Posted by
cahSamben |
at
23.4230/11/10 |
Tag
Mystery
On compassionate leave after the murder of his wife, Thomas Lynley is called back to Scotland Yard when the body of a woman is found stabbed and abandoned in an isolated London cemetery. His former team doesn't trust the leadership of their new department chief, Isabelle Ardery, whose management style seems to rub everyone the wrong way. In fact, Lynley may be the sole person who can see beneath his superior officer's hard-as-nails exterior to a hidden—and possibly attractive—vulnerability.
While Lynley works in London, his former colleagues Barbara Havers and Winston Nkata follow the murder trail south to the New Forest. There they discover a beautiful and strange place where animals roam free, the long-lost art of thatching is very much alive, and outsiders are not entirely welcome. What they don't know is that more than one dark secret lurks among the trees, and that their investigation will lead them to an outcome that is both tragic and shocking.
A multilayered jigsaw puzzle of a story skillfully structured to keep readers guessing until the very end, This Body of Death is a magnificent achievement from a writer at the peak of her powers.
Posted by
cahSamben |
at
20.2129/11/10 |
Tag
Mystery
At the heart of Gardner's outstanding fourth novel featuring Boston PD detective Warren (after The Neighbor) are some very sick kids, notably Lucy, a nine-year-old feral girl who self-mutilates when any attention is given to her, and Evan, an eight-year-old boy who during fits threatens to kill his mother. D.D gets involved after two grisly family annihilations lead to the locked-down pediatric psych ward in Cambridge that specializes in Lucy's and Evan's types of hard case. When a child is too sick and the parent can no longer handle care, the child ends up in the acute care facility under the tutelage of pediatric psych nurse Danielle, the lone survivor of her own family bloodbath. Coincidence? That's for D.D. to figure out--in the midst of a budding romance with police academy professor Alex Wilson and infuriating encounters with Andrew Lightfoot, resident "woo-woo expert" (that's cop talk for psychic), who works in tandem with the hospital. Plenty of red herrings keep readers guessing, but Gardner always plays fair in this tight and consistently engaging page-turner.
Posted by
cahSamben |
at
17.0814/11/10 |
Tag
Mystery
In the newest entry in Dana Stabenow’s New York Times bestselling Kate Shugak series, Kate and the rest of the Park rats are stunned by the death of Old Sam, Kate’s eighty-seven-year-old uncle and foster father. In his will, he leaves almost everything to Kate, including a homestead deep in gold mining country that no one knew he had and a letter that reads simply, “Find my father.”
Easier said than done, since Sam’s father is something of a mystery: an outsider who disappeared shortly after learning about Sam’s existence, he took with him a priceless tribal artifact, a Russian icon. During the first three days of Kate’s search, she gets shot at, whacked in the head, and run off the road in deep snow and left for dead.
Interspersed with flashbacks from Sam’s fascinating life, including scenes from major events in Alaskan history, Kate does her best to fulfill Sam’s last wish—as various people follow her every move, in search of the icon, Old Sam’s gold, or possibly some other secret remnant of his long, mysterious life.
It seems like just another quiet night at Elaine's. Stone Barrington and his former cop partner, Dino, are enjoying some pasta when in walks former client and all around sad sack Herbie Fisher...with a briefcase containing $14 million in cash.
Herbie claims to have won the money on a lucky lotto ticket, but he also says he needs a lawyer-and after a single gunshot breaks the window above his head and sends diners scrambling, Stone and Dino suspect Herbie might need a bodyguard and a private investigator, too.
Port Mortuary, the title of Patricia Cornwell's 18th Scarpetta novel, is literally a port for the dead. In this fast-paced story, a treacherous path from Scarpetta's past merges with the high tech highway she now finds herself on. We travel back to the beginning of her professional career, when she enlisted in the Air Force to pay off her medical school debt and found herself ensnared in a gruesome case of what seemed to be vicious, racially motivated hate crimes against two Americans in South Africa. Now, more than twenty years and many career successes later, her secret military ties have drawn her to Dover Air Force Base, where she has been immersed in a training fellowship to master the art of CT-assisted virtual autopsy--a procedure the White House has mandated that she introduce in the private sector.
