Murder Mystery

“Deadly Stillwater” suspense fiction by Roger Stelljes – Book Review

September 23, 2016 by William F. Brown Leave a Comment

Roger Stelljes has now written six police procedural, suspense novels featuring Mac McRyan and his friends from the St. Paul Police Department. Deadly Stillwater is the third book in that series, series of action-adventure, suspense fiction set in St. Paul, Minnesota. No doubt, there will be more to come. Although series books are very much in vogue these days; I usually dislike them, because they all-too-often cheat the reader. I feel a story should be distinct and complete from cover to cover and not simply a teaser to get the reader to buy yet another book. By and large, Roger Stelljes’ excellent suspense fiction featuring

‘Mac’ McRyan and a cast of quirky St. Paul homicide detectives don’t do that. They are self-contained stories and you really don’t need to read them in sequence. While they are nominally cop stories, like Deadly Stillwater, Roger Stelljes they are much more action-adventure than police procedurals and fun reads. Think Mitch Rapp with a badge, shooting first and asking questions later. Because this series is set in the Twin Cities of Minnesota, they will always draw comparison to John Sandford’s highly successful “Prey” thriller novels. I think Stelljes’ books like “Deadly Stillwater” have considerably more action and running around (the characters are always running or racing somewhere), while Sandford’s have better suspense and character development, but both series are good reads. Roger Stelljes’ books are on Kindle, and you can frequently find them in the Kindle Countdown Sales. Pick one up, like “Deadly Stillwater.” They are great for the beach or a long airplane ride.

William F. Brown is the author of 5 suspense fiction novels with over 300 Five-Star Reviews: The Undertaker, Amongst My Enemies, Thursday at Noon, Winner Take All, and now Aim True, My Brothers. They are all available on Kindle and now on Audible Audio Books. You read about them and my other book reviews at my web site Billbrownwritesnovels.wordpress.com

Review of The Third Coincidence, suspense thriller by David Bishop

September 22, 2016 by William F. Brown Leave a Comment

Nobody believes in coincidences when it comes to multiple assassinations, certainly not the FBI or Secret Service in this suspense thriller. So, when Supreme Court Justices and Governors of the Federal

Reserve start dropping, in completely different ways, the President has no choice but bring in Jack McCall, a veteran CIA and Defense Department agent to track the killers down and stop them. But is it a them? Or just a him? McCall gathers together and eclectic mix of local cops, FBI agents, and computer whizzes to find out. Given the fractured nature of the Washington security world, the competing agencies want McCall stopped almost as much as they want the killer stopped. The only one in Washington who believes McCall can pull it off is the man who talked him into taking the job — The President himself. So it is a coast to coast manhunt from Washington DC to the Bay Area of California with very few clues and the clock is ticking. The question is, will McCall and his team stop the killer before we run out of “Supremes,” or before the killer gets McCall? You need to suspend your credibility a bit to believe one killer could pull off that many complicated killings, each unique and against a well-guarded target, but all-in-all, David Bishop’s suspense thriller is a pretty good story. The author has two Jack McCall novels out, plus others in the Lina Darby and Matt Kile books.

William F. Brown is the author of 8 suspense thrillers with over 500 Five-Star Reviews: Burke’s War, Burke’s Gamble, The Undertaker, Amongst My Enemies, Thursday at Noon, Winner Take All, and Aim True, My Brothers, and The Cold War Trilogy. They are all available on Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, and now on Audible Audio Books. You read about them and the author’s screenplay and other writing at billbrownwritesnovels.wordpress.com

Burke’s War action adventure novel on Kindle Sale Now

August 11, 2016 by William F. Brown Leave a Comment

Think ‘The American Sniper’ meets ‘The Godfather’ in this action adventure novel. Burke’s War just went on a $1.99 Kindle Countdown Sale today. It is book #1 of the Bob Burke action adventure novel series, with an Amazon 4.6 Star Rating on 226 Amazon Reviews posted! Grab

a copy now on the Kindle site under Kindle Countdown Deals, or at the book page, http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TXZYQWG for a great thriller novel read.

