Chanticleer Book Reviews

Tag: Thriller

The BUTCHER’S BILL (The Linus Schag, NCIS Thrillers Book 2) by Martin Roy Hill – Int’l Mystery & Crime, Military Thriller, Suspense

Bill Butcher can’t take it anymore. He’s played by the rules and lost. Now he’s making up his own rules. He’s determined to assert his own justice upon the people he identified as secretly betraying him and the troops who serve the country.

In this novel, part of the conspiracy against Bill Butcher is the publishing of a fraudulent list of demands supposedly written by him. The media nicknames the list The Butcher’s Bill. How can he fight? Follow the money trail, is all he can do – and what he hopes Linus Schag will do. It’s clear by now that Bill Butcher is a tormented man; terminated from NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigative Service) after his deployment in Iraq under accusations he’s unstable.

In every sense, this is a page-turner that readers won’t want to miss as Bill Butcher conducts his own subversive investigation to exact revenge. Is he out of his mind? Or, are his instincts right? This second book in the Linus Schag series by author Martin Roy Hill will keep you up nights.

Agent Schag has a reputation for impatience with authority, hidden secret guilt from his previous assignment, and boredom with his current exile in San Diego. He is the best in the business, and he is the only person Bill Butcher trusts to do the right thing. But when Butcher commits a crime so outrageously brutal, that Agent Schag is called in to bring him to justice. The question is, what kind of justice should be administered, and to whom?

Despite all obstacles before him, Bill Butcher relentlessly pursues the man he suspects is the source of the corruption. He will put an end to this man or die trying.

Linus Schag analyzes the evidence while keeping a vigilant watch against treachery. As he reviews the case, his concern grows. It is at this point, Lt. Commander Kendra Clarke of the Medical Corps steps in and diagnoses Butcher’s behavior as severe psychosis from a drug administered by naval officials. This new information may explain the gruesome messaging Butcher leaves behind at the crime scenes.

This is a smart thriller that will keep you guessing until the very last page. Martin Roy Hill builds the suspense skillfully, placing you just where he wants you: on the edge of your seat.

Martin Roy Hill is well-versed in the culture and commitment of those who serve in the military, especially the Navy. Even the term, “The Butcher’s Bill” is an old naval slang for the list of killed and wounded after a battle and takes on an additional meaning as it also represents the number of dead left behind as the book’s plot advances. Hill relates a compelling picture of service. These are professionals against a smart setting.

Be ready to puzzle through the trail of evidence as it is uncovered and analyze the potential motives of characters who are not always as they appear. This thriller engages the reader to solve the ultimate twisted solution. A thrilling work of fiction inspired by historical fact will leave readers wondering how closely art imitates life. Highly recommended.

The Butcher’s Bill won 1^st Place in the 2017 CIBAs CLUE Awards for Suspense/Thriller novels.

October 4, 2019
BLIND TRUST by John W. Feist – Political Thriller, Suspense/Thriller, High-Stakes Int’l Thriller

Brad Oaks and his wife Amaya have no idea what is in store when they answer a call for help from the newly appointed Japanese prime minister in John W. Feist’s second novel, Blind Trust.

The year is 2022, and a mysterious explosion compromises Japan’s electric grid infrastructure (LNG regasification, to be precise). Yuko Kagano’s election as the next prime minister comes with the hope that she will commit to her campaign promise of restoring Japan’s energy structure. However, she must first deal with the criminal activity associated with the previous leader. She needs help. She calls on Brad Oaks and Amaya Mori, his wife, for advice on pipeline and steel strategies. Amaya especially, as the two women have known one another since college, and both are heirs to familial steel companies, the American Elgar Steel and the Japanese Kanawa, respectively.

Brad Oaks gave up his lawyer career a few years back after he rescued Amaya when she was abducted due to her connections with her father’s company. The two fell in love, married, and moved to California. Now, Brad is the executive vice president of Elgar Steel (Please refer to John W. Feist’s first novel in the series, Night Rain, Tokyo). Three years later, they receive a call from Eisuke Tanaka, the commissioner of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, who delivers the message that Yuko requests a meeting with them in Tokyo. The call couldn’t have come in a more inconvenient time. Brad and Amaya are critically assessing a possible new season in their marriage: adoption. Placing their plans on hold, they fly to Tokyo unaware that they will be walking into deadly covert schemes to undermine the prime minister.

