Category: Suspense

Caught is a quick read. It grabbed my attention in the prologue and kept me reading. That's not to say it was a great book, but it never let up. There was twist after turn and a batch of characters to keep track of. Wendy Tynes is a reporter who tracks down sexual predators, sets up sting operations, and exposes them on national television. Dan Mercer is the latest pedophile who she catches. He gets off on a technicality, helped by a flamboyant lawyer who only makes one appearance in the book, but Dan's life is essentially ruined. Wendy starts to wonder if he was ever actually guilty, though. Meanwhile, a teenage girl in the neighborhood, pretty, talented, a good girl, has been missing for months and the police have exhausted all their leads. In addition to the missing, potentially kidnapped girl and a falsely accused man, there's a murder, a vigilante, an embezzlement scheme, a group of unemployed middle-aged men, four...

The Chatham School Affair by Thomas H. Cook Henry Griswald is the narrator of this tragic story he relates what happened seven decades earlier, when in 1926, he was a teenager, son of the headmaster of the Chatham School. That is the year, Elizabeth Channing arrived in town, a young, beautiful art teacher who has traveled the world.  That is the year his small town witnessed passion and death, saw a young woman destroyed and eventually accused of murder. Only Henry holds the key to what truly happened those years ago and it takes the whole book to learn all of the secrets. We left a few minutes later, and I didn't say a single word to Miss Channing that morning, but only gazed at her stonily, my demeanor already forming into the hard shell it would assume on the day I testified against her, answering every question with the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, knowing all the...

Hopefully, I'll have my review up for 13 1/2 by Nevada Barr later this week, but I did want to share this tidbit with you.  Polly was not given to the accumulation of worldly goods, but, had anyone gone through her house, they would have seen pictures of children and friends, letters from students, invitation accepted and declined, calendars marked with upcoming events, hand-drawn birthday cards, inscribed book, awards, diplomas, notes on bulletin boards—a short history of Polly Marchand in three dimensions. (pg. 237) Polly is contrasting her house with another woman's apartment. In Red's plethora of objects nothing that spoke of her heart had surfaced, only evidence of compulsion, addiction, and depression. But for the cigar box, there was no indication that anyone had touched her life—or that she had touched the life of another. (pg. 237) It made me wonder what a stranger would think if they went through my house. Would they know who and what were important to me? I...

Hold Tight by Harlan Coben Tia and Mike Baye never imagined they'd spy on their kids. But their sixteen-year-old son Adam has been unusually distant lately, and after the suicide of his best friend Spencer Hill, they can't help but worry. Within days of installing a sophisticated spy program on Adam's computer, they are jolted by a cryptic message from an unknown correspondent that shakes them to their core "just stay quiet and all safe." As if Mike Baye isn't dealing with enough, he also learns that Lucas Loriman, the sweet kid who grew up next door, is in urgent need of a kidney transplant. As the boy's doctor, Mike suddenly finds himself in possession of an explosive secret that threatens to rip the Loriman family apart at the seams. Nearby, while browsing through an online memorial for Spencer, Betsy Hill discovers a surprising detail about the night of her son's death. Before she can find out more, Adam disappears, taking the truth with...