Ali Reynolds, a former TV news anchor who returned to her hometown in Arizona after a series of personal crises, is sitting the waiting room of a Phoenix hospital burn ward. She’s an undercover operative for a local sheriff, hunting for the person who stripped a woman bare, doused her with gasoline and set her afire. The woman’s husband walks into the room.

Sula Moreno, despite her phobias and family tragedies, is about to take on the powerful, cold-blooded CEO of a Eugene, Ore., pharmaceutical company. Standing outside a corporate conference room, Sula hears the CEO arguing with a VP about undisclosed dangers of an anti-depressant drug that is about to be launched—with possibly deadly results. She records the conversation, but the CEO spots her.

It’s just another day in the life of Spenser and Hawk. Someone is trying to shake down the operator of a classy, upscale Boston whorehouse run by an old friend of Spenser’s. With expected aplomb, Spenser and Hawk dispatch two batches of thugs but find themselves in something much deeper than a simple protection racket.

Some people are comfortable reading more than one novel at a time. I’m not one of them. Frequently, I read nonfiction while I’m in the middle of a novel, but the thought of trying to keep track of characters and plots from two (or more?) novels at the same time takes the fun out of it. I like to live in novels, identify with characters, appreciate an author’s skill with words and, in the case of mysteries, try to solve the puzzle. Why would I want to do that with three crime books simultaneously? Continue Reading →