Hostile Witness (Rebecca Forster)

Lawyer Josie Baylor-Bates, legendary beach volleyball champion, is hired to defend Hannah Sheraton, 16, jailed at Sybil Brand (Los Angeles County's women's jail) for killing California Supreme Court Justice Fritz Rayburn. Her job is to prove that Hannah didn't murder Judge Rayburn, father of her stepfather, Kip Rayburn, Esq.

Josie faces obstacles right from the start, including interference from Kip, who has a hidden agenda and begins working at cross purposes against her efforts ... including insistence from Hannah's mother, Linda ... including her boss and potential law partner, Faye Baxter, not being exactly enthralled that it's personal, that Josie is helping a former bosom buddy.

But Josie is tough, and fights for what she believes is right for Hannah, as competitive as she ever was when she and Linda Rayburn played volleyball together for USC, or competitively as teammates on the beaches of Southern California.

As he paints a picture of a helpless old man being taken advantage of by a selfish, manipulating young girl, Deputy District Attorney Rudy Klein's questioning of his witnesses is a challenge to Josie's skills as a defense attorney, but she is up to the task. Unfortunately for Hannah, her stepfather is called as a witness for the prosecution, complicating matters considerably.

Josie is adamant about continuing to defend Hannah, despite extremely difficult developments. But in the process, she alienates friends and tears herself apart while methodically steering the proceedings to her advantage.

And then, a courtroom shock. One that determines the course of the trial, and opens the story up to a shocking twist that holds on to the reader and makes it all but impossible to lay the book down and stop reading.

Hostile Witness (2004)

Rebecca Forster

Signet digital edition ($2.99 list)

ISBN-13: 978-0451211637

Ping (Susan Lowry)

Don’t buy this book; it’s pretty much a waste of a good dollar.

When we first meet Canadian artist Kate, her city is reeling in a snow storm, and everything seems to be going wrong. Her husband, Jon, suddenly falls ill.

Nobody answers at 911, her neighbors aren't around to help. She reaches her dad on the phone, but he can't help. Then her toddler son falters as well, succumbing to "the disease."

Soon, Kate is sorely affected by something, vomiting continually, her body wracked with fever and covered with pustules. She somehow survives. Her family is dead, her neighbors and friends are dead ... disintegrated and desiccated. Kate is a sole survivor. She makes a connection with Thomas, 7-year-old boy who calls her but doesn't talk.

Okay, now that you know that, I'm going to do you a favor, and suggest that you skip the first third of the book. There's really nothing interesting to read, just mindless drivel designed to give you insight on Kate's mental state of being, but not doing a very good job of it.

How she got from Canada to St. Augustine, Florida, between Chapters 9 and 10 is not explained. Neither is her sudden communication with a resurrected imaginary childhood friend, Ping, who lives in Texas.

And then there is Jack, a former doctor convicted of murder and sexual abuse of a young boy, incarcerated in a maximum security prison. One day, about four months after the "event," he shows up on a beach and meets Kate. They become intimate and he falls in love. He wants to just stay there and live out their lives; she wants to search out Thomas and Ping. Her telepathic connection with Ping pays off. It turns out she's met him before.

Frankly, I skimmed over the last half of the book, and it was a chore even to do that. In fact, I quit reading before getting three-quarters of the way through. I give it 0 bookmarks with a recommendation that you save your dollar and consign Ping to the "Forget It" bin. It's awful.

Ping (2011)

Susan Lowry

Amazon Digital Services, Kindle edition ($1.00 list)

ASIN: B0058UW9H4

True Detective (Max Allan Collins)

First published in 1973, True Detective: A Nathan Heller Novel is author Max Allan Collins' first book in his Nathan Heller series. Since then, he's written 11 more Nathan Heller novels. We're fortunate that it's been reissued as an eBook, as the original and subsequent paperback edition prices have risen.

True Detective is historical fiction, with the fictional private investigator and former Chicago Police Department detective Heller working cases involving real-life historical figures. In fact, nestled among the chapters are pictures of many personalities, clipped from old newspapers or gleaned from dusty archival files.

Collins' book won the 1983 Best Novel Shamus Award from the Private Eye Writers of America.

I love the story's opening line: "I was off-duty at the time, sitting in a speak on South Clark Street, drinking rum out of a coffee cup." It says so much about 1932 Chicago and introduces us to Nathan Heller early in his career as a cop.

Nate quits the police force when he is tricked into being present at an attempt to kill Frank "The Enforcer" Nitti, Al Capone's cousin and heir to the mob. He opens his own private investigation office and is hired by Al Brown (alias for Al Capone) prevent Nitti from hitting Chicago Mayor Anton J. Cermak ("Ten Percent Tony").

The assigned hit man is the same one who killed Alfred "Jake" Lingle, a dirty reporter for the Chicago Tribune, and got away because Nate played the game and helped finger the wrong man when he was just a traffic cop, many years ago.

In what appears to be an unrelated case, Mary Ann Beame, a beautiful woman in the black dress (the stereotypical PI client) hires him to find her lost fraternal twin brother, Jimmy. They quickly become lovers, and take a side trip to her hometown of Davenport, Iowa, where Nate does research on her brother. It turns out that Jimmy was involved in gangland activities more than they thought.