As the chief of the new Cambridge Forensic Center in Massachusetts, a joint venture of the state and federal governments and MIT, Scarpetta is confronted with a case that could shut down her new facility and ruin her personally and professionally. A young man drops dead, apparently from a cardiac arrhythmia, eerily close to Scarpetta's new Cambridge home. But when his body is examined the next morning, there are stunning indications that he may have been alive when he was zipped inside a pouch and locked insider the Center's cooler. Various 3-D radiology scans reveal more shocking details about internal injuries unlike any Scarpetta has ever seen. These suggest the possibility of a conspiracy to cause mass casualties. She realizes that she is fighting a cunning and cruel enemy that is invisible as she races against time to discover who and why before more people die.
In Port Mortuary, Patricia Cornwell brings Scarpetta together with Marino, Benton, and Lucy in an intimate way that is reminiscent of the early novels, and we welcome a voice we haven't heard in years. The point of view is Scarpetta's, and this is her story.
For years, Jack Ryan, Jr. and his colleagues at the Campus have waged an unofficial and highly effective campaign against the terrorist who threathen western civilization. The most dangerous of these is the Emir. This sadistic killer has masterminded the most vicious attack on the west and has eluded capture by the world's law enforcement agencies. Now the Campus is on his trail. Joined by their latest recruits, John Clark and Ding Chavez, Jack Ryan, Jr. and his cousin, Dominick and Brian Caruso, are determined to catch the Emir and they will bring him in...dead or alive.
Detective Alex Cross and Bree's wedding plans are put on hold when Alex is called to the scene of the perfectly executed assassination of two of Washington D.C.'s most corrupt, a dirty congressmen and a underhanded lobbyist. Next, the elusive gunman begins picking off other crooked politicians, sparking a blaze of theories, is the marksman a hero or a vigilante?
A Murderer Returns The case explodes, and the FBI assign agent Max Siegel to the investigation. As Alex and Siegel battle over jurisdiction, the murders continue. It becomes clear that they are the work of a professional who has detailed knowledge of his victims movements, information that only a Washington insider could possess.
Caught In a Lethal Cross Fire As Alex contends with the sniper, Siegel and the wedding, he receives a call from his deadliest adversary, Kyle Craig. The Mastermind is in D.C. and will not relent until he has eliminated Cross and his family for good. With a supercharged blend of action, deception, and suspense, Cross Fire is James Patterson's most visceral and exciting Alex Cross novel ever.
Posted by
cahSamben |
at
21.3119/10/10 |
Tag
Mystery
The Adventure of a Scandal in Bohemia To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise, but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen; but, as a lover, he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer-excellent for drawing the veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his. And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.
I had seen little of Holmes lately. My marriage had drifted us away from each other. My own complete happiness, and the home-centred interests which rise up around the man who first finds himself master of his own establishment, were sufficient to absorb all my attention; while Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker-street, buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature. He was still, as ever, deeply attracted by the study of crime, and occupied his immense faculties and extraordinary powers of observation in following out those clues, and clearing up those mysteries, which had been abandoned as hopeless by the official police. From time to time I heard some vague account of his doings: of his summons to Odessa in the case of the Trepoff murder, of his clearing up of the singular tragedy of the Atkinson brothers at Trincomalee, and finally of the mission which he had accomplished so delicately and successfully for the reigning family of Holland. Beyond these signs of his activity, however, which I merely shared with all the readers of the daily press, I knew little of my former friend and companion.
