The Thieves of Heaven by Richard Doetsch ( Michael St. Pierre #1)

The Thieves Of Heaven by Richard Doetsch
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Sometimes you pick up a book that just catches your eye. It may be the description, or the blurb from an author you love. But, when that book turns out to be just awesome, then you have something. The Michael St. Pierre series from Doetsch is just one of these books as well as the whole series and ANYTHING else Richard Doetsch has written. He deserves best seller status.
In The Thieves of Faith, we meet our hero, Michael, a flawed man but with an incredible talent for theft. In the course of a heist, he saves a beautiful woman from being killed and is in turn caught and sent to prison. Later, after being released, a known felon, he meets his wife, he gives it up and becomes a security professional, helping other people design systems to stop thieves. Finding his soul mate in a cruel twist of fate in that she soon becomes very sick. With a new business and no money, Michael is blackmailed into stealing again to save his wife's life. Something he promised her he would never do. The heist? Just steal two keys from the Vatican. One gold and one silver.
This is a quasi religious thriller in the mold of the Da Vinci Code but so much more. Michael completes the job and comes to find out that the treatment for his wife is not working, additionally he is visited by a enigmatic stranger who tells Michael that those keys are the keys given to Simon Peter and are the only things keeping Satan in check. They must steal them back from the billionaire who commissioned the job, someone NO ONE wants to mess with if you get my meaning. Do yourself a favor and read this and it's sequels. You will not be disappointed.

View all my reviews

Veil of Lies by Jeri Westerson ( Crispin Guest 31)

Veil of Lies by Jeri Westerson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Every once in a while you pick up a book on a whim. This was the case with Jeri Westerson 's Veil of Lies, the first book in the Crispin Guest Medieval Noir series.
What a plaesant surprise! The author knows her craft and subject. It is not easy to evoke the feeling of medieval England but Westerson does.
This nystery takes place in the late 1300's and involves our hero, former disgraced knight, Crispin Guest. Since his fall from grace, he has become known as The Tracker and solves mysteries and finds things for people. Owning much of his experience to his former life as a noble and a knight, Guest is a breath of fresh air. He's not perfect but has a nobility that shines through.
In Veil of Lies, Guest is commisioned by a wealthy merchant to keep an eye on his young wife, he believes her to be having an affair. Reluctantly, Guest agrees. After discovering the truth, Guest reports back to the merchants manor only to find him stabbbed to death in a room that had been locked from the inside.
Throw into the mix a nasty Sherrif, an Italian syndicate bent on destroying the English economy, Crispin's loyal houseboy Jack and a mysterious relic that may or may not bear the image of Christ and you have one hack of a story. Twists and turns abound and you coulkd swear at times that you can smell the Thames nearby or the squalor of the Shamnbles.
Well worth reading.

View all my reviews

Just Watch Me by Jeff Lindsay ( Riley Wolf #1)

Just Watch Me by Jeff Lindsay
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Long live Riley Wolfe! Riley Wolfe is a thief, but not just any thief. He is the best in the world. But, it seems that he may be in a bit of a rut. There are no challenges. Everything is to easy. The answer? He has to find the unstealable. Something that he might fail at.
This is the premise of Just Watch Me. A very fast moving and well written book by Jeff Lindsay of Dexter fame. Riley is a complex character. There is nothing that will stand in the way of his objective:
If he has to kill,maim, or hurt it is just part of the job, which can also be a real sign of someone playing without a full deck.
In Just Watch Me, Riley has become who he is due to events that shaped him when he was young. Being bullied was part of his daily life and he had a father that died when he was young with a mother that kind of checked out. His father always told him to "not be a sheep, but be a wolf", this lesson kicks in in his teenage years and will carry him through life even with a name change to reflect the new found philosophy.
In researching the impossible heist, Riley finds that the Iranian Crown Jewels are coming to the States. With the best security that money can buy and a troop of the Republican Guard from Iran. It can't be done. Or can it?
We follow Riley in his planning which involves some pretty nifty disguises as well as his love of parkour to relax and think. One of the coolest things about this book is that Riley loves his music while thinking and Lindsay has been kind enough to let us know what he is listening to. So, if you have Amazon Music, Apple Music or Spotify handy while you read, you can really immerse your self in Riley's world.
In the course, of the heist, Riley will kill, break hearts and bank accounts. With the help of a beautiful master forger and the backstory of an FBI agent hot on his trail, Just Watch Me was well worth reading.

