I received a promotional packet from Ripley’s Entertainment Inc which included book covers, the first book in the RBI series, and information about the books in the series. I was quite impressed by it. The packet informed me: “We have heard from many librarians and educators that Ripley’s should publish a series for younger children especially aimed to boys and reluctant readers. From this suggestion we are happy to present the RBI series.”

I really like the idea behind this series. Books for children and young adults that tells a story while at the same time incorporating some non-fiction into the mix as a group of teens from the RBI work to solve a mystery. Peppered throughout the pages are facts about aspects of the story in sidebar and plenty of illustrations to help kids imagine the action. I think this series is well-designed and thought out. It interests kids who like non-fiction and fiction, it appeals to young kids with the illustrations and older kids with the modern feel of technology and gadgets the teens in the RBI use which are pictured throughout the book. There are trading cards included in the book not just for characters, but for some of the facts (or fiction) found in the story. The characters are multicultural and a good mix of character types. And while the focus may have been boys and reluctant readers, I think this series will appeal to any kid in its age demographic.

The covers are slick and colorful — certainly eye-catching. The books aren’t too long so as to turn off reluctant readers by its size. And they’re affordable at $5.00 each. And I believe that books are some of the best gifts you can give. Especially when they’re interactive and fun like these.

Robert Langdon is back with another mystery to solve. His good friend, the very wealthy philanthropist Peter Solomon, is hosting an event at the Capitol Building in Washington, DC, and his keynote speaker has fallen ill. Robert is asked to fill in at the last minute, and is flown by private jet to Washington, where he is soon to discover that his friend actually did not invite him, but he is in urgent need of his help. Because instead of a glitzy event attended by Washington’s elite, Robert arrives to discover Peter’s hand, sawn off and placed strategically beneath the Capitol’s dome, with symbols tattooed on the fingertips containing a message for him to decipher. Robert realizes that he has been manipulated by a very sick man with the resources and cunning necessary to bring him to D.C. on an impossible quest to locate The Lost Symbol, an fabled icon of Masonic mythology. If Robert doesn’t help this man find what he’s looking for, Peter will die. Then, to make the matter even more urgent and mystifying, he is greeted with the arrival of the Central Intelligence Agency’s top agent, who takes Robert into custody and claims that he must do as this sick man requests, or the entire nation’s security will be compromised.

This all seemed a little familiar. And that’s because I could have been reading The Da Vinci Code instead. The similarities are many. TDVC: Old friend of Langdon’s found dead in museum with cryptic message pointing to clues which sets our symbologist hero on a seemingly impossible quest. TLS: Old friend of Langdon’s hand is found in museum with cryptic message (literally) pointing to clues which sets our symbologist hero on a seemingly impossible quest. TDVC: The security of the entire world depends on Robert keeping sensitive information from coming to light. TLS: The security of the entire world depends on Robert keeping sensitive information from coming to light. TDVC: rich with historical information about Opus Dei and architectural and art history. TLS: rich with historical information about the Masons and architectural and art history. TDVC: contains complex code to break. TLS: contains complex code to break. TDVC: Robert is teamed up with beautiful, intelligent scientist who has access to critical information. TLS: Robert is teamed up with beautiful, intelligent scientist who has access to critical information. Both books feature villains who are not averse to murdering to get what they need to achieve a goal that is “bigger than us all” and who would die for their causes. Both books take place in the same amount of time — one long, thrilling night.

Yes, Brown reused his formula here, and when you consider how wildly successful The Da Vinci Code was, who can blame him? Does it detract from the story and make it less of a good read? A teeny bit, yes, but perhaps only to those of us who read a book to appreciate its writing as much as its story. But does it matter in the end? Not really. This is still a good book. I appreciated the history in it, and, like The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons before it, I found myself wanting to stop at certain points as I read to go look up things on the Internet to see if Brown really was accurate in the information he presented. So while I did find the story formulaic, and a few of the characters to be underdeveloped and underused, I am still impressed with the effort that is present within the details. This was not a book that was put together in a hurry. In fact, this is a book that was long overdue for fans of Brown, especially following the success of The Da Vinci Code. Originally intended to be published in 2006 under the title The Solomon Key, this novel was pushed back so Brown could keep working on it (and probably due in part to his legal issues at the time). I can appreciate that time was taken to make the novel better, despite the pressure he no doubt felt to publish so quickly after the bestseller that was The Da Vinci Code.

I can’t say that this is his best work, but it’s still a good read and a page-turner. Thanks to Victor at Special Ops Media and Doubleday for the review copy. (more…)

Myron Bolitar receives a pleading phone call from a woman he spent one passionate weekend with 10 years ago, asking him to fly to Paris to see her. He hasn’t seen Terese Collins since that weekend, but something in her voice convinces him this isn’t a booty call she’s asking for. He can tell she needs his help, and as soon as he lands in Paris and is pulled into questioning at the airport by the local authorities, he knows Terese is in bigger trouble than he ever could have imagined.

Myron soon discovers Terese is a suspect in the murder of her ex-husband, another man she hasn’t seen in ten years, but one who called her to meet him in Paris with the promise that she would learn something that would change her life forever.  When the ex was found brutally murdered shortly after, Terese becomes the prime suspect when it is discovered that Terese and her ex-husband had a child and that child’s blood was also discovered at the scene of her father’s murder, but the child is nowhere to be found. That’s not the problem though, the problem is that their little girl was supposed to have died in a car accident ten years ago; an accident that left Terese in a coma long enough to miss her daughter’s funeral. After waking up from the coma, and discovering she was responsible for the accident, the grief and guilt caused Terese to estrange herself from her husband and leave him. But it may now be possible that the girl did not die after all, but instead had been taken away and raised in a cult to become a domestic terrorist for an international ring that Myron soon finds himself entangled with, leaving him fighting for his and Terese’s lives as they search to discover what happened to her daughter and ex-husband.

