It’s Not Her by Mary Kubica
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is hard to rate. I enjoyed it even though I thought it was a piece of schlock tripe. It could be a 1 star or 5 star. Two related families are at a summer camp. Two people get killed and their teen daughter is missing. The author tells the story from two time frames – post-murder is told by Courtney, the sister of one of the murder victims, and pre-murder by Reese, the daughter of the victims and Courtney’s niece. Reese is a hormone-deranged teenager: surly, spiteful, rude, that is, until she sees the hot pool boy Daniel and Daniel takes an interest in her. Then it’s the best vacation ever. Courtney is a suspicious, paranoid airhead. She suspects everybody including her own husband, her nephew Wyatt, and of course Daniel. Then there’s the camp owner lady Mrs. Dahl who seems oddly detached from this horrible double murder. To top off the character list, there’s Mae and Cass, 10-year-old cousins, the youngest of the two families, and Detective Evans who seems competent and empathetic. The book kept me guessing and relatively entertained for several days, more so than the nonfiction book I left on the shelf.

So why do I complain that it’s schlock tripe? The author employs transparent cheap tricks to create a false sense of suspense and mystery. A woman hears a scream. The chapter ends and the scene switches. We have to wait for find out what the scream is for and it turns out to be something harmless and meaningless in the plot. Blood is found unexpectedly. The chapter ends so we have to wait for the explanation. Reese sneaks out at night to see Daniel and before she gets to the meeting spot she sees a form in the forest following her. The chapter ends and we have to wait. Courtney and Reese “feel” something is wrong, something ominous is looming but it’s nothing. You get the idea. I’ve never had to roll my eyes so much in my life. It’s impossible to figure out who the murderer is until the end because the motivation and unlikely mechanism that set the murder in motion isn’t revealed until then. The writing isn’t elegant or insightful; it’s a pure beach read aimed at the semi-literate. I feel guilty for reading to the end. Maybe that says more about me than the book.

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A Murder in Hollywood by Michael Crichton writing as John Lange
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’m a big Crichton fan and it was no surprise to me that I loved this book. The primary appeal was actually not the mystery, although that was good, but all the inside detail about the movie business and the shooting on location in particular. The title is an odd choice since all the action takes place near Tucson, Arizona where a western is being filmed. The writer is found dead. He was a nasty fellow and quite a few people have motive to kill him, but was it murder or an accident? The local authorities have tentatively ruled it an accident.

The studio head brings in Perkins, the top insurance investigator to serve as private eye. He finds a lot of things to be suspicious. The detective work is superb (Sherlock Holmes-like). The biggest flaw in the book for me is that it is too short and too fast a read.The author originally wrote this under the name of John Lange, a name he used before using his real name and publishing The Andromeda Strain. This confused me at first because this book supposedly was never published in those early days, only in 2026. But Wikipedia tells me this was written in 1973, four years after The Andromeda Strain and two years after that was filmed, so I presume he got his scoop from being involved in that filming. I don’t know why he was still writing under the name Lange by that point.

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The Oligarch’s Daughter by Joseph Finder
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Our hero Paul falls in love with Tatiana, the daughter of a Russian oligarch living in the U.S. Hmm, maybe that where the title came from. The writing jumps back and forth in time starting from the early days when Paul falls for her and then to present day where he is hiding in a small town under a different name building boats. He has a girlfriend there and it’s not Tatiana. He’s obviously on the run from someone, but who, and why? The story continues to ping pong back and forth in time. There are several suspense/action scenes as Paul is pursued and has to use his wits and some luck to survive. It’s reasonably entertaining until it gets near the end and the plot begins to have some big “twists.” At least the author and publisher may consider them twists. They’re called twists because they’re unexpected, but they’re actually unexpected because they’re preposterous eye-rolling fantasy. I lost interest after the big bloodbath scene (not a spoiler). As a retired FBI agent I’m picky, maybe too picky, about portrayals of the FBI in derogatory ways, but mainly totally impossible ways. The author seems to get all his information on the FBI from second-rate TV shows. If nothing else, it spreads misinformation about the FBI. I finished it because it’s a selection for my book club.

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