View all my reviews

The Wild One by Nick Petrie ( Peter Ash #5)

The Wild One by Nick Petrie
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Nick Petrie is stellar and his Peter Ash series is one of the finest series out there. These books are well written with well drawn characters that you genuinely care about.
In The Wild One, Peter is trying and failing to control his PTSD from the war. Unable to escape from the dreams of people who died under his watch, Peter takes a job from a wealthy woman whose grandson is missing with his father who is accused of killing his wife
who is her daughter. The real story however is that she discovered secret files that would prove damaging to the powerful in Washington DC.
The job is in Iceland and as Peter arrives it becomes quickly apparent that someone powerful doesn't want him to succeed.
The action begins immediately in this book with the scenes alternating between current day and 12 months previous where the child, Oskar and his parents, Erik and Sarah are in the throes of trying to expose the powerful. Much to their own danger.
In Iceland, Peter comes to find the relatives of Erik and Oskar and to see if they are hiding with family. The brutal beauty that is Iceland is on full display as is the powerful loyalty of family.
This book is not to be missed.

View all my reviews

The Last Odyssey by James Rollins ( Sigma Force #15)

The Last Odyssey by James Rollins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have been reading Rollins for almost 20 years and the one thing that I have always loved is his blend of history and action and the whole narrative of "what if". When reading him, sometimes to really have to stop and google things to see of they are true. Fun stuff!\
In The last Odyssey, our friends from Sigma Force are investigating an Arab Dhow locked in a glacier in Greenland when all hell breaks loose. Literally.
The Homeric epics loom large here and the tantalizing idea of just what was true and what was fiction has our heroes racing around the Med to try to keep a very powerful weapon out of the hands of an Apocalyptic cult bent on the world's destruction.
There is a lot of heart in this book none more so than the very end which will cause a few tears..
This is truly one of those series where you could pick up any book and enjoy it, but they are so much better when you start with Sandstorm and wade though with Painter, Gray, and the others.

View all my reviews

The Order by Daniel Silva ( Gabriel Allon #20)

The Order by Daniel Silva
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Every year there is always a Daniel Silva book to look forward to. Silva is really in a class by himself. Just a quick warning though about The Order, there is a ton of religious discussion and supposition. If your faith is flimsy, you might want to pass on by,
In The Order, Chief of the Office, Gabriel Allon needs a vacation. So, he and hwife, Chiara and there two children head to Venice. While they are there, Gabriel learns of the passing of his friend the Pope, whom he saved years ago in a attempted bombing. Not only that, Luigi Donati, another friend as well as the Pope's personal secretary, comes to Venice to talk to Gabriel about his suspicions that the Pope was actually murdered. Also, before he died, there was a letter that the Pope had written to Gabriel that never got delivered and is now missing. So, Gabriel begins looking into the circumstances surrounding the pontiff's death and comes to realize there is much here that doesn't jibe. Throw into the story a militant anti-jewish order, the death of a younf Swiss Guard who was stationed outside the Pope's rooms on the night in question, and rumors of the Gospel of Pontius Pilate and you have quite the story. There is also the papal Conclave that will either see the election of a new Pope, hopefully one that is not involved with the above order. As in all Allon books, there is art and history and a glimpse into what may be next for Gabriel and his family.

A worthwhile book.

View all my reviews

The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi ( The Interdependency #1)

The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Really enjoyed this by Scalzi. Loved his Old man's War from years past and to see him return to his galactic roots was welcome.
Full disclosure, I bought this book over 4 years ago and just never got to it until recently. Glad I did, for not that large of a book, the story is huge!
The Interdependency is a conglomeration of many different star systems all with one thing in common. The Flow. There is still not a way to travel faster than light, but there is The Flow which allows the Interdependency to be connected, something that would be impossible dur to many of the systems being light years from each other. When a ship enters the Flow it travels faster that light making all of this possible. The problem is that no one knows exactly how they work.
The House of Wu rules the Interdependency and the old Emperox is dying. His preferred heir was killed in an accident leaving the mantle to Cardenia, who was an illegitimate child but the only one who can take over. Something she never wanted.
In Scalzi's universe there are little to no actual planets that can support life except End, at the far end of the Interdependency. Hub being where the Emperox is at the other end, many years before the Flow to Earth just disappeared. Which is a problem now facing this new generation.
In an act of foresight, Cardenia's father sent his friend, a Flow Physicist to End to study the Flow decades before. His result is that the Flow is going away.
Add to this unique problem the struggles of dynastic merchant guilds, attempted assassinations, rebellions and some great characters and you have one hell of start to a series.
Well worth the read, even if Scalzi's characters can swear with the best of them.

View all my reviews