John Feist blazes a path in his approach to geopolitical suspense. Having ventured into Japanese culture via his past professional connections, Feist understands, firsthand, the underlying and ongoing cultural tension that exists between the Japanese and foreigners in the business sector. That said, Feist’s method of storytelling is not Americanized, which usually follows an often dizzying and fast-paced route. Instead, tension builds through innuendo-rich dialogue scenes between characters as he undergirds his plot with realistic aspects of Japanese culture that is rooted in “nativism” (the revival or perpetuation of an indigenous culture especially in opposition to acculturation, Merriam-Webster).

Feist does an excellent job surrounding Brad and Amaya, his principal characters, with a diverse cast of characters that range from subdued to surly. Each chapter alternates character POVs packed with a handful of red herrings and a plethora of unexpected twists and turns amid political history and the sights, sounds, and smells of a beautiful Asian country.

Blind Trust is a unique and satisfying Political Thriller that closes on a promising note of a sequel.

September 23, 2019
COOPERATIVE LIVES by Patrick Finegan – Literary Fiction, Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Literary Fiction, Romance Literary Fiction

How well do people really know their neighbors? More importantly, or perhaps more sinisterly, how well do those neighbors know each other – and each other’s secrets?

Cooperative apartment buildings may exist everywhere, but in the U.S., they are frequently imagined as a distinct creation of the densely populated New York City landscape – the location of Cooperative Lives.

This is the story of one particular co-op on Central Park South, a desirable address that is home to a number of seemingly affluent, mostly middle-aged and older residents who look as if they lead rather comfortable and downright dull lives.

Of course, there wouldn’t be a story if that were the case.

As the novel shifts from apartment to apartment, from resident to resident, readers glimpse the secret hurts, the poorly hidden grievances, and the deeply held griefs that inhabit each resident – and the ways that these seemingly casual acquaintances are linked by suddenly exposed lies.

We are drawn into the maze of interconnectedness, slowly but inexorably, beginning with one lonely tenant sleeping on a park bench during one of New York City’s infamous blackouts. From this one life derailed by divorce, the story spirals outwards to the couple whose seemingly perfect life slalomed out of control after a skiing accident that links the first resident’s ex-wife to the one who may spend the rest of hers in a wheelchair.

Who is, in turn, saved from a fatal bus collision by yet another tenant who lapses into a coma and, in his delirium, imagines events that he and his caregivers come to believe must really have happened. This winds up embroiling the cooperative in a shocking televised scandal.

Cooperative Lives is a story told in multiple shifting perspectives, as each resident links to another, to another, and to another. The changes in point of view are often abrupt, but the reader who follows from person to person, lie to lie, and secret to secret will find themselves at the heart of a dark web that stretches well beyond the building to a case that almost seems ripped from the headlines of the late 2000s and early 2010s when this story takes place.

While the author describes this work as extremely recent historical fiction, this character-driven story is most definitely a work of exquisite literary fiction that uses the exploration of its characters to drive the narrative. As the story opens, readers are introduced to the status quo of the residents, mundane lives that, on the surface, are not terribly interesting. But this is far from the case.

Finegan does an excellent job of drawing us inside these seemingly tiny lives, and the deeper we go, the more significant these lives seem, and the greater the impact they have on each other as well as those who have been drawn into their well-written and extremely sticky web.

September 3, 2019
The KAFIR PROJECT by Lee Burvine – Technothriller, Atheism, Mystery

From page one, things are not going as planned on The Kafir Project, and author Lee Burvine has many more surprises in store before this undertaking ends. The action leaps off the page from beginning to the grand finale in this thought-provoking thriller. The villains are well-organized and highly motivated to stop the Project dead, as well as anyone who gets in their way.

