The reason for these "quarterly" reports is that I just can’t keep up with the speed most of you read. It is not unlikely that I’ll only get one book done in a month and now that my "day" job has me doing less traveling, I don’t go through audio books as often.
 

A young Dr Carmen Nguyen, against her better judgment, accepts the request from an emergency room patient to look in on his birds while he convalesces in the latest medical thriller from Robert Greer, Heat Shock. Luke "Stone" Redstone's birds are fighting gamecocks. He fears someone is trying to steal his winning birds. Carmen, a former medical researcher, is intrigued by these unnaturally strong and aggressive birds. She suspects the secret may lie in the uranium-rich soil in which Stone trained his birds and in which may have been the cause of Stone's current medical problem. When the birds go missing, and with the help of Walter Rios, Stone's friend, Carmen investigates, finds herself being stalked and shot at. She soon suspects the bird's value has little to do with their fighting prowess. Why would someone commit murder to keep the theft of fighting gamecocks a secret?
 

The core of this story is a medical research thriller. "Heat shock" is a protein that at normal levels prevents the activation of radical protective genes from steering the growth of an organism to new directions.
 

This story isn't so much a message or warning shot, but more of a "What if…."  One of the "neat" things about medical thrillers is that it makes me feel smarter than I really am. But the true genius is the writer that weaves all these medical and scientific ideas in clear everyday English without bogging you down with the jargon. It was Chapter 5 before the first medical term appeared; a 3-word 90 wt; "ruptured brachial artery”. "Ruptured" and "Artery" are pretty clear all by themselves and getting right down to it, "Brachial" isn't too bad, but even if you don't know what that is, any ruptured artery can't be a good thing. Greer doesn't bother explaining it either and, you know what? He didn't need to. Quite deft.
 

The General's Daughter by Nelson DeMille has Paul Brenner as an undercover cop in the US Army. He is asked to take on the investigation of the daughter of the General who has been murdered and, apparently, raped as she was staked, spread-eagle, in the middle of the night on the rifle range. He is teamed up with a rape specialist with whom he had a steamy affair (which ended badly) during a previous duty assignment. The real suspense is actually, more about these two than it is about the solution to the murder investigation.

This story from 1992 was made into a film staring John Travolta as Brenner in 1999. I have to say that this is one of the few times that I felt the film was better than the book. There were some elements that were different in the film and the book. Many times, a book made to a film will change things, even the ending, like in The Bone Collector or Jaws (just two I can recall immediately). Whether or not this film changed "who done it", I won't say. I will say that the film seemed more of a suspense mystery while book was more of a romantic tête-à-tête set with a murder investigation as a backdrop.
 

Donna Andrews' You've Got Murder has an utterly fascinating premise! An organization that develops Artificial Intelligence Personalities (AIPs) has at least one that is becoming "aware". We are introduced to Turing Hopper, sentient, and suspicious over the absence of "her" creator, Zack. Suspecting fowl play, Turing enlists the help of Maude and Tim (Employees where Turing is installed) to be her, metaphorical, arms and legs to do some research and gather clues to Zack's whereabouts. In the process, they uncover a plot to … well, that would be a spoiler …. Needless to say, whatever the plot and whoever is behind it, it is important enough that people, and computers, nosing around could end up dead (or re-programmed). Being in the computer biz myself, I can testify that Andrews' work does not take a tremendous leap of faith (see below), but it will take some. Furthermore, and probably more important, is that there is very little computer jargon and what little there is, is explained to Tim (and, vicariously, to the reader) who doesn't know that much about computers. So you won't get blown away by computer-eze.
 

I read an article back in the early nineties about the state of affairs with Artificial Intelligence (AI). According to the guy being interviewed, the problem with AI wasn't so much with overall design and decision making routines, but rather that computers just didn't have any "common sense". So his idea was to feed the program a bunch of, seemly, non-computer related, common knowledge information, such as the story lines and passages from famous books, films and speeches as well as some philosophical factoids and common human interaction dialog. Their program was called "Psych." At one point, one of the women feeding Psych some information had said, "Intelligent things tend to like intelligent things of the same type." And much later she said, "I like you, Psych." The computer then responded, "Are you a program or am I a person?" I still get chills up my spine when I think about that. I can't help but wonder if Donna had read the same article.
 

Christopher Reich brings back Adam Chapel in The Devil's Banker. A terrorist bombing of a Parisian apartment leaves clues for the CIA that suggests more attacks and on US soil. To avert another 9-11, they assemble a task force to follow the money. In the lead is forensic accountant, Adam Chapel. Chapel, who lost four colleagues in the Paris blast, is teamed up with British intelligence agent Sarah Churchill. Together, the follow vast sums of money from bank to bank and country to country. There is a great deal of suspense and the setting of international terrorism is all too real and upsetting. The money trail aspect of it was intriguing, but it just didn't hold my attention. I didn't understand the significance of some of the money manipulations, nor the point of them. Consequently, I found my attention drifting. I think, however, if international suspense thrillers are your "thing", you'll probably love this. The Adam Chapel character is a returning character from previous Reich novels.
 

Cottonwood, from Scott Phillips, is an episodic historical novel that has the feel a personal journal written over 100 years ago. Told in first person by Bill Ogden, saloon keeper and stereo picture photographer, we are introduced to the town of Cottonwood, Kansas. Here, Bill is looking to making his fortune and getting out of this one-horse town. He meets up with Marc Leval, a wealthy Chicago developer who sees big things for Cottonwood and expects that Bill's ambition will help him bring his plans to fruition.

The book is basically a two-parter; the first in Cottonwood, Kansas in the early 1870's and the second finds Bill in San Francisco in the early 1890's about to head back to Cottonwood after a, nearly, twenty year absence. Though there is a story and one laced with the true-life crime of The Bloody Benders, its calling card is Phillips' narrative and the characters, but mostly his setting. At truly vivid account of an historical setting. After just a few moments with this story, you'll want to check your shoes for you may have stepped in!