London, 1930. Maisie Dobbs runs small private investigation agency a professional office in Fitzroy Square with an assistant, the happy-go-lucky Billy Beale. A former nurse in the Great War, she has proven herself as a psychologist and investigator. In the spring of 1930 Maisie Dobbs is hired to find a runaway heiress. When three of the heiress’s old friends are found dead, Maisie must to discover who would want to kill these seemingly respectable young women. She discovers that the answers lie in the agony of the Great War.

This is the second book in the Maise Dobbs series and there is a dramatic drop-off.  We are constantly told (by other characters) how smart Maisie is, but she never comes across that way. She is cold, arrogant and often condescending. Her method of investigating using mysticism is too much New Ageish, feels silly and is ultimately unbelievable. 

There is also the aspect of withholding information from the reader. Maisie finds clues at each murder scene, but we never know what the clue is … she tucks it away. When it is revealed, (and you realize the major clue is related to the title) the effect ham-handed and amateurish. It’s a technique you would expect from a TV show, not a novel. Even Jessica Fletcher wouldn’t stoop so low. 

There also two subplots with Maisie’s father and her assistant Billy that seem to have been added into the story just to make it novel length.

The concept of this series is interesting, but this second book is w-e-a-k.

This is an impressive novel – even more so because it is the author’s debut. Matthew Fitzsimmons has written an engrossing political thriller that is filled with complexity but is easy to read and follow.

The novel opens on the tenth anniversary of the disappearance of Suzanne Lombard. Her disappearance became one of those national stories that was covered 24/7 for weeks and weeks by the media, mainly due to her father – who was a U.S. Senator at the time, currently the vice president and a presidential candidate. Ten years later, when a new photo of Suzanne appears Gibson Vaughn is approached by a private investigation team to assist in a new inquiry into Suzanne’s case.

Gibson was the son of Senator Lombard’s chief political advisor and best friend to Suzanne. However, after Suzanne’s disappearance, Gibson’s father commits suicide, and soon after, the teenage Gibson is arrested for hacking into the Senator’s private computer files, releasing damaging info. Due to his age, the judge gives Gibson an alternative –go to prison for 10 years, or join the marines, and upon completion of his military career, his criminal record will be expunged.  

Even though Gibson keeps his end of the deal, when released from military service, he discovers it difficult to find more than a low-level IT job and suspects V-P Lombard still holds a grudge. Then, Gibson is shown the new photo of Suzanne and asked to join the investigation …

To say any more about the plot would be unfair. The book practically gallops along, with fascinating twists and turns. The major characters are all fascinating and the mystery of a “what happened to Suzanne” is tantalizing. Go and read. You will not be sorry.

Intriguing premise that quickly becomes a write-by-numbers plot, with an unbelievable Hollywood Dan Brown-style conclusion that was ridiculous. It’s also obvious that the author, Charles Belfoure, is an architect, since his descriptions of buildings and their designs offer the best writing in the book. Too bad he didn’t bother to create characters as interesting as the buildings.  

John Cross, a successful architect in late 19^th century New York City, has a problem. Seems his eldest son has accumulated excessive gambling debts, and is entangled in a web of organized crime, thugs and opium dens.  A gentleman gangster, James Kent, is determined to make the son, or the father, pay up. So the son is kidnaped and John is blackmailed into helping Kent and his gang set up robberies of prominent New York citizens whose houses and office buildings Cross designed.

Cross gets in deeper with the gang, finds he actually enjoys the robberies, and then, his wife gets involved, as does his teenage daughter and younger son. Talk about stretching the limits of the suspension-of-disbelief? The characters soon became boorish and I openly rooted for the older son to be killed, since his selfish behavior was the root of the entire plot and he was such an ass. By the end, this upper crust, prim-and-proper family, is involved in the world of pickpockets, murderers, opium dealers, and organized illegal gambling. The climactic scene takes place during the dedication ceremony of the Statue of Liberty and is so silly that I literally tossed the book on the floor.  

Instead of going for gritty realism, depicting the disparity between the New York elites and the horrific poverty of the lower class and the homelessness of thousands of children, the author, Charles Belfoure, opted for a sanitized on-the-surface plot and shallow characters.  

Seventy-two chapters for 366 pages … welcome to the James Patterson school of writing. And half the chapters are flashbacks! So this short novel (novella? Novelette?) that should have lots of narrative momentum, loses its propulsion because every other chapter is a flashback which completely destroys the story’s forward progression.

The story: Two college roommates figure out how to give people superpowers – they are called ExtraOrdinarys, or EOs. The process involves dying, being resurrected, and viola! You’re an EO! They naturally begin with themselves, however, superpowers do not make a person superhero.  As these two morally ambiguous characters become rivals things become deadly.

I was not surprised to discover that the author, V.E. Shwab, had written several YA novels, because Vicious IS a YA novel, yet marketed toward adults. The story is flimsy – a direct knock-off from X-Men – and the character development is James Patterson-worthy.

The number of authors I respect and enjoy reading that have given Vicious rave reviews makes me suspicious … a suspect a tit-for-tat among them. Most likely they share a publisher.

All in all, it’s pretty juvenile.

The price with being consistently good is the raising of expectations. Carl Hiassen has written 22 excellent novels since 1981, so at some point he had to write a novel that doesn’t meet his usual high bar. Skink: No Surrender is that book. With a plot that moves at the pace of a molasses glacier, and with main characters that make one dumb decision after the other, it was a Herculean chore to turn the pages.

The basic story: Fourteen-year old Malley is being sent away to a boarding school in the cold climes of the Northeast, away from her home in sunny Florida. And since Malley “doesn’t do” cold weather, she decides to run away with a guy she meets online. Disappears without a trace. Her best friend, her cousin Richard, decides to track her down. However, he is also only 14, so where does he even begin?

Enter Skink, one of Hiassen’s greatest fictional characters. The eccentric (a mild description) 72 year former governor of Florida turned eco-warrior, first appeared in 1987’s Double Whammy (and five other Hiassen novels). Richard runs across Skink on the beach, who agrees to help Richard track down Malley.

The worst thing about Skink: No Surrender, other than its tepid pace, is that in writing for a teen crowd, Hiassen decided to replace his typical sharp and wacky humor with a dumbed-down hipster, all-too-cool attitude – think the worst of modern day SNL or the glut of humorless Hollywood “comedy” films featuring Will Farrell-Melissa McCarthy-Adam Sandler, et all.  

It’s also a crime what Hiassen has done to the character of Skink. In Hiassen’s adult novels Skink is a complex, charismatic and fascinating character, always the most interesting person in each scene.  However, in the new teen book, Skink has been watered down so much, he feels like a character in an Adam Sandler movie – a shallow caricature.

There is also an uncomfortable subtle message that underlays the entire book. The stranger Malley met online is a scuzzy lunatic bad guy, but the stranger Richard meets on the beach, Skink, is a scuzzy lunatic good guy. So is Hiassen saying that it’s bad for a female kid to run away with a stranger, but okay for a male kid to do so?

Avoid this book, and read Hiassen’s other novels, in particular the five novels that feature Skink – Double Whammy, Native Tongue, Stormy Weather, Sick Puppy, Skinny Dip and Star Island.