Rex’s reviews of anything (but mostly books)

Look Again - Lisa Scottoline

Ellen Gleeson reached the mommy track via an unconventional route: after writing an article about a sick boy in a Philly hospital, the thirty-something single reporter ended up adopting little Will when his birth mother relinquished him. Now three, Will’s the apple of his Mommy’s eye, and there’s no way she could conceive of her life without him.

No way, that is, until the card comes in the mail. You know the ones: white cardboard advertising circulars with the words “Have You Seen Me?” printed beside a picture on the back. Little Timothy Braverman, kidnapped two years ago in Florida, looked exactly like Will. And he was the same age. And some strange form of “adoptive-mother’s intuition” let Ellen know that the two were the same child…

Even though there were layoffs in the wind at her paper, Ellen knew it was up to her to prove that Will was not the missing boy. If doing so placed her job in jeopardy – not to mention maybe never seeing hunky Marcelo, her Brazilian editor, again – there was no comparison. And so Ellen began doing what good reporters do: she started her own investigation. But a strange thing happened along the way: people connected with the adoption kept dying…
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David Baldacci: First Family

Twelve-year-old Willa Dutton has gone missing; snatched from her suburban Virginia home by heavily-armed men who left her mother lifeless on the kitchen floor. What sets this apart from your ordinary Amber Alert is that Willa’s aunt Jane just happens to live in a big White House in Washington, DC. If the First Lady’s favorite niece has been snatched, it’s gotta be Eye-rainian terrorists, right? Wrong. Sam Quarry’s home-grown, and he’s not a terrorist; or at least he doesn’t think he is. Instead, he’s the man with the plan – and the plan is pure and simple revenge.

As luck would have it, the kidnapping was nearly foiled by ex-Secret Service agents turned PI Sean King and Michelle Maxwell, who’d been called to the Dutton home on unspecified business. Since the two are already in the loop and, more importantly, since King has a personal relationship with First Lady Jane Cox; they’re automatically on the case. That makes neither the FBI nor the Secret Service happy, but, then, King and Maxwell have never been good at making people happy… Read the rest of this entry »

Long Lost - Harlan Coben

The optimists around me always say that when one door closes, another one opens (they’re the same people who apparently envision lemonade stands every block…). For Myron Bolitar, however, the action went backwards: one door opened and then the other one closed. Just hours after he received a phone call from Long Lost love Terese Collins begging him to meet her in Paris, his current inamorata Ali informed him that she was moving to Arizona and not to bother following. As Bolitar’s bosom buddy-slash-bodyguard Win pointed out; the delectable Ms Collins had a world-class derriere and the Air France ticket was paid for, so why not? Especially after a little scuffle might’ve put the two in some legal straits…

Welcome to Paris, where Terese – one of those rare women who just get more beautiful with age – had some revelations. The first was that she’d come to Paris at the request of her ex-husband (“Your what?!” he cried), and the second was that Rick Collins was missing: murdered, in fact, according to the gendarmerie. DNA found at the scene was that of the dead man’s daughter – a daughter with Terese. Problem number one: Rick and Terese did have a daughter, who died more than a decade ago. Problem number two: Terese knew quite well she’d had but one child.
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Alex Treven hasn’t seen big brother Ben in over a decade; not since the elder Treven missed their mother’s long, slow decline and blew off her funeral. That’s just fine by the up-and-coming patent attorney: the brothers’ relationship has been distant, at best, since high school. Alex doesn’t even know (or care) where the globe-trotting Ben is or what he’s doing, other than that it’s something involving cloaks and daggers – the stuff of James Bond movies and Barry Eisler novels.

When the brainy legal eagle’s client is murdered and Alex himself is attacked, however; it becomes apparent that just knowing about “Obsidian” could get a guy killed (see, I told you Alex was smart). Small wonder he starts looking for some brawn to protect him, and even smaller wonder who gets the call. It’s just as well, Ben’s in line for a little vacation: he’s sort of hot after his latest caper: the assassination of a pair of Iranian nuclear physicists and their minders.

Back in Silicon Valley, things are complicated by presence of brainy, beautiful Sarah; an associate at Alex’s firm who also knows too much about Obsidian. Though little brother lusts after the raven-haired beauty (and who wouldn’t?), big brother distrusts out of hand anyone whose last name is Hosseini – and he’s the one calling the shots. Handed by unkind fates the task of protecting a pair of clueless civilians – one of whom is a bleeding-heart Farsi-spouting stone fox and the other the brother he detests – Ben Treven nonetheless gets to work; and therefore, several more people get dead. The next few days just might teach the two brothers a lot about each other. If they live…
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