written himself into a corner, but I was sorting through possible scenarios and not coming up with much. It managed to surprised me and I love the way things wrapped up. I’ve come across a lot of books that are great right up to the last chapter, then they fizzle. This delivered a very interesting ending.

This book was originally written under the name Jill Emerson. According to Jill’s webpage, she hasn’t had a book out since 1975! It’s a surprising assortment from a male author, and worth checking out. (If you scroll to the bottom of her webpage, there are links and descriptions of the other novels.)

My copy of Getting Off was an Advance Reader Copy, provided free of charge. A copy of this went out in the Serial Killer box for my recent Black Friday Giveaway. I hope my winner is enjoying it!

You start out feeling very sorry for Lucian Glass. He’s late picking up his girlfriend; she ends up dead. He meets with an important witness; he gets bashed over the head and the witness ends up dead. He has nightmares, compulsions, crippling headaches. But what if it is all his fault? What if this is all related to his past…his past lives.

In The Hypnotist, Lucian Glass is a member of the FBI’s Art Crime Team. He is caught up in the case of Malachi Samuels, a renowned reincarnationist who is searching for Memory Tools, artifacts which may finally prove that reincarnation exists and help us access our past lives.

It’s a complicated plot, with much of it is centered in New York, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There are stolen paintings, artwork with shady origins, espionage and an assortment of plots and subplots, designed to keep a reader guessing. There’s a Matisse, a statue of a Greek god, and a Trojan horse. Throw in some startling coincidences, some past-life drama and a little romance, and you’ve got a pretty entertaining mystery.

I was a little confused in the beginning of the book; there is a lot of talk about Memory Tools, but no real explanation of what they are. I’m not sure if this was explained in Rose’s earlier novels on reincarnation (The Reincarnationist and The Memorist), but even Google didn’t give me much information. But that’s a fairly small complaint. A little reading and I was pretty sure I knew what it was we were hunting for (although I admit that I have no idea how a “pot of fragrant wax” is going to help).

This is an excellent book for those who like their mysteries with twisty plots. The action comes at you from all directions and time periods. I found it very easy to sit down and lose myself in the tangled storylines.

My copy of The Hypnotist is an Advanced Reader Copy, provided free of charge.

In a sense, The Woodcutter is a fairy tale. Not a cute Disney fairy tale, but one of those old Grimm Brothers’ tales, with heartbreak and revenge and bad folks meeting nasty ends. Even while parts of the story have a very modern feel, there are still ties to its more mythic underpinnings. I really enjoyed that part of the story.

Wolf Hadda is a successful businessman who describes his life as a fairy tale. His father was a woodcutter, the groundskeeper for a castle, and he grew up in a cabin in the woods. He fell in love with the daughter of the castle’s owner and eventually won her hand. But everything changes when he is accused of a shocking crime and gets swept up in accusations and investigations. In typical Wolf fashion, he doesn’t wait for the wheels of justice to grind him up. In a bid for freedom (more stubborn than desperate), there is an horrific accident that leaves Wolf crippled, disfigured, and near death. He wakes up to a world in which his friends have deserted him, his wife is divorcing him and he has been all but convicted of child pornography. His fairy tale is over.

Years later, he agrees to see the prison psychiatrist, Alva (from the Swedish for “elf”) to talk about his conviction. Their talks lead to acceptance and recognition of his crimes and, eventually, to parole. That’e when the fun begins.

The most interesting part of the book for me was Wolf’s prison interviews with Alva. The reader, of course, begins by assuming that Wolf is innocent; Alva is convinced he is guilty. Everything he says is proof of denial, every aspect of his childhood lays the groundwork for his future perversions. She takes nothing at face value. It was both fascinating and frustrating to me as a reader — you want to shout at Alva that she is being unfair to Wolf, but, of course, her reactions are perfectly normal for someone working with convicts — I’m sure most of her patients insist that they are innocent.

Wolf takes up residence in his old family home, adjacent to the grounds of the castle where his in-laws still live. The rustic cabin, the isolation, the disgust of his neighbors — it would be a very difficult existence for most men, but Wolf seems to thrive. After all, he is a man with a purpose…

This is really a terrific story. Some of it requires some suspension of disbelief, especially in the later chapters, but it is a modern-day crime mystery set against a fairy-tale backdrop of castles and woods and cliffs. Wolf is a fascinating character and I was not at all surprised that Alva became somewhat obsessed with him; it would be easy enough to do. The differences between Wolf’s family and that of his “princess”, Imogen, are startling and play an important role in the story, both the modern plot and the myth behind it. It’s a thick book — 500+ pages — but the story draws you in and keeps you turning pages throughout. Definitely worth the reading time and effort.

