The Devil's Star

by Jo Nesbø
452 pgs  (Harry Hole series #5)

The Devil's Star is the fifth installment in Norwegian author Jo Nesbø's crime series featuring detective Harry Hole. This time Harry is brought out of his alcohol-infused stupor to track down a serial killer in Oslo.

It begins when a young woman is found shot dead in her apartment. One of her fingers has been severed and a red star-shaped diamond is discovered under one of her eyelids. Five days later an actress goes missing. When her finger arrives at the police station wearing a ring with a red star-shaped diamond, Harry realizes more victims will likely follow. Sure enough, with the precision timing Scandinavians are known for, they do.

But finding and stopping the killer isn't the only thing Harry's trying to do. He's also trying to expose one of his colleagues, Tom Waaler, whom Harry believes is behind many of the illegal weapons being smuggled into Oslo. He also believes Waaler was behind the killing of Harry's former partner.

For those not familiar with the series, this one's probably not the one to start with. Not because it's not a good book. It's as good, if not better than it's four predecessors. But a reader would be better served getting to know Harry and his tumultuous life through the earlier books before reading The Devil's Star. It's also important to know the backstory between him and Waaler.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Saint of Wolves and Butchers

by Alex Grecian
388 pgs

The Saint of Wolves and Butchers is the first stand-alone novel by Alex Grecian. His previous four books were all part of his Victorian-era "Murder Squad Series," which follows the exploits of the officers who failed to capture Jack the Ripper, a series I've enjoyed a lot.

The book begins when Skottie Foster, a Kansas Highway Patrol trooper, pulls over a Jeep being driven by Travis Roan. Roan was sent to Kansas by the Noah Roan Foundation, an organization that hunts down former Nazis living in the United States and brings them to justice. Roan is following the trail of his father, who was sent there weeks ago to confirm a report of a sighting of a man named Rudolph Bormann, a Nazi doctor and assistant administrator of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp during World War II. No one has heard from Roan's father for quite some time, and Roan has been sent to first find out what became of him, and second, to find out whether the sighting of Bormann was legitimate.

It is revealed right away that Bormann is indeed living in rural Kansas now and going by the name of Rudy Goodman. he's the founder of a controversial right-wing church in the area and even at 94 years old, he's a powerful man in the community.

I was really hoping to enjoy The Saint of Wolves and Butchers more than I did. It's not a bad book by any mes. But it would have been a much better book had Grecian incorporated some twists or surprises in the plot. There's no mystery around who Rudy Goodman once was. And there's really no suspense regarding what his fate will eventually be. On top of that, Roan was a pretty boring protagonist. If this is the first book in a series featuring him, I don't think I'll continue reading it. I'm hoping Grecian quickly returns to the Murder Squad.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

The Outsider

by Stephen King
561 pgs

In his latest book The Outsider, Stephen King creates a seemingly impossible murder mystery. A teenage boy is savagely killed and the police quickly have no question about who killed him. Multiple reliable witnesses saw Terry Maitland, a local English teacher an popular Little League coach, with the boy right before the time of death. They saw him get into a van with the boy, the same van that soon turns up filled with the boy's blood and covered with Terry's fingerprints. DNA evidence matching Terry is found at the crime scene as well. There's so much evidence against Terry, and so much outrage over the nature of the murder, that Detective Ralph Anderson makes a public spectacle out of arresting Terry during the middle of one of his Little League games, in front of the whole town.

But Terry is adamant in proclaiming his innocence. He's a well-loved family man and an admired member of the community, and he claims he wasn't even in town the day of the murder. he was at a teachers' convention hundreds of miles away with a group of his colleagues at the school. All of them can attest to him being with them the night of the murder. There's even video proof of him being at the convention. In fact, there's just as much evidence of him being at the convention as there is of him being at the crime scene.

Who else but Stephen King could begin a story with a premise like that and then ride it to such a satisfying conclusion? No one.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

City of Endless Night

By Lincoln Child & Douglas Preston
358 pgs  (Pendergast series #17)

I looked back at my reviews of the last several Preston & Child books and noticed I've been pretty lukewarm about them for quite a while. In fact, I haven't given a book more than three stars since 2013. City of Endless Night finally snapped that streak of mediocrity.

This time around FBI Special Agent Pendergast and NYPD Lieutenant D'Agosta are up against "The Decapitator," a man preying on members of the 1% and taking their heads as trophies. The first victim is Grace Ozmian,the socialite daughter of one of the wealthiest men in New York, whose headless body is discovered in an abandoned warehouse in Queens. But Grace is only the first. Soon headless bodies of other wealthy people begin showing up. The killer possesses a remarkable ability to get through any layer of security his victims have, and to separate them from their head without raising any alarms.

In the press he's given the moniker "The Decapitator" and the accounts of his crimes quickly put the wealthy on high alert. As Pendergast and D'Agosta try to discover who The Decapitator is and stop him, it becomes apparent that Pendergast is also on his list of targets.

