Diana Ladd is the widow of a man believed to have killed an Indian girl seven years ago in the Arizona desert. The girl's grand­moth­er, Rita Antone, is helping Diana rear her son in a remote house. Now the real killer, Andrew Carlisle, is out of jail, blaming Diana for his being put away for manslaugh­ter.

Jance weaves together several in­ter­est­ing characters, their back­sto­ries, and Indian myths to make a satisfying thriller.

Sequel to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Mikael Blomkvist's Millennium magazine is about to publish an exposé of sex traf­fick­ing in Sweden, when the two re­searchers are gunned down. Lisabeth Salendar's prints are on the gun and she im­me­di­ate­ly becomes the most wanted woman in Sweden—but it's not so easy to catch her. We learn a great deal about Salander's traumatic past by the end of the book.

While the book is en­thralling—I read it in less than a day—it's not especially well-written. The plot …continue.

Dr. Sara Linton and her husband, police chief Jeffrey Tolliver, travel to a small Georgia town to find out why Jeffrey's detective, Lena Adams, has been found beside a burnt-out car with a corpse. They uncover a lot of dirty secrets in Reese, including neo-Nazis and dru­grun­ning.

I found the plot gripping but also unpleasant. Slaughter seems to enjoy torturing her characters.

Jana Matinova is a senior Slovak police officer following the trail of a master criminal across half of Europe. His old rivals think he's dead and are squabbling over his legacy.

The book is more in­ter­est­ing in the long flashbacks to her early career under the Communists than in the fairly pre­pos­ter­ous present-day plot, which relies too heavily on co­in­ci­dences and clichés.

Pock Rafferty is a "rough travel" writer trying to form a family in Bangkok with ex-bar girl Rose and former street kid Miaow. When he is asked to look into the dis­ap­pear­ance of an Australian expat after the Tsunami, he finds both a sadistic child pornog­ra­ph­er and a Khmer Rouge torturer.

Hallinan clearly knows a lot about Thai culture and brings the seedy back streets of Bangkok to life. Rafferty is no hard-bitten Mar­lowesque cynic however. He is a soft-hearted would-be family man, trying to bridge the cultural …continue.

The first of the The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series.

Mma Precious Ramotswe sets up a one-woman detective agency in Gaborne, the capital of her native Botswana. She is shrewd and observant and makes a go of it, despite the naysayers. The book is a collection of short episodes, loosely tied together. Her good nature helps lead her to find sat­is­fac­to­ry res­o­lu­tions for most of her clients.

Enjoyable, if frothy.

Requiem for an Angel is subtitled “The Secret History of a Murderer”; it is also known as the Roth Trilogy.

The Four Last Things is a psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller set in the present day (late 90s, when it was written). Four-year-old Lucy Appleyard is abducted in London by the dimwitted Eddie. We follow her mother, the Rev. Sally Appleyard, as she dis­in­te­grates. Her husband, Michael, is the godson of David Byfield. We also follow Eddie who comes to realize that his partner Angel is quite terrifying.

The Judgement of Strangers's …continue.