My copy of The Woodcutter was an advanced reader copy, provided free of charge.

What do super spies do when they retire? Buy a beach house on a little island in the South Pacific? Spend their days squirreled away in basement offices in D.C., drinking bad coffee and filing reports no one will read? Maybe they don’t get to retire — maybe they just keep on working until they blow their cover one last time.

In Original Sin: A Sally Sin Adventure, Lucy Hamilton appears to be a run-of-the-mill suburban mom. She has playdates. She gets manicures. She has a handsome husband with an important job and an adorable toddler named Theo. But Lucy Hamilton barely exists. She has no paper trail. But she has plenty of secrets.

Sally Sin, Lucy’s alter-ego, once attracted the attention of Ian Blackford. He was once the pride of the USAWMD but he turned his back on the agency and went rogue — and how do you hunt down your best agent, once he’s on your Most Wanted list? He seeks out Sally, over and over, but she thought she was free of all that. Now Blackford is back and dragging Sally into a very dangerous game. Can Sally stop the bad guys, save the world and still make it to yoga on time?

This book was so much fun! I must admit, I rolled my eyes a little when I got it. It seemed like pretty silly stuff. (I still can’t imagine walking away from an exciting career — even something as dangerous as espionage — to change diapers and drive the carpool. Different strokes, I guess.) But that’s all part of the fun. Lucy is a little torn as well. She misses the excitement of her old job, bringing down terrorists and international criminals for the USAWMD, but she doesn’t miss the danger and she loves her husband and her son very much. Luckily, her husband is the forgiving sort — he knows she’s got secrets and he hopes one day she’ll share them, but he doesn’t push too hard.

Original Sin: A Sally Sin Adventure would be a great beach read. It’s light and funny, with plenty of excitement, and once I got past my eye-rolling, I really enjoyed it. My copy of Original Sin was an Advanced Reader Copy, provided free of charge.

The world is going crazy around Tom Crandall in Neil McMahon’s L.A. Mental. His brother, Nick, calls him in a paranoid frenzy, probably drug-induced. When Tom finds him, Nick literally jumps off a cliff. His sister, Erica, has been receiving threats. His brother Paul is involved in a film project with a charismatic figure that he follows with a cult-like intensity. And those are the only strange things happening — all over Los Angeles, people are going on destructive rampages for no discernible reason. Is there a connection?

The story gets better — and stranger. The film project looks very much like a cult. The project’s leader, Gunnar Kelso, is a former physicist, a brilliant scientist whose ideas may have gone off the deep end. Now he has a posse of Beautiful People — actors, writers, producers and the wealthy elite — huddled around him, turning over their cash and following his instructions, all in a bid for power. Kelso promises that his organization, Parallax Productions, can lead its members to immense personal power.

Basically, imagine Scientology is real, and not a hoax dreamed up by a sci-fi writer. You’ve got some similar concepts — pneuma and Gatekeepers and other crazy stuff — along with the promise of great power, tremendous secrecy and the requirement to hand over a lot of money. They also tend to go after the people who decline their invitation to sign up for the craziness, and that’s the position Tom finds himself in. Strange things begin to happen and Tom has to ask himself: is this a scam or is it real?

There’s evidence pointing in both directions and the great fun of the book is the way it wavers back and forth. First, we get a tidbit that clearly says it’s a scam; next, something completely inexplicable happens. It’s a good mystery, lots of turns and twists, and plenty of moments where you think you know where it’s going, but you’re wrong. It’s not particularly scary, but there’s plenty of action and lots and lots of questions. This was a fun read that would make a very interesting movie.

My one big criticism is the ending. There’s a bit too much cloak and dagger and then a rather abrupt full stop. There’s a bit of a teaser for a sequel, but it didn’t leave me panting after the next book.

This is Neil McMahon’s first thriller — and it’s a pretty good one. He’s the author of six mystery novels and four fantasy novels (under a pseudonym).

My copy of L.A. Mental was an advance reader copy, provided free of charge.