Everything comes to a head at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair – “A Century of Progress” – a celebration seen from an "other angle" point of view as to its raison d’etre.

Historical characters make their appearance in True Detective: Edward "Ted" Newberry, Capone’s competitor on Chicago’s Southside; Barney Ross, one of greatest professional prizefighters of the time, top lightweight contender; Gen. Charles G. Dawes, former United States vice president and Chicago banker; Eliot Ness, yes THAT Eliot Ness; and actor George Raft, in town doing personal appearances publicizing "Undercover Man."

True Detective: A Nathan Heller Novel had me from the opening paragraph and didn’t let loose until the “what they did afterwards” conclusion. It’s gripping reading and evokes images of a famous bygone era in United States history.

I’ve already purchased the second Nate Heller novel; it’s on my bookshelf waiting its turn.

True Detective (2011)

Max Allan Collins

AmazonEncore (Paperback, $14.95 list; Kindle edition $4.50)

ISBN-13: 978-1612180885

Stealing Faces (Michael Prescott)

John Bainbridge Cray is a Tucson stalker/kidnapper who steals his victims' faces. But he's not your run-of-the-mill serial killer, he's the best-selling author of The Mask of Self, and director of Hawk Ridge Institute for Psychiatric Care.

Elizabeth Palmer has known of Cray for eight years and is on the run from something or someone. From the start, we wonder why she's really after the psychiatrist.

Cray remembers her, but she was someone else at the time, and one of his patients at Hawk Ridge after she shot her husband, Justin, 12 years ago. Many years and aliases later, they are reunited. She is not who she says she is; she is who he says she is. She's Kaylie McMillan.

Dr. Cray’s stalking her while she's stalking him. He wants her for his next victim; she wants to stop his killing.

Early on, author Michael Prescott presents a poser: Why has her husband's father, Anson McMillan, been helping her stay a few steps ahead of the law? Tucson Det. Roy Shepherd, head of what's being called the White Mountains Killer task force, hopes to find out.

So just what or who is the key to this mystery? Do any of the characters, actual or alluded to, have anything to do with the White Mountains Killer? The answer is revealed, soon enough, but not too soon, just before the focus turns to Hawk Ridge, a confluence of characters and agendas in a most-exciting climax.

John Cray is the sort of antagonist that will drive the reader's patience and tolerance to the brink. He's got a certain smugness and intellect that mocks his opponents and says, "Go ahead and try it, I can counter anything you do." You feel like reaching past the words and slapping him silly.

Instead, I kept on reading and enjoyed his getting his comeuppance when it really counted.

Stealing Faces (1999)

Michael Prescott

Signet Kindle edition ($2.99)

ISBN-13: 978-0451198518

Selection Event (Wayne Wightman)

Martin Lake, 29, has just spent 14-and-a-half months underground as part of a University of California isolation experiment. He had agreed to stay down there for a year, which, according to his calculations, was up some time ago.

Bored and anxious to get on with his life, Martin unlocks his doors and finds a note -- a rather cryptic note telling him to stay away from people until he figures out what's going on. Strange. So what IS going on? Why is it so quiet? Why isn't there anyone to greet him and debrief him?

His project leaders are there. Sort of. And they've left him a stack of newspapers that clears things up. There's been an epidemic – Mongolian Influenza Virus. MIV is virulent and lethal, more horrifying than AIDS, with a 98+% fatality rate. Governments broke down, civilization simply evaporated.

No phones, no Internet, no radio. He finds his parents' pet Collie, Isha, still alive, but just barely. He also meets a bipolar manic-depressive (yet self-proclaimed harmless) biker named Diaz.

It's not long before Cord Curtiz, "the First Leader," shows up at Marty's front door, thanks to a sassy young kid with a ghetto-blasting radio in his car, who they soon put in his place. Curtiz is an organizer with a mini-society of 15 other people, which should be a good thing. Except that Curtiz's self-aggrandizing philosophy is not "My way or the highway," it's "My way or you're dead." Curtiz wants Martin in the leadership circle, but Martin’s too smart for that.

Selection Event then morphs into a parallel short stories of Marty, Diaz and Isha, all on journeys focused on survival, seeking peace, safety and companionship. There are three worlds explored – the natural world of the living: a small world of Isha's, the larger world of Marty and his wandering little community, and the former-national world being explored by Diaz.

Diaz does his Easy Rider thing, blazing hundreds of miles a day through the West and America's heartland on his good days, stalling on his bad days, occasionally passing on Marty's address to people who look trustworthy. His odyssey took him north to Great Lakes country, down the East Coast to Florida, and through the Deep South.

Martin finds people, the most important being Winchell "Winch" Hobson of Reno, who was sent by Diaz, and Winnifred Waite Bunkley, who lives in the Sacramento State Capitol and calls herself Catrin.

His peaceful settlement grows slowly, until religious proselytizers begin tearing it apart with their passive-aggressive persuasive techniques. But Martin would prefer peaceful coexistence, if only they would let "his" people alone. It doesn't fly. His efforts are met with treachery and lies.

Selection Event moves along nicely – it’s a microcosm of human history and what we value, and it will grab you by the short hairs, holding you tight until you reach the end. And you know what the best part about Selection Event is? No zombies!

Selection Event (2011)

Wayne Wightman

Amazon Digital Services ($4.99 list)

ASIN: B004XNNGDS