This was one of those books that make you think. Since it was about something that could actual happen, it really makes you put on you thinking cap. It didn't seem interesting at first but was better the longer I kept with it. ( )

Very good

A serial killer who focuses on cheating wives almost finishes Ali Reynolds, in this entry in Jance's other Arizona series. Unlike most books featuring a serial killer, this one does not linger lovingly over every gory detail. Instead, it is more about Ali's life, family, friends, and construction woes.

Worth reading but nothing special. ( )

An up and coming young lawyer from Glasgow and a former TV personality retired to a mobile home in the Arizona backwoods would appear to have nothing in common and yet, as is the way with thrillers, they are both forced to fight for their lives when targeted by ruthless evil…

Now don’t get me wrong, I love thrillers – I love mysteries and detective stories and police procedurals, I even enjoy horror stories – but there comes a point where even the most dutiful brain rebels against the willing suspension of disbelief.

Ever noticed how few murders in thrillers are opportunistic? South African serial killers seldom have a personal motive for their crimes – they simply kill whenever they think they can get away with it. Your foreign psycho however is a far more complex character and needs a motive to justify his slaughters.

Daisy Chain, GJ Moffat’s debut novel, is an entirely different proposition: it has an urban rather than a rural setting and the ‘baddies’ – while they may be conscienceless killers – are simply, like good Nazis, following orders.

Yuppie Glasgow lawyer Logan Finch is get-head ambitious and appears to have it all – except he has only ever been half a person since Penelope Grant, the love of his life, simply walked out on him and then disappeared over 12 years ago.

As is so often the case when a naive innocent is threatened by evil, finch is saved by the expertise of a friend with a shadowy past and access to weapons. American Alex Cahill runs a security company and is present when police arrive from a murder scene in which Logan’s card was found under the corpse. The dead woman is Penny Morgan, Finch’s former girlfriend.

The police suspect him, but not only was he unaware that Penny had been in Glasgow for several months, he was also ignorant of the fact she had a daughter, Ellie – his daughter, who has been kidnapped by her mother’s murderers.

The child was taken to pressurize Finch into laundering money on behalf of an international racketeer: with the assistance of Cahill and his associates, Ellie is rescued, her abductors killed, and father and daughter are united for the first time.

Instead of finding another lawyer, the criminals set their sights on Logan, investigated his past, tracked down his girlfriend, and discovered he has a daughter – in short, they knew more about him than he knew about himself.

Is this usual gangster SOP? It seems like a lot of time, expense and trouble to go to merely to acquire leverage over a lawyer. But that’s what they do and why Logan finds himself risking all to save a girl he has never met.

As I said initially, homegrown killers have a lot to learn from their more sophisticated European and American brothers who seldom opt for the safe and easy when to comes to killing and, although their success rate is relatively low, have turned murder into an art form cherished by all thriller readers. ( )

pretty good. quite a few interesting side characters. ( )