Bad Luck and Trouble - Lee Child

I stayed up past 1am on a Wednesday to get through the final pages, simply because I couldn't wait to find out how the story would turn out! Jack Reacher is a past-CO of an Army investigations unit, and his old colleagues are turning up dead. Putting their skills to the test, the surviving members of Reacher's group pull back together to prove their old mantra, "you don't mess with the special investigators." Through the streets of Las Vegas and beyond, the unit proves the mantra remains true a decade after its last official action. The characters, action, and overall writing style of the Jack Reacher series is great, and I'm pleased to have discovered a new favorite author.

Lost on Planet China - J. Maarten Troost

I loved this author's first two books, and was intrigued by his decision to follow those tales of the South Pacific with a trip to China. I was disappointed. The first two books were filled with loosely connected stories that were each funny in their own right, but this book was more a beginning-to-end narrative of his trip and lacking in much of the hilarity that made the first two books so attractive. In all, we get a picture where materialism balances with poverty, where the Chinese government has destroyed history, and an underlying sense that each corner houses at least a million people. All true, and all conceptions that I already had before buying this book. It is not a bad book by any means, but when laid up against expectations, it fell short.

Shadow of Power - Steve Martini

Foremost, I loved this book! Although I have collected this author for years as a keystone writer of legal fiction, until this book I hadn't found the dust jacket copy that made me pick one off of my shelf. The plot here starts with the murder a law-professor-turned-writer while he was promoting a book criticizing the continued existence of the three-fifths compromise in the Constitution (actually true, even though it is dead law). A member of the Aryan Posse, and the son of Attorney Madriani's friend, is an employee at the hotel, and his fingerprints are on the weapon and his shoeprints are in the pools of blood. Much of the book takes place in the courtroom, but there's a fantastic backstory regarding a swing-justice of the Supreme Court and the mysterious J Letter which purports to spell out the backroom deals of the founding fathers regarding slavery. The writing in this story is very tight, I loved the characters, and for once I was surprised by an author! If you enjoy good legal fiction, a great mystery, or Constitutional history, this is a great book! (07-16-08)

Final Theory - Mark Alpert

This book has an interesting premise that applies the Da Vinci formula, but instead of a religious quest, this story has a science historian chasing the Einheitliche Feldtheorie, Einstein's unified field theory, the calculations that attach all things. When Einstein's past students start turning up dead at the hands of a mercenary, David Swift ends up at the middle of the quest when the lynchpin of the theory is revealed to him from the deathbed of the last living student. Soon the FBI is chasing him under a cloak of lies created to prejudice the public, and the mercenary Simon is seeking the secret for an unknown employer. This story had promise, and for the most part delivered. The science is not as pervasive as the dust jacket copy may have suggested, and is ultimately not all that important to the plot itself. I'll certainly seek out this author's next book.