One night-it was on the 20th of March, 1888-I was returning from a journey to a patient (for I had now returned to civil practice), when my way led me through Baker-street. As I passed the well-remembered door, which must always be associated in my mind with my wooing, and with the dark incidents of the Study in Scarlet, I was seized with a keen desire to see Holmes again, and to know how he was employing his extraordinary powers. His rooms were brilliantly lit, and, even as I looked up, I saw his tall spare figure pass twice in a dark silhouette against the blind. He was pacing the room swiftly, eagerly, with his head sunk upon his chest, and his hands clasped behind him. To me, who knew his every mood and habit, his attitude and manner told their own story. He was at work again. He had risen out of his drug-created dreams, and was hot upon the scent of some new problem. I rang the bell, and was shown up to the chamber which had formerly been in part my own.
His manner was not effusive. It seldom was; but he was glad, I think, to see me. With hardly a word spoken, but with a kindly eye, he waved me to an armchair, threw across his case of cigars, and indicated a spirit case and a gasogene in the corner. Then he stood before the fire, and looked me over in his singular introspective fashion.
"Wedlock suits you," he remarked. "I think, Watson, that you have put on seven and a half pounds since I saw you."
"Seven," I answered.
"Indeed, I should have thought a little more. Just a trifle more, I fancy, Watson. And in practice again, I observe. You did not tell me that you intended to go into harness."
"Then, how do you know?"
"I see it, I deduce it. How do I know that you have been getting yourself very wet lately, and that you have a most clumsy and careless servant girl?"
"My dear Holmes," said I, "this is too much. You would certainly have been burned had you lived a few centuries ago. It is true that I had a country walk on Thursday and came home in a dreadful mess; but, as I have changed my clothes, I can't imagine how you deduce it. As to Mary Jane, she is incorrigible, and my wife has given her notice; but there again I fail to see how you work it out."
He chuckled to himself and rubbed his long nervous hands together.
"It is simplicity itself," said he; "my eyes tell me that on the inside of your left shoe, just where the firelight strikes it, the leather is scored by six almost parallel cuts. Obviously they have been caused by someone who has very carelessly scraped round the edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud from it. Hence, you see, my double deduction that you had been out in vile weather, and that you had a particularly malignant boot-slitting specimen of the London slavey. As to your practice, if a gentleman walks into my rooms smelling of iodoform, with a black mark of nitrate of silver6 upon his right fore-finger, and a bulge on the side of his top-hat to show where he has secreted his stethoscope, I must be dull indeed if I do not pronounce him to be an active member of the medical profession."
I could not help laughing at the ease with which he explained his process of deduction. "When I hear you give your reasons," I remarked, "the thing always appears to me to be so ridiculously simple that I could easily do it myself, though at each successive instance of your reasoning I am baffled, until you explain your process. And yet I believe that my eyes are as good as yours."
"Quite so," he answered, lighting a cigarette, and throwing himself down into an armchair. "You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear. For example, you have frequently seen the steps which lead up from the hall to this room."
"Frequently."
"How often?"
"Well, some hundreds of times."
"Then how many are there?"
"How many! I don't know."
"Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is just my point. Now, I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed. By the way, since you are interested in these little problems, and since you are good enough to chronicle one or two of my trifling experiences, you may be interested in this." He threw over a sheet of thick pink-tinted notepaper which had been lying open upon the table. "It came by the last post," said he. "Read it aloud."
The note was undated, and without either signature or address.
"There will call upon you to-night, at a quarter to eight o'clock," it said, "a gentleman who desires to consult you upon a matter of the very deepest moment. Your recent services to one of the Royal Houses of Europe have shown that you are one who may safely be trusted with matters which are of an importance which can hardly be exaggerated. This account of you we have from all quarters received. Be in your chamber then at that hour, and do not take it amiss if your visitor wear a mask."
"This is indeed a mystery," I remarked. "What do you imagine that it means?"
"I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. But the note itself. What do you deduce from it?"
I carefully examined the writing, and the paper upon which it was written.
