A good swashbuckling novel, that’s a fun and enjoyable yarn. The only thing (and a small thing) I disliked about it was the referencing to past novels in the series. There are lots of interesting historical snippets which adds some real depth and interest both to the time and location of the book. AN easy relaxing read, full of charm and intrigue.

Synopsis
Matthew Hawkwood, ex-soldier turned Bow Street Runner, goes undercover to hunt down smugglers and traitors at the height of the Napoleonic Wars in this thrilling follow-up to Ratcatcher. For a French prisoner of war, there is only one fate worse than the gallows: the hulks. Former man-o’-wars, now converted to prison ships, their fearsome reputation guarantees a sentence served in the most dreadful conditions. Few survive. Escape, it’s said, is impossible. Yet reports persist of a sinister smuggling operation within this brutal world — and the Royal Navy is worried enough to send two of its officers to investigate. But when they disappear without trace, the Navy turns in desperation to Bow Street for help. It’s time to send in a man as dangerous as the prey. It’s time to send in Hawkwood!

Synopsis
A gunman is terrorising young women in the Cathedral town of Laffteron. What - if anything - links the apparently random murders? Is the marksman with the rifle the same as the killer with the handgun? “The Vows of Silence” is a sequel to the “Various Haunts of Men”, “The Pure in Heart” and “The Risk of Darkness”. ‘This is a crime series that specialises in sidestepping conventions, always to exhilarating effect…These books succeed in harnessing all the genre’s addictive power while maintaining a complexity and fascination entirely their own’

Synopsis
‘Abby stepped in the lift and the doors closed with a sound like a shovel smoothing gravel. She breathed in the smell of someone else’s perfume, and lemon-scented cleaning fluid. The lift jerked upwards a few inches. And now, too late to change her mind and get out, with the metal walls pressing in around her, they lunged sharply downwards. Abby was about to realize she had just made the worst mistake of her life …’Amid the tragic unfolding mayhem of the morning of 9/11, failed Brighton never-do-well Ronnie Wilson sees the chance of a lifetime, to disappear and reinvent himself in another country. Five years later the discovery of the skeletal remains of a woman’s body in a storm drain in Brighton, leads Detective Superintendent Roy Grace on an enquiry spanning the globe, and into a desperate race against time to save the life of a woman being hunted down like an animal in the streets and alleys of Brighton. Acclaim for “Not Dead Enough”: ‘Another smashing thriller from the UK’s most respected crime writer’

A stonker of a novel (i.e. good). Even though it is a slim volume, it is packed with loads of characters that are both flawed and well rounded at the same time. The tempo drags you along from page to page. A gripping novel, that is both well written and entertaining.

Product Description
“Breathless tension!” raved the San Francisco Chronicle. “One of [the year’s] most remarkable achievements,” crowed the Philadelphia Inquirer. Karin Slaughter dazzled readers and critics alike with Triptych, her New York Times bestselling suspense novel set in metropolitan Atlanta. Now the #1 internationally bestselling author returns to the damaged landscape she knows so well in a bold new novel—at once a powder keg of suspense, a gritty portrait of a cop’s life, and a searing exploration of a shocking crime and its aftermath…

With its gracious homes and tree-lined streets, Ansley Park is one of Atlanta’s most desirable neighborhoods. But in one gleaming mansion, in a teenager’s lavish bedroom, a girl has been savagely murdered. And in the hallway, her horrified mother stands amid shattered glass, having killed her daughter’s attacker with her bare hands.

Detective Will Trent of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation is here only to do a political favor; the murder site belongs to the Atlanta police. But Trent soon sees something that the cops are missing, something in the trail of blood, in a matrix of forensic evidence, and in the eyes of the shell-shocked mother. Within minutes, Trent is taking over the case—and adding another one to it. He is sure that another teenage girl is missing, and that a killer is on the loose.

Armed with only fleeting clues, teamed with a female cop who has her own personal reasons for hating him, Trent has enemies all around him—and a gnawing feeling that this case, which started in the best of homes, is cutting quick and deep through the ruins of perfect lives broken wide-open: where human demons emerge with a vengeance.

I’m a fan of Clive Cussler, but I found the carping on about non-lethal force in this novel very annoying and it detracted from an otherwise good yarn. The story is very James Bond like and entertaining even with its faults, which are many. One of which is repeating the same thing over and over again, like we are idiots and can’t remember that we have already read it. 5/10

Synopsis
For four novels, Clive Cussler has charted the exploits of the Oregon, a clandestine spy ship completely dilapidated on the outside, but on the inside packed with sophisticated weaponry and intelligence-gathering equipment.Captained by the rakish, one-legged Juan Cabrillo and manned by a crew of former military and spy personnel, it is a private enterprise, available for any government agency that can afford it - and now Cussler sends the Oregon on its most extraordinary mission yet. The crew has just completed a top-secret mission against Iran in the Persian Gulf, when they come across a cruise ship adrift in the sea. Hundreds of bodies litter its deck, and as Cabrillo tries to determine what happened, explosions rack the length of the ship. Barely able to escape with his own life and that of the liner’s sole survivor, Cabrillo finds himself plunged into a mystery as intricate - and as perilous - as any he has ever known, and pitted against a cult with monstrously lethal plans for the human race…plans he may already be too late to stop.