Wounds by Alton Gansky

by admin | May 8, 2013 | Books, Contemporary Fiction, Law Enforcement, Suspense

Wounds

B&H Books (May 1, 2013)

by

Alton Gansky

 THE AUTHOR:

Alton L. Gansky is the author of 24 novels and 8 nonfiction works, as well as principle writer of 9 novels and 2 nonfiction books. He has been a Christie Award finalist (A Ship Possessed) and an Angel Award winner (Terminal Justice) and recently was award the ACFW award for best suspense/thriller for his work on Fallen Angel. He holds a BA and MA in biblical studies and Lit.D. He lives in central California with his wife.

In addition to his own writing, Alton Gansky has consulted and provided editing/ writing services to several CBA publishers and written copy, video scripts, and other works for the general business market. Through Gansky.Communications he has consulted with publishers and agents, as well as provided editing services. He is “the go to guy” for co-writing having been selected by Penguin, Waterbrook, Broadman Holman, and other publishers to work with their top tier authors.

Gansky is in frequent demand at writer’s conferences having taught and keynoted in California, Arizona, New Mexico, North Carolina, Delaware, Washington, and Canada. He has also been guest lecturer on suspense writing at Taylor University in Indiana.

Learn more about Alton and his books on his Website.
ABOUT THE BOOK:

A man’s lifeless body is found in the fresh soil of San Diego’s botanical garden. Cause of death is asphyxiation, an easy call for the medical examiner. More mysterious, however, are the tiny drops of blood on the victim’s skin, resulting from hundreds of punctures.

A rabbi leaving his house for work expects a regular day at the synagogue. That quickly changes when he discovers a dead man on his front lawn, clearly beaten to death.

Motorcycle riders racing along the empty streets of an abandoned military base stumble across another man’s corpse, its skin revealing long, red-purple marks of a thrashing given with wood dowels.

The numbers mount. Each week another victim and another mysterious clue in a game of mass murder the police don’t want to lose. The solution rests with Dr. Ellis Poe, a religious professor who only wishes to be left alone with his books and classes.

But evil must be faced, and the choice is no longer his own.

If you would like to read the first chapter of Wounds, go HERE.

MY REVIEW:

An unsolved murder three decades old has shaped the lives of two individuals. Carmen Rainmondi, San Diego homicide detective, has spent her life with one purpose in mind – finding her sister’s killer and putting away others like him. A loner, her private life has very little space for others. Dr. Ellis Poe has spent his life filled with guilt because he witnessed the murder of Carmen’s sister but did nothing to help. Work is his panacea and he too spends his free time alone. When one of Poe’s seminary students is the victim of a bizarre murder, Carmen and Ellis’s paths cross for the first time with Carmen the chief investigator on the case. By the story’s end both Poe and Carmen will be instrumental in solving a rapidly developing case as more bodies are found that seem to be connected.

Wounds is a novel that grabs the reader and takes them for an unforgettable ride with homicide detectives as they attempt to solve a case before more people die. The descriptions are so vivid that the reader sees what the detectives see, hears what they hear, and practically smells what they smell. Very little is left to the imagination yet it was all handled tactfully and non-offensively. The tension mounted with each chapter but brief moments of humor offered some much needed relief. Although the author dropped clues along the way, there were plenty of plot twists and surprises to keep me in suspense until the very end.

Wounds is the perfect book for those who enjoy a realistic murder suspense novel.

A Matter of Trust by Lis Wiehl (with April Henry)

by admin | May 1, 2013 | Books, Contemporary Fiction, Law Enforcement, Suspense

MY REVIEW:

Recently widowed Mia Quinn is just barely managing to hold things together on her own. Between the two jobs she holds down to keep her head above water financially and two children who need more of her time than she can spare, she doesn’t need more responsibilities. When her friend and colleague Colleen is murdered, Mia’s boss urges her to work with homicide detective Charlie Carlson to solve the case. She agrees to work on the case if she and Charlie are also allowed to work on a case involving school bullies that has grabbed her attention. Both cases throw some big surprises at Mia and Charlie as they work against the clock to find a killer who may be targeting others in the prosecutor’s office.

I have read several novels by Lis Wiehl during the past year and have added them all to my keeper shelf. “A Matter of Trust” has earned its place among them. Its well-crafted plot and realistic characters are characteristic of her other novels and is one reason why I will continue to read anything this author writes. The descriptions of the legal process were both interesting and informational. The suspense built at just the right pace with natural breaks for real life family matters that helped me as a reader to know the characters better, especially Mia. Although “A Matter of Trust” is not an overtly Christian novel, I appreciated both the references to faith and the absence of objectionable subject matter.

I hesitate to say more for fear of spoilers. If you are a fan of legal suspense, do yourself a favor and give “A Matter of Trust” a try. You may find yourself a fan of Lis Wiehl just like I did.

A digital copy of this book was provided for review by Thomas Nelson Publisher’s BookSneeze program.

ABOUT THE BOOK:
When life is murder, who can you trust?

One minute Mia Quinn is in her basement, chatting on the phone with a colleague at the prosecutor’s office. The next minute there’s a gunshot over the line, and Mia listens in horror as her colleague and friend Colleen bleeds to death.

Mia’s a natural for heading up the murder investigation, but these days she has all she can do to hold her life together. As a new widow with a pile of debts, a troubled teenaged son, and a four-year-old who wakes up screaming at night, she needs more time with her family, not less—and working Colleen’s case will be especially demanding. But Colleen was her friend, and she needs to keep her job. So she reluctantly teams up with detective Charlie Carlson to investigate Colleen’s death. But the deeper they dig, the more complications unfold—even the unsettling possibility that someone may be coming after her.

Lis Wiehl’s signature plot twists and relatable characters shine in this absorbing series debut . . . with an intriguing cameo from her best-selling Triple Threat series.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

Lis Wiehl is one of the nation’s most prominent trial lawyers and highly regarded commentators. Currently, she is the legal analyst and reporter on the Fox News Channel and Bill O’Reilly’s sparring partner in the weekly “Is It Legal?” segment on The O’Reilly Factor. Prior to that she was O’Reilly’s co-host on the nationally syndicated show The Radio Factor. She is also a Professor of Law at New York Law School. Her column “Lis on Law” appears weekly on FoxNews.com.

Prior to joining Fox News Channel in New York City, Wiehl served as a legal analyst and reporter for NBC News and NPR’s All Things Considered. Before that, Wiehl served as a Federal Prosecutor in the United States Attorney’s office.

Wiehl earned her Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School and her Master of Arts in Literature from the University of Queensland.

Wiehl is also the author of The 51% Minority, which won the 2008 award for Books for a Better Life in the motivational category, and Winning Every Time.

She lives with her husband and two children in New York.

Noted author Roald Dahl helped New York Times bestselling author April Henry take her first step as a writer. When April was eleven, she sent the famous children’s author a short story about a frog who loved peanut butter. He read it to an editor of an international children’s magazine, who then asked to publish it. April has since written several highly acclaimed mysteries and thrillers. Her books have been short-listed for the Agatha Award, the Anthony Award, and the Oregon Book Award, and translated into several languages. Two have been chosen for BookSense by the independent booksellers of America. April lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and daughter.