As Bob Burke’s 737 comes in to land at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, he looks out his window and sees a man murder a woman on a rooftop below. No one believes him, of course, but that doesn’t matter. He knows what he saw, and Bob Burke isn’t the kind of guy to let a thing like that rest. Over the next three days, he finds himself butting heads with the Chicago mob, crooked suburban cops, a zealous US Attorney, a psychopathic doctor, and his own vindictive soon-to-be-ex-wife, who is trying to take his company away from him. Slight of build and now a telecommunications company executive, Bob Burke appears to be an easy guy to dismiss; but ‘the telephone guy’ is a former Army Ranger and Delta Force commander who spent four tours in Iraq and the rugged mountains of Afghanistan running ‘special operations’ missions. His men were some of the most lethal killers the US

government ever produced; but as they readily admit, the little guy the middle of the photos is the one you don’t want to meet in a dark alley. So, when the bodies start falling, a young woman needs help, and the wrong people start pushing his buttons, long odds don’t bother him in the slightest. His new combat

If you like a good action adventure novel, read, put this new fast-moving mystery thriller in your Cart. It is from the author of ‘The Undertaker,’ ‘Amongst My Enemies,’ ‘Thursday at Noon,’ “Aim True, My Brothers,’ and ‘Winner Lose All,’ with over 500 Kindle Five Star Reviews Enjoy!

“Kane” by Steve Gannon – Book Review –

June 3, 2016 by William F. Brown Leave a Comment

“Kane” – This police procedural novel is a very good blend of a police manhunt for a smart, vicious serial killer, who is every bit as nasty as Thomas Harris’s Francis Dolarhyde and Hannibal Lecter. That is juxtaposed by the extensive backstory of Kane, the LA Detective who is out to get him, and Kane’s family. Good suspense, and a good, reasonably unpredictable ending. I would also note that the cop part of the story is told in the 1st person, which adds a nice immediacy to the telling. Like virtually all police detective stories these days, the main protagonist must battle the idiots and politicos up the chain of command as much as he does with the perp.

If I have a quibble, it is that this has become terribly cliched, and the author paints quite a few of Kane’s LAPD supervisors as being too stupid, too incompetent, and too disruptive to be believable. In Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch books, he also has enemies up the chain, but they are more subtle and devious, which adds to the challenges and the drama. I grew up with Chicago cops, and stupid just isn’t credible, even in LA. A second quibble is that if anything, the story spends a bit too much time on the backstory of the cop and his wife and kids. It’s well done and adds to the climax, but I would prefer more dogged, tough, nit-picking police work to break the case leading up to it. That said, Kane is a good book and a good read.

William F. Brown currently has eight international suspense novels of his own on Kindle, including the recent and popular Burke’s War and Burke’s Gamble the first two books in his Bob Burke series. You can read other reviews in the book review section on my website.

Michael Connelly’s The Crossing – Book Review

May 24, 2016 by William F. Brown Leave a Comment

Book Review – This is a very good Harry Bosch novel by Michael Connelly. You don’t need to know anything else. Connelly is the best in the business. The stories are always about watching Harry Bosch slowly pick at the threads of a mystery, one thread at a time until he has the case solved and the bad guys in jail. In this one, he is actually sharing screen time with Mickey Haller, his half-brother defense lawyer, who is hte main protagonist of five of his own books in the second series by Michael Connelly. Those Mickey Haller books are every bit as good, but I personally prefer Harry Bosch. He is a dark, plodding vulnerability about Harry that is hard not to like.

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“The Crossing” refers to Harry Bosch going to work for the criminal defense, which violates every Blue Line cop rule and earns him the enmity of the other LAPD homicide detectives, at least until he makes his case. I love Harry Bosch, but Connelly has created a slight character/ plot / chronology problem for himself. As those of us know who read all of the books, Harry Bosch was a tunnel rat in Vietnam, I think, in nineteen sixty-eight. Even if he went in when he was 18 or 19, he’s now in his upper 60s and getting a little long in the tooth for the action scenes, much less having an eighteen-year-old daughter. I thought Clint Eastwood was a little old for the part in Bloodwork, but now he’d probably work just fine in The Crossing.

Bill Brown is the author of eight mystery and suspense novels currently for sale on Kindle — Burke’s Gamble,” “Burke’s War,’ ‘The Undertaker,’ ‘Amongst My Enemies,’ ‘Thursday at Noon,’ “Aim True, My Brothers,’ ‘Winner Lose All,’ and ‘Cold War Trilogy.’ Enjoy! You can find other reviews under the book review tab on my website.

