Briar Patch Books

Category: Thriller/Suspense

  • Big coal, big problems

    A few years ago, I flew as a passenger in a small private plane over a mountaintop-removal coal mine in West Virginia. The image of that huge, ugly wound on what had been a beautiful wilderness still haunts me. Most people will never see the ravages of modern strip-mining up close, but John Grisham’s new…

  • Where angels watch

    Here’s the latest in a long-running crime-novel series. Don’t worry if you missed out on the earlier books. You can always go back and enjoy them, too. Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson DEATH ANGEL. By Linda Fairstein. Read by Barbara Rosenblat. Penguin Audio. 11 CDs, 12½ hours. Also available in hardcover from Dutton. Alex Cooper,…

  • A chilling Barcelona tale

    Antonio Hill’s day job, according to the blurb on the cover of this audio book, is translating English-language fiction into Spanish. He must have analyzed what makes fiction successful as he pursued his translations. Like his debut thriller, The Summer of Dead Toys, published a year ago, his new book is expertly plotted, intelligently written,…

  • Beware the wild New Jersey Chihuahuas

    What fun! Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson TOP SECRET TWENTY-ONE. By Janet Evanovich. Read by Lorelei King. Random House Audio. 6 hours; 5 CDs. $32. How many wacky adventures can Stephanie Plum get into? How many cars can be destroyed? How often can her apartment be trashed? How long will her relationship with Joe Morelli…

  • Where there’s Hope, there’s a good story

    It’s always a pleasure when the latest installment in a good series arrives. Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson THE PRIME MINISTER’S SECRET AGENT. By Susan Elia MacNeal. Bantam Books. 301 pages. $15, paperback. Susan Elia MacNeal’s Maggie Hope series has become one of my favorites. In Maggie, MacNeal has created an intelligent, sensitive, complex heroine…

  • A Buffalo girl – detective

    A few books and CDs sit heavily on the table in my office, emanating a cloud of guilt whenever I look their way. These are books I read or listened to and liked enough to review – but something happened, and that review never made it out of my head and into print. One of…

  • Crime, Minnesota style

    By Linda C. Brinson It should come as no surprise to me or anyone else that John Sandford’s novels are very good. After all, everything he writes lands at the top of the bestseller lists. He brings the writing and investigative skills of a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist to his fiction, with good result. He’s a…

  • Spies: gentleman and madam

    Speaking of mysteries, foul deeds and intrigue: I seem to have missed book No. 3 in Carol K. Carr’s entertaining India Black series. My very strong clue was the arrival of what appears to be book No. 4 in my mailbox, listing the two previous novels I had read and reviewed (favorably, I might add),…

  • What is real?

    Sometimes, when she’s not writing historical novels or modeling Tudor costumes at book events, Anne Barnhill amuses herself by reading a good thriller. Reviewed by Anne Barnhill THE OTHER TYPIST. By Suzanne Rindell.  G. P. Putnam and Sons. 354 pages.  $25.95. In her debut novel, Suzanne Rindell dishes up a delicious psychological thriller, a cold…

  • Stephanie Plum, in hot pursuit of a giraffe in New Jersey?

    If you want to listen to a thoroughly entertaining audio book, it’s hard to beat the combination of a Janet Evanovich Stephanie Plum tale read by Lorelei King. Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson TAKEDOWN TWENTY. By Janet Evanovich. Read by Lorelei King. Random House Audio. 6 hours, 5 CDs. $32. Also available in print from…