Lee Child 3: Tripwire

When you pick up a Lee Child novel, you know what you're getting. Mystery and some violence to go along with your mystery. In Tripwire, the third installment of the Jack Reacher series, the hero is in Key West hanging out, digging ditches and working as a bouncer in a strip club. In typical Reacher fashion, he vastly enjoys this drifter lifestyle. Soon, his peaceful existence is interrupted when he is sought out by a private detective and a couple of tough guys. Reacher winds up in New York City, where he reacquaints himself with the daughter of his mentor in the military police. And they unearth a plot that involves the military and MIA soldiers in Vietnam. (The movie Basic, with John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson, has some very similar -- almost identical -- plot elements and if screenwriter James Vanderbilt didn't read this book, I'd be very surprised.) Reacher has an uncanny way of finding trouble, and by this third installment, the reader is hip to the modus operandi in this series -- the drifter is minding is own business until some criminal makes the mistake of awakening the sleeping giant, so to speak. Despite the predicitibility of the violence, this book -- and the two previous novels -- are entertaining in a Rambo meets Die Hard sort of way. And when I'm in the mood for more of this molotov cocktail style of writing, I'll pick up the next Jack Reacher novel. (Lee Child books and reviews)

Boris Starling 3: Vodka

I really enjoyed the first two books written by Boris Starling -- Messiah and Storm -- and I was expecting more of the same in Vodka, especially after one of the reviewers compared Starling to Martin Cruz Smith, obviously since the spectacular crime novel Gorky Park was also set in Moscow. However, for the first 300 pages of Vodka, crime took a backseat to an unlikely romance between American banker Alice Liddell and Russian mafia kingpin -- and politician -- Lev (no last name given). Somehow, the beautiful Liddell falls for the nearly seven foot tall tattooed not very handsome member of the Russian vory. In addition to the romance, the story also focuses on the Russian economy following the end of communism as Liddell is hired to privatize Lev's Vodka distillery, Red October. The book dragged for me for those 300 pages and I considered not finishing it. However, after several attempts, I finally continued -- and finished -- the book and I'm glad I did. Things pick up in the last 300 pages as crime takes front seat to finance as Estonian detective Juku Irk tracks the killer of several young orphans. If you like reading about business and the economy, this book will explain those concepts from the Russian perspective, where the black market under communism may have given them a better understanding of capitalism than those of us who have lived under it for our entire lives. If you like vodka, this book is a guide to the myriad different types and flavors of the drink that is the fabric of Russia. And finally, if you love crime -- and especially international crime -- this book provides a glimpse into the struggles of fighting crime in a country where the police receive little or no equipment, resources or pay. Things are even worse for Irk, who is not considered a Russian by most of those he meets. Hopefully, Starling will revive the Irk character in a future novel, similar to Arkady Renko appearing in a subsequent Smith novel. (Read more about Vodka on Amazon)

John Shannon 1: The Concrete River

In The Concrete River, author John Shannon introduces us to an atypical gumshoe, who specializes in finding missing children. In typical detective fashion, Jack Liffey is divorced, has a child and is behind on his child support payments. He is also a Vietnam vet, who had a real job before his current gig. Set in Los Angeles, the grandmother of one of the children Jack found several years earlier asks him to look into the disappearance of the child's mother. When the woman is found dead, Liffey becomes a "full-fledged" detective and has run-ins with some unsavory characters on both sides of the law. Similar to a Carl Hiaasen novel, the book features some zany characters. In one scene, a midget and a very skinny guy trade jokes in a bar. Of course, when the midget makes a Nietzche reference -- which goes over my head -- I start to wonder if I'm enough of an intellectual to read this book. I was also taken back a bit by Liffey's romantic interludes with two middle-aged women -- one with humongous breasts and one who is a virgin. As the first novel in the series, the book was a bit rough in places and I even found a typo. But I liked the Jack Liffey character and there were interesting supporting characters in addition to the aforementioned zany characters. The story wasn't the most imaginative nor did it feature a huge plot twist, but things tied up nicely at the end. And it was entertaining enough that I'll keep reading. (Read more about The Concrete River on Amazon)