Title: Mister X Author: John Lutz File Type: Mobi Subject:Mystery Description:From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. A page-turner to the nail-biting end, the fifth Frank Quinn investigation (after 2009's Urge to Kill) will leave readers breathless. After leaving the NYPD, Frank Quinn created his own investigation agency, joined by his former partner, Larry Fedderman, and his former lover, Pearl. Five years before, the notorious serial killer called the Carver claimed his last victim, Tiffany Keller. The cops have given up on catching the murderer, so Tiffany's twin, Chrissie, begs Quinn to reopen the case. Then Chrissie disappears, and the Carver starts killing again. Slimy police commissioner Harley Renz warns Quinn to back off of his investigation, but Quinn, Fedderman, and Pearl know they may be the only ones who can stop the killer. Misleading clues and dramatic suspense will keep readers pondering the intricacies of this twisty, creepy whodunit long after the last page is turned. br Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. FromStarred Review Their throats are sliced. An X is carved into their torsos, among other mutilations. Frank Quinn is a retired NYPD homicide detective who specialized in serial killers, so he’s not surprised when the identical twin of the last victim hires him to investigate. Police Chief Harley Renz, Quinn’s former and very ambitious partner, thinks Quinn and his associates—Pearl Kasner and Larry Fedderman, also former detectives—would make good additions to the task force charged with solving the crimes. Renz also assigns a renowned profiler to the case, the stunningly sexy and media-savvy Addie Price. The initial hurdle: Quinn must separate reality from fiction. His original client disappears; Quinn then learns she’s not the victim’s twin sister. There are twins, but she’s not one of them. What’s her angle? Oh, and the real twins were abused by their father, who’s started a new life as a midwestern politician. Addie Price’s background is fiction, and there’s a mystery woman stalking the investigators. A lesser writer would lose readers in this ever-evolving plot with shifting identities and motives, but this is John Lutz, winner of multiple Edgar and Shamus awards. By the very satisfying conclusion, it all makes perfect sense. Lutz has produced another procedural masterpiece. --Wes Lukowsky

Title: The Emperor of Ocean Park Author: Stephen L. Carter File Type: Mobi Subject:Fiction:Legal Description:Amazon.com ReviewA complex, smart mystery filled with intrigue, drama, and more than a little danger awaits in Stephen L. Carters engaging debut novel, The Emperor of Ocean Park. After the funeral of his powerful father (a federal judge whose nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court became a public scandal), Talcott Garland, an African American law professor at an Ivy League university, is left to unravel the meaning of a cryptic note and carry out the arrangements his father left behind. Armed with fortitude and familial devotion--though paranoid of his wifes fidelity--Talcott soon finds himself in an investigation that entangles him with a number of questionable Washington, D.C., denizens, including attorneys and government officials, law professors, the FBI, shady underworld figures, chess masters, and friends and family. All the while Talcott tries not to hurt his attorney wifes chance for a judicial nomination--and their fragile marriage--but the closer he comes to unraveling his fathers dark secrets, the more dangerous things become. Clocking in at over 650 pages, the novel could easily have been streamlined; many of Talcotts thoughts are unnecessarily repeated. But Carters storytelling skills are adept: tension builds, surprises are genuine, clues are not handed out freely. The prose, while somewhat meandering, can be crisp and insightful, as demonstrated in Carters description of the misguided paths of young attorneys who sacrifice blockquoteall on the altar of career... at last arriving... at their cherished career goals, partnerships, professorships, judgeships, whatever kind of ships they dream of sailing, and then looking around at the angry, empty waters and realizing that they have arrived with nothing, absolutely nothing, and wondering what to do with the rest of their wretched lives.blockquote--Michael FerchFrom Publishers WeeklyCarter, a Yale law professor and distinguished conservative African-American intellectual known for his nonfiction (The Culture of Disbelief), has written a first-rate legal thriller guaranteed to broaden his audience. The narrator, Talcott Garland, is a law professor at Elm Harbor University whose occasional Carteresque editorializing about politics and justice are saved from didacticism by his abiding existential loneliness. The mystery at the heart of the novel stems from Tals fathers disgrace: Judge Oliver Garland (a Robert Bork meets Clarence Thomas type) was nominated by Ronald Reagan for a Supreme Court seat, but brought down in the Senate hearings when it was revealed that he had a friendship with Jack Ziegler, a wild-card former CIA agent now rumored to be an organized crime kingpin. When the judge dies of what looks like a heart attack and Ziegler turns up at his funeral, Tal is initiated into a quest to uncover mysterious arrangements his father made in the event of his untimely demise. Various shady entities observe Tal chasing down the judges clues, which include a cryptic note (you have little time.... Excelsior! It begins!) and derive from chess strategy. Meanwhile, Talcott is going through a rough patch: his wife, Kimmer, a high-powered attorney, is probably cheating on him, his Elm Harbor law school colleagues are suspicious of him and a fake FBI man is following him around. As Talcott digs deeper, he uncovers a vein of corruption that runs all the way to the top, and his own life becomes threatened. This thriller, which touches electrically on our sexual, racial and religious anxieties, will be the talk of the political in-crowd this summer. br 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.