Gevin Rees is a television science communicator, a celebrity who explains complex scientific discoveries and theories to television audiences. He interviews guests on specific topics and is surprised the world’s most celebrated and reclusive physicist, Edward Fischer, wants to meet with him. It’s even more curious because Fischer’s death in an explosion had been broadly reported. However, he stands before Gevin Rees and begins to tell a story of intrigue about a secret project on a pier along San Francisco Bay. The story is interrupted with gunfire. This time there is no doubt that Fischer is dead. Now on the run, Gevin Rees is a new target.

To solve this mystery, Fischer throws Rees a pack. The contents answer few questions and suggest new ones. Why did Fischer want Rees involved? Before this perilous journey ends, Rees will need to join forces with unexpected allies. One is a rogue agent; others are scientists. Even as a team is taxed to escape the persistent, elusive, evil people determined to stop them and Fischer’s project, Faraj, one of the antagonists declares, “We need the dark to appreciate the light.” His methods are very dark, indeed.

To have any hope to escape these people, Rees will need to employ all of his scientific knowledge, along with sharpening his wits and pushing his fervor beyond limits. But will these efforts be enough to discover the truth of the project? The core of worldwide belief systems is at stake – and a lot of money.

The author’s lifelong thirst to get to the bottom of things has culminated in The Kafir Project, his first novel, and the science behind the plot is beautifully shown through the characters, especially by the TV celebrity turned unexpected hero, Gevin Rees. The Kafir Project is an excellent work of fiction, packed with action and profound ideas that will linger long after the last page is read.

The Kafir Project by Lee Burvine won 1st Place in the CIBA 2017 Global Thriller Awards.

August 12, 2019
The APOTHEOSIS by Darrell Lee – Genetic Engineering, Science Fiction Thriller, Science-Fiction Adventure

The boldness of the ideas contained within this novel about cloning begins with its title. The word “apotheosis” can be freely translated as 1.a. the perfect form or example of something, 1.b. the highest or best part of something, or 2. elevation to divine status. (Merriman-Webster Online Dictionary). It is with these expectations that the book begins with a letter from John Numen, who tells us from the beginning that he is unapologetically a multifaceted scientist, medical researcher, doctor, billionaire investor, a fugitive on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, and a fledgling serial killer.

We believe him.

Numen’s trajectory from a scientist to a reclusive but fiendish killer with infinite financial resources is quite the tale. Human cloning is his obsession. He believes he has developed the science to make it easy and practical despite its medical and scientific, legal and ethical challenges. As he progresses decades into the future, he plans carefully for the lifespan he needs and the facilities he requires to develop his ideas into practical tools. He has the resources to do both and gives us a front-row seat on the often-murderous details involved in how he accomplishes his goals, whether it be on his private island in the Caribbean or at his Colorado estate.

What distinguishes Numen from many other mad scientists is his portrayal as a human being. He is as capable of loving as he is in murdering. His descriptions of both give this read a humanity most welcome in the sci-fi genre. In particular, his love affair with the wife of a business colleague and its tragic ending lend a dramatic sensibility that sci-fi books rarely achieve.

For more than half the book, the potential for it becoming the basis for a long-form television mini-series virtually leaps off the page. Then the story seems to wander a bit, shifting the point of view from Numen to a female kickboxer with dreams of MMA championships and the moxie to carry it out. Fast action sequences and brutal punches make for a great diversion.

What Darrell Lee delivers is a fast-paced thriller with a lot of tendrils that are likely to snatch readers up and keep them in the chair, a well-drawn mad scientist with a sexy kick-ass femme fatal, and an interesting story that may stay with you for a while.

All in all, we expect The Apotheosis will indeed find its fan-base among those who love fast-paced, unapologetic sci-fi thrillers.

July 19, 2019
The MIDNIGHT CALL by Jode Millman – Female Sleuth, Police Procedural, Suspense/Thriller

In this fast-paced legal thriller, young attorney Jessie Martin faces multiple crises in both her personal and professional lives when her former high school teacher and beloved mentor calls in the middle of the night to confess a crime. He has just committed murder.

