COLD DAY IN HELL by Richard Hawke

 Refinished Mo 9/30/24

This was one of my hardbacks that I got on the internet and finished on Tu 1/6/09. 

The central plot is that a nationally famous talk show host is charged with two murders. When another murder happens similar to the other killings it seems to show that the real killer is still at large. He was and the true killer is the talk show host's manager. 

There's a lot of moving parts and many, many characters, but the book is well written and I liked it. 

From Google Books:

"In the stew and dazzle of New York City, savvy, irreverent Fritz Malone-who Susan Isaacs called "the perfect balance of noir P.I. and decent guy"-is embroiled in a string of grisly murders that drags him behind the lurid headlines into the tangled affairs of some the city's most beautiful people and their ugly truths. When two women linked with charismatic late-night TV personality Marshall Fox are found brutally slain in Central Park, Fox becomes the prime suspect and is charged with the murders. At the tabloid trial, one of Fox's ex-lovers, Robin Burrell, is called to testify-and is instantly thrust into the media's harsh spotlight. Shaken by a subsequent onslaught of hate mail, Robin goes to Fritz Malone for help. Malone has barely begun to investigate when Robin is found sadistically murdered in her Upper West Side brownstone, hands and feet shackled and a shard of mirror protruding from her neck. But it's another gory detail that confounds both Malone and Megan Lamb, the troubled NYPD detective officially assigned to the case. Though Fox is in custody the third victim's right hand has been placed over her heart and pinned with a four-inch nail, just as in the killings he's accused of. Is this a copycat murder, or is the wrong man on trial? Teaming up with Detective Lamb, Malone delves deeper into Fox's past, unpeeling the layers of the media darling's secret life and developing an ever-increasing list of suspects for Robin's murder. When yet another body turns up in Central Park, the message is clear: Get too close to Fox and get ready to die. And Malone is getting too close. In Cold Day in Hell, Richard Hawke has again given readers a tale about the dark side of the big city, a thriller that moves with breakneck speed toward a conclusion that is as shocking as it is unforgettable."

THE DROP by Michael Connelly

 Finished Th 9/19/24

This is a trade paperback that either Janny loaned to me or it was a Christmas present. Not sure.

The title refers to a person who commits suicide by jumping from a very high place. 'Splatter' was an even better name used by the police. 

TWO CASES:

1) The son of a city official is found dead on the sidewalk in front of the Maramount Hotel in Los Angeles. Did he jump or was he dropped? It was a suicide. His wife was leaving him and the room was where the couple spent their honeymoon. The city official wanted it to be a murder because he couldn't deal with the shame of suicide. 

2) A development in a 20 year old 'Cold Case' was found. DNA from a blood splatter connects to a single individual, however this man was only eight years old at the time of the murder. He was there, however it was his foster father that committed the murder. The boy's blood was on a belt that dad used on the boy for punishment. 

 From the book's page at Kirkus Reviews: 

"Harry Bosch, the LAPD detective who insists, “I don’t want to be famous. I just want to work cases,” gets his wish times two.

Assigned to the Open-Unsolved Squad, Bosch catches a cold case with an impossible twist. Now that the lab can analyze DNA evidence from the 1989 rape and murder of Ohio student Lily Price, it’s linked conclusively to Clayton Pell, a known predator whose long history of sex crimes has already landed him in prison. Pell would be perfect as the killer if only he hadn’t been eight when the victim was slain. Before Bosch can start looking beyond the physical evidence for an explanation, he’s pulled out of past crimes and into the present by an old enemy. City Councilman Irvin Irving, the ex–deputy chief whom Bosch played a supporting role in bouncing from the LAPD years ago, demands that Bosch take charge of the investigation into his son George’s fatal plunge from his seventh-story room at the Chateau Marmont. It looks like suicide, but the Councilman claims it’s murder, and he doesn’t want it swept under the rug, even if it takes the hated Bosch to ferret out the truth. Hamstrung between two utterly unrelated cases, Bosch tries to work them both, with predictably unhappy results: scheduling conflicts, treacherous leaks to the media, trouble with his bosses and even his old partner, Lt. Kizmin Rider. Even so, it’s not long before he’s worked out pretty convincing explanations for both crimes and can begin the slow, patient process of winding them up before a pair of nasty surprises gives both of them a bitter edge.

Not by a long shot Bosch’s finest hour, but a welcome return to form after the helter-skelter 9 Dragons (2009)." 

I would read or reread anything by Connelly and it's always a pleasure.

THE UNDERGROUND MAN by Ross Macdonald

 Finished Su 9/15/24

This is one of my ancient trade paperbacks that I first finished July, 4 1997 before 'GROSSE POINT BLANK' at the Esqire. 

A link to a deep dive into the novel:

https://www.honest-broker.com/p/the-underground-man-at-age-50

From Library of America:

"A hot wind awakens Lew Archer in his Los Angeles apartment on the first page of The Underground Man (1971), presaging the conflagration ninety miles to the north which will race through this often breathtaking chronicle of unrestrained weather and people: “The edges of the sky had a yellowish tinge like cheap paper darkening in the sunlight.”

Sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, the narrative spurs interest, sympathy, and a mood of growing danger.

A youngster, Ronny, joins Archer in the courtyard of his building, to help him feed the morning’s jaybirds. “The boy looked about five or six. He had dark close-cropped hair and anxious blue eyes. . . . The jays were all around him like chunks of broken sky.” The gentle, vulnerable lad was a miniature portrait of Macdonald’s own grandson Jimmie, towards whom Millar had grown protective. Into Jimmie his grandfather invested his hopes and anxieties for the human future.

