An Obvious Fact

by Craig Johnson
317 pgs  (Longmire series #12)

Chief William Nutter is the police chief of Hulett, Wyoming, a small town with about 400 residents that once a year is overrun by 50,000 bikers, who come to town for a motorcycle rally. hen alt Longmire arrives in town to support his friend Henry Standing Bear, who has come to try to win a race he won several years ago, Nutter immediately calls on him to help with an investigation.

Bodaway Torres, a young member of a biker gang, lies in critical condition in the hospital, and it appears as though someone ran him off the road. His mother, Lola Wojciechowski, is an old "biker chick," who has a history with Henry. In fact, she's the woman he named his car after. Both men are reluctant to get involved, until Lola hints at the possibility that Bodaway could be Henry's son.

Walt's investigation leads him to Bob Nance, a wealthy businessman in town, whose daughter has both romantic and criminal ties to Bodaway, and to Brady Post, an undercover ATF agent currently riding with the motorcycle club. Things quickly escalate into chaos, but fortunately, for both Walt and the reader, Walt's undersheriff Victoria Moretti arrives in town to further agitate the situation.

An Obvious Fact is another solid book in Craig Johnson's increasingly entertaining mystery series. I don't know of another author who is as consistent in the quality of the books he puts out, especially not at the frequency he does. I'm often asked for reading recommendations by people who know how much I enjoy reading, and I've recommended Johnson's Longmire books numerous times. Of those who have taken my advice and tried one, I have yet to hear back that they were disappointed. Something I can't say about my other recommendations.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Institute

by Stephen King
557 pgs

Luke Ellis is an extremely gifted 12-year-old, who lives in Minneapolis with his parents. Luke plans to attend MIT soon, but that will never happen. Because Luke also happens to possess minor telekinetic abilities. Abilities which have placed him on the radar of a secret organization, an organization that is monitoring kids like Luke all over the world.

One night, Luke's parents are killed in their sleep and Luke is taken to The Institute, a non-descript campus somewhere in the woods of Maine. Very few people know that The Institute exists, and none, except for the children who have been taken there and the small group of men and women who work there, know what has been going on there for decades.

At The Institute, Luke and the other children are given injections and subjected to extreme conditions, which all have the affect of heightening and enhancing their telekinetic or telepathic abilities. And once they've reached a certain level, the children are exploited, drained, and discarded.

The Institute is classic Stephen King. It bears similarities with some of his earlier works, like Firestarter and It, with children having to face extraordinary circumstances, but does so in a wholly original way. And the fear and horror King taps into is the very real fear and horror that can take place when otherwise normal adults do horrible things because they believe what they're doing is ultimately for the best.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Snowman

by Jo Nesbø
384 pgs  (Harry Hole series #7)

Several years ago, I saw a copy of Jo Nesbø's The Snowman at the bookstore and picked it up. I had never heard of Nesbø before, but after reading the summary of the book on the flap, I was interested and bought it. But I didn't read it. I'm the type that only reads a series from the beginning, and I typically buy the books I read, so I started collecting the previous six books and had to read those first. It's a little sad how long it took me to work my way to finally reading this one, but it didn't disappoint.

The book begins with the first snowfall in Oslo in 1980. A married woman is having an affair with a man and gets startled by what she believes is someone watching them through the window. It turns out to be merely a snowman outside. Twenty-four years later, a young boy wakes up in the night to discover his mother has gone missing. The only clue the police have to go on is the pink scarf the boy gave his mother for Christmas, which is now wrapped around the neck of a snowman, which inexplicably appeared in front of the house earlier that day.

During his investigation, Harry Hole discovers the links between the current missing-woman case and eleven previous cases, all of women who went missing in Norway over the span of several years, and all on the first snow of the season.

The Snowman is the best book in the series so far. I'm a fan of other mystery writers, who rely more on surprise twists and the use of red herrings to misdirect their readers away from the clues they place in the story. But Nesbø doesn't do that. Instead, he methodically and subtly presents the clues for Hole to discover, leading up to a very satisfying reveal by the end. And as good as his mysteries are, Nesbø's characters are always equally fantastic, Hole being primary among them. I'm looking forward to many more stories featuring the character.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Never Game

by Jeffery Deaver
399 pgs  (Colter Shaw series #1)

The Never Game kicks off a new series for Jeffery Deaver, one without any connection to his Lincoln Rhyme series. Colter Shaw is a "reward seeker," someone who investigates missing-persons cases whenever a reward is offered. He's a brilliant man, who really doesn't even need the reward money to survive, and he uses his keen intellect and deductive skills to search for the missing child or person. More often than not he's successful and able to rescue the missing person before law enforcement is able to locate the person themselves.

