"White Bodies" by Jane Robbins, 2017

"White Bodies" by Jane Robbins, 2017

Even though the book has some of the elements that have put me off this genre – present tense, the prologue, etc. I somewhat enjoyed it because of the quality of the writing and characterization. It’s not an angst-filled tale of woe despite the subject matter – in fact, there’s a reasonable amount of humor in it and even a nice, rather under-stated little romance in the background. In that sense, though the storyline is very contemporary, it feels more like an old-style psychological thriller than the modern misery-fest domestic thriller.

In White Bodies, we meet twins Callie and Tilda Farrow. It is clear from the start that they are nothing alike – Callie being more introverted and Tilda craving the spotlight. Behind closed doors, Callie has an obsession with her sister and her sister’s life; constantly doing weird things to get her fill of Tilda – literally – and documenting it all in a journal she has kept since she was young. Through the story, we learn a lot about their odd relationship and the history behind it.

Then Callie meets Tilda’s new boyfriend, Felix, and things turn dark. Callie suspects that Felix is manipulative and harmful to her sister and wants her to leave him, though Tilda claims there is nothing wrong with the way she is being treated. Callie joins an online forum about controlling men and forms friendships with others in the group who are able to give her advice and reassurance. When Felix is found dead, Callie thinks something is suspicious and it turns out nothing is as it seems. 

My rating ★★☆☆☆ (2 out of 5 stars) - It was ok.

"Pines (Wayward Pines #1)", by Blake Crouch, 2012

Pines (Wayward Pines #1), by Blake Crouch, 2012

An excruciatingly frustrating start, but by halfway through, the book went from 0 to 60 and I burned through it all the way to the end. Starts off as a mystery novel that sharply turns into a thriller, and ends with a sci-fi surprise.

Pines saw Secret Service agent Ethan Burke waking up in Wayward Pines, a secluded town deep in the forests of Idaho, severely injured after an apparent car accident. Days of concussed, amnesia-driven investigation led Ethan to eventually discover that the entire town was surrounded by an electric fence and under constant electronic surveillance. Nobody comes into Wayward Pines, nobody leaves, and the townsfolk are willing to mob-kill anyone who tries. Is it a government experiment? An episode of The Twilight Zone? The afterlife? Pines concluded with a soul-shattering cliffhanger, as the secret of Wayward Pines was finally revealed to Ethan (a secret I will not divulge here).

My rating: ★★★★★ (5 out of 5 stars) - Wow. I loved it!

Sick (Project Eden #1) by Brett Battles, 2011

Sick (Project Eden #1) by Brett Battles, 2011

There’s a war brewing in America, one simmering just below the surface but ready to explode. Captain Daniel Ash, his family, and the other 56 residents of Baker Flats military base find themselves at ground zero of that war one horrible night when hell descends upon their little corner of the world.

Awakened by a cry from his daughter, Ash goes to her room expecting to find her upset from a nightmare. Instead, he finds the girl burning with a dangerously high fever. As he struggles to get her into a cold tub he calls out to his wife for assistance, but gets no response.

Leaving his daughter in the slowly filling tub he returns to his bedroom and finds his wife still in bed. Dead. Panic now flooding in, Ash races to his son’s room and finds him apparently unaffected by whatever killed his wife and has made his daughter dangerously ill.

As he huddles in the bathroom with his two children Ash makes a frantic call to 911 pleading for help, but when it finally arrives it is not what Ash had expected, and his life will never be the same again.

Instead of paramedics or police officers, a team of men in full biohazard gear bursts into the Ash house, bundling Ash and his children outside and into an isolation truck. The scene that greets him as he exists his home is something out of a Hollywood film, as Ash realizes there are similar vehicles and teams of men in biohazard gear deployed throughout the neighborhood, seemingly at every house. Before he can fully process what’s going on he is spirited off to a containment facility, where he is separated from his kids and subsequently informed they have died as a result of exposure to a highly deadly virus.