Jessie feels compelled to help Terrance Butterfield, after all the many times he has come to her aid, so she rushes to his side over the protests of her fiancé, and in spite of her third-trimester pregnancy.

When she arrives, she finds herself plunged into the depths of a nightmare that has only just begun. The ending will either make or break Jessie and everything she holds dear. As well as the lives and careers of everyone caught up in the bloody mess.

Although this story begins with Jessie receiving the titular midnight call, the pace of the story is driven by the investigation into the crime, the defendant, and eventually into Jessie herself.

The maneuvering of both legal teams sets a frenetic pace, as the District Attorney is driven to prosecute what turns out to be a high-profile case in the press as well as the courtroom. While the defense attorney sees the case as a way to solve his financial problems, feed his adrenaline addiction, and put himself back on top as the maverick defender with a nose for finding the weak spots in any case.

The punch and counterpunch between the rival legal teams push the story forward at a high-speed, as they maneuver both in and out of the courtroom. The revelation of new information, about both the crime and the people involved in it, is nothing short of fascinating.

As the case builds, Jessie’s life falls apart, and all her long-held secrets are laid bare. During these instances, the pacing slows a bit, in juxtaposition to the back-and-forth battles between the legal teams. The legal strategy and the courtroom battles create an intense page-turner of a book.

The ending of the case does an excellent job of making the reader – and the defense team – question every single thing that came before.

The Midnight Call won First Place in the 2014 CIBAs in the CLUE Awards.

May 21, 2019
AGED in CHARCOAL: A Stu Fletcher, PI Mystery Novel by Jeffrey Ridenour – Noir, Mystery, Detective Mystery

Aged in Charcoal by Jeffrey Ridenour is a classic hardboiled detective novel set in 1960s Bay area California. This novel features dirty cops, bribes, an inept justice system, and Stu Fletcher, an ex-cop turned detective, who despite his jaded outlook wants to do the right thing.

Fletcher has been hired by Maggie Ogilvy following her husband’s apparent suicide to find his long-lost sister, Bernie. Maggie doesn’t let Fletcher know what she plans to do once Bernie is found, only that she wants to know her whereabouts. It seems to have been her husband’s last wish to see his sister because Charles Ogilvy—a wildly successful architect who had his eye on running for lieutenant governor before his death, strangely didn’t leave behind any sort of suicide note. Instead, his last writing was a note to himself reading: “Find Bern. Must apologize.”

With nothing much more to go on, Fletcher finds himself embarking on what feels like a wild goose chase and more than once realizes he has run into a wall and must backtrack. He soon gets the idea to ask a local artist to draw pictures of Bernie, each one progressively aging her so that he may be able to show people what she possibly looks like now. But the closer he seems to get to finding Bernie, the farther away he gets from what is to be expected from a case like this. Along the way, Fletcher also has to contend with the local mob and soon finds himself in mortal danger.

This is the first book in the Stu Fletcher, PI thriller series. And while Ridenour unravels his story at a leisurely pace where nothing seems to happen quickly in the world of private investigating, the plot doesn’t want for twists and turns. This mystery uses slang from the time period in which it’s set, the ‘60s, and as such, some modern readers may cringe at some of the time-authentic slang. What readers will also find is a large cast of characters who serve to flesh out the setting, and an often-stark writing style that wastes no time in getting right to the point.

Aged in Charcoal reveals the seedy underbelly of the justice system—from dirty cops to inefficient courts. And in the end, the only good ending may be the justice you make for yourself.

Aged in Charcoal won First Place in the CIBA 2017 Clue Awards for Mystery novels.

