Tuesday, December 13, 2022

Two by two

Prayers for the Dead ~ by Faye Kellerman, 1996, thriller, 406 pages

The brutal murder of Dr. Azor Sparks in an alley behind a restaurant is greeted with public outrage and a demand for swift, sure justice.  But the investigation into the well-known surgeon's death is raising too many questions and providing too few answers for homicide detective Lieutenant Peter Decker.  Why, for example, would the family of a man so beloved respond to his slaying with more surprise than grief?  And what linked a celebrated doctor with strict fundamentalist beliefs to a gang of outlaw bikers?  But the most unsettling connection of all is the one that ties the tormented Sparks family to Peter Decker's own and the secrets shared by a renegade Catholic priest and Decker's wife, Rina Lazarus.

Serpent's Tooth ~ by Faye Kellerman, 1997, thriller, 425 pages

A man walks into a trendy Los Angeles restaurant a disgruntled ex-employee with an automatic weapon and seconds later, thirteen people are dead and thirty-two more have been wounded.  It is a heinous act of mass slaughter that haunts Homicide Detective Peter Decker.  But, though eyewitnesses saw only the lone gunman who apparently took his own life after his bloody work was done —  evidence suggests more than one weapon was fired.  It is a disturbing inconsistency that sends Decker racing headlong into a sordid, labyrinthine world of Southern California money and power, on an investigation that threatens to destroy his reputation and his career.




The Confessor
~ by Daniel Silva, 2003, thriller, 400 pages

In Munich, a Jewish scholar is assassinated.  In Venice, Mossad agent and art restorer Gabriel Allon receives the news, puts down his brushes, and leaves immediately.  And at the Vatican, the new pope vows to uncover the truth about the church’s response to the Holocaust — while a powerful cardinal plots his next move.  Now, as Allon follows a trail of secrets and unthinkable deeds, the lives of millions are changed forever — and the life of one man becomes expendable




The Unlikely Spy ~ by Daniel Silva, 1996, thriller, 752 pages

"In wartime," Winston Churchill wrote, "truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies."  For Britain’s counterintelligence operations, this meant finding the unlikeliest agent imaginable — a history professor named Alfred Vicary, handpicked by Churchill himself to expose a highly dangerous, but unknown, traitor.  The Nazis, however, have also chosen an unlikely agent.  Catherine Blake is the beautiful widow of a war hero, a hospital volunteer — and a Nazi spy under direct orders from Hitler: uncover the Allied plans for D-Day.


Two books each by two authors

I picked up her library book delivery for a friend:  two thrillers by Faye Kellerman and two thrillers by Daniel Silva.  Do you think she was thrilled with her library loot?

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