One Minute Out: A Gray Man Novel #9 by Mark Greaney

One Minute Out: A Gray Man Novel #9. Mark Greaney. Penguin Publishing Group. February 2020. pb, 512 pp.; ISBN: 9780593098912.

Court Gentry, the Gray Man, is a hired assassin whose initial job is to take out a former criminal responsible for war crimes that destroyed hundreds of families.  However, as this job is panning out, he discovers that this criminal is involved with something much worse, that of trafficking sex slaves. This reviewer has a tough time with this subject as these young women are stuck in a situation that is horrific to say the least.  Anyway, Gentry knows he has a problem with a soft conscience but that means he can’t let this go.  So he starts out by killing the leader and many of his so-called guards.  Then he gets information on the fact that this business is far bigger than he had imagined.  In fact it’s world-wide.  We meet many of the leaders in the plumbing line, men who are interested in cruelty to these young women and beyond greedy for the millions they are making for their small part in planning and organizing the movement of this “product” as it’s called.  Add to that that each leader has no idea who the others are or from where they are operating.  This keeps the secret under wraps, but they are not used to the “Gray Man” who keeps showing up in the places where the product is being shipped. 

Some may say the girls were partially responsible for being snared into this hellish trap but one has to find this unacceptable when realizing how they are now living.  Add to this garbage the fact that the CIA, with whom Genry doesn’t have the greatest relationship, has an active interest in this group because they are also an active terrorist threat and so don’t want him near the top man of this trafficking organization known as the Consortium.

Two things work very well in this international crime novel.  One is the fact that Gentry is one wild agent whose fighting abilities are the best you’ve ever encountered.  The next is that he thinks everything out and really cares what happens to thee young women, wanting them to get to live a normal life that has no connection to sex trade.  He also acknowledges that he has dark secrets in his past and so can excuse a certain amount of same when he meets in these women individually. 

The novel doesn’t have a perfect ending but it’s a satisfactory one for the young girls and we learn that the CIA has an even “bigger” job coming up soon.  So stay tuned for another action-packed international crime thriller!  Mark Greaney has the plots ready and adds some very human elements that make this a huge success.  Yes, it’s somewhat stereotypical but so are most of the books and movies of the same nature.  It’s a good, adrenaline-pumping story that one could envision in film form!  Nicely crafted, Mark Greaney!

The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James

The Sun Down Motel. Simone St. James. Penguin Publishing Group. February 2020. pb, 336 pp.; ISBN #: 9780440000174.

In upstate New York in 1982, Vivian Delaney takes a job as a night clerk at the motel in the small town of Fell after leaving home and her disagreements with her family.  She intends this job to be temporary as she plans to make enough money to go to New York City to become an actress.  However, this turns out to ghostbe a very complicated position.  There are ghosts in the motel, all connected with disappearances, murder and other trouble.  Years later, Vivian’s niece, Carly, travels to Fell determined to find out why and how her aunt disappeared.  Carly is an untrained but intelligent young woman who uses her skills to track the past problems.

Carly finds the job at the motel to be as creepy as her aunt did years ago.  At certain moments she smells fresh cigarette smoke but never finds out the source of that smell.  Doors in the motel randomly open and then slam shut.  She sees an appearance of a woman that she knows is a ghost.  There’s also a trace of a young boy who supposedly fell into the empty pool and died from the fall. 

The novel switches between Viv’s and Carly’s accounts, past and present.  There’s a salesman who frequently stays over who signs a different name every time he appears.  There’s a photographer who takes strange pictures that just might provide clues of a serial killer.  There’s a policewoman who tries to get both women to stop playing amateur detective.  There’s a man who’s trying to work through his very troubled past that involved his family’s violent past but who is very appealing to Carly.

This novel will keep readers awake long past bedtime.  It has ample eeriness, tension and mystery to hold any mystery lover’s interest.  And most of all, it maintains a very credible ambience that makes the supernatural seem real but not frighteningly so!

Nice read that’s well-crafted and highly recommended!

Gilded Dreams (Newborn Gilded Age Book Two) by Donna Russo Morin

Gilded Dreams. (Newport Gilded Age Book Two). Donna Russo Morin. Magnum Opus: Sold by Amazon. June 2020, 325 pp.; ASIN: B084GM8DC4.

For the last eight years, the women’s rights movement for suffrage is raging.  Donna Russo Morin brings us into Pearl’s Newport world. Beginning with a terrible tragedy, Pearl loses her father on the Titanic.  That awful event brings the reader to the event as she is forced to identify her father, the last member of her family, and the horrors she has to experience.  That loss makes her realize that she has lost everything as her husband inherits everything. She can inherit nothing as she’s a woman.  It is here that she sees the need for a women’s rights law. 

She finds her world as a novice suffragette as she meets the women involved in this far off fight. She continues to forge on, being a mother of two and drawing fashion and agreeing to do little things at the Newport level.   She and Ginerva are together through the thick and thin of it all. WWI is begun and she is separated from her beloved husband, Peter.  The hero he was emerges as she hears of his heroic action which saved the lives of hundreds.

Her world dissolves with the death of Peter and we experience it with Pearl.  A crisis develops and she must come up with the will of Peter which she does after much searching and worrying.  Who will inherit in this mess when a wife cannot inherit anything? 

The world is winding up the war.  During this time we meet the other upper echeleon of women’s rights supporters, such as the Lady Astor Brooke, whom Pearl supports.  Night and day is the picture of this lady.

Late in the novel, Pearl and Ginerva become opponents.  This is totally unexpected and shocks readers but doesn’t prevent the goal of achieving women’s rights which are signed into law. 

There are dozens of pages in which supporters help Pearl become the women she rises as she rises from little known Pearl to the leader of the Newport campaign.  She is a woman who reads a great deal and is a wise leader in sharing her knowledge. 

Donna Russo Morin is great writer who has done her research well and presented a lively and dynamic story.  This is historical fiction at its highest and all should enjoy the story!!!