After over a week in isolation, communicating only with a disembodied voice from a speaker in the ceiling, Ash is slipped a note with his morning meal one day which contains a single cryptic word written on it: TONIGHT. What follows that evening is a daring breakout from the facility with the assistance of two mysterious men whom do not identify themselves to Ash, but hustle him to the outskirts of the facility and give him instructions on how to proceed from there. Ash eventually meets up with the people behind his escape and is informed that though the virus was intentionally released, it wasn’t done by terrorists. Not only that, but contrary to what Ash was told his children are still alive, being studied to determine what made them immune to the virus. And with that Ash is off on a mission to not only rescue his children, but to help stop the people behind the virus from unleashing it upon the world.

Brett Battles

Battles ratchets the intensity and sense of urgency in Sick up to levels so thick you could cut it with a knife. Though military, Ash is no Rambo. He’s a man driven by emotion not machismo, and it is easy to identify with his single-minded goal of rescuing his children at all costs. He’s a man on a mission, and woe be it to anyone who gets in his way. Add to that a great subplot involving a team of reporters hot on the scent of the story the public is not being told, fueled in part by a cell phone video uploaded onto YouTube which appears to show civilians being killed by military, and Battles has set the stage for a pulse-pounding thriller that rockets to a classic showdown between Ash and the man behind the virus. But as this is merely the first book in the Project Eden series, though Ash eventually brings this particular battle to an end, the war rages on.

My rating ★★☆☆☆ (2 out of 5 stars) - It was ok.

"The Fold" by Peter Clines, 2015

"The Fold" by Peter Clines, 2015

Our main character Mike is one of the smartest people in the world with a sky-high IQ and perfect memory recall (photographic memory) of anything he has seen. He teaches English in a small-town high school until he gets recruited by DARPA to work with a group of scientists who developed a functioning teleportation device.  His job is to sort-of investigate the device and scientists to suss out an explanation for the oddity or strangeness of the project.

The premise appears fairly simple. The concept of teleporting is fairly ubiquitous in popular culture. However, the twist in how the device works turns this story from a mystery novel to a horror novel set with a science-fiction backdrop.

The characters are well developed and very distinct from each other in terms of personality. The dialog among them feels natural and unforced-- from casual conversations to action scenes.

As the book progressed, elements from the novel "14" by the same author appear to provide possible hints or clues as-if to suggest where the author may take the story.  While not really a necessity to read "14" prior to reading this book, I think it would be a great idea to start there. For example, towards the end of this novel (or as epilog) a brown-ish skinned woman described as Indian and a man named Nate appears to assess the "event" and ultimately recruit Mike. These were two of the main characters in the novel "14".

This book pretty much stands on it own and entertaining in it own quirky, twisty-turny kind of way. From Clive Cussler to Lovecraft's Cthulhu, this book starts fast & strong, goes for the marathon, and ends with a sprint.

My rating: ★★★★☆ (4 out of 5 stars) - I really liked it.

http://peterclines.com/books/the-fold-hc

Book description from Amazon.com

STEP INTO THE FOLD.
IT’S PERFECTLY SAFE.

The folks in Mike Erikson's small New England town would say he's just your average, everyday guy. And that's exactly how Mike likes it. Sure, the life he's chosen isn’t much of a challenge to someone with his unique gifts, but he’s content with his quiet and peaceful existence.

That is, until an old friend presents him with an irresistible mystery, one that Mike is uniquely qualified to solve: far out in the California desert, a team of DARPA scientists has invented a device they affectionately call the Albuquerque Door. Using a cryptic computer equation and magnetic fields to “fold” dimensions, it shrinks distances so that a traveler can travel hundreds of feet with a single step.

The invention promises to make mankind’s dreams of teleportation a reality. And, the scientists insist, traveling through the Door is completely safe.

Yet the evidence is mounting that this miraculous machine isn’t quite what it seems—and that its creators are harboring a dangerous secret.

As his investigations draw him deeper into the puzzle, Mike begins to fear there’s only one answer that makes sense. And if he’s right, it may only be a matter of time before the project destroys…everything.