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Being released on April 7th from Poisoned Pen Press is the thriller "After She Wrote Him" by Sulari Gentill, winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction. There's been a lot of buzz around this title and I was fortunate enough to get my hands on an ARC earlier this year.

The novel centers around Madeleine d'Leon, a former corporate lawyer who quit her day job to write quirky whodunit mysteries. Her next writing project is a crime novel that centers around the character Edward "Ned" McGinnity, a literary author who finds himself in a middle of a murder mystery when the famous critic Geoffrey Vogel is murdered at an art gallery event.

Madeleine becomes obsessed with her creation and at times she cannot tell between what's real and what's fiction.

Final Thoughts

From my understanding, After She Wrote Him was originally released in 2017 under the title Crossing the Lines, though I'm not for sure if that was an Australian release, which is the author's home country. Sometimes titles do get changed for USA releases. Then again, I might be completely clueless on the subject and wasted an entire paragraph on nothing.

Anyway, I became interested in reading After She Wrote Him after hearing a lot of buzz about the novel, which resulted in me getting my hands on an ARC. To keep things short, let's just say I was both intrigued and disappointed by the time I read the final page. The constant narration switcheroo wasn't too big of a distraction for me. However, the two narrations caused many "show, don't tell" moments and became very repetitive throughout the entire novel.

To enjoy a book, I need to connect with a character and, sadly, this never occurred with Madeleine or her creation, Edward. I found both characters to be quite boring!

Overall, After She Wrote Him has an interesting concept but was poorly executed by the author. I had to push myself just to finish reading it. Maybe other readers will like it, but I'm not one of them.

Available on Audible Audiobook!

Considering there's a worldwide epidemic, and add in the fact that I suffer from anxiety issues, the last thing I should be doing is reading a book about a man-made virus, but that's exactly what I did after I noticed author Dean Koontz was making online headlines with his 1981 thriller The Eyes of Darkness. It seems readers were saying Koontz predicted the COVID-19 virus, which if you've actually read the novel, then you would know it's a false claim.

Mill Creek Entertainment; Amazon

There were a slew of teens in peril movies released in the 1980s. A few of these titles became classics and many others have mostly been forgotten, such as 1985's The New Kids starring a young Lori Loughlin and James Spader.

The New Kids was released this week to Blu-ray (R; 90 mins; $14.98) for the very first time by Mill Creek Entertainment. There are no special features or bonus extras. It does come with an '80s VHS-style DVD slipcover. 

Directed by Friday the 13th's Sean S. Cunningham, the film centers around Loren and Abby McWilliams (played by Shannon Presby and Lori Loughlin), whose parents were killed in an accident. With no were else to go, the siblings pack their bags and move to a small Florida town to live with their Uncle Charlie on his roadside amusement park.

After helping their uncle get the amusement park in working shape, Loren and Abby start school at the local high school, where I guess you can say things don't go so well there. Unknowingly to Abby, Dutra (played by James Spader) and his redneck gang make a bet to who can take Abby's virginity. However, Abby rejects all their attempts to sweep her off her feet. This leads to Dutra and his goons harassing, stalking, and tormenting Abby and her brother.

The film was critically panned and bombed at the box office; taking in under $200,000 on a $6 million budget.

Final Thoughts

Little Brown & Company; 448 pages; $28; Amazon

For anybody who follows this blog regularly, it should be no surprise to find me reviewing a James Patterson novel.

Yes, I like reading mysteries, and yes, Mr. Patterson happens to be one of my favorite authors. Of course that hasn't always been the case, as I started reading his books around 2003 or 2004 after my grandmother gave me a few Patterson titles to read. I would buy each new title, read it, and then pass it on to her. After my grandmother's death in 2009, I've continued to buy every new Patterson title, well, the ones that I don't receive a review copy for on here.

This week I finished reading The Black Book by James Patterson & David Ellis. Despite being disappointed with Never Never (read my review here), my expectations for this one were high, mostly due to the fact that I had heard good things about the novel before I even started reading page one.

The Black Book starts off with a bizarre crime scene involving one male and two female victims. The male is the only one to survive the crime, and he happens to be Detective Billy Harney, the son of Chicago's chief of detectives, and the twin brother to Hatti, who is also a cop.

The novel flips back and forth from the past to present. In the past, Billy and his adrenaline-junkie partner, Detective Kate Fenton, are investigating a murder that leads them to an exclusive Chicago brothel that caters to rich and powerful. Their only lead to the killer might be inside a black book containing all the brothel's clients, but of course the book is missing.

In the present, as Billy recovers from his wounds, he tries to piece together the final hours that lead to the death of two women (I'm not naming names here as I don't want to give away too many spoilers!), but proving his innocence isn't going to be easy as he can't remember what actually happened that fatal night.

Revell; 352 pages; $15.99; Amazon

Now available in bookstores from Revell (a division of Baker Publishing Group) is the crime thriller Justice Delayed, book one in the Memphis Cold Case series, by author Patricia Bradley.

I have a habit of picking out new books to read just by their cover arts alone, but this isn't the case with Justice Delayed, as I don't think the cover art is very good for it. To me, it looks very bland. The only reason I signed up to review the novel is because I had read a couple other titles by the author in the past.

The novel centers around Andi Hollister, a crime reporter who's sister was murdered eighteen years ago. After a letter surface with evidences that suggests the murderer might be innocent, Andi teams up with Will Kincaide, a detective at the Memphis Cold Case Unit, to seek out the truth.

With the accused murderer's execution date looming just around the corner, Andi and Will race against time to unravel the mystery and track down the real killer.