police consultant

Red Queen by Juan Gómez-Jurado – Book Review

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Red Queen by Juan Gómez-Jurado – Book Cover

Antonia Scott is the smartest person in the world. She’s a member of a special covert police unit designed to crack the most complex criminal cases. Her codename? Red Queen. But for the past three years, Antonia has been in a state of near-hibernation after an attack took away the one person she cared for most in the world…

The Red Queen Is Back in Action

With Red Queen, Juan Gómez-Jurado has broken through the nearly impenetrable barrier of international recognition after publishing numerous books in Spanish. Not an easy feat if you’re not writing in English. To pull it off, you need something truly extraordinary—something that grabs readers’ attention immediately.

And Antonia Scott is precisely that.

The superintelligent yet quirky and eccentric personality commands both your admiration and your sympathy, making her even easier to relate to. (Much like Lisbeth Salander, a.k.a. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.)

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The Last Mile by David Baldacci – Book Review

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The Last Mile by David Baldacci - Book Cover

Amos Decker Used to Punch Above His Weight

I bet you thought Memory Man, the first book in the Amos Decker series, was pretty great. Sure, beneath the surface it was just another run-of-the-mill crime novel—but it still stood out as something oddly gripping and refreshingly original, thanks to its 286-pound, grumpy, and socially awkward main character who remembers literally everything that has ever happened to him, down to the exact second. In The Last Mile, this oddball Amos Decker returns—a man who, on top of everything, had to avenge the murder of his own family. Now that was one hell of a start.

Especially if, like me, you once swore off David Baldacci for good, convinced he was a truly awful writer. And yet, Memory Man—I’ve got to admit—turned out to be weirdly irresistible.

Long story short: Amos caught the bastard who murdered his family—that nasty little piece of garbage—and ended up joining the FBI as an outside consultant. Just like Patrick Jane in the final season of The Mentalist.

Hey—Decker’s Starting to Lose His Mind!

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Gods of War by James Lovegrove – Book Review

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Gods of War by James Lovegrove - Book cover

A Lukewarm Investigation Begins

In Gods of War, James Lovegrove’s crime novel, Sherlock Holmes is now in his sixties. No surprise, then, that his joints creak and crack like an old staircase. And chubby Dr. Watson? Let’s be honest—he’s not exactly in top shape anymore either. Lucky for them, they barely need to do anything in this story.

The great detective, get this, can’t even be bothered to pull off the biggest cliché in every Holmes story—using his signature method to deduce, without breaking a sweat, what extraordinary adventures his long-lost buddy had on his train ride—because, supposedly, he’s “too excited about the new case.” Which, by the way, turns out to be nothing more than a pathetic little burglary.

(Feels a bit cheap, doesn’t it? I mean, how hard would it have been for Lovegrove to throw in that Watson’s seatmate across the aisle was an elderly, half-limping horse trader from Devonshire on his way to buy feed for his prize stallion, Oxhead—while to his right sat a spinster in a pheasant-feathered hat, off to visit her sister, who suffers from trichotillomania, casually reading Northanger Abbey, fourth edition.

Cost him nothing.)

Laurel and Hardy Back on the Case!

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