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.

Dominance got my attention in the very first pages and hung on to it right to the end. It’s a book about a book with an author who may not even exist. It’s about the night class, taken a decade ago, and how it changed the lives of the students who took it. It’s about The Procedure, and the danger it represents. And it’s about a present-day murder and how it may change everything they thought they learned in the night class.

Back in 1994, tiny Jasper College offered a very special night class. It was taught by Richard Aldiss, a literary genius, and he would be teaching from his prison cell: Aldiss had been convicted of the brutal murders of two female graduate students at his former university. He is also an expert on author Paul Fallows, a recluse whose identity has never really been established. Aldiss challenges his students to discover Fallows’ identity and hints that in the process, they will uncover the real murderer.

In the present day, they have a new murder to solve: the death of a night classmate brings the students back to Jasper College. Alex Shipley, the star of the night class, has been asked to work with the local police — she solved the previous mystery and has at least some relationship with the genius professor. The former students congregate at the home of aged Dean Fisk for the funeral, while Alex and the police hunt for a murderer — and wonder if the night class turned one loose.

The pacing is what really draws you into the story. Writer Will Lavender doles out little nuggets of information, hints and tidbits that aren’t quite enough to really tell you what’s going on, but certainly make you keep reading. What is the Procedure, exactly? What happened in Iowa? What is the name of the man in the dark coat? What did Alex uncover in the night class?

The story has a bit of a locked-room feel to it, with all the students/suspects staying in the Dean’s home. That’s a bit of a stretch, but not completely improbable. Alex has to worry about whether there’s a murderer in the next room, plus she gets to wonder what’s going on amongst her old classmates while she is off working with the police or talking to her former professor. The story brings out Alex’s insecurities about what she discovered in the night class, about her position at Harvard, and the way she relates to her former professor and fellow students.

Dominance is a story full of juicy twists and turns. There are secrets, lies and unexpected revelations. You get enough information to keep you involved in the story, but not enough to know what it all means. I was curious at the start and every bit of revealed information fed the fires a little further. Definitely an intriguing read!

My copy of Dominance by Will Lavender was an Advanced Reader Copy, provided free of charge.

It’s always tough to come into a series of books in the middle. I imagine it’s hard for an author, as well — to make sure that new readers have enough information to understand the story, without boring your longtime readers.  A Lonely Deathby Charles Todd does an excellent job of involving you in the ongoing story. It made me want to seek out the rest of the series and add it to my TBR list.

A Lonely Death is part of the Inspector Ian Rutledge mystery series. Rutledge is a war veteran with a ride-along: he has the voice of one of his soldiers, Hamish, in his head. As I’m new to the series, it took me a bit to sort out that Rutledge feels a lot of guilt over Hamish’s death and the voice of his old comrade nags at him, chastises him, scolds him…and occasionally gives him clues.

Chief Inspector Cummins, Rutledge’s mentor, is retiring, leaving behind the files on a cold case that has nagged at him for years. Sadly, he does not leave Rutledge his office and position, as much as he would like to. Rutledge has made some enemies at the top of the ladder, and they will plague him throughout the book.

Someone is murdering men in Eastfield in a particularly gruesome way, a way that seems connected to the war and the Eastfield Company in which some of the men served. Scotland Yard is called in by the well-to-do father of one of the victims, a Mr. Pierce, whose remaining son may be one of the prime suspects. It’s a complicated and convoluted story with a number of interesting twists. Through it all, Rutledge struggles along with his guilt and the voice of his dead friend for company.

I enjoyed this mystery very much and I plan to add some of the earlier books to my reading list. Hamish is an interesting character, but one that I think could become tedious after a time. I’m not sure how I would react to him over the long term, constantly tormenting the inspector. The same goes for Rutledge’s feud with Chief Inspector Bowles, back at Scotland Yard. A little conflict is a good thing, but it could easily get to be too much.  The secondary plot involving Cummins’ cold case is a pleasant distraction and a good mix of investigative skill and serendipity.

There are 12 other Inspector Rutledge mysteries, so it may take me a while to get caught up. If the library has them on audio, they would make a very pleasant summer’s listening.

