All posts by Keith Brownlow

HIDDEN WAR

Title: Hidden War

Author: Lt. John Nores, Jr.

Tallying up the numbers from the start of the pilot program in July 2013 through December 2015, the Marijuana Enforcement Team’s production level painted an ugly picture. During our first fire years of operations, the unit completed 800 arrest, eradication and reclamation missions. On those missions, we destroyed 3 million poisoned marijuana plants, seized and destroyed 58,677 pounds (29 tons) of processed marijuana, made 973 felony arrests, seized 601 firearms, removed 899,945 pounds (450 tons) of grow site waste and other pollutants, recovered and removed 2.35 million feet (445 miles) of black poly pipe, removed 91,728 pounds (46 tons) of fertilizers, extracted 756 gallons of illegal of illegal toxic chemicals and dismantled 793 water-stealing dams and diversions from drug trafficking organization grow complexes. Those dams stole approximately 12 billion gallons of water, mostly during the peak of California’s drought period, costing 12 billion gallons of much needed drinking and agricultural irrigation water had we not eliminated the operation.

Illegal marijuana growers divert millions of gallons of water, contaminate sensitive habitat with toxic chemicals and kill threatened wildlife–and they endanger public safety with weapons, bobby traps and poison. this explosive new book details Nores ‘dangerous missions to take down some of the most destructive criminals in America.

T

THE PANDORA ROOM

Title: The Pandora Room

Author: Christopher Golden

From the New York Times bestselling and Brian Stoker Award–winning author of Ararat comes the sensational new novel that will turn ancient lore into a modern-day horror. In one ancient variation on the myth of Pandora’s Box, there wee two jars, one for Pandora and one for her sister, Anesidora. One contained all the blessings of the gods, the other all the world’s curses.

Archaeologist Sophie Durand has spent her life studying ancient mythology and languages. Years of work have led her to the greatest discovery of her career, a subterranean city deep in the heart of Northern Iraq. No one has set foot within these walls for thousands of years. When Sophie’s team uncovers a secret chamber whose walls are covered in cuneiform, along with a warning from Alexander the Great himself, history and mythology begin to merge. The writings confirm the old Pandora tale of two jars. but the chamber guards only one. It’s a find that could make history, or start a war.

Weird-science expert Ben Walker is called in to join Sophie’s crew as the mystery deepens and grows ugly. Those who believe the myth want to know which jar has been found in the Pandora Room, the one containing blessings or the one full of curses. Governments rush to lay claim, but jihadi forces aren’t waiting for the dust to settle. Whatever the jar contains, they want it, no matter who they have to kill or what will emerge when they open it. For Sophie, Walker, and the others, the Pandora Room may soon become their tomb.

In a novel that breathes new life into the supernatural thriller, Christopher Golden’s pulse-pounding tale is not to be missed.

SOMEONE KNOWS

Title: Someone Knows

Author: Lisa Scottoline

Allie Garvey is heading home to the funeral of a childhood friend. She is not only grief-stricken, she’s full of dread. Because going home means seeing the other two people with whom she shares an unbearable secret.

Twenty years earlier, a horrific incident shattered the lives of five teenagers, including Allie. They played a dangerous prank that went tragically wrong. he teenagers never told anyone, believing that getting caught would be the worst thing that could happen. But time has taught Allie otherwise. Not getting caught was far worse. The dark secret has eaten away at her, distancing her from everyone she loves, including her husband. Because she wasn’t punished by the law, Allie has punished herself, and it’s a life sentence.

Now Allie stands on the precipice of losing everything. She’s ready for a reckoning, determined to learn how the prank went so horribly wrong. she digs to unearth the truth, but reaches a shocking conclusion that she never saw coming–and neither will the reader.

Someone Knows is Lisa Scottoline’s most powerful novel to date. Starting page turning and with an ending that’s impossible to forget, this is a tour de force by and author at the top of her game.

