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Location: Vero Beach, Florida, United States

My name is Pat and I live in Florida. My skin will never be smooth again and my hair will never see color. I enjoy collecting autographs and playing in Paint Shop Pro.,along with reading and writing. Sometimes, I enjoy myself by doing volunteer "work" helping celebrities at autograph shows. I love animals and at one time I did volunteer work for Tippi Hedren's Shambala Preserve.

Saturday, September 24, 2016

Every Dead Thing

Book 4 for RIP....

Every Dead Thing by John Connelly.

Paperback: 512 pages
Publisher: Atria/Emily Bestler Books(June 16, 2015)
ISBN-10: 1501122622


 

Amazon Review.

Former NYPD detective Charlie "Bird" Parker is on the verge of madness. Tortured by the unsolved slayings of his wife and young daughter, he is a man consumed by guilt, regret, and the desire for revenge. When his former partner asks him to track down a missing girl, Parker finds himself drawn into a world beyond his imagining: a world where thirty-year-old killings remain shrouded in fear and lies, a world where the ghosts of the dead torment the living, a world haunted by the murderer responsible for the deaths in his family—a serial killer who uses the human body to create works of art and takes faces as his prize. But the search awakens buried instincts in Parker: instincts for survival, for compassion, for love, and, ultimately, for killing.
Aided by a beautiful young psychologist and a pair of bickering career criminals, Parker becomes the bait in a trap set in the humid bayous of Louisiana, a trap that threatens the lives of everyone in its reach. Driven by visions of the dead and the voice of an old black psychic who met a terrible end, Parker must seek a final, brutal confrontation with a murderer who has moved beyond all notions of humanity, who has set out to create a hell on earth: the serial killer known only as the Traveling Man.
In the tradition of classic American detective fiction, Every Dead Thing is a tense, richly plotted thriller, filled with memorable characters and gripping action. It is also a profoundly moving novel, concerned with the nature of loyalty, love, and forgiveness. Lyrical and terrifying, it is an ambitious debut, triumphantly realized.




I have read 2 other books by John Connolly and liked them both.  This one was another good book.  "Bird" was on the search for the cold case in which his wife and child were killed.... but not "just" killed.

At times he almost lost me by having so many people involved that I'd start wondering what the heck was going on.  But eventually it cleared up and I once again knew what it was all about.   I am a bit brain dead when I get too many characters to keep track of lol.

I enjoyed this book enough to order yet another book by the same author.  Which surprises me since  "detectives" are getting to be the "norm" when in truth my favorite books are still more to the "family secrets" when solving a crime.

 

 

 

 

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

The Life We Bury

Book 3 for RIP...



 

The Life We Bury by Allen Eskens.

Paperback: 303 pages
Publisher: Seventh Street Books(October 14, 2014)
ISBN-10: 1616149981


 



 

College student Joe Talbert has the modest goal of completing a writing assignment for an English class. His task is to interview a stranger and write a brief biography of the person. With deadlines looming, Joe heads to a nearby nursing home to find a willing subject. There he meets Carl Iverson, and soon nothing in Joe's life is ever the same.
Carl is a dying Vietnam veteran--and a convicted murderer. With only a few months to live, he has been medically paroled to a nursing home, after spending thirty years in prison for the crimes of rape and murder.
As Joe writes about Carl's life, especially Carl's valor in Vietnam, he cannot reconcile the heroism of the soldier with the despicable acts of the convict. Joe, along with his skeptical female neighbor, throws himself into uncovering the truth, but he is hamstrung in his efforts by having to deal with his dangerously dysfunctional mother, the guilt of leaving his autistic brother vulnerable, and a haunting childhood memory. 
Thread by thread, Joe unravels the tapestry of Carl’s conviction. But as he and Lila dig deeper into the circumstances of the crime, the stakes grow higher. Will Joe discover the truth before it’s too late to escape the fallout?


Ok... best book I've read in a long time!! I hated this book to end!  Loved the characters, loved the story (stories)..nothing I didn't like about this book!.. well, except that I didn't want it to end but couldn't stop reading it!

Excellent mystery of a "cold case" pulled up due to and English project for Joe.  Toss in Joe's background and a small love story and you have it all in a very good, too short, book.  I had this book on my wish list for some time and sorry now that I waited so long to send for the used copy!!

It's a keeper!  Ya'll  might want to read this one!

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

The Woman Who Walked Into the Sea

Book 2 for RIP...





The Woman who Walked into the Sea by Mark Douglas-Home.

Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Sandstone Press (November 12, 2013)
ISBN-10: 1908737328




Amazon Review:

Cal McGill watches the young woman through the dirty windshield of his Toyota. There's something compelling about her stillness, about the length of time she has been standing, staring out to sea. What has brought her to this remote beach, he asks himself. Is she a kindred spirit who finds refuge by the shore? Idle curiosity soon turns into another investigation for oceanographer and loner McGill as he embarks on a quest to discover why, 26 years earlier, another young woman walked into these same waves. According to the police, she killed herself and her unborn baby. McGill, the Sea Detective, questions this version of events and confronts the jealousies, tensions, and threats of a coastal community determined to hold on to its secrets.

Hooray! A real mystery!!  Of course it includes a dead body or two..  but the mystery is finding out ones past.  I liked the writing style in this book and found I looked forward to picking it up each time.

The only strange thing about the book is that Cal McGill did not really seem like a "detective" but more of a person wanting to help in the situation.  However I did like that it wasn't a detective constantly going to his office and reporting to others.   I enjoyed the book and all the mysteries surrounding the story! 

Friday, September 09, 2016

The Silent Girls



First book for RIP!

The Silent Girls by Eric Rickstad.

Paperback: 416 pages
Publisher: Witness Impulse (January 27, 2015)
ISBN-10: 0062351540




Amazon Review:

With the dead of a bitter Vermont winter closing in, evil is alive and well . . .

Frank Rath thought he was done with murder when he turned in his detective's badge to become a private investigator and raise a daughter alone. Then the police in his remote rural community of Canaan find an '89 Monte Carlo abandoned by the side of the road, and the beautiful teenage girl who owned the car seems to have disappeared without a trace.

Soon Rath's investigation brings him face-to-face with the darkest abominations of the human soul.

With the consequences of his violent and painful past plaguing him, and young women with secrets vanishing one by one, he discovers once again that even in the smallest towns on the map, evil lurks everywhere—and no one is safe.

Morally complex, seething with wickedness and mystery, and rich in gritty atmosphere and electrifying plot turns, The Silent Girls marks the return of critically acclaimed author Eric Rickstad. Readers of Ian Rankin, Jo Nesbø, and Greg Iles will love this book and find themselves breathless at the incendiary, ambitious, and unforgettable story.

A good mystery right up to the end!  A new missing person case connects to some old cold cases, and if that's not bed enough Rath's daughter turns up missing!  It began like most detective stories but it got better and better as it went along. 

I still prefer mysteries with lots of family secrets in them but it seems more and more books are detective books.  If you get a really good and interesting main character then it's good when more books come out using the protagonist that you have come to find so interesting.

This is my first book by Eric Rickstad  so I don't know if he uses Frank Rath in other books yet.