DI Nikki Galena and her team have been targeted by someone with a vicious grudge. One copper is dead, another is badly injured, Galena has been hounded out of her home, and civilians have been hurt too. The cops have no idea who's behind it.

The story is over­wrought but the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion was good and the story was en­ter­tain­ing.

Flashman and the Angel of the Lord finds Flashy back in America where everybody wants him to be the aide-de-camp to the abo­li­tion­ist John Brown, who's plotting a raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry. The Un­der­ground Railroad want him to help Brown to start a slave rebellion; Kuklos (a proto KKK) want Brown to start a civil war to cause disunion; and finally the secret service want Flashman to sabotage Brown so as to …continue.

The “Butcher” is leaving dis­mem­bered corpses of women all over New York City and he seems to want to get Frank Quinn's goat. Quinn is a former police captain, who's been called back from retirement along with two of his former team members, Pearl, his ex-girlfriend, and the slovenly Fedderman. The “Butcher” is brilliant and the body count is climbing.

While the book is properly sus­pense­ful, I couldn't suspend my disbelief at the notion that the NYPD would have little more than Quinn's tiny team working on such a …continue.

Flashman in the Great Game finds Flashy back to India, sent there by prime minister Lord Palmerston to look into worrying rumors of mutiny amongst the Indian troops and to sweet talk the re­cal­ci­trant Rani of Jhansi. After an attempt upon his life by Thugees, Flashman goes undercover in the native cavalry at Meerut, where the Sepoy Mutiny begins soon after. He then finds himself in the Siege of Cawnpore and the Siege of Lucknow and imprisoned at Gwalior before being almost …continue.

Flashman At The Charge finds our hero, newly promoted to Colonel, nurse­maid­ing a minor Royal cousin in the Crimean War. Somehow he finds himself in the thick of the Charge of the Light Brigade, which he survives only to be taken captive by the Russians. Sent off to Count Pencher­jevsky's estate, he luxuriates there for some time, bedding the count's daughter Valla. When he and another British officer overhear the Tsar discussing Russian plans to invade India, he re­luc­tant­ly escapes. After he is captured …continue.

In Jason Bourne, the eponym is back in action, running around the planet in a personal vendetta with the director of the CIA. Bourne's old ally Nicky Parsons is killed trying to pass him some in­for­ma­tion that she's unearthed about the Treadstone program that turned David Webb into the amnesiac assassin known as Jason Bourne. The CIA director sends a killer known only as the Asset after Bourne, while the fresh-faced head of the Cyber Ops division does her best to keep Bourne alive.

This is a largely un­nec­es­sary sequel to the Bourne franchise. While …continue.

Detective Inspector Ben Cooper, newly promoted, is leading the team that's in­ves­ti­gat­ing the murder of a lorry driver outside a remote Peak District village. It seems to be connected to a suicide that took place the same day, but how? Cooper and his team manage to peel back the layers sur­round­ing the dual mysteries.

Booth writes solidly plotted, solidly char­ac­ter­ized novels, and this is another good entry in his long-running Cooper & Fry series.

Flashman And The Redskins is the seventh volume of the Flashman Papers, although it opens im­me­di­ate­ly after Flash For Freedom! In the first part, which takes place in 1849–50, Flashman is fleeing from New Orleans in the company of a madam who is taking her entire brothel westward to take advantage of the California Gold Rush. He sees the opening of the West and the beginning of huge changes to the Plains. He is taken captive by Apaches …continue.

Jack Holloway is a prospector on Zara XXII, con­tract­ing for the giant ZaraCorp. On one momentous day, he is fired, discovers a huge seam of sunstones worth trillions, and meets the first members of a new species, the fuzzies. Since he was fired before he discovered the sunstones, he now has an en­force­able claim—and he's a disbarred lawyer, so you can bet he's following through. The fuzzies are delightful and they're pretty smart—so smart that they might just be sapient. And if they are, that's a huge problem for ZaraCorp, since the fuzzies …continue.

Flash For Freedom! is the third volume of the Flashman Papers, in which Flashy gets caught up in the slave trade. After a scandal involving cheating and assault, England becomes too hot for young Flashman and his father-in-law ships him off. Flashman quickly realizes that he's on a slave ship captained by a lunatic that is bound for Africa to take on a cargo of slaves, and he's horrified. Not so much about slavery but that running slaves is proscribed in 1848 and he's …continue.