16. Murder Board by Brian Christopher Shea

#1 Michael Kelly, Boston/Dorchester detective
read on my iPhone - Kindle
2019 Severn River Publishing
321 pgs.
Adult Mystery/Police Procedural
Finished 1/23/2020
Goodreads rating: 4.22 - 292 ratings
My rating: 3
Setting: Contemporary Boston/Dorchester, MA

First line/s: "Twelve minutes didn't seem like a long time.  It's the time a morning commuter waits for the next T to arrive.  Or somebody idles in line at their local Dunkin' Donuts in anticipation of their morning jolt.  To those people twelve minutes is an inconvenience, but to Michael Kelly it was an eternity."

My comments:  This is about a Boston homicide cop written by a former Boston cop.  This one was about a Polish family that abducted very young girls - 13/14 - and forced them into the sex trade underground of Dorchester.  The protagonist cop is divorced with an eight year old daughter, born and bred in Dorchester in a family of Irish Americans.  He teams up with an old female friend in the sex crimes unit to solve the murder of a 13 year-old girls and dig into the business surrounding her demise.  For some reason the book seemed to drag, but that may be my fault because I've spent so much time listening to books lately instead of reading the, and read this one in bits and pieces over a two-week period.

Goodreads synopsis:  A Boston homicide detective sets out to find a young girl’s killer—and confronts the dark world of city politics and organized crime. THE FIRST NOVEL OF THE NEW BOSTON CRIME THRILLER SERIES BY FORMER DETECTIVE BRIAN SHEA.
          The young girl was from a good family in an affluent suburb. Her body was found in a shallow grave in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood, not far from where Detective Michael Kelly grew up.
          Solving a murder is never a simple undertaking, but Kelly is driven. Obsessed with finding justice for the victim. Willing to do whatever it takes. Destroy politicians. Stand up to the mob.
          Kelly is a fighter, and he needs to be. Because his investigation uncovers a wide conspiracy—and many more innocent lives are at stake.   
          As the lines between right and wrong begin to blur, Kelly turns to his old connections on the streets of Boston. The search for answers becomes a clash of policing and politics. Of redemption and betrayal. Of greed and violence. To find true justice, Kelly will do whatever it takes...or die trying.                    BRIAN SHEA has served as both a military officer and law enforcement Detective, and his authentic crime fiction novels have been enjoyed by thousands. His books are recommended for readers who enjoy Michael Connolly’s Harry Bosch, David Baldacci’s John Puller, or James Patterson’s Alex Cross.

75. Vanishing Girls by Lisa Regan

#1 Detective Josie Quinn, Denton, PA cop
listened on Audible, also have on Kindle
read by Eilidh Beaton (do not listen to anything she reads again!)
Unabridged audio (11:40)
2018 Bookouture
334 pgs.
Adult Police Procedural/Murder Mystery
Finished 8/12/2019
Goodreads rating:  4.24 - 6246 ratings
My rating: 2
Setting: Contemporary Denton, PA

First line/s:  "There was a man in the woods, she was sure of it."

My comments:  OMG, I can't believe the audio company hired this particular reader for this particular book.  The almost 30-year-old rural PA protagonist sounded like an 18-year-old valley girl and mispronounced so many words that I really wondered what her background was (Scottish?).  It was unbelievably disconcerting and totally took away from the setting and this important primary character, making her almost laughable in places where she definitely should not have been!
     The story was fast paced, but the aforementioned discrepancy re: character and setting just threw the whole story itself off...
     Josie (who ends up becoming Denton's chief of police, yeah, right...) is impulsive, screwed up, on probation, and continues to work nonstop while her fiance lies near death in the the hospital, seemingly without much thought of him at all.  And the, bad guys start spilling their guts after keeping their mouth shut for years..... The combination of horrible narrator and implausible happenings make this one an eye roller.  It didn't give me any sense of rural Pennsylvania AT ALL.
     Here are some of her frustrating pronunciations (remember, this is supposedly in Pennsylvania!
          been = bean (do you know how many times people use this word?  LOTS!)
          ate = ett
          anything = ehn ih thinn
          taco = (pronouncing the a as in apple)
          everything = ev ra thinn
          hovered = haw - verd
          tel - uh - VIZH - un
          process:  proe-sess
          die-rector
          mo-bile
          temporary - temp-ree
          Maryland = merry-land!!!!!
          tousled = tousuhld
          protest = praw-test
          cemetery = sem eh tree

