Chanticleer Book Reviews

Author: bjarne-rostaing

  • SPOTLIGHT on GLOBAL THRILLERS High-Stakes Thriller, Chillers, multiple Killers – CIBA Thriller Books, Book Awards, Best Thriller Books

    SPOTLIGHT on GLOBAL THRILLERS High-Stakes Thriller, Chillers, multiple Killers – CIBA Thriller Books, Book Awards, Best Thriller Books

    It’s come down to this…

    You’re good at deadlines… cutting the right wire under pressure is nothing. You can take down dozens of bad guys with just your wit and some duct tape.

    You can certainly make this deadline!

     

     

    Our new deadline for the 2020 (only) in the  CIBA GLOBAL THRILLER  Awards is October 31, 2020, at 11:59 p.m.

    (*Beware, my friends, for the Global Thriller Awards deadline next year will be one month earlier ~ September 30, 2021! …tick, tick, tick!)

    ENTER TODAY!

    Avanti Centrae pulled the trigger just in time and brought home the CIBA 2019 GRAND PRIZE in GLOBAL THRILLERS Book Awards for SOLSTICE SHADOWS – A VanOps Thriller!

     

     

    The First in Category Winners for The 2019 Global Thrillers are: 

     

    • Randall Krzak for Carnage in Singapore
    • Courtney Leigh Pahlke for Life Force Preserve
    • Jett Ward for Execute Order
    • Nicole Mabry for Past This Point
    • Avanti Centrae for VanOps: The Solstice Shadows
    • Joanne Jaytanie for Salvaging Truth, Hunters & Seekers, Book 1

     

     

     

     

    In 2018, Michael Pronko won the Global Thriller Awards with The Moving Blade.

     

     

    The 2018 Global Thrillers First in Category Winners are:

     

    • Magenta is Missing by Richard Garis
    • Dangerous Alliance by Randall Krzak
    • The War Beneath by Timothy S. Johnston
    • The Sunken Forest by R. Barber Anderson
    • Never Again by Harvey A. Schwartz   
    • Beyond Control by  Lawrence Verigin

     

     

     

    Sara Stamey took home the Grand Prize in 2017 for The Ariadne Connection

     

    The First in Category Winners for 2017: 

     

     

     

    Here are some winners that came before: 

    From the 2016 CLUE Awards:

     

    From the 2015 CLUE Awards:

    • Blended Genre: Timothy S. Johnston – The Tanner Sequence: The Furnace, The Freezer, The Void
    • Espionage/Spy: Michele Daniel – The Red Circle

    We also had Cybertech Thrillers and Political Thrillers such as John Trudel’s Raven’s Resurrection and the Raven’s Series.

    Here’s your assignment, if you choose to accept it…

     

    Submit your Thrillers in the following categories by October 31, 2020,  for a chance to bring home a First in Category WIN the 2020 CIBAs in Global Thrillers – or a Grand Prize – or maybe even the Overall Grand Prize! 

                • Historic
                • LabLit
                • Science Fiction
                • Dramatic
                • Action/Adventure
                • CyberTech

    If you never enter, you’ll never know!  

    Follow this link and enter today! 

    Tick Tock…

    (For light-hearted, cozy, or classic Mystery and Suspense entries see our Mystery & Mayhem Awards and for Thriller/Suspense/Hardboiled-Detective series, please see the CLUE Awards)

    Don’t delay! Enter today!

  • GLOBAL Chillers, Killers, High-Stakes Thrillers – We want them all! Welcome to the November SPOTLIGHT on Global Thrillers Awards

    GLOBAL Chillers, Killers, High-Stakes Thrillers – We want them all! Welcome to the November SPOTLIGHT on Global Thrillers Awards

    The clock is ticking… you’re working on a deadline while your husband is across town, picking up the kids. You’ve taken the day off and gone to the cabin. You have to write that last chapter … the one that will get your work noticed, like J.D. Barker or Stephen King kind of noticed.