April 19, 2019
100 DAYS of TERROR by Larry Temple – Terrorism/Thriller, Suspense/Thriller, Conspiracy Thriller

The suspense in Larry Temple’s excellent, haunting, global thriller, 100 Days of Terror, begins as a seed planted in the minds of the main characters and the reader. A torched car is found in a field in New Jersey. Residents in a town in Idaho wake to find green water gushing from their faucets. A small college town in West Texas is vandalized. And, then, three trucks explode on a highway in Los Angeles, and the clues linking the explosion to the other incidents are undeniable. The FBI knows that these aren’t random acts of isolated violence but an escalating series of terrorist incidents designed to disrupt life in America. During the next few months, multiple bridges will be bombed, airports will close, many highways will be unnavigable, communities will suffer power outages, and groups of children will stop attending school. The Dow Jones Industrial Average will steadily drop and the entire nation will be wondering what and where the next attack will be. Who is wreaking this havoc on America? To determine that answer, however, another question must be asked: Why?

At the heart of it all is Noah Reardon, an FBI agent in his thirties who saw plenty of violence during three years in Afghanistan with the Joint Special Operations Command. It is in America, though, where he has suffered egregious personal loss and is now getting through his days in an alcoholic haze. His boss, the gruff, no-nonsense McCullum has his reasons for not firing Reardon. Laura Spencer, Reardon’s partner, is protective of him, even while she chastises him for constantly over-sleeping and reeking of booze. Reardon has a personal connection to the events at hand; it was his stolen car that was found torched and abandoned in New Jersey. Could this have something to do with his liaison officer and close friend in Afghanistan, Abdul? After all, it was Abdul who told him, “Anyone who attempts to contradict or interfere with America’s drive for money and power are terrorists in your mind.” But, no; this can’t have anything to do with Abdul, the man who died in an explosion, the man who saved Reardon’s life. Or can it? Temple does an extraordinary job of keeping the reader guessing. Clues, the name of the game, are planted, but what to make of them? A sinister series of riddles are at play.

As a whole, the novel is a thoroughly engrossing meditation on what people can survive. The attacks aren’t leveled at the entire nation; they take place in an exact time and region of the country. Citizens will learn that they can keep going after local destructions. That doesn’t mean they emerge unscathed, however. They are forever changed by suspense-filled days, by hours wondering where and when the next attack will occur. If an explosion occurs nearby, can they relax for a moment and assume the next one won’t happen in their city, on their street? What is the true aim of terrorism? To eliminate people or to make fear such a constant in their lives that they stop living; they exist only to run for cover when the next attack occurs. When there is no end in sight for certain yet unpredictable violence, people are trapped in a cycle of action and reaction. “Normal” is no longer part of the national vocabulary.

The ending packs a huge wallop, a kick to the gut that will leave you gasping for breath. It causes the reader to stop and reconsider every question raised in a narrative that moves forward and back in time, giving us a composite of Reardon’s life, a mosaic of the good and the bad, the wonderful and the painful. Like the best fiction, it will leave the reader asking the question, “What would I do?” Read this powerful thriller for yourself and see if you can supply the answer.

April 1, 2019
JACKAL in the MIRROR by V.&D. Povall – Ghosts, Mystery/Suspense, Thriller

Panic surfaces as bodies of murdered young women are found in the once peaceful lake located by a small, rural town in California. No one can find the murderer, let alone stop him. In the third psychic adventure book by authors V. & D. Povall, the reluctant psychic Sarah Thompson will follow a voice that rings with agony. She will try to track and stop the killer in Jackal in the Mirror.

Sarah Thompson has embraced the love of her new family and seems to be managing her sometimes unpredictable sixth sense. She makes plans for a fun four-day escape with her girlfriends from work to Eureka, California; a weekend that turns into a heart-pounding, fist-tightening trip of the most shocking events. It all starts when Sarah explores the little town’s shops. A strange book, Jackal in the Mirror, finds Sarah in the town’s antique bookstore. The book mystically weaves a story of murder, terror, misplaced loyalties, sweet love, and innocence. Sarah is the only one who can hear the call for help, the only one who knows that time is running out for someone, the only one who can help.

In fact, the spirit driving the book’s messaging is insistent that Sarah is the only one allowed to hear the story. Sarah finds herself increasingly emotionally and physically isolated by the ghostly storyteller, to the point that phone reception to loved ones is mysteriously cut off, and even best-intentioned friends are blocked from helping. Sarah is truly left on her own to solve this mystery. Her worried husband Conrad does all he can to try and find her, but she is secreted away, out of reach. Sarah can only hope that with the clues from the story she can piece together the mystery and save an innocent life.