"The man who wrote it was presumably well to do," I remarked, endeavouring to imitate my companion's processes. "Such paper could not be bought under half-a-crown a packet. It is peculiarly strong and stiff."
"Peculiar-that is the very word," said Holmes. "It is not an English paper at all. Hold it up to the light."
I did so, and saw a large E with a small g, a P, and a large G with a small t woven into the texture of the paper.
"What do you make of that?" asked Holmes.
"The name of the maker, no doubt; or his monogram, rather."
"Not at all. The G with the small t stands for 'Gesellschaft,' which is the German for 'Company.' It is a customary contraction like our 'Co.' P, of course, stands for 'Papier.' Now for the Eg. Let us glance at our Continental Gazetteer." He took down a heavy brown volume from his shelves. "Eglow, Eglonitz-here we are, Egria. It is in a German-speaking country-in Bohemia, not far from Carlsbad. 'Remarkable as being the scene of the death of Wallenstein, and for its numerous glass factories and paper mills.' Ha, ha, my boy, what do you make of that?" His eyes sparkled, and he sent up a great blue triumphant cloud from his cigarette.
"The paper was made in Bohemia," I said.
"Precisely. And the man who wrote the note is a German. Do you note the peculiar construction of the sentence-'This account of you we have from all quarters received.' A Frenchman or Russian could not have written that. It is the German who is so uncourteous to his verbs. It only remains, therefore, to discover what is wanted by this German who writes upon Bohemian paper, and prefers wearing a mask to showing his face. And here he comes, if I am not mistaken, to resolve all our doubts."
As he spoke there was the sharp sound of horses' hoofs and grating wheels against the curb, followed by a sharp pull at the bell. Holmes whistled.
"A pair, by the sound," said he. "Yes" he continued, glancing out of the window. "A nice little brougham9 and a pair of beauties. A hundred and fifty guineas apiece. There's money in this case, Watson, if there is nothing else."
"I think that I had better go, Holmes."
"Not a bit, Doctor. Stay where you are. I am lost without my Boswell.10 And this promises to be interesting. It would be a pity to miss it."
"But your client--"
"Never mind him. I may want your help, and so may he. Here he comes. Sit down in that armchair, Doctor, and give us your best attention."
A slow and heavy step, which had been heard upon the stairs and in the passage, paused immediately outside the door. Then there was a loud and authoritative tap.
"Come in!" said Holmes. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
This book included 12 adventures: 1. A Scandal in Bohemia 2. The Red-Headed League 3. A Case of Identity 4. The Boscombe Valley Mystery 5. The Five Orange Pips 6. The Man with the Twisted Lip 7. The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle 8. The Adventure of the Speckled Band 9. The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb 10. The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor 11. The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet 12. The Adventure of the Copper Beeches
"Mr Hercule Poirot--you fancy yourself, don't you, at solving mysteries that are too difficult for our poor thick-headed British police? Let us see, Mr.Clever Poirot, just how clever you can be." Was the anomyous note a briliant challenge or a crackpot hoax? The answer is as loud and clear as a woman's scream--precisely that of Alice Ascher, a shopkeeper in Andover bludgeoned to death on the job. Next to her corpse, a clue that's as simple as ABC. Alphabetically speaking, the master Belgian sleuth suspects it's now a matter of one down, twenty five to go...
Posted by
cahSamben |
at
21.4311/08/10 |
Tag
Mystery
The Tinny Carribean island of St.Honore is a tropical paradise. But for Miss Marple, enjoying a well-earned rest from her busy life in the village of St.Mary Mead, it is a place where nothing ever seems to happen. Until old Major Palgrave tells her the strange story of a suspected double murderer. As rumors begin to circulate, the elderly sleuth is not alone in suspecting that things are not as they seem. And when a death that is indisputably murder occurs, Miss Marple finds an unlikely ally in the cantakerous crippled millionare Mr.Rafiel.