    Then the inexplicable happens, as you type in the very last line and hit return, your screen goes black. You reach to plug in your computer, but it’s already plugged in… You jiggle the cords. You hit ESC. You hit RETURN. You unplug the thing and plug it back in again. Nothing. You do a hard reset…

    This time the screen powers on and a thin line travels across the middle of it. Then words appear…

    “You have until November 30, 2019, 11.59 p.m. to turn in your Global Thriller, or you will have no chance of winning…” 

    Don’t let this happen to you! Turn in your High-Stakes Thriller, your Chillers, your multiple Killers for a chance at the prize! But one thing is certain, if you don’t enter, you won’t have a chance of winning!

     

    Be like Michael Pronko who submitted his novel, The Moving Blade, all the way from Japan –

    and took home the 2018 CIBA Grand Prize in the Global Thriller Awards!

     

    Or, you can be like these 2018 Global Thriller Book Awards for Lab Lit & High Stakes Thriller Novels First in Category Winners!

    • Magenta is Missing by Richard Garis
    • Dangerous Alliance by Randall Krzak
    • The War Beneath by Timothy S. Johnston
    • The Sunken Forest by R. Barber Anderson
    • Never Again by Harvey A. Schwartz   
    • Beyond Control by  Lawrence Verigin

    Sara Stamey took home the Grand Prize in 2017 for The Ariadne Connection

    The First in Category Winners for 2017: 

    Here are some winners that came before: 

    From the 2016 CLUE Awards:

     

    From the 2015 CLUE Awards:

    • Blended Genre: Timothy S. Johnston – The Tanner Sequence: The Furnace, The Freezer, The Void
    • Espionage/Spy: Michele Daniel – The Red Circle

    We also had Cybertech Thrillers and Political Thrillers such as John Trudel’s Raven’s Resurrection and the Raven’s Series.

    Here’s your assignment, if you choose to accept it…

     

    Submit your Thrillers in the following categories by November 30, 2019, for a chance to bring home a First in Category WIN the 2019 CIBAs in Global Thrillers – or a Grand Prize – or maybe even the Overall Grand Prize! 

    • Historic
    • LabLit
    • Science Fiction
    • Dramatic
    • Action/Adventure
    • CyberTech

    If you never enter, you’ll never know!  

    Follow this link and enter today! 

    Tick Tock…

    (For light-hearted, cozy, or classic Mystery and Suspense entries see our Mystery & Mayhem Awards and for Thriller/Suspense/Hardboiled-Detective series, please see the CLUE Awards)

    Don’t delay! Enter today!

     

     

  • CLUE AWARDS – Police Procedurals, Hard-Boiled Detectives, Thriller/Suspense/Mystery – in the SPOTLIGHT – CIBAS

    CLUE AWARDS – Police Procedurals, Hard-Boiled Detectives, Thriller/Suspense/Mystery – in the SPOTLIGHT – CIBAS

    So, how do you get a clue? 

    A hard-boiled detective pulls his overcoat a little closer, leans against the northern wall at Village Books in downtown Bellingham. Washington. The state.

    It’s late. It’s raining. It’s a typical Autumn night in the Pacific Northwest. So, what makes this night different than any other night?

    Glad you asked.

    Our gumshoe is hot on the trail of those killer stories that make you turn the page. You know the kind, police procedurals, good-man-gone-wrong tales, the who-dun-its and the why-didn’t-I-see-that-coming books that leave you breathless, reaching for the Alka-Seltzer or the next book in the series.

    Our gumshoe is nervous, see? He knows there’s more to discover out there, winners, maybe, that are just waiting to be discovered. That’s why he’s standing there, waiting. Oh, just a second… he’s gone now… Guess he got tired of waiting in the rain.

    But he left a message…

    “Get your manuscripts and novels ready, because the deadline to the 2019 CLUE Awards is coming before you know it. Submit your books and manuscripts to the best book awards on the planet by September 30, 2019, if you know what’s good for you.” 

    That was short and sweet. What are you waiting for?

    Chanticleer International Book Awards is looking for the very best books dealing with Detectives, P.I.s, Noir – stories that build suspense
    and pay off in spades. 

    The deadline for the 2019 CIBA CLUE Awards is September 30, 2019.

