Author

Jeff Ayers

Review

Close Call

by Jeff Ayers

Kipness compellingly combines her background as a sports reporter with her love of crime fiction, and her latest Kate Green thriller is her best yet. Kate is a sports reporter with a recent Emmy win, and she’s asked to cover the U.S. Open and specifically to interview two tennis stars: Brynn, an arrogant but talented up-and-comer, and Lucy, a veteran facing her last event. Brynn does not trust Kate at all, while Lucy is nicer but also hesitant. As Kate continues her coverage, she begins to uncover details that seem straight out of a soap opera rather than the tennis circuit. When Lucy forfeits a match the day after Kate interviews her, the reporter knows that something happened to Lucy and then receives a photo of the bound and gagged player. Kate can’t help but investigate, an effort that will uncover secrets about Lucy and Brynn and reveal personal elements of Kate’s life. There are many suspects here and it is so much fun from the first page to the last. Kipness’s engaging novel is perfect for newcomers to and fans of the series and is a blend of Hank Phillippi Ryan’s work and the Myron Bolitar novels by Harlan Coben. With a recently announced TV deal with Universal Television, picking this up should not be a close call.

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Review

Veil

by Jeff Ayers

The disappearances seemed ordinary at first, with the police thinking those gone were runaways. Then more vanished, all at night, and curfews were implemented. John Calhoun, a teacher with a fractured family, has his son vanish after going around a corner. The wave continues, and the news and government have no answers. When John’s wife is taken in broad daylight by an invisible force that drags her away screaming, it’s clear that whatever is responsible won’t stop until every person on the planet is abducted. But who is responsible, and what is their motive? John and his 13-year-old daughter hunker down in their house and begin a survivalist lifestyle to avoid being next. At the same time, the neighborhood around them becomes a scene right out of the classic Twilight Zone episode The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street. Janz, the pseudonym of Craig Shaeffer, uses his background and influences growing up to craft a tense and twisty thriller. The surprises come later in the story when John is forced to fight back by making sacrifices to save his family and the motivations behind the disappearances come to light. Janz takes the quintessential theme of how far you would go to protect your family to clever and horrifying heights.

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Review

She Didn’t See It Coming

by Jeff Ayers

Bryden seems to have the perfect family. She has a loving husband, Sam, and an adorable three-year-old daughter named Clara. One night when he’s working late, Sam gets a call from Clara’s daycare. Bryden has not picked up their daughter and is not answering her phone or responding to texts. Sam picks Clara up and arrives home to find Bryden’s cell phone and purse in the apartment and her car parked in the garage. Where did she go, and what happened to her? Detective Jayne Salter of the Albany Police Department gets the case. From the moment she starts investigating, she finds Bryden’s family, friends, and neighbors all seem to be hiding something. But does that make one of them guilty? Lapena keeps the suspense and mystery going to the final page. Readers, at one point, will think everyone is responsible for Bryden’s disappearance, but the truth is shocking and surprising. Jayne will uncover more murder and chaos than she’s bargaining for, and Lapena could have a series character on her hands with this charismatic detective.

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Review

Fallen Star

by Jeff Ayers

Los Angeles Detective Eve Ronin uses an unorthodox method to stop a robbery while off duty, putting her in the boss’s crosshairs in Goldberg’s (Dream Town, Calico, Malibu Burning, Ashes Never Lie) latest. Eve is torn between her celebrity status from having a TV show based on her “life” and the higher-ups who want her to leave. Even a suspension is temporary when videos of Eve stopping the robbery go viral and a dead body is discovered in a metal drum. Her life and the case escalate when one of the suspects has a vendetta against her. Add corruption inside her own department and a helicopter crash that hits literally too close to home, and she barely has time to breathe. Eve must balance her pursuit of justice and be on her best behavior since one false move could mean the end of her career, even if she’s the most famous detective in Los Angeles. Readers will love Goldberg’s dive into Eve’s world and the quirky aspects of Los Angeles life as well as the continuing story (Goldberg even throws in an extensive cameo featuring featuring his other series characters). Whether Fallen Star is your first time reading Eve or your sixth doesn’t matter. In either case, Goldberg has done it again with a compelling and complex mystery.

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Review

The List

by Jeff Ayers

Berry delivers a novel unlike anything he’s ever done before. Rather than exploring history, this one takes pieces of John Grisham’s The Firm and mixes them with the business aspects of a Joseph Finder novel and storytelling elements from David Baldacci. Brent Walker left his hometown and the woman he loved ten years ago, and now he’s come back to help his sick mom. He takes a job at the small-town paper mill in a legal role beneath his level of expertise to oversee their negotiations with the local union. The company’s management is not trustworthy, and more than doctoring the financials, they have created a list, and the purpose of the names on it is beyond reprehensible. Brent and his lifelong friend and co-worker, Hank, are given a series of what appear to be random numbers, but research reveals to them the horrendous nature of what the numbers mean. They are not random at all, but to say anything more would spoil the fun. Someone given the pages without knowing the author’s identity would never identify Berry as this book’s writer, and his going outside his comfort zone to resurrect one of his early, desk-drawer novels is beneficial to him, his fans, and thriller readers alike. The List would be a perfect story to be turned into an Alfred Hitchcock film, and this should only add to Berry’s fanbase.