Archer becomes fearful for Ronny, whose estranged parents quarrel in front of him. Lew protects the boy from the father’s raised hand. “I want to stay here,” Ronny says. “I want to stay with the man”—with Archer. But the angry father drives away with the son. “I wanted to stop him and bring the boy back,” Archer admits. “But I didn’t.”

The lingering image of the vulnerable youngster stays with Lew as he returns to his apartment; it blends with his own reflection as he gazes at himself in the mirror, “as if I could somehow read his future there. But all I could read was my own past . . . A hot wind was blowing in my face.”

Archer swiftly responds to Ronny’s mother’s plea to retrieve her son from his unstable-seeming dad, who’s driving in the direction of that growing forest fire. “The tang of fear I felt for the boy had become a nagging ache.”

Thus was launched the novel which would prove one of Macdonald’s best: a work which combined thrills and lyricism, psychology and symbolism, in ways Macdonald had been perfecting for years. As the chairman of UCLA’s meteorology department wrote Macdonald regarding Underground, “It is fascinating to see the interplay of Santa Ana [wind] and sea breeze. The growing intensity of the fire . . . tends to accelerate the sea breeze; so the fire, like your other characters, is working towards its own destruction.”

On July 2, 1970, the author told agent Dorothy Olding of his new manuscript: “For me the book has the merit of not being an imitation of the last book . . . Underground Man has more movement, and the movement is in the present, for the most part, though of course everything started long ago when everybody was younger. . . . It has, I think a strong single narrative device and is as much a suspense novel as a detective novel.”

I thought it was a compelling story, but too many characters. You almost need a spreadsheet to keep everything straight. 

CAUGHT. by Harlan Coben

 Finished WE 9/11/24

This was a paperback that Jamny loaned to me and I finished on the day that we (Janny & Joe) went to the  local ball field [SCHLITT PARK] to watch Jamie's kids play ball. 

TWEAK (Growing Up On Methamphetamines) by Nic Sheff

 Refinished Sa 9/7/24. I last read the book and finished on We 8/18/21 and I first completed the book Fr 1/9/09.

TWEAK (Growing Up On Methamphetamines) by Nic Sheff 

This time through I felt less critical of the book. Intelligent and artistic people can be addicts and their experience would be much different from normal people. However, somebody in his position will always have more 'chances' if and when he fails at sobriety. 

And, as always with these books of recovery, nobody is allowed to drink or use drugs responsibly. Millions and millions of people can use drugs and do not have the dire negative effects, but the focus is always that substances are 'bad' and can never be used in a positive manner. Alcohol Annonymous is actually a religious organization regardless of their belief that "it's only a higher power, not god". The Oxford Group was an early 20th century Christian revivalist group and Wilson lifted most of their important tenents for Alcoholics Annonymous. 

THE ASSOCIATE by Johnn Grisham

 Finished Tu 8/27/24

This was a paperback that Janny recently loaned me. 

The story of what it's like to be a rookie lawyer when signed to one of the biggest law firms in NYC. All the partners care about is how many hours that can be billed. If a case involves reading millions (literally) of pages of documents, the novice lawyers (they haven't even passed the bar exam) are required to examine every sentence. The early years at a law firm are called 'boot camp'.  

The background story is one of the newbies is being blackmailed by a group that wants secrets about an upcoming defense contract involving billions of dollars. The ending was less than satisfying because it's never clear who were the individuals that wanted this information and who they were working for. This seemed like it was the first in a series of novels following these characters, but this is not the case. However, it looks like a movie is in the works. 

Link to the book's page at Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Associate_(novel)

Everything by Grisham is woth the time and this was a great 'beach or airport' read. 

DARK SACRED NIGHT by Michael Connelly

 Finished Th 8/22/24

This is a hardback that Janny recently lent to me. I was familiar with some of the plot and I think I have read it before or I saw one of the television shows that was based on this novel. 

From Kirkus Reviews:

"Harry Bosch, who just can’t stay retired, unwillingly teams up with a Hollywood detective who has reasons of her own for wanting in on his latest cold case.

It may be nine years since 15-year-old runaway Daisy Clayton was grabbed from the streets of Los Angeles and killed, but the daily presence of her mother, Elizabeth, in Harry’s life—she’s staying at his place while he helps her stay clean—makes it a foregone conclusion that he’ll reopen the case. On the night Bosch drops into Hollywood Division to sneak a look at some of the old files, he’s caught by Detective Renée Ballard, who was bounced from LAPD Robbery/Homicide to “the late show,” Hollywood’s third shift, after her complaint about aggressive harassment by a superior went nowhere. Bosch needs to find out who was responsible for what happened to Daisy; Ballard needs to work a case with teeth, even if she’s partnering with a reserve investigator in the San Fernando Police Department (Two Kinds of Truth, 2017, etc.) who’d rather work alone. Before they get what they need, they’ll have to wade through a double caseload as grueling and sometimes as maddeningly routine as you can imagine, from an apparent murder that turns out to be a slip-and-fall to an ancient gang killing whose repercussions flare to sudden life to the theft of some valuable Andy Warhol prints to a missing man who’s not just missing—not to mention Elizabeth’s sudden disappearance and Ballard’s continuing lack of support, and sometimes even backup, from her department. Not even the canniest readers are likely to see which of these byways will end up leading to the long-overdue solution to the riddle of Daisy Clayton’s death.

Fans who don’t think the supporting cases run away with the story will marvel at Connelly’s remarkable ability to keep them all not only suitably mystifying, but deeply humane, as if he were the Ross Macdonald of the police procedural."

The actual killer/ kidnapper of Daisy worked as a 'cleaner'. His job was to remove decomposing bodies and generally to 'clean a scene' after violent and messy crimes. Daisy's body was placed in a plastic container filled with bleach and company's logo on the tub left an impression on her skin. This clue led to the apprehension of the killer. 

I would read (and reread) anything by Connelly.