    Submit your work today right here.

     

    We thought you might enjoy some of our past winners…

    2018 CIBA Grand Prize Winner in CLUE – Timothy Burgess for California Son

    2018 1st Place Category Winners:  (Book reviews are slated for the ones without links). 

    • The Only One Left by Pamela Beason
    • Facing The Dragon by Philip Derrick
    • Forgotten Rage by Melodie Hernandez
    • Do Not Ask by Elaine Williams Crockett
    • Scare Away the Dark: A Stone Suspense by Karen Dodd
    • The Blind Pool by Paul McHugh
    • Hong Kong Central by Marilynn Larew

    2017 CIBA Grand Prize Winner in CLUE – Kaylin McFarren for Twisted Threads

    2017 1st Place Category Winners: (Book reviews are slated for the ones without links). 

    2016 CIBA Grand Prize Winner in CLUE – Keith Tittle for A Matter of Justice

    2016 1st Place Category Winners:

    2015 CIBA Grand Prize Winner in CLUE – Lonna Enox for Blood Relations

    Blood Relations by Lonna Enox

    2015 1st Place Category Winners:

    2014 CIBA Grand Prize Winner in CLUE – Rachel B. Ledge for The Red Ribbon

    The Red Ribbon by Rachel B. Ledge

    2014 1st Place Category Winners:

    Who is going to take home the Grand Prize for the 2019 CLUE Awards? It could be you! 

     

    The deadline is fast approaching!

    Submit your work today right here.

  • EPSTEIN’S PANCAKE by Bjarne Rostaing – Political Thriller, Thriller & Suspense, Mystery, CLUE AWARD WINNER

    EPSTEIN’S PANCAKE by Bjarne Rostaing – Political Thriller, Thriller & Suspense, Mystery, CLUE AWARD WINNER

    Blue and Gold Clue 1st place badgeStyled in the cooling off days of the Reagan era and the still heated Iran Contra imbroglio, Epstein’s Pancake features a street-wise hero afflicted by PTSD and new to the spy vs. spy game. Viet Nam vet Rob Price is not having an easy time with civilian life when a friend introduces him to a mysterious man who wants to hire him for some low-level, well-paid courier work in France – dropping things off, meeting people in airports, that kind of thing.

    Of course, it’s espionage and despite how careful Price normally is, he doesn’t hesitate. He has little to lose, though he will gradually realize that even someone with little to lose might find something worth saving. In this case, possibly, the entire world. As he gets more tightly drawn into more secretive levels of the work, Price begins to wonder who the good guys really are. He has one trustworthy supporter, a martial arts teacher name Jennie whose instruction might save his life as he takes on an entire military-industrial complex.

    At the core of this multi-layered plot is a scientist playing with something that still seems ultra-futuristic, though it has been around for longer than most people realize: artificial intelligence. In this case, AI is represented by a plate full of genetic mush connected to wires and computers – the eponymous pancake that multi-nationals, dictators and even the leaders of the free world want to control. After numerous near-death experiences and constant switchbacks that force Price to re-learn his playbook almost daily, he will identify the villains in the piece and force their hand. But not without cost to his psyche.

    Rostaing, an award-winning author, paints a remarkable picture of the times and the setting of this action-rich, intelligent tale, and is able to convey it in rich language. Doubtless, he has accessed many sources in piecing together a novel that seems entirely accurate down to small but significant details, from everything that was on TV in the late 1980s to how the bigwigs were thinking.

    He inserts some believable behind-the-scenes vignettes and a few well-chosen opinions without weighing the narrative, and he has an excellent ear for dialogue. In Price, he has brought to life an enjoyable mix of John le Carré’s cool-headed Smiley and Dashiell Hammett’s hard-bitten Sam Spade.

    With international intrigue, a new twist on almost every page, life-threatening danger, and a hard-living hero with a soft heart, Epstein’s Pancake is a smart story solidly in the spy thriller genre that’s bound to garner a loyal readership.

    Epstein’s Pancake won First Place in the 2016 Clue Awards for Bjarne Rostaing.

    5 Stars! Best Book Chanticleer Book Reviews