Goodreads synopsis:  She was close enough to see that the girl had written a word on the wall in bright, warm red blood. Not a word, actually. A name…
          Everyone in the small American town of Denton is searching for Isabelle Coleman, a missing seventeen-year-old girl. All they’ve found so far is her phone and another girl they didn’t even know was missing.
          Mute and completely unresponsive to the world around her, it’s clear this mysterious girl has been damaged beyond repair. All Detective Josie Quinn can get from her is a name: Ramona.
          Currently suspended from the force for misconduct, Josie takes matters into her own hands as the name leads her to evidence linking the two girls. She knows the race is on to find Isabelle alive, and she fears there may be others… 
          The trail leads Josie to another victim, a girl who escaped but whose case was labelled a hoax by authorities. To catch this monster, Josie must confront her own nightmares and follow her instinct to the darkest of places. But can she make it out alive?
          Fans of Angela Marsons, Helen Fields and Robert Dugoni will be utterly gripped and sleeping with the lights on once they discover the first in this unputdownable new crime thriller series.

46. Open Season by Linda Howard

listened to Audio - Chirp
read by Deborah Hazlett
Unabridged audio (8:47)
2001 Pocket Books
320 pgs.
Adult romance with a bit of mystery....fun!
Finished 5/17/2019
Goodreads rating:  4.01 - 17,200
My rating: 4
Setting: 2001 Alabama

First line/s:  from prologue:  "Carmela nervously clutched the burlap bag that heeld her other dress, some water, and a small package of food she had been able to save for the trip north, across the border."
from Chapter 1:  " 'Daisy, breakfast is ready!' "

My comments:  This book was a riot!  I snickered and guffawed all the way through it.  It was a mystery and it was a romance (quite sexy, actually, for its 2001 copyright) and it was a makeover story, all rolled into one...and it was loads of fun.  The narrator, Deborah Hazlett, used just the right touch of southern/Alabaman accent to really pull the whole thing off.  Greatly enjoyed it!

Goodreads synopsis:  On her thirty-fourth birthday, Daisy Minor decides to make over her entire life. The small-town librarian has had it with her boring clothes, her ordinary looks, and nearly a decade without so much as a date. It's time to get a life—and a sex life. The perennial good girl, Daisy transforms herself into a party girl extraordinaire—dancing the night away at clubs, laughing and flirting with abandon—and she's declared open season for manhunting. But her free-spirited fun turns to shattering danger when she witnesses something she shouldn't—and becomes the target of a killer. Now, before she can meet the one man who can share her life, first she may need him to save it.     
          Seamlessly blending heart-pounding romance and breathless intrigue, Linda Howard delivers a stylish and provocative novel that absolutely defies readers to put it down.

29. Worth Dying For - Lee Child

Jack Reacher #15
Listened to audio cd in the car
2010 Delacorte
400 pgs.
Adult Mystery
Finished 5/19/16
Goodreads rating: 4.20
My rating: 4
Setting: Contemporary rural Nebraska

First line/s:  "Eldridge Tyler was driving a long, straight two-lane road in Nebraska when his cell phone rang."

My comments:  Jack Reacher was a little disconcerting in this entry, at least until the very end.  He seemed particularly ruthless and ...blood-thirsty... in this one, much more than usual.  But a tiny bit more is revealed just before the very end of the book that made my "thumbs up, Reacher" attitude return.  Reacher is his usual foot-loose and fancy-free self in this one, making quick friends and enemies in an isolated small town in Nebraska where one family rules without question.  And they aren't a nice family.  Of course Reacher discovers what everyone is hiding, how to outsmart one heck-of-a-lot of hoodlums, and end up on the winning side...something you never doubt for a moment.  As always, an enjoyable audible treat on my drive back and forth from work.

Goodreads synopsis:  There’s deadly trouble in the corn county of Nebraska . . . and Jack Reacher walks right into it. First he falls foul of the Duncans, a local clan that has terrified an entire county into submission. But it’s the unsolved, decades-old case of a missing child that Reacher can’t let go.
 
The Duncans want Reacher gone—and it’s not just past secrets they’re trying to hide. For as dangerous as the Duncans are, they’re just the bottom of a criminal food chain stretching halfway around the world. For Reacher, it would have made much more sense to put some distance between himself and the hard-core trouble that’s bearing down on him. For Reacher, that was also impossible.