Personally, I thought this book was a good read, though it did sort of fall apart for me with the whole terrorist ring and its ties to 9/11. I think that sort of thing just isn’t my kind of reading. But that being said,  I did read it all in one go, something I haven’t done is a very long time, especially not since the birth of my baby boy a year ago, so it was thrilling enough to keep me engaged from start to finish. However, I wouldn’t say this is the sort of book that makes you think or work your brain too hard the way good suspense and complex details found in something like Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code can do, but it’s an entertaining read and has some fun characters in it, particularly Myron’s eccentric friend, Win, and their co-workers at his legal agency.

I haven’t read many of Coben’s books, and this is my first of his Myron Bolitar novels, but I can see myself picking up more of them for some quick, entertaining reads. (more…)

Joe Carpenter lost his wife and two daughters to a horrific plane crash with no survivors that authorities blamed on a mechanical error. He accepts the explanation, but can’t accept his family’s deaths. For a year, Joe has shut himself off from the world, locked up in his apartment, grieving his losses. On the first year anniversary of their deaths, Joe visits their graves and finds a woman there, photographing their tombstones. The woman claims to be the sole survivor of the plane crash that had killed over 300 others on board. But before she can explain how this is possible, she is chased away by two men intent on keeping her quiet. Joe’s curiosity is piqued, and he starts to think that if it’s possible she survived, perhaps others did too… perhaps his own wife and daughters could have survived. Using his skills as a former crime journalist, Joe starts investigating the two men trying to keep the sole survivor quiet, and begins to learn things about the crash that suggest all is not as it seems, and perhaps there is hope that his family will be returned to him. (more…)

Twenty years ago, seventeen-year-old Paul Copeland was a summer camp counselor making out with his girlfriend Lucy in the woods behind their coed camp when he should have been keeping watch. Only a short distance away, four teenagers, including Paul’s sister Camille, sneak into the woods together. Two of them are never seen again, including Camille, and the bodies of the other two are found brutally murdered, one tied up, the other buried in a shallow grave.

Today, Paul is the county prosecutor in Essex, New Jersey. He’s successful, respected and on the path to great things. But he’s had a lot of tragedy in his life: his sister’s body has never been found, and his mother, having never recovered from Camille’s death, abandoned Paul and his father shortly after that night in the woods and never returned. His father, gone crazy from searching the woods for Camille’s body over the last twenty years, recently died. And to top it all off, Paul has also become a widower in the last year, left to raise his six-year old daughter on his own after his wife loses the battle with a long illness. (more…)

Lena Fleet left Alabama for Chicago ten years ago, vowing to God that she would do 3 things: stop fornicating with every boy that crossed her path, never tell a lie, and never go back to Alabama to face her ghosts. As long as God didn’t bring Alabama and her past back to her, they had a deal.

And Lena has kept up her part of the deal: she’s been completely celibate, she’s managed to never tell a lie, and in the ten years since she’s left Alabama, she hasn’t once returned, not even for funerals, celebrations, Christmas or vacations.

But one day, an old classmate named Rose Mae Lolley shows up at her door, wanting Lena’s help to track down an old boyfriend, Jim Beverly. And at that moment, Lena knows that God broke their deal: here was Alabama on her doorstep, looking for the boy she killed ten years ago and thought she had gotten away with. (more…)

This book is very good. I’m tempted to leave it at that and ask you to take my word for it because there is so much happening in this story that it’s daunting to even think about how to review it well enough to give those of you who haven’t read it a good sense for it. But I’ll try.

This is a novel that combines true science with thrilling story-telling. It addresses the way the media, environmental agencies and government institutions can manipulate scientific facts to perpetuate a state of fear about something that need not be feared over at all. This is a novel about politics, science, and terrorism; three things I admit that I don’t care much for thinking about. So I never thought I’d pick up a book like this, let alone enjoy it, but I did (if you’re wondering what made me pick it up in the first place, it’s because it showed up on many “If you liked The Da Vinci Code, you might want to try…” lists. So I did and I didn’t bother reading the jacket, I just jumped in. That, plus I’ve liked Crichton’s other books).

Let me just say however, that I don’t want to lead anyone to believe I’m throwing my personal beliefs behind the theories presented in this book. I do think that his theories and ideas are well-documented and are certainly not unbelievable, but at the same time, I don’t know much about global warming beyond what I hear on the news and read from time to time. Reading this one book is not going to give me all I need to know to make some informed opinions on the matter. (more…)

Nicole Sullivan is desperate to bring her low-rated show, Twenty-Four Hours Investigates, up in the ratings so she can secure herself a better job in the big leagues. All she needs is one good story to get noticed.

She decides to run a story centered on a unsolved mystery back in her hometown of Pawley’s Island, South Carolina. She’s taking a big risk with a special live edition of the show, featuring her mother Leonara James, a famous psychic. Leonora is going to hold a seance at the scene of a triple homicide and attempt to speak to the spirits of the three girls who were brutally murdered there fifteen years earlier in an attempt to discover the identity of the killer who is still at large.

Joe Franconi is a big-city cop who, because of a bust gone wrong, has recently been transferred to Pawley’s Island to take over the new position of Police Chief. Apart from the brutal murders fifteen years earlier, nothing ever happens in this idyllic resort town. That is, nothing until Twenty-Four Hours Investigates comes to town. (more…)