Spoiler Alert! The guy that gets run over in the beginning.... is SATAN! Yikes. What the hell was that about? Did T. Jefferson Parker just run out of ideas and instead of a decent plot figured he'd just wing it? Add that to a few stereotypic AFT agents, some macho yammering, a little bit of chris...
A highlight of the book for me is a mere narrated detail on the "coincidence" of the vampire myth in Europe not long after a vampire bat breakout. When with rabies, humans show multiple symptoms that resemble the classical vampire descriptions and traits. Feral aggression and accompanied strengt...
Was a pretty good read. Got a little slow at times. Good mix of realistic(cartels, guns, ATF) and not-so(vampires/vampire bats). The ending was unexpected, considering that I was expecting the familiar everything-works-itself-out-and-everyone-lives-happily-ever-after but was surprised with somet...
In my humble opinion, this novel was dreadful. There was nothing remotely believable or intriguing about it. In this novel an ATF agent goes off the grid and starts killing the bad guys he's investigating. And the reason why he went off the grid - he and his girlfriend had rabies that was purpose...
The Jaguar is an action/adventure novel set in the environment of drug trafficking in the southwest and Mexico. There is strong character development with rationale for their behaviors. Erin is an innocent musician who has been kidnapped by a drug lord. Her thought processes from a musician's per...
I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, it's a well done story of a young marine returning from Afghanistan to his family's avocado farm in southern California. A devastating wild fire has destroyed most of their trees and thousands of acres in the area around the town, and ther...
I simply couldn't finish this book. It is a collection of short mystery stories, each by a different author. I checked it out for the one Harry Bosch story that I knew was in there somewhere. The first story (not the Bosch story) was so bad (very sexual and poorly written) that I didn't finish...
California Girl is almost a history lesson in the 1960's for Orange County. It deals with the old John Birch Society, the hippies, dope, LSD and features cameos from Richard Nixon, Charlie Manson, and Timothy Leary (used fictiously, I'm certain-- but with an effort to be authentic). The story f...
I have a signed copy of Laguna Heat, T. Jefferson Parker’s first mystery novel. It was a gift from a friend. My wife and I were living not far from Laguna at the time and it was a huge treat to receive the book. Everyone in Orange County was talking about it.A few years later I met Parker when ...
My local reading friend and I both love mysteries so we were talking about writers who won or were nominated for the yearly Edgars. From there we went on a venture to find and read as many authors as possible in that category. T. Jefferson Parker was Sandy’s find and she was bragging about him ...
A psychopath is abducting women and leaving their blood behind, but no bodies. Orange County sheriff's deputy Merci Rayborn is on the case. But Merci has filed a sexual harassment suit against her partner, and the sheriff wants someone to partner with her who can keep an "eye" on her. Therefore, ...
On a rainy day, Rebecca Harris is shot to death at long range in the parking lot of the southern California newspaper where she works as the assistant to a liberal columnist. It quickly becomes apparent that Harris was almost certainly not the intended target. Rather, it was the columnist herself...
Los Angeles is gripped by the exploding celebrity of Allison Murietta, her real identity unknown, a modern-day Jesse James with the compulsion to steal beautiful things, the vanity to invite the media along, and the conscience to donate much of her bounty to charity. Nobody ever gets hurt - until...
Dad.” Kathleen set the croissant on the baking rack and looked across the worktable at Wylie, her face flushed and the great vertical worry lines setting in her forehead. Wylie had been waiting for days for a private moment to ambush her. Now they were doing the morning prep at Let It Bean, the g...
Oak branches vanished when she turned off the headlights. She killed the engine, felt her nerves bristle, then settle. She dangled an arm into the space behind the backseat, moving it around in the cool, comforting emptiness. She watched the smoke rise from chimneys up and down Modjeska Canyon, a...
Of course, in the middle of our heat wave, the county building's air conditioning had overloaded and failed. Being a modern building, it had few windows that would even open. Outside, the smog lingered like smoke. Inside, the air was already stale and hot. Waiting, I heard the phones ringing cons...
APB on a white van, stolen plates, description of UN-SUB male pending. One terrified girl, okay—she got away. But her mother was strangled while she escaped and The Horridus had slithered back into the dark. Johnny said it looked like the mother had heard something and surprised him. I wasn’t at ...
He’d always liked driving eighteen-wheelers, and was taught to handle them by one of his uncles, who drove long hauls for a living. At age sixteen, Bradley had stolen a big rig from a drunken operator at a truck stop. Just a joyride, really, though he had gone all the way to Reno. But this mornin...
He'd felt himself swimming upward for a long time, but he had no way of telling hours from years. All he knew was he was rising through water and stars, earth and fire, toward something necessary and far away, woman's voice told him: Swim. Breathe. Rest. Swim. Breathe. Rest. And that was what he ...
It is an autumn evening scrubbed by breeze, cloudless and dry, ripe wit the promise of change. If seen from above, the dominant feature of Liberty Ridge is the blue oval of lake in its center. In the middle of the lake is small round island, densely wooded and dark. The lake seems to stare upward...
Outlaws 10 “We’ll call her Allison Murrieta because we don’t know who the hell she really is,” said the captain. His name was Patmore, and he was leading an interagency task force briefing on the armed robber Allison Murrieta. He stood in a Sheriff ’s headquarters conference room beside a televis...
The early October morning was warm and dry and the scorched earth wheezed smoke and ash. Rice Canyon was steep and rugged and serviced by only one paved road, which intersected Highway 76 six miles from the Fallbrook city limit. She hadn’t seen the canyon in two years, since she and her husband h...
The winter sky was gray, and out by Rockpile he saw a pelican tuck its wings and drop into the green wind-chopped water. A moment later the bird bobbed to the surface and raised its head and a fish tail disappeared down its beak. The waves were small and orderly.Juliet was older than him by two y...