Cecilia Sutton

Oh boy!  Meyer doesn’t hold back with her principal character in this novel! , an new adult thriller “The Chemist.”

Alex is  a medic and an interrogator who worked for a shadowy branch of the US government torturing terrorists before her bosses turned on her. Now she is a fugitive. Having already seen off three would-be assassins from” the agency,” she sleeps wearing a gas mask in whichever nondescript room she’s renting, various deadly chemical compounds rigged up to go off if anyone breaks in.  That’s a main character!

Known as “the Chemist,” because she used to squeeze the truth out of her suspects with excruciatingly painful drug concoctions, she was brilliant at her job, “batting a thousand”, she’s told at one point, with a perfect record. “I am the bogeyman in a very dark and scary world,” she says. “I frighten people who aren’t afraid of anything else, not even death. I can take everything they pride themselves on away from them; I can make them betray everything they hold sacred. I am the monster they see in their nightmares.”A little like “Miss Marfple of old, , we first meet her in a library, where she’s reading spy novels for ideas to keep her safe from her former employers. She doesn’t know why they want her dead, but she’s getting tired of running, and when she reads an email asking her to take on one last job for the agency, because “many, many lives” are on the line, she hopes her days as a fugitive might be at an end. At least, she hopes, she’ll be able to find out what they have on her. But as Alex delves deeper into the case – it involves biological warfare, and she’s able to rig up a few scenarios where her own particularly dark talents are made use of – she finds that nothing is as it seems, and that the corruption goes right to the highest levels.

The Chemist is not Meyer’s first adult novel – that was The Host, a story of alien invasion. There are no traces of the supernatural here, unless you count the preternaturally intelligent German shepherd that saves the day on more than one occasion. Rather, Meyer, clearly a major fan of the genre, has dreamed up a fast-paced thriller, and a tough, mysterious heroine with a penchant for decking herself out in dangerous jewellery, concealing syringes of poison in her belt and switchblades in her shoes. There are some great pitched battles leading up to a conclusion that it’s easy to imagine in the cinema

“Twenty years after the Unseen War, powerful mages known as Augurs are no longer so powerful. They have been stripped of their standing in society and their powers have failed them. In their place are mages who possess the Gift, but their rise is only a result of the strict rules called the Four Tenets—not unlike Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics—under which they must operate. Though these Gifted individuals are able to use their form of magic—the Essence—they are not looked upon with great favor by society at large. Unfortunately, the world is still under threat of attack from those on the other side of the Boundary, a dark army sealed nearly two thousand years prior to the novel waiting to escape and reap their revenge. As the novel begins, characters are concerned that the Boundary is not going to hold for very much longer. Against this backdrop, the lives of young Davian, Wirr, Asha, Dezia, and Caeden unfold under the auspices of the school for the Gifted where many of them meet. Although using the term school might be generous since the ‘students’ are afforded too much freedom as their Administrators watch over them.”

It’s the usual stuff.

Islington devotes a great deal of the novel to providing background information about his characters and the depth of history of his world. The connections between the characters and that prior history is revealed over the novel’s nearly 700 pages giving a great deal of detail to them. Each of the primary characters possesses a mystery or secret about them, they aren’t exactly what they seem. Adding to the “secret mystery” is that most of these primary characters have meagre memories of themselves, only going back to just before the novel began.

While some of the characters and mythology in the novel felt as if they had some meat to their personalities, others  were not quite as developed. The weakening “Boundary” was continually referenced, but through most of the novel, the consequences and threat lacked urgency. There was no “why” to the threat.

Having read many epic fantasy novels and series, “hints of things to come” in later volumes is to be expected and probably part of why longer series are popular. However, the balance between those hints of something substantive being revealed in later volumes and revealing information in the immediacy of the current volume was uneven. The character’s journeys also suffered from a sense hollowness. They were told to go places, but the destination wasn’t always clear and the reason for their journey wasn’t always clear.

Unfortunately, too much of the nearly 700 pages of The Shadow of What Was Lost was world-building and showing what the characters were rather than getting to know who the characters were.  So at times many times) it was difficult to get into the novel.

In the end, The Shadow of What Was Lost offers some promise, but is ultimately patchy like so many  debut novels.

Lt Eve Dallas is used to murder in New York,  but when she gets a call to the scene of a triple homicide in Central Park, she discovers a crime unlike anything she’s seen before. A clinical hit, it could only be committed by a professional-military and/or police trained. So she calls in some favors.  Sorting through all the evidence, Eve is shocked to discover there isn’t one killer, but two. A mentor and a trainee. And Central Park is only the beginning.

Eve Dallas is back and facing one of her greatest challenges to date in the forty-third installment in J.D. Robb’s long-running futuristic mystery/thriller In Death series. Apprentice in Death opens the door to more action, mystery, and excitement as Eve and the NYSPD find themselves racing against time to stop a pair of deadly snipers whose still unknown agenda spells death for New York and its citizens.

Even forty three books in, Robb continues to combine solid writing, intriguing subplots, and dynamic characterization to keep her world evolving but familiar and comforting. Strong police procedurals keeps readers firmly engaged while subtle bits humor and lighter moments helps to offset some of the darker moments of the storyline.

It’s pretty clever!  Robb flashes between the police and the killers, allowing us to view Mackie and Willow as they set up for their next hit while Eve uses all her wits and talents to piece together the clues and evidence to form a picture that shocks even this hardened cop.

Robb begins to cross the two storylines and merge them together towards a climactic finale.   Eve and her team must work fast in order to try and predict where they will strike next. As per Robb’s style, a majority of the book focuses on the investigation of the case with well laid immersions of Eve’s personal life into the storyline.

Apprentice in Death is another intriguing addition to this series, giving readers an emotionally complex mystery to solve while enjoying the timeless couple whose love affair continues to capture our attention even forty three books later. Per usual, I love revisiting Robb’s version of the future and look forward to the next installment-Echoes In Death-set to release February 7, 2017.

It is always wonderful fun to open a package containing a book by a favourite author. And for many years I have tried to read everything written by Kellerman, almost as soon as it was written. This one has been out for a while, but I plead extended overseas travel as an excuse for only just getting to it.

Grace Blades is a psychologist with a very exclusive practice. She has a small list of loyal clients who come to her from great distances when necessary. Although she endured a very difficult childhood, clearly her life has turned around. Just before a short vacation, Grace receives an enquiry about a new patient, coming from Texas to talk to her. The first interview does not go well, and there is no chance of a second simply because the new patient is murdered. How, why, and who is this ‘stranger’ reappearing from Grace’s past. And then there is the attempt on her life…

Kellerman is back to his best with this new and fresh idea. This is a real page turner guaranteed to keep you reading until far too late at night. And if you have trouble sleeping, read this one only during daylight hours. You will be looking over your shoulder and listening for things that go bump.

Love a thriller? Don’t pass this one by.