24. Deadline - Sandra Brown

listened to the cd in the car
2013 Grand Central Publishing
410 pgs.
Adult Mystery
Finished  4/19/16
Goodreads rating: 4.07
My rating:  4
Setting:Contemporary Savannah, GA and an island just off it

My comments:  Other than a few questionable/implausible plot devices that I was willing to ignore, this was a very listenable mystery.  There was one surprise near the end that really floored - and tickled - me and changed my thinking about a great deal of the prior story.  I'm not usually one to enjoy the 50/50 mystery/romance - I like the "hardcore" mystery with limited romance - but this one wiled away many hours driving back and forth to work.

Goodreads synopsis:  Dawson Scott is a well-respected journalist recently returned from Afghanistan. Haunted by everything he experienced, he's privately suffering from battle fatigue which is a threat to every aspect of his life. But then he gets a call from a source within the FBI. A new development has come to light in a story that began 40 years ago. It could be the BIG story of Dawson's career--one in which he has a vested interest.
          Soon, Dawson is covering the disappearance and presumed murder of former Marine Jeremy Wesson, the biological son of the pair of terrorists who remain on the FBI's Most Wanted list. As Dawson delves into the story, he finds himself developing feelings for Wesson's ex-wife, Amelia, and her two young sons. But when Amelia's nanny turns up dead, the case takes a stunning new turn, with Dawson himself becoming a suspect. Haunted by his own demons, Dawson takes up the chase for the notorious outlaws. . .and the secret, startling truth about himself.

22. Red Mist - Patricia Cornwell

Kay Scarpetta #19

Audio read by

11 unabridged cds

2011 Putnam Adult

512 pgs.

Adult Mystery

Finished 3/15/2015

Goodreads rating: 3.70

My rating:   4 - Excellent story

PBS

Contemporary Savannah, GA

My comments:  I haven't read a Kay Scarpetta novel in years and years, so when this audio book "fell" into my hands I decided to take another look/listen.  I still find Scarpetta self-absorbed, haughty, and unlikable, but the mystery and the story surrounding it are fascinating.  Cornwell can certainly spin an interesting tale....interesting, gruesome, and actually, quite believable.....

Goodreads book summary: Determined to find out what happened to her former deputy chief, Jack Fielding, murdered six months earlier, Kay Scarpetta travels to the Georgia Prison for Women, where an inmate has information not only on Fielding, but also on a string of grisly killings. The murder of an Atlanta family years ago, a young woman on death row, and the inexplicable deaths of homeless people as far away as California seem unrelated. But Scarpetta discovers connections that compel her to conclude that what she thought ended with Fielding's death and an attempt on her own life is only the beginning of something far more destructive: a terrifying terrain of conspiracy and potential terrorism on an international scale. And she is the only one who can stop it.

62. Fallen - Lauren Kate

#1 Fallen series

2009 Delacorte Press

452 pgs.

YA Fantasy

Finished 9/25/2014

Goodreads rating: 3.75

My rating:   1 - Yuck

Purchased at the TPPL Friends book sale

Set in a reform school (?) in Savannah, GA

1st sentence/s: from prologue:  Around midnight, her eyes at last took shape.  The look in them was feline, half determined and half tentative -- all trouble.
from 1st chapter:  Luce barged into the fluorescent-lit lobby of the Sword & Cross School ten minutes later than she should have..  A barrel-chested attendant with ruddy cheeks and a clipboard clamped under an iron bicep was already giving orders -- which meant Luce was already behind.

My comments:  There are so many smart, savvy, thoughtful, meaty YA dystopian/ other-wordly novels out there, and this isn't one of them. It's tedious, repetetive, and ridiculous.  I wish I hadn't wasted my time.

Goodreads book summary:What if the person you were meant to be with could never be yours?
          17-year-old Lucinda falls in love with a gorgeous, intelligent boy, Daniel, at her new school, the grim, foreboding Sword & Cross . . . only to find out that Daniel is a fallen angel, and that they have spent lifetimes finding and losing one another as good & evil forces plot to keep them apart. Get ready to fall . .