I had a crisis a few weeks ago. I was on an airplane, diverted from my original destination, and I didn’t pack a back-up book. Luckily, we eventually got off the plane in Indianapolis, and I picked up The Ice Princess by Camilla Läckberg in the airport bookstore. (I admit that I picked it up because I liked the cover and I’ve been reading some Scandinavian authors lately, so it fit the bill.)  More than entertaining enough to keep me engrossed all the way to Chicago.

The theme of the book seems to be cold. Even the corpse that starts the story is frozen.

“Mercifully, the corpse’s eyes were shut, but the lips were bright blue. A thin film of ice had formed around the torso, hiding the lower half of the body completely…The knees also stuck up through the frozen surface. Alex’s long blonde hair was spread like a fan over the end of the tub but looked brittle and frozen in the cold.”

Author Erica Falck comes to the aid of the old man who finds the body. Alex is an old friend of hers — once her very best friend, and she has never really known what caused the rift that developed between them. Erica has made a name for herself writing biographies and she has come home to the small town of Fjällbacka after the death of her parents, to deal with their estate.

“Erica stepped carefully through the snow covering the rocks. She had felt a great need to get a little fresh air, and here from Badholmen she had an uninterrupted view of the islands and the seemingly endless white ice.”

This is really a fabulous mystery! There are so many twists and turns and misdirections that it keeps you guessing all the way through. There’s the murder mystery — who killed Alexandra Wijkner? Who is the mystery man she was involved with? There’s the backstory — is this related to whatever made Alex pull away from Erica back in their school days, and made Alex’s parents move away? There are other names cropping up — are they involved? Even Erica’s love life and her complicated family situation play into the story.

“The shocking story had touched him deeply, but at the same time he had felt a deep professional satisfaction when the pieces of the puzzle one by one fell into place. So many questions had been answered this afternoon. Yet now he felt an even greater frustration than before. He had found the explanation for so much, but he was still fumbling in the dark…”

My copy of The Ice Princess came from my personal library, thanks to the Indianapolis International Airport. For more about author Camilla Läckberg and her work, check out her website.

The cover of this book says: “Infidelity can be deadly.” Murder on the Down Low puts a whole new spin on infidelity in this thriller that focuses on an issue of particular interest to the African American community. Black men are being murdered — upstanding men, athletes, businessmen, pillars of the community — and they are being targeted because they are on the down low.

Stop back tomorrow for a guest post by author Pamela Samuels Young!

According to Wikipedia, “on the down low” refers to men who identify as straight, but still have sex with other men in secret. Obviously, this is not limited to the African American community, but this novel’s focus is on black women and their reaction to it. A group of friends — Venetta, Special, J.C. and Nichelle — are determined to avenge the death of their friend, Maya. Maya died of AIDS, and she was exposed to it by her fiance, Eugene, who is on the down low. They want to use the law to get justice for Maya and to bring the issue to the attention of the larger community: they file a lawsuit against Euguene for wrongful death.

At the same time, prominent African American men are being murdered. There is no obvious connection between them, but there are whispers…this puts the police in an awkward position and brings up a host of other issues and prejudices in the most unexpected of places. Are the rumors credible? Are the police willing to protect the living at the expense of the victims’ reputations?

For one of the women, a lawsuit is not enough. Special wants Eugene to pay. She wants to destroy him. So she embarks on some solo projects, designed to make Eugene’s life a living hell. Unfortunately, they may also make her the prime suspect.

There is a lot about this book that I found interesting. I think Young does a very good job of showcasing all sides of this argument. There are gay characters as well as straight characters. There are people who are tolerant and there are unexpected bigots. Should the friends pursue their lawsuit, dragging out the suffering of Maya’s family? How much blame should be shouldered by the women these men are involved with? Afer all, if they don’t insist on condoms, they are putting themselves at risk. And what about society in general? Is there a place in African American society for gay men? Is being “on the down low” really a result of homophobia in the community? It’s a lot to digest, and Young’s characters continually bring new facets of the issues to the debate.

