Mystery/Thriller Book Reviews
Digging up Death by Triss Stein
Walker, June 1998.Hardcover, 190 pages.
ISBN: 0802733190. Ordering information:
Amazon.com.
Magazine columnist Kay Engles has a lead on a fascinating new story;
while digging just fifty feet from Wall Street,
her archeologist friend Dr. Vera Contas has just unearthed the skeleton
of a man who is three hundred years old in the ruins of what
was an old tavern frequented by pirates, perhaps even the famous
Captain Kidd. The dig is in the middle of a site where realtor Alan Elkan
plans on constructing a commercial building after the required archaeological
survey is completed. When strange things begin happening on the
site, such as the murder of a security guard and the vandalism of
Kay's car, Kay's investigative instincts are roused and she begins
to dig deeper into the mystery of the site. Her search is complicated by
the fact that she spends time pining for her
out of town beau, Tony, fending off the very insistent attentions
of the handsome Alan Elkin, and trying to track down her long-lost
mother. When another murder occurs, Kay realizes that she must
solve the mystery before she becomes the next victim of an
unseen killer.
This is the second adventure of Kay Engles (See, Murder at the Class Reunion, 1993). Kay is a likeable heroine and the archeological mystery is interesting. Although the numerous subplots can be a bit confusing, Stein ably wraps up all the missing threads by the end of the tale in a rousing conclusion.
The First Horseman by John Case
Fawcett Books, August 1998.Paperback, 325 pages.
ISBN: 0449911020.
Ordering information:
Amazon.com.
The Spanish Flu was a
devastating flu epidemic,
killing 40 million people
in 1918. The flu killed
all across the globe, young and
old -- no
one was safe.
Kang is a medical worker in
an isolated village in North
Korea. His fellow
villagers are sick and dying from an
unknown disease and he is off
gathering wood to keep the fires
burning when he notices help,
in the form of soldiers, tanks
and trucks,
finally coming
to the rescue. But the help stops
short of his village and, before he
realizes what is going to happen,
the village is bombed and incinerated.
Kang flees for his life and
barely manages to escape. He enters
the DMZ and
passes into
South Korea. When information is relayed to
the CIA and they determine there is a possibility that
a bioweapon based on the
Spanish Flu may be under development,
a crew is sent into the Arctic to try and recover
the virus from the bodies of miners.
Records show the miners died from the flu and
their bodies froze on the work site, which would
allow scientists to potentially extract
the flu virus from their bodies.
Reporter Frank Daly catches wind of
the developing story and tries to follow
the crew on their expedition -- but some
suspicious men keep him from
the information. However, Daly is
hard to turn away and his continuing
investigation leads him onto a story that
could impact the entire human race.
The First Horseman is a fast-paced novel with appealing characters, a global threat based on a real disease and spine-tingling espionage. John Case, author of The Genesis Code, has penned a first-rate biomedical thriller. Highly recommended.
Return to the December 1998 issue of The IWJ.
More from Writers Write