Thriller

Title: Black Wings
Author: Kathleen Jabs
Genre: Thriller/Mystery
Reviewer: Jim Greenwald

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): B006KJ198W

Lieutenant Bridget Donovan suspect the worst when her Naval Academy roommate, Audrey Richards, perishes in a botched take-off from an aircraft carrier. The Navy says it's an accident, but facts
don't add up. Could it be a suicide, or murder? Donovan's unofficial investigation into what really happened, both during their past Academy days and Richards' final hours, forces her to examine the concepts of honor, justice and the role of loyalty in pursuit of those ideals.

Title: The Shadow File
Author: Green Chandler
Genre: Fiction Thriller/Mystery
Reviewer: Terry Shoptaugh

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store):

Title: Mining Sacred Ground
Author: David E. Knop
Genre: Fiction, Mystery, Thriller
Reviewer, Marcia J Sargent

ISBN: B004YZB9JI

Ancestral spirits demand that Marine veteran Peter Romero protect the secrecy of a sacred burial ground, and the world becomes a stranger place than he’d ever understood. He is pitted against a psychotic anthropology professor in a life-and-death struggle through the hills, arroyos, and caves of central Arizona, and into another world.

When Romero’s cousin is murdered, the former military policeman is astonished that the local sheriff shows no enthusiasm for solving the crime. He is forced to recognize that, after a military career, greater danger lies ahead in his civilian life.

Romero takes up arms to mete out his own justice, but he must decide if he belongs to the world he sees, or to a spirit world in which he discovers the strength of his ancestors. He makes their power a part of his being. As a spirit warrior, Romero battles self-doubt, his wife’s threats of divorce, and local law enforcement who plan his murder. He confronts an armed gang bent on revenge, skirts federal agents intent on stopping him, and evades the deadly fire of a deranged sniper.

Aided by a wise tribal elder, Romero uncovers a tangle of clues that link his cousin’s death to trafficking in ancient treasures and a deadly conspiracy that centers him in their crosshairs. Romero combines his combat experience and the fighting skills of his ancestors to dispatch his enemies and protect an ancient secret.

Title: Mischief
Author: Will McIlroy
Genre: Fiction, Historical, Thriller
Reviewer: Joyce Faulkner

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): B005E070CC

A modern take on classic espionage.

At the start of World War II a British battleship mysteriously explodes at anchor inside a well defended home port. Given a final chance to resurrect a failed career, Intelligence Officer Richard Kast uncovers troubling evidence of espionage but his superiors whitewash the investigation and the attacks continue.

Without friends and unable to trust colleagues, Kast's pursuit of an elusive and unseen enemy becomes intensely personal, a jaded ex-boxer's stubborn physicality and resolve against the beguiling acumen and mischief of a master German spy in a shifting, deadly duel which weaves science, theater and early BBC television around real events. At stake, disclosure of illegal aid agreements between Churchill and FDR which threaten America's entry into the war and possession of a new device which revolutionizes radar and shifts the strategic balance of the war.

Similar societal outcasts, one man seeks redemption and the other retribution. Both alternate between hunter and hunted. Neither knows or expects quarter.

Title: Another Colorado Kill
Author: Bob Doerr
Genre: Fiction, Mystery, Thriller
Reviewer: Joyce Faulkner

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1590957857

Another Colorado Kill is the fourth book in the Jim West mystery/thriller series. In this fast paced story, Jim and friend Edward “Perry” Mason are in route to Colorado Springs to play some golf when they discover a dead body, an apparent murder victim, at a rest stop along the interstate highway. Perry’s stress levels hit the max during the subsequent police interview. He has a heart attack and the golf outing falls apart.

When the police find two more murder victims the next day, both killed with the same weapon that killed the victim whom West had discovered the day before, and the female victim has his name written on a notepad in her purse, their focus on West intensifies. West explains that by chance both the female victim and he had eaten at the same restaurant, but at separate tables, the night before. She had been with two men at the restaurant and had left before he had a chance to talk to her. They had met a few times in the past, but weren’t close. A Sheriff’s deputy, Lieutenant Michelle Prado befriends West, and the two work together in an effort to find the real murderer. As their relationship develops, West finds himself physically attracted to her, but does she feel the same way?

Soon an attempt is made on Jim’s life and he realizes that for some reason the killer, like the police, believes that West knows more about the killings than he has admitted. Jim finds himself playing “cat and mouse” with the killer while trying to convince the police that their focus on him is a waste of time and resources.

When the FBI moves in to help out, the pressure to solve the case mounts. West and Lieutenant Prado discover the local murders may be connected to a larger, nationwide FBI investigation into organized crime and political corruption. West finally has permission to go home to Clovis and is about to leave when the killer shoots Ollie, a young female Deputy whom had become friends with West. The killer leaves her to die on a dirt road. The killer had gone too far. As Michelle leaves with Ollie’s crumpled body in her back seat, West picks up Ollie’s issued 9mm and heads off into the woods to track the killer. The time had come to stop the killings. If he can catch up with the killer, only one of them will return alive.