The book also has a pretty good mystery. There are several potential killers presented, some dead ends and plot twists, enough to keep a mystery lover interested. I did have some frustration with the friends and their behavior, particularly Special. No one seems to think things through very well. The lawsuit might be a good move, but it opens up Maya’s estate to legal action. When J.C. takes her suspicions to the police, it’s as if she never thought about how a black man might react to being told that men he respected were having secret gay affairs, that he might take them more personally then she does. On several occasions I wanted to strangle Special! She behaves like a spoiled child, completely unable to control herself, and she doesn’t seem to care that her actions hurt the people around her and endanger the objectives they’re working towards. The book deals with her fairly harshly and I thought it was well-deserved. She needed a serious whap with a clue-by-four, because she was really out of control.

Overall, this is quite a good read. There’s a lot to think about, but it doesn’t beat you over the head with it. It doesn’t have the sort of magical ending where suddenly everyone is in agreement. But everyone does have a chance to consider the issues and change their opinions, and that’s really what you want in this sort of book.

Don’t forget to stop back tomorrow for a guest post from author Pamela Samuels Young. My copy of Murder on the Down Low is an Advance Reader Copy, provided free of charge.

Okay, here’s your chance to win your own copy of Blood Trust by Eric Van Lustbader. I’ll be giving away one copy to a lucky reader, and I’ve got a paperback copy of First Daughter for my runner-up.

Here are the rules:

1. Contest runs through 5 pm EST on August 18, 2011.
2. Open to readers in the US and Canada only (sorry! shipping is expensive!)
3. You receive one entry for using the form below.
4. You can receive additional entries for posting the giveaway on your blog, Facebook or Twitter, and providing a link below or in a comment. (If your accounts on Facebook and Twitter are locked, or “followers only”, the entry will not count.)
5. You must provide a valid email in the entry below (the entry is not visible on the site). You’ll have 48 hours to respond by email and claim your prize.

That’s it! No hide and seek, no essay to write, nothing difficult at all — just give me your email and click below! I’ll pick a winner (and runner-up) next Thursday afternoon.

Good luck!

Eric van Lustbader’s third installment in the Jack McClure series, Blood Trust is just as exciting and fast-paced as the first two books, if not quite as believable. It’s full of foreign locales, double agents, evil billionaires and hidden agendas – everything a spy novel needs! It also takes us deeper into the relationships between our key characters, primarily the relationship between McClure and former first daughter, Alli Carson, and the relationship between Carson and Jack’s dead daughter, Emma.

Click here for a chance to win a hardcover copy of Blood Trust!

In the first book, First Daughter, Jack McClure is called in to prevent a catastrophe when the daughter of the President-Elect, Alli McClure, is kidnapped. In the second in the series, Last Snow, Jack and Alli team up in Eastern Europe to find a senator’s killer and derail a political plot that could be devastating for the US. Last Snow ends with huge twist that could potentially derail the series. Instead, Blood Trust uses the twist brilliantly, picking up on Alli and Jack’s lives as they have tried to move on.

Jack McClure is an odd sort of leading man. He was an ATF agent, but suffers from intense dyslexia, the sort of reading and comprehension problems that would seem to disqualify him from such a job. Instead, he has used his very different style of comprehension to his advantage, as it lets him see patterns and pathways most people don’t. He also talks to his dead daughter. It’s weird – rather like the Hamish character in A Lonely Death. She’s the voice of his guilt, but she’s also an active, observant character in the story.

I found this installment a little less believable than the last, with all of its conspiracies at the highest levels of the US government, unstoppable foreign dictators, etc., but plausibility is not high on my list of criteria for spy novels. I want action and adventure and plot twists and surprise turns of events and this certainly has all of that. Alli is in trouble and Jack is going to save her, no matter what it takes. There’s her billionaire uncle with surprising secrets and tendrils reaching into all sorts of nasty places. There’s Thate, the young man who is either their worst enemy…or their only hope. And there’s a not-so-surprising visit from an old frenemy, bringing surprises of its own.

I really enjoyed Blood Trust. I have enjoyed the skillful way that Lustbader moves the series forward, without leaving behind characters and threads of plot that started in earlier books. the story is over-the-top enough to make a great spy novel, but it’s not completely out of the realm of possibility. McClure is an interesting character, using what most people would consider a disability to his considerable advantage. I’m not sure how much I love the latest developments where Alli is concerned, but I am more than willing to give the author another book or two to see how they pan out.

For more on Lustbader and his novels, check out his website.

My copy of Blood Trust was a review copy, provided free of charge. Want to win a copy of your very own? Click here for a chance to win a hardcover copy of Blood Trust.