The authors are a husband and wife writing team that has also authored screenplays, and fiction novels, in addition to this murder-mystery series. They’ve partnered in creating yet another tale that entertains and captures the imagination. Their writing is rich and exciting; readers may find they cannot put the book down.

Jackal in the Mirror explores dimensions of trust, loyalty, and love when tested by separation, misunderstanding, and regret. At times the spirit’s sentiment is so strongly insistent in urgently guiding Sarah that the underlying emotion can only be expressed poetically. Still, emotion is not always sweet, sometimes, as Sarah discovers, it is hidden fury.

Read our reviews of the first two novels in this riveting series, The Gift of the Twin Houses and Secrets of Innocence.

March 19, 2019
CUT: A Medical Murder Mystery by Amy S. Peele – Medical Mystery, Thriller, Cozy

With heart, compassion, and a dash of comic relief, Amy Peele’s engaging murder mystery takes us into the precarious realm of human organ transplantation. Here, as life-saving procedures become marred by money, social status, and criminal intent, a moral compass spins out of control, revealing just how far some will go to reach the top of the donor procurement platform.

Sarah Golden is a dedicated and well-respected traveling organ transplantation nurse who loves her job. She’s on the final leg of a four-month contract in Miami and plans to spend her bonus check on a wild trip to Cuba with her best friend from nursing school, Jackie Larsen. Jackie’s now a stay at home mom to son Wyatt, and married to Laura Calleghan, an Assistant Medical Examiner in San Francisco. When Sarah happens to overhear a conversation involving patient Amanda Stein, an obnoxious, over-indulged woman who oozes entitlement, it leads Sarah to believe this San Francisco executive didn’t receive her liver transplant through the proper channels. As Sarah decides to pursue her suspicions, she also learns that wealthy Amanda is best friends with the wife of Dr. Harris Bower, the renowned head of San Francisco’s Transplant Dept. who recently offered Sarah a senior position back in California.

From the back streets of Miami to the hub-bub of Chicago and the West Coast, this well-paced story plays out amidst raucous escapades of inquiry as Sarah enlists the help of her fun-loving cohort Jackie to trace the path of Amanda’s donor organ. Suddenly they’re attending high society charity events, performing Cuban gang bar surveillance, riding off with “Biker Bob” to a private speakeasy boasting 300 kinds of rum, and flirting with the local “Officer Handsome” to gain some lawful and necessary assistance. As Amanda’s nefarious Latin boy toy gets wise to the probing, the womanizing lothario is determined to stop them. Before long, this Cagney and Lacey-esque duo are entangled in an investigation as both hunters and prey.

In a well-balanced contrast to the typically dark and somber tones of a mystery, particularly one focused on such a serious topic, Peele lightens the hard edge through the wit and humor brought by the central characters. These savvy, wise-cracking women like to imbibe and enjoy throwing out a few f-bombs to relieve stress, but have a no-nonsense attitude about their jobs, and always maintain a genuine concern for friendship and family.

With a passion for organ donation, and 35 years in the field to ultimately retire from one of the most successful transplant programs in the country, Peele is able to draw from a deep well of knowledge and experience that translates seamlessly to the storyline. From enlightenment about how recipients get their organs, and distinctions between donor types, to the backlash of gaming (i.e. moving someone up on a list) that can shut down a program, these layers of detailed information woven throughout the story bring an added richness to the texture of this well-organized narrative.

Peele also brings emotional depth to this work, not only from her own nursing background but through the feisty personalities of the sleuthing duo. They are determined to find justice and hold accountable those attempting to undermine the transplant system. From sobering board room revelations about individuals denied organs due to immigration or economic status, to the heart-wrenching toll of losing young pediatric patients, the subject matter is presented as an important, timely, and volatile issue.

Cut: A Medical Murder Mystery won First Place in the 2017 CIBAs for the M&M Awards.

February 27, 2019