Here is the third and probably final chapter in this series.  As before, the individual items are in no particular order.

The Alex Cross, I should say Dr. Alex Cross, series by James Patterson is one that is well worth reading.  Cross is a psychologist who becomes a Washington DC homicide police detective, moves on to the FBI and ultimately becomes a consultant to both.  Cross while reasonably well off continues to live in the Southeast DC area, one that is particularly crime ridden. Patterson surrounds him with a well developed cast of characters.  From his partner, John Sampson, through to Nana Mama, his grandmother, who raised him and on to the bad guys, particularly Gary Soneji, that he pursues, the collection makes for engrossing reading. By the way the newest book in the series, Kill Alex Cross, is due out next month but on Amazon you can download the first 27 chapters free.  I have and intend to start reading those chapters today. What do you think the odds are that after reading the first 27 chapters that I will not pay to download the rest of the book? Talk about an inventive marketing ploy! By the way, in addition to the Kindle, the Kindle reader is available for all computers and most smartphones at http://www.amazon.com.

The Camel Club series by David Baldacci takes a very different story line than we see in the Cross series by Patterson. Here we have Oliver Stone (an alias for John Carr a former assassin for the CIA), the man from nowhere, who hides out as a crypt keeper at a cemetery, and whose “Club”, an eclectic group, are political watch-dogs who are looking for conspiracies within the government. Besides Stone the Club includes, a computer genius, a blue-collar laborer, and a Library of Congress reference specialist.  In addition we sometimes see a con-artist, an FBI agent and a homeless person.  As I said an eclectic group. In one novel, along with the con-artist one Annabelle Conroy, they work to bilk millions of dollars from a crooked Atlantic City casion owner.  Fast moving and well written with solid character development.

Lescroart’s primary protagnanist is Dismas Hardy, a San Francisco defense attorney. Abe Glitske, a police lieutenant, and Wyatt Hunt, a private investigator, show up regularly in the Dismas Hardy series and Lescroart sometimes makes the two of them the primary character in other books.  Dismas, in case you didn’t catch it is the name of the good thief crucified with Christ. With Hardy as a criminal defense attorney and Glitske a police lieutenant who are good friends and whose families are together often, we sometimes see tension as the two do their jobs. Throughout the series Hardy, as you might imagine, finds an interesting and sometimes very conflicted clients.

Another attorney, Paul Mandriani is the central character  in books by Steve Martini.  If you haven’t guessed, I like legal mysteries. In my opinion the author, who is a lawyer, does a good job of keeping the courtroom and other legal issues true to life and does not fall in the trap that many of the TV legal shows do. The early books in the series are based in Sacramento California but Mandriani moves to San Diego following his wife’s death from cancer. The books in the series, and there are twelve of them, are courtroom and before court preparation focused but the later ones have more out-of-the-courtroom action.

Steve Berry’s character, Cotton Malone, takes us on a much different story line. Malone is a former Justice Department Agent who after retirement moved to Denmark and bought an antique bookstore from a Danish billionaire Henrik Thorvaldsen. Cassiopeia Vitt, Thorvaldsen’s beautiful assistant and an adventurer, figures in many of the books.  Berry takes Malone on a number of different adventures through his novels.  From attempting to determine what happened to his father, a submarine captain who was lost in the Arctic, to the Terra Cotta warriors in China and throughout Europe, Malone and a rotating cast of characters help to avoid catastrophes.  Always entertaining and engaging reads.

Another author that I just started reading is Kathy Reichs. Reichs, a forensic anthropologist, is the Producer of the Bones TV series and the title character, Temperance Brennan, is based on her work. While the story lines in the books follow the types of things one sees in the TV series, the main Character, Temperance Brennan, is different in many ways and there is no Seeley Booth. The books unlike the TV series are not based in the Washington DC area but move around from South Carolina to Canada, Hawaii and other locations. The locations are based on places Reichs has worked. More good news is that the story lines are based on situations that come from Reichs’ personal experience. I have totally enjoyed the four books that I have read so far and you might want to give this author a try.

If you haven’t read the Stieg Larrson trilogy do it. The three books; The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest should be read in that order to fully enjoy the series. The two main characters are Mikael Blomkvist; journalist, publisher and amateur sleuth and Lisbeth Salander who while antisocial is an extremely gifted hacker and researcher who possesses a photographic memory (Think Pippi Longstocking). Just writing about this series makes me want to reread them, something I rarely do.

Jeffrey Deaver has written a wide range of novels, some of them quite dark, but the books in the Lincoln Rhyme series are the ones I have enjoyed the most. Lincoln Rhyme, a brilliant criminologist and genius in the field of forensics, became a quadriplegic in an accident but continues to solve crimes from his New York Brownstone. Police Detective Amelia Sachs, a tall red head that loves fast muscle cars, serves as Rhyme’s eyes on crime scenes and later in the nine book series becomes his love interest. Extremely well developed characters and fascinating in how Rhyme uses sometimes almost insignificant clues, or the combination of clues, as the key to solving crimes.

In this series I have discussed seventeen authors who between them have written well over a hundred, maybe two hundred novels (I didn’t take the time to count them).There are many more that I have enjoyed; Nelson DeMille, Harlan Coban, James Lee Burke (I particularly liked his development of Dave Robicheaux, a conflicted sometimes alcoholic police detective in New Orleans), Greg Iles and too many more to detail here.

As you may have guessed I enjoy reading, given the choice between watching a movie or reading a book – the book wins every time. One of my joys is discovering new authors so if you have one that you think I might enjoy, please let me know. As a result of these posts one of my friends has already made that offer and I intend to take him up on the offer.

Thanks for taking the time to read these posts and I hope what you have read here will inspire you to try one of the featured authors.