As I mentioned before, it's been a long time since Preston and Child have written a book that really delivers. They don't quite hit it out of the park with this one--like they used to so regularly early in the series--but they managed to get in scoring position. Hopefully their best books haven't already been written.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Guise of Another

by Allen Eskens
267 pgs

The Guise of Another is the second book by Allen Eskens, an author I'm becoming increasingly more excited about with each book. It begins with a car accident late at night on the streets of Minneapolis. An amorous couple--engaging in some extracurricular activities while driving--cross over the median and kill a man traveling in the other direction. The name on the man's license is James Putnam, but Detective Alexander Rupert soon learns that's not his true identity.

Alex's career is currently falling apart. He, along with the rest of the Joint Drug Enforcement Task Force he was a member of, is being investigated by federal authorities on accusations that they have been steeling money and valuables from drug dealers during arrests. Alex sees the case of identity theft that just landed on his desk as an opportunity to salvage whatever career he has left.

When Alex is given access to the man's computer by his girlfriend, he discovers records of deposits totaling half a million dollars made on the same date going back years. The dates of the deposits all coincide with trips he insisted to his girlfriend that he had to take alone every year. Alex is able to soon discover the man's true identity, but in so doing, many more questions are raised about how and why he assumed the identity of James Putnam. His discover also leads to several more deaths, and he fears even his own life is now in danger.

For a second time now, Eskens has written a story that quickly grabbed a hold of me and didn't let go. This was one of those books I found myself picking up to read, even if I only had a few minutes available. The story is compelling and the characters are all strongly written. It's worth mentioning that Alex's brother, Max Rupert, a minor character in the book, was the police officer from his first book, The Life We Bury, and I believe he's the central character in Eskens' third book, The Heavens May Fall, which I'm looking forward to reading soon.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Rooster Bar

by John Grisham
352 pgs

Mark, Todd, and Zola are three law students about to start their final semester at Foggy Bottom Law School in Washington D.C., and while for many in their position, it's an exciting time, for them, there's little to look forward to. Combined, they owe over $600,000 in student loans, and because Foggy Bottom is a low-level school, the only have about a 50% chance of passing the bar exam after graduation, and little-to-no chance to find jobs with decent law firms even if they did.

They are victims of a real-life scam Grisham shines a light on in The Rooster Bar, in which for-profit law schools recruit mediocre students, who have no business being in an law school, and then encourage them to rack up exorbitant student loans from the federal government to pay for it, with the assurance that they'll have no problem getting on with a firm when they graduate, who will help them wipe out their debt. The students then graduate and find out those promises were empty, and have a lifetime of insurmountable debt ahead of them. The only people making any money are the owners of the schools.

After one of their classmates decides to take his own life because of the circumstances he now finds himself in, the three classmates come up with a scam of their own. They decide school is a waste of money and time and since lawyers are never asked to prove they've earned their J.D. and passed the bar, why not just start acting like lawyers? Mark and Todd start hanging out around courthouses, hustling clients there with DUI and other traffic charges and taking in cash retainers. Zola starts chasing ambulances in hospital waiting rooms. They change their names and start a bogus firm, and they live and work out of an apartment above their favorite bar, The Rooster Bar.

The appeal of Grisham's story is finding out how far they can take their scheme before their house of cards comes crashing down, along with the lengths they're willing to go to to keep it up. But I found myself wishing for characters I could root for. Zola is the most sympathetic of the three, but eventually I was ready for all three of them to get caught.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Uncommon Type - Some Stories

by Tom Hanks
403 pgs

Who knew Tom Hanks was a writer? I didn't. I guess it makes sense though. As an actor and a director, telling stories is what he's been doing for years. Why not write them as well?

Uncommon Type is a collection of short stories written by Hanks that all share a common element or theme: an old-fashioned typewriter. Typewriters make appearances in each of the stories. Sometimes it's a small cameo, other times the typewriter is a major character in the story. But it's always one of those old, built-to-last-forever machines for which Hanks must possess a strong feeling of nostalgia for.

The stories in Uncommon Type are each heartfelt and charming, two words I don't think I've ever used individually, let alone in the same sentence together. But that's really the best way to describe them. Take the story "The Past is Important to Us" for example. It's a story about a wealthy man living in 2027 who repeatedly travels back in time to 1939, so he can bump into a beautiful woman wearing a green dress at the New York World's Fair over and over again, despite the risks to his own life each time he goes.

Or "Christmas Eve 1953," which is about a WWII veteran who lost most of one of his legs and hands in the war, but whose experiences in the war have made him that much more grateful for the wife and family he now gets to enjoy now that he's safe at home.

Tom Hanks is a pretty good writer. He's not as good at writing as he is at acting, but still, I was impressed. I'd be interested to see what he could pull off with a full-length novel.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