When a $10,000 reward is offered by the father of a college student named Sophie Mulliner, who goes missing in Silicon Valley, Colter travels there to see if he's able to find her. He's quickly able to locate and save Sophie, but soon two other people go missing as well, and Colter discovers that all three kidnappings are tied to a video game called The Whispering Man, in which players find themselves dumped in inhospitable settings with five random objects they must use to try to survive and escape. Colter recognizes the fact that the three kidnappings resemble the first three levels of the game, and using the next levels as clues, tries to get ahead of the kidnapper and catch him before someone else disappears

Deaver has created a great new character to base this new series on. With his genius-level intelligence and his unique upbringing by a survivalist father, Colter Shaw is a character I'm looking forward to learning more about, and finding out what Deaver has planned for him next.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Full Throttle

by Joe Hill
480 pgs

Full Throttle, the most recent offering from Joe Hill, is a collection of twisted, unsettling, and sometimes shocking stories from a writer who is obviously following in his father's footprints, but is doing so with his own style and voice.

A couple of the stories: Throttle and In the Tall Grass, were coauthored with his father, Stephen King. But as big a fan as I am of King, and as good as those two stories are, they weren't my favorite ones in the collection. Throttle was inspired by the story Duel by Richard Matheson, which was adapted into a movie by an up-and-coming Steven Spielberg many years ago. Into the Tall Grass is about two siblings who wander into a field of grass too high to see over and quickly learn they've entered a strange and savage world none have ever escaped from. You are Released (my favorite), is about the passengers on a commercial airplane who find out mid-flight that nuclear war has broken out while they've been in the air.

There are ten other noteworthy stories in the book that I'm not going to say anything about, but that are each well worth the hour or so it takes to read them. They're not the kind of stories that can be forgotten soon after reading.

I became a fan of Stephen King's shorter stories very early on in my discovery of his writing, and I still get a little extra excited when he publishes another collection of them. So, I'm happy to see a similar pattern with Hill, and I hope he follows the example he's been given and continues to write them and compile them every time he has enough.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

A Journal of the Plague Year

by Daniel Defoe
271 pgs

A Journal of the Plague Year is Daniel Defoe's novel depicting the Great Plague of London, which book place in 1665. The book reads just like a journal, and I understand that for some time, the book was categorized as non-fiction, even though he published it in 1722, nearly 60 years after the events he wrote about.

I didn't know much about the book before reading it, but having enjoyed Robinson Crusoe as much as I did, I thought this one was as good an opportunity as any to read something else by Defoe. At the time it was written, Defoe intended it to serve as a warning, of the things both to do and not to do, in the event of a plague. The plague was in Marseilles at the time, and there were fears it would cross into England at the time. Defoe hoped his account of the 1665 plague would help limit its spread, if it did.

Today the significance of the book is the detailed account of life in London in the 17th century, as well as the insight into the inexplicable start and ending of the plague that killed almost a quarter of London's population within 18 months. Today we understand the conditions that resulted in the plague, as well as how it spread and how it can be treated. But back then, it was all attributed to the will of God.

The book is an interesting read, but not what I would call riveting. It didn't have the same appeal Robinson Crusoe had, no sense of adventure or the constant problem-solving dilemmas Crusoe faced, but the book had its own appeal. I enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone who has an affinity for history and/or highly-contagious, deadly diseases.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Starsight

by Brandon Sanderson
461 pgs  (Skyward series #2)

Picking up where Skyward left off, Starsight takes Spensa Nightshade, the young, newly-trained, intergalactic fighter pilot, away from Detritus, the human prison colony she's called home her whole life, and onto the massive Krell spaceship. She's there as a spy, her true identity as a human hidden by a holographic disguise. She's there to try to discover and steal the source of hyperdrive space travel and hopefully, save the human species from extinction at the hand of the Krell.

But Spensa is in way over her head. She's not trained to be a spy. She wasn't sent to the Krell ship by her commanding officer, but an unexpected and unique opportunity presents itself to her. Without considering the risks or possible ramifications of her decision, she leaves and travels to the Krell's ship.

Starsight is a worthy follow-up to Skyward. It's full of action scenes (which Sanderson excels at) and Spensa's knack for shooting from the hip and letting motions drive her actions, provides for a very enjoyable story to read. I'm excited to see how things get wrapped up in the next book.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