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Review

King Sorrow

by Jeff Ayers

Gwen Underfoot is a senior in high school, and her closest friends are all in college, including twins Donna and Donavan; Allie; Colin; and the young man Gwen has feelings for, Arthur, who works at the college library. An act of kindness ends up with him being blackmailed to ensure his mom stays alive: forced to steal first-edition books from the collection, Arthur wants a way out before he gets caught. The others devise a solution involving an ancient ritual and a journal bound by human skin that conjures up the dragon King Sorrow. The beast promises to help Arthur with his problem, but he and the others are now bound to the dragon, who will demand a sacrifice from each of them every year for the rest of their lives. Hill has crafted a brilliant story with well-rounded characters readers will love and hate, a terrifying spin on everyone’s worst fears, and a tale of six people bound together by a bad decision as they journey through life with that weight on their shoulders. There is even a blink-and-you-miss-it spin on the Greg Stillson campaign from Hill’s father, Stephen King’s, classic The Dead Zone. Don’t let the size of this book sway you from reading it. Joe Hill has another classic on his hands.

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Review

The Story That Wouldn’t Die

by Jeff Ayers

Jolene finds herself in the lobby of city hall when the mayor of Phoenix, Arizona, gets stuck in an elevator. With a job as a TV reporter, she gets the exclusive on the mayor’s rescue. But her instincts go into high gear when she talks to a small-business owner who believes some shady deals are happening in the city government. When he later dies in a car crash, and the family doesn’t want to talk to her or anyone, she begins to question if lucrative government contracts and the people responsible for them are to blame. It doesn’t help that Jolene’s editor wants her to cover a cupcake story and drop the city-hall case. When she begins to receive death threats, she’s torn between wanting to stay alive and not letting injustice slide. Estes has a background in television reporting, and she nails how to tell a story with strong characters whom readers can relate to. The compelling mystery and pursuit of answers make Jolene a fun and engaging amateur detective. The next entry in the series (the previous is Off the Air) cannot come fast enough

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Review

Dying Cry

by Jeff Ayers

A vacation/honeymoon for Mattie and Cole Walker, along with Cole’s young daughters, quickly goes awry in Mizushima’s (Gathering Mist) latest when the family is out snowshoeing and they hear a scream. Cole and the girls return to the lodge for help, while Mattie stays behind with her K-9 companion, Robo. They see someone hurt, but before they can get there to assist, a rockslide buries the victim, and if it weren’t for quick thinking, Robo would have been buried as well. The investigation proves rocky when Mattie realizes that the victim is someone her family knows; he’s the husband of Cole’s veterinary assistant, Tess. Mattie works with the investigative team for Timber Creek County, and when they start digging, the clues and evidence mount for Tess’s guilt. Isn’t it always the spouse? Mattie doesn’t believe it could be Tess, but the more she tries to prove her friend’s innocence, the more she puts her family in the crosshairs of a dangerous person who is willing to kill again. Mizushima has a terrific series with the Walkers and life in the fictitious Colorado Timber Creek County. Robo, her K-9 assistant, continues to shine. Ten books in, and Mizushima still gets better with every entry.

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Review

Departure 37

by Jeff Ayers

In the middle of the night, an airline pilot receives a frantic call from his mother, begging him not to fly in the morning. He is not the only one to receive a call from their mom, all with the same request. In some cases, their mother has been dead for some time. In a tiny town in Maine, a high-school girl named Charlie follows an odd-looking weather balloon to the remains of a military crash from the 1960s, and the pilot was her great-grandfather. The landing of a mysterious aircraft at an abandoned military base ties into a top-secret project of a scientist named Marty, who discovers a unique way to hide planes from radar. Add in the escalation of a mission to drop a nuclear bomb on Cuba at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. All of these random factors convene in this engaging and baffling thriller. The storyline alternates between Marty’s scientific research during the Kennedy administration and the present, when Charlie and another student search for answers. Carson, a pseudonym for Michael Koryta, delivers a terrific blend of horror and espionage that could be frighteningly real.

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Review

Nightshade

by Jeff Ayers

Sergeant Stilwell works for the sheriff’s office of Catalina Island, off Los Angeles, a job he was shoved into after an incident on the mainland involving his partner. Police politics and his dogged pursuit of the truth have placed him in a thankless job, but serving a warrant on a suspect in an animal-abuse case quickly turns ugly. When the murder of a young woman who waitressed at a gentlemen’s club puts him in the crosshairs of influential people, not to mention those of his former colleagues, Stilwell can either sit back and let everyone else solve things, or he can go against protocol and orders and pursue justice. Doing the right thing could jeopardize his career and future with a woman he’s fallen in love with on the island. Connelly has created a whole new cast of characters, and just like Bosch and Ballard, Stilwell and the rest are terrific. The case and the story flow nicely, and it wouldn’t be a Michael Connelly novel without a few surprises. His name on the cover guarantees a stellar read, and Nightshade is no exception and hopefully the start of a new series.

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