Reviews
City of Angels – The BOLO Books Review
Los Angeles, California. The self-proclaimed City of Angels, land of facades and facelifts where money and movies dominate, but masks and manipulation are de rigueur. This is the setting for Kristi Belcamino’s new novel, her young adult debut. Appropriately titled...
The Red Hunter – The BOLO Books Review
With her new stand-alone novel, The Red Hunter, Lisa Unger ventures beyond her beloved locale of The Hollows, to present a novel which succinctly and effectively details the long legacy wrought by violence in the lives of two complex women. Claudia Bishop moves with...
The Secret Room – The BOLO Books Review
Dr. Zoe Goldman was first introduced in Sandra Block’s Little Black Lies. This debut was then followed by The Girl Without A Name. And now with The Secret Room, Zoe’s story comes to an end. While each of these books work perfectly well as stand-alone mysteries, the...
One Perfect Lie – The BOLO Books Review
High school is a turbulent time as young people struggle to ascertain who they are, what they want to do with their lives, and a myriad of other huge life-altering decisions. This makes it a perfect backdrop for a Lisa Scottoline novel – she loves nothing better than...
A Simple Favor – The BOLO Books Review
Friends do favors for each other all the time; so when Emily asks Stephanie to pick up her son after school, she thinks nothing of it. After all, she has to pick up her own son and the two boys love to have playtime, so no big deal, right? Except that Emily never...
The Good Byline – The BOLO Books Review
The cozy mystery sub-genre is populated with a plethora of amateur sleuths working a multitude of day-jobs as they solve crimes on the side; but rarely have I encountered such an inspired occupation as that found in Jill Orr’s debut mystery, The Good Byline. Riley...
Betrayed – The BOLO Books Review
Like any good thriller should, Karen E. Olson’s Betrayed starts like a bullet – quickly gaining velocity and smashing through each obstacle in its path – before reaching a tension-filled climax guaranteed to please even the most jaded reader. Through each book in the...
Ragdoll – The BOLO Books Review
Ragdoll is Daniel Cole’s debut novel. From the description, it sounds like another gruesome serial killer novel designed to shock reader’s sensibilities. Please know this couldn’t be further from the reality. Daniel Cole has launched his writing career with a creative...
Conviction – The BOLO Books Review
The dense relationship between Rebekah Roberts and Saul Katz has been one of the cornerstones of Julia Dahl’s series of mystery novels set in and around the Hasidic community of Brooklyn, New York. Through all of their highs and lows, Saul has always been important to...
The Day I Died – The BOLO Books Review
For a woman who cannot be herself, Anna Winger is certainly skilled at knowing about other people from the barest of evidence - all it takes is their handwriting. This simple fact only scratches the surface of the complex lead character in Lori Rader-Day’s absorbing...
A Twist of the Knife – The BOLO Books Review
Sometimes with a series, the author is comfortable giving readers “the same, but different” with each new book release and that is often satisfying. However, with a character as unique as Brigid Quinn, it is fitting that Becky Masterman does not follow that mold. With...
The Cutaway – The BOLO Books Review
Media scrutiny is at an all time high. It seems that no matter where one turns, there is controversy, distrust, and scandal involving our news agencies. Of course, none of this is really "new," but in our social climate, it seems that everyone suddenly has an opinion....
Natchez Burning Trilogy
There are few novels as worthy of being called EPIC as those that make up The Natchez Burning Trilogy. What Greg Iles has crafted in this series likely won't be fully realized until years down the road. The scope of these three novels is bewildering and a true...
The Legacy – The BOLO Books Review
Readers of series crime fiction know that typically the linkage between books resides with the characters, so when an author tries something different, it does tend to get noticed. In her new series debut, Yrsa Sigurdardóttir centers the series around an institution –...
Sherlock Holmes and the Clocktower Mystery – A BOLO Books Guest Post
From the Booking Desk: When I heard that the Fleet Science Center in San Diego was opening an exhibit called Sherlock Holmes and the Clocktower Mystery, I knew that I wanted coverage of it here on BOLO Books. So I reached out to my good friend Erin Labonte-McKay and...
Six Stories – The BOLO Books Review
Everyone recognizes that different people going through the same experience can – and likely will – tell very different versions of that shared incident. Matt Wesolowski is well aware of this and uses this knowledge to create a cunningly plotted mystery in his first...
Quieter Than Killing – The BOLO Books Review
Across three novels, Sarah Hilary has slowly peeled back the layers on the complex relationship between DI Marnie Rome and her foster-brother (who at the age of fourteen killed their parents). Now with Quieter Than Killing, the dynamic between these two clash to such...
Wildcat – A BOLO Books Short Story Review
In any discussion of the living legends of crime fiction, the name Sara Paretsky will quickly be mentioned. Sara Paretsky became a champion for women writers when in 1986 she was instrumental in the founding of Sisters in Crime, but over the years she has proven that...
The Art of Vanishing – The BOLO Books Review
The Semester of Our Discontent, the debut novel in Cynthia Kuhn’s academic mystery series, is currently nominated for an Agatha Award for best first novel, so you can imagine that anticipation of book two is running high. Fortunately, The Art of Vanishing is almost...
Behind Her Eyes – The BOLO Books Review
Some novels arrive with a media buzz attached and one never knows if the reality will live up to the hype. In the case of Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough, regardless of what readers might think of the unusual genre-hopping, there is no denying that the payoff at...