A business man is found dead in his office with a handful of grain in his pocket. His wife is found dead in the parlor with honey dripping from her scone. And the maid is found strangled in the garden with a clothes pin attached to her nose. The work of an insane homicide maniac or the clever plan of a cold, calculating killer??
It's a simple party game where a secret murderer strikes, leaving the guests to play detective...except this time there's a real corpse. Now enter a real detective: Miss Jane Marple
Elspeth McGillicuddy is down from Scotland for a holiday and boards the 4:50 train from Paddington station to visit her friend Miss Marple. During the journey, another train pulls alogside, and through the window Mrs.McGillicuddy witnesses a tall, dark man strangling a blonde woman. She reports what she has seen, yet no one takes any notice. There is no report of any murder, no dead woman found on any train, and the police have no record of any persons reported missing that match the description given by Mrs.McGillicudy. Only Miss Marple believes her account, and realizing that the body must have been thrown off the train, with the help of maps and train timetables she pinpoints the exact spot where the body must be. With the help of her young friend Lucy Eylelesbarrow, she goes about the tricky task of uncovering a amurder, and a cunning murder..
Deception Point, a story that combines mystery, fiction, and science. Struggling to rebound from a series of embarrassing blunders that have jeopardized its political life at the start of this lively thriller, NASA makes an astounding discovery: there is a meteor embedded deep within the arctic ice. And it isn't just any meteor. Inside the huge rock, which crashed to earth in 1716, are fossils of giant insects proof of extraterrestrial life. Yet, given NASA's slipping reputation, the question arises: Is the meteor real or a fake? That uncertainty dogs NASA and its supporters in Brown's latest page-flipper, a finely polished amalgam of action and intrigue. Trying to determine the truth are intelligence agent Rachel Sexton and popular oceanographer Michael Tolland, both among the first to suspect something is amiss when the meteor is pulled from the ice. Their doubts quickly make them the targets of a mysterious death squad controlled by someone or something that doesn't want the public to hear the meteor may be a fraud. Together, Sexton and Tolland scramble across arctic glaciers, take refuge on ice floes, are rescued by a nuclear submarine, then find themselves trapped aboard a small research vessel off the coast of New Jersey. All the while, the nation's capital is buzzing as to whether NASA has engaged in deception. Or is NASA just a dupe for aerospace companies that have long wanted a bigger share of space contracts?
A rip-roaring action thriller by the author of The Da Vinci Code. This is a stand-alone focused on a Presidential election, NASA and a remarkable discovery. Another non-stop ride.
What would happen if every nation and person in the would, with a computer, could access every top secret file of the government? This is what Susan Fletcher and David Becker have to prevent in Digital Fortress: A Thrillerby Dan Brown. With a lot of action and suspense Digital Fortress is a book for anyone who likes action and mystery.
The United States government has just bought a huge computer that can unscramble any code called TRANSLTR. A top secret government agency called National Security Agency, NSA, has purchased this computer to prevent terrorist from sending coded messages to other terrorist inside or out of the United States. Thinking the people of the US may considerTRANSLTR a breech of privacy, the government never told any one about the device.
Susan Fletcher is the head Cryptographer at the NSA Crypto facility. David Becker is a foreign-language specialist Georgetown University. Commander Greg Strathmore is in charge of the facility. There also are three other Cryptographers and many engineers who work on TRANSLTR in the facility.
Susan Fletcher head Cryptographer notices a code that TRANSLTR has been working on for Eighteen hours, and most files take less than one hour. A few days latter a strange address sends them an email. Sending the email, let the NSA figure up a way to shut down Digital Fortress. The virus that will shut downTRANSLTER and expose the main government data bank to any one with Internet access. Exposing the data bank, will put the nation at risk of attack and total chaos of the citizens.
The NSA sends in David Becker to receive the ring that has the code to shut down Digital Fortress. In the mean time, Susan Fletcher is trying to convince the head boss of the whole operation that there is a problem. David is nearly shot to death, and Susan is nearly blown to bits. Will the two succeed?