“A Wanted Man ” suspense thriller by Lee Child – Book Review

May 24, 2016 by William F. Brown Leave a Comment

A Wanted Man – I’m not sure what Lee Child has against Nebraska and its surrounding states, but he has placed several recent novels in that setting. Not just Nebraska, but Nebraska in winter, with flat, cold, muddy, stubbly cornfields. This story, like a wanted man, is are dark, which fit precisely with the setting. It’s a little like that scene in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, where Cary Grant finds himself standing at that crossroads with absolutely nothing around him from horizon to empty horizon, except

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Child’s stories usually happen at night. Clearly, the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce needs to have a talk with him. Stylistically, Child seems to be writing stories that are as sparse and Spartan as the landscape — no character back-story, very few adjectives or adverbs, just straight action. After 18 books in the Jack Reacher series, no one needs any back story on him, but would be nice to better understand some of the other characters. Lee Child and Michael Connelly are my two favorite authors. That said, I do have two criticisms about this book. First, the back and forth car trips and plot moves about two thirds of the way through the book get pretty confusing. Secondly, as with several of his other recent books. We know absolutely nothing about the bad guys. In “A Wanted Man,” Reacher kills them all, but they have no face, and we never do get a clear picture of who they are or what they are doing, much less how Reacher figured it all out.

Book Review – Dress Her in Indigo – John D. McDonald

August 26, 2014 by William F. Brown

A book review by Bill Brown of John D McDonald’s Travis McGee mystery story, “Dress Her in Indigo.” I think I discovered John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee thriller novels when I was a senior in high school and devoured all 21 at least once. Travis McGee is the prototypical knight errant and John D MacDonald is the master of weaving a slow, easily told Florida mystery. At the time, they were breaths

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of fresh, exciting air from one of the prolific giants in the mystery-suspense field with over 78 books to his credit. His lead character, Travis McGee is an errant knight with a deep concern for the environment and a sense of fairness. He can’t abide brutality or wrongs that need righting, and he usually figures out a way to fix them. Unfortunately, MacDonald died in 1986. While the Travis McGee mystery series remained available in paperback, Amazon wasn’t able to bring out Kindle editions until earlier this year. Regrettably, they are prices at $9.99, which is a bit high. The stories remain good reads, but after a steady diet of Michael Connelly, Lee Child, Daniel Silva, David Baldacci, Dennis Lehane, Vince Flynn, and others, I found Dress Her in Indigo a bit dated and slow. In his day, he took the craft to a new level, but a lot of new writers have now passed him by. Still, without the Travis McGee mystery series, there would be no Jack Reacher; and John D. McDonald is always worth a read.”

William F. Brown is the author of 5 thriller novels with over 300 Five-Star Reviews: The Undertaker, Amongst My Enemies, Thursday at Noon, Winner Take All, and now Aim True, My Brothers. They are all available on Kindle and now on Audible Audio Books. You can read about his books and find more book review at billbrownwritesnovels.wordpress.com

Book Review of Robert Tannenbaum’s “Tragic”

July 28, 2014 by William F. Brown

Book Review of Robert Tannenbaum’s “Tragic” by William F Brown. I used to love this series and read all of Tannenbaum’s excellent thriller novels and bought the new book as soon as it came out. Robert K. Tannenbaum has published 25 novels, perhaps a dozen of which feature crime busting New York City DA Butch Karp, his quirky, feisty, Italian wife Marlene Ciampi, their savant daughter, and there twin sons. The best of them were a fast-moving combination of detective story and courtroom drama, and they were all New York City. Invariably, Karp drove the story, taking the lead against one nasty bunch

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of bad guys after another, with his family providing fire support. True, the novels got a bit bloated and under edited in recent years; but book after book they were great reads as long as Tannenbaum stuck to the basic formula of great characters, lots of action, a nasty crime, and enough twists and turns to serve as a plot. It isn’t that “Tragic” doesn’t have some of that, it just doesn’t have enough of it. The family seems to take an extended vacation. And for some reason he has decided that “On the Waterfront” meets “MacBeth” can pass for a plot. I don’t mind the “On the Waterfront” part nearly as much as I mind the inexplicable allusions to “MacBeth,” complete with three witches standing around a fire. All of the good suspense writers seem to go through dry patches, and “Tragic” could well be one of them. That would be ‘tragic,’ but we loyal readers will continue to stick with the brand, hoping the Golden touch returns in the next one ─ up to a point.

