The Mystery Starts Here

Owen Laukkanen’s debut novel, The Professionals is, without a doubt, one of the best new thrillers I’ve read in years. Laukkanen has done everything right. The novel is fast-paced, the dialogue believable and the characters realistic and sympathetic. Even though the gang is breaking the law, you can’t help but root for them. This is the kind of book I love! I picked it up, started reading and literally could NOT put it down!  I can’t believe that this is the first effort of this writer. He is going on my list of authors to look out for in the future. I WILL buy his next book.

In the beginning of The Professionals, four friends, recent college graduates, caught in a terrible job market, joke about turning to kidnapping to survive. And then, suddenly, it’s no joke. For two years, the strategy they devise, quick, efficient, low risk, works like a charm, until it doesn’t. They kidnap the wrong man and find themselves in more trouble than they ever anticipated.

Now two groups they’ve very much wanted to avoid are after them. The law, in the form of veteran state investigator Kirk Stevens and hotshot young FBI agent Carla Windermere, and an organized-crime outfit looking for payback. As they all crisscross the country in deadly pursuit and a series of increasingly explosive confrontations, each of them is ultimately forced to recognize the truth: The true professionals cop or criminal, are those who are willing to sacrifice everything.

Laukkanen develops the characters and sets a pace of action and suspense that will take the reader on an unforgettable ride, with memorable characters and actions that touch emotions and keep the pages flipping well into the night. A finger burning page turner filled with twists, turns and memorable characters you’ll remember long after reading, The End.

Laukkanen is hard at work writing the next book featuring the Stevens-Windermere crime stopping duo and I can’t wait for the next book to come out.

In Ice Cold by Tess Gerritsen, Boston Medical Examiner Maura Isles is taken out of her element– the mortuary– and plunked down in the middle of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. While attending a medical convention in Wyoming, she encounters an old colleague from medical school and, discontented with her going-nowhere relationship with Catholic priest Daniel Brophy, she agrees to go on a skiing weekend with her friend, two of his friends and his daughter. No one knows of Maura’s change of plans which leads to big problems. When they get lost and run off the road in a heavy snowstorm, they take shelter in a spooky village that has been seemingly abandoned. In their attempt to get out of the village, one of the fiends is critically injured, and Maura finds herself in the unusual position of having to take care of a patient who is alive.

Maura’s friend, Doug, has no choice but to strap on skies and go for help. He knows his friend will die if he doesn’t get help soon. Maura the the other survivors continue to explore the other empty houses and determined that something bad, very bad happened here. All the window in the house are open, well-careful pets are dead, and there’s food on the table. Something happened fast to make the people disappear. Meanwhile Maura sees footprints in the snow under the window of the house where the group has sheltered and knows someone is stalking them.

Meanwhile back in Boston, no one can reach Maura, so Jane, Gabriel and Daniel fly out to search for their friend. Their worse fears are realized when an abandoned and burned SUV is found and what they think is the body of Maura is found inside, burned beyond recognition.

Before this unusual tale is over, we’re into a polygamy cult, an apparent mass murder/suicide, a hermit teenager as comfortable in the wild as in a house, charred remains of a body identified as our heroine, and  Rizzoli and her FBI agent hubby eventually start hunting for our missing ME, accompanied by Maura’s illicit lover, priest Daniel Brophy.

Just when you think Maura will be saved and be able to return to her life in Boston, something else happens.  Ice Cold is the kind of mystery I love! I literally couldn’t put it down and read FAR in the the night to finish it. Run out and get a copy of Ice Cold now, but make sure you have nothing else on your calendar, because believe me – you will NOT be able to put it down!