The Killing of Mindi Quintana, Jeffrey A. Cohen – Review
Freddy Builder is certain he is meant for more. More than his life in corporate-America bondage. More than selling china to bluebloods in Philadelphia's landmark department store, Chanet's. Meant for more, meant for better, and lacking only, only an occasion to rise to.
And now that occasion is murder - of Mindi Quintana, an old college flame wanting simply to stay in his past.
Freddy's crime is major news from the start. Mindi is the beautiful daughter of a renowned Philadelphia businessman whose dramatic fall a few years back captivated the city. A televised trial for Freddy is in the offing. Meanwhile, he is writing the book about his relationship with Mindi - a remorseless rewrite of her life, his own, and their miserable thin involvement.
As excerpts of his book are published to acclaim, he gives articulate, sympathetic jailhouse interviews, publishes ghostwritten articles on prison issues, and coverage goes national. A new celebrity murderer is taking the stage - a killer with a book, a jailhouse literary sensation.
Freddy's defense attorney, Phillip, watches as his client builds his fame with the bones of his victim. As a career public defender, Phillip thought he'd seen evil in all its incarnations. He'd lost his outrage, his passion for the law, and his marriage along the way