Charles Todd has a BA in Communication Studies as well as a culinary arts degree — so he can write and cook! An excellent combination. According to his website, he writes with his mother, Caroline Todd, sharing a great love of history (and a lizard named Schnickelfritz). He is also the author of the Bess Crawford, battlefield nurse, series.

My copy of A Lonely Death was an Advanced Reader Copy, provided free of charge.

On a rainy night in La Cieba, Honduras, a group of desperate people crash into each other like bumper cars — careening from one another, bouncing off, sneaking up on another. They are all driven for different reasons. They have secrets. Eventually, it will all come out, with Rainfall and Bullets.

Armando Murilla is a cab driver with a shady past, a sick wife and an angry mother in law. Sergeant James Watts is stationed at the local military base — and he’s in love with a local girl. Juanisa is doing her best to hide her affair from a family who wouldn’t approve. Then there are the bad guys — Carlito, Sanchez, Santiago — and the dirty cop, Detective Ramirez. The plot is a tangle of motives, ambitions and underground connections.

Armando needs to come up with a windfall so he can pay for his wife’s surgery. Carlito is back in town on a personal errand and Santiago, head of the local crime syndicate, calls in a favor; that favor puts him at odds with Sanchez, another of Santiago’s employees. James plans a little adventure that puts him in the wrong place at the wrong time and Detective Ramirez leaves him only one way out of trouble.

It’s an interesting story, if a little far-fetched. There were a few of those moments where the action feels forced, where your disbelief gets a little stretched. But for fans of action and shoot-em-ups, there is plenty to keep you entertained. There are car chases, ambulance rides, showdowns and gun battles. Through it all, family secrets are revealed and hidden agendas come to light.

Author Herbert J. Cooke, Jr, is a retired Air Force Security Forces Specialist. He is well-traveled, having spent time in England, Germany, Kuwait, Egypt, Korea, Panama, Spain, Honduras and Boliva. My copy of Rainfall and Bullets was a review copy provided free of charge.

Heads You Losestarts with a very clever idea: crime novelist Lisa Lutz asks ex-boyfriend David Hayward, a published poet, to collaborate on a mystery novel with her. Lisa writes the first chapter and sends it to David; he writes the second chapter and sends it back. They alternate, odd and even chapters, and manage to write a funny, interesting crime novel with some great twists and turns. The story is good, but the interaction between the two co-authors (their footnotes on each other’s chapters and their emails between chapters) is better.

They had a few simple rules:

“Lutz would write the first chapter and all odd-numbered chapters thereafter. Hayward would write the even ones. They would not outline or discuss what they were working on. Each author would read the other’s chapter ‘blind.’ Neither author was allowed to undo a plot development established by the other.”

I think Lisa cheated on that one a little.

Paul and Lacey Hansen are siblings sharing a home in rural Northern California. Their parents were killed in a freak accident and currently they make their living growing and selling pot. So when a headless corpse is dumped on their property, they can’t really risk calling the sheriff. They move the body, they wait for someone to find it, and someone does — Lacey, a few days later, dumped in their driveway. And she may know who it is.

It’s a great beginning! It’s got all kinds of possibilities. You could really plot a terrific mystery from a lead-in like this. Of course, our collaborators aren’t plotting much of anything — they write a bit, hope the other follows their lead (they don’t) and then the fireworks start.

Our authors bicker like siblings.  By the beginning of chapter eight, they are sniping about a road trip to Reno a decade earlier and when they should have stopped for gas on the drive into the desert. They fight about vocabulary, they fight about plot points, they fight about who is the more accomplished writer and they are not above threatening each other’s favorite characters to make a point. If David wants to hang onto Paul’s stripper girlfriend and Irving, the cat, he had better stop threatening Doctor Dreamy! The bodies are starting to pile up.

The mystery is fun (I think Lutz and Hayward are both good writers, even if they bash each other a little), but it is interesting to read it knowing they are truly making it up as they go along. They obviously identify with the siblings and are living vicariously through them — sometimes to great comic effect. A clever, original idea and very well executed.

Lisa Lutz is the author of the Spellman series of comedic crime novels. According to his bio, David runs a small writing and editing business in Healdsburg, California, where he does not grow pot or have a cat. My copy of Heads You Loseis an Advanced Reader Copy provided by LibraryThing Early Reviewers.