William F. Brown is the author of 5 suspense novels with over 300 Five-Star Reviews: The Undertaker, Amongst My Enemies, Thursday at Noon, Winner Take All, and now Aim True, My Brothers. They are all available on Kindle and now on Audible Audio Books. You can read this review and others at billbrownwritesnovels.wordpress.com

The Racketeer by John Grisham – Book Review

July 24, 2014 by William F. Brown

The Racketeer, by John Grisham. He Is usually the master of the southern legal thriller, with well-known and best-selling books and films such as “The Firm,” “The Pelican Brief,” “A Time to Kill,” “The Client,” “The Runaway Jury,” “The Chamber,” and many more. “The Racketeer” is one of the newer books in that fine line. It is told in the first person, through the eyes and actions of Malcolm Bannister, a black, small town Virginia lawyer. While Grisham is white, he practiced small town law in Mississippi and has a pretty good feel for the South. The opening lines of the novel are, “I am a lawyer, and I am in prison. It’s a long

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story.” All three are true, especially the long part. Bannister was caught up in a money-laundering scheme of which he had no part. None-the-less, he was convicted, disbarred, lost his wife and family, his ‘good’ name, and is serving 10 years in the Federal pen, frustrated and angry, until fortune finally smiles his way. The corrupt Federal Judge who convicted him is murdered and he learns from another prisoner who did it and why. Bannister contrives an intricate plot to get himself out of jail, get his hands on the millions the Judge has squirreled away, and get his revenge on the system that sent him away. However, if Bannister started out as an innocent man, he is anything but at the end. It is a fun read, but long and slow in parts; and in the end it leaves a lot to be desired. The ending of the Racketeer almost seems rushed, as if Grisham looked at the clock, or his page count, or got one too many demands from his publisher and quickly wrapped The Racketeer up — too quickly, with a lot of ‘he did this, and then he did that’, The End.’ The story deserved better.

William F. Brown is the author of 5 suspense novels with over 300 Five-Star Reviews: The Undertaker, Amongst My Enemies, Thursday at Noon, Winner Take All, and now Aim True, My Brothers. They are all available on Kindle and now on Audible Audio Books. You read about them at billbrownwritesnovels.wordpress.com

The Hunter and The Outfit, Richard Stark’s Thriller Novels

June 27, 2014 by William F. Brown

The Hunter and The Outfit were written by Donald E. Westlake, who was one of the most amazing and perhaps least known American writers of the 20th Century. As unbelievable as it sounds, he was the author of over 100 thriller novels, screenplays, and short story collections written under 14 pen names, both male and female, and his books have been made into 24 movies prior to his death six years ago. I suspect all the pen names are one reason for his relative anonymity compared to dozens of less talented writers with far fewer writing credits. I’m sure he cried all the way to the bank. That said, Westlake was best known for two utterly different series of crime novels. One is the thirteen

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‘Dortmunder’ novels — comic capers by a gang of dimwitted and always unlucky crooks. The best of these, and the best of his movies, are “The Hot Rock” and “The Bank Shot.” Read the books or rent the movie. You’ll die laughing. On the other hand, his second series is the 26 ‘Parker’ novels written under the name Richard Stark. ‘Stark’ is also a pretty good description of the lead character, the stories, and the writing. They are well beyond noir. Parker is a brutal, remorseless killer and the stories about him, such as “The Hunter,” the first of them, and “The Outfit,” the third, usually deal with violent crime and revenge. Parker doesn’t believe in ‘proportional response.’ When crossed, he kills everyone in sight and “lets God sort it out;” or he would if he believed in anything except money, which he doesn’t. Unlike Dortmunder, who has many redeeming character traits and is impossible to dislike, Parker has none, zero. No character arc, no quirky habits, no funny sidekick. He is a loner and a humorless killing machine. Some people refer to Parker as the prototypical ‘anti-hero’, but even they must have at least one redeeming, sympathetic character trait, and Parker has none. Hence, my dilemma. I loved Westlake’s other books; and then I read “The Outfit,” and I hated it. However, all the literary critics and Hollywood-types love the Parker character, the dramatic plots, and the technical stuff, so I figured I must be a dolt and missed something. To give it another chance, I read “The Hunter.” Same result. I didn’t like it either. The best comparisons I can draw are to some of the early 87th Precinct hriller novels by Ed McBain or a couple of less-successful Elmore Leonard novels, but maybe I just don’t ‘get’ it. Read them yourself and see what you think.

William F. Brown is the author of 5 suspense novels with over 300 Five-Star Reviews: The Undertaker, Amongst My Enemies, Thursday at Noon, Winner Take All, and now Aim True, My Brothers available on Kindle and Audible Audio Books. You can read about them at billbrownwritesnovels.wordpress.com