PULSE

Title:  Pulse

Author:  Michael Harvey

Boston, 1976.  Daniel Fitzsimmons is just sixteen years old and totally on his own–his parents are long dead, and his beloved brother, Harry, is off at Harvard, the star of the football team.  When Harry is murdered, Daniel wrestles not only with inconsolable grief but with strange new powers he never knew he possessed.  Powers he’s not sure he can control.

Detectives William Barkley “Bark” Jones and Tommy Dillon are assigned to Harry’s case.  The veteran partners thought they’d seen it all, but they are stunned when Daniel wanders into the crime scene.  Even stranger, Daniel claims to have known the details of his brother’s murder before even happened.  The investigation leads the detectives deep into the Fitzsimmons brothers’ past.  They find heartbreaking loss, sordid characters, and metaphysical conspiracies.  Even on the rough streets of 1970s Boston, Jones and Dillon have never had a case like this.

Pulse is laced with real danger and otherworldly twists–a stunningly original and mind-bending novel that stretches the boundaries of the crime thriller.

BLOOD OATH

Title:  Blood Oath

Author:  Linda Fairstein

Assistant DA Alexandra Cooper of the Manhattan Sex Crimes Unit is finally back at work following a leave of absence., and not a moment too soon.  With more women feeling empowered to name their abusers, Alex is eager to return to the courtroom to do what she does best.  But even she can’t anticipate the complexity of her first case when she meets Lucy, a young woman who testified years earlier at a landmark federal trial….and now reveals that she was sexually assaulted by a prominent official during that time.

Yet Lucy’s isn’t the only secret Alex must uncover, with rumors swirling about one colleague’s abusive conduct behind closed doors and another’s violent, mysterious collapse.  As the seemingly disparate cases of her client, adversary, and friend start to intertwine, Alex along with NYPD detectives Mike Chapmen and Merce Wallace, finds herself in uncharted territory within Manhattan’s Rockefeller University, a premier research institute, hospital, and cornerstone of higher learning.  But not even the greatest minds in the city can help her when unearthed secrets begin to collide in dangerous ways…and unless she can uncover the truth, the life saving facility just may become her grave.

THE MALTA EXCHANGE

Title:  Th e Malta Exchange

Author:  Steve Berry

The pope is dead.  A conclave to select his replacement is about to begin.  Cardinals are beginning to arrive at the Vatican, but one has fled Rome for Malta in search of a document that dates back to the fourth century and Constantine the Great.

Former Justice Department operative Cotton Malone is at Lake Como, Italy, on the trail of legendary letters between Winston Churchill and Benito Mussolini that disappeared in 1945 and could rewrite history.  But someone else is after the same letters, and when Malone obtains, then loses, them, the ensuing hunt attracts the attention of the legendary Knights of Malt.

The knights have existed for more than nine hundred years, the only warrior-monks to survive into modern times.  Now they are a global humanitarian organization, but within their ranks lurks trouble–the Secreti–an ancient sect of the knights intent on affecting the coming papal conclave.  With the help of Magellan Billet agent Luke Daniels, Malone races the rogue cardinal, the knights the Secreti

, and the clock to find what has been lost for centuries.  The final confrontation culminates behind the walls of the Vatican, where the election of the next pope hangs in the balance.

CEMETERY ROAD

Title:  Cemetery Road

Author:  Greg Iles

So begins Cemetery Road, Greg Iles’s most captivating and propulsive novel to date.  Marshall M McEwan is one of the most successful journalists in Washington, D.C.  But as a chaotic presidential administration lifts him from print fame to television stardom, Marshall discovers that his father is terminally ill, and he must return to his childhood home–a place he vowed he would never  go back to.

Bienville, Mississippi, is no longer the city Marshall remembers.  His family’s 159-year-old newspaper is failing, and Jet Talal, the love of his youth, has married into the family of Max Matherson, one of a dozen powerful patriarchs who rule the town through the exclusive Bienville Poker Club.  To Marshall’s surprise, the Poker Club has offered economic salvation to this community on the brink of extinction, in the form of a billion-dollar Chinese paper mill.  But on the verge of the deal’s consummation, two deaths rock Bienville to the ore, threatening far more than the city’s economic future.

Joining forces with his former lover–whose husband stands to inherit a seat in the Poker Club–Marshall begins digging for the truth.  but he and Het soon discover that the soil of Mississippi is a minefield whose explosive secrets can be far more destructive than injustice.  By the time Marshall grasps the long-buried truth about hos own history–and the woman he loves–he would give almost anything not to have to face it.

THE BORDER

Title:  The Border

Author:  Don Winslow

What do you do when there are no borders?  When the lines you though existed simply vanish?  How do you plant your feet to make a stand when you no longer know what side you’re on?

The war has come home.

For more than forty years, Art Keller has been on the front lines of America’s longest conflict: the war on drugs.  His obsession with defeating the world’s most powerful, wealthy and lethal kingpin–the godfather of the Sinaloa Cartel, Adan Barrera–has left him bloody and scarred, cost him the people he loved, even taken a piece of his soul.

Now Keller is elevated to the highest ranks of the DEA, only to find that in destroying one monster he has created thirty more, who are wreaking even more chaos and suffering in his beloved Mexico.  And not just there.

Barrera’s final legacy is the heroin epidemic scourging America.  Throwing himself into the gap to stem the deadly flow.  Keller finds himself surrounded by enemies, men who want to kill him, politicians who want to destroy him, and worse, the unimaginable–as incoming administration that’s in bed with the very drug traffickers Keller is trying to bring down.

Art Keller is at war not only with the cartels, but with his own government.  And the long fight has taught him more than he ever imagined.  Now he learns the final lesson: There are no borders.

In a study that moves from the deserts of  Mexico to Wall street, from the slums of Guatemala to the marbled corridors of Washington, DC, Winslow follows a new generation of narcos, the cops who fight them, street traffickers, addicts, politicians, money launderers, real estate moguls, and mere children fleeing the violence for the chance of a life in a new country.

The Border is an unflinching portrait of modern America, a story of–and for–our time.

WE MUST BE BRAVE

Title:  We Must Be Brave

Author:  Frances Liardet

December 1940:  As German bombs fell on Southampton, England the city’s residents flee to the surrounding villages.  In Upton village, amid the chaos, newly married Ellen Parr finds a girl asleep, unclaimed at the back of an empty bus.  Little Pamela, it seems, is entire alone.

Ellen has always believed she does not want children, but when she takes Pamela into her home, the child cracks open the past Ellen thought she had escaped and the future she and her husband, Selwyn, had dreamed for themselves.  As the war wages on, love grows where it was least expected, surprising then all.  But with the end of the fighting comes the realization that Pamela was never theirs to keep.

A story of courage and kindness, hardship and friendship, We Must Be Brave is a luminous and profoundly moving novel about the people we rescue, and he ways in which they rescue us in return.

JUDGMENT

Title:  Judgment

Author: Joseph Finder

It was nothing more than one-night stand.  Juliana Brody, a judge in the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, is rumored to be in consideration for the federal circuit and maybe someday, the highest court in the land.  While at a conference in a Chicago hotel, she meets a gentle, vulnerable man and has an unforgettable night with him–something she’s never done before.  They part with an explicit understanding that this must never happen again.

But back home in Boston, Juliana realizes that this was no random encounter.  The man from Chicago proves to have an integral role in a case she’s presiding over-a sex-discrimination case that’s received national attention.  Juliana discovers that she’s been entrapped, he night of infidelity captured on video.  Strings ae being pulled in high places, a terrifying conspiracy unfolds that will turn her life upside down.  But soon it becomes clear that personal humiliation–even the possible destruction of her career–is the least of her concerns, as her own life and the lives of her family are put in mortal jeopardy.

In the end, turning the tables on her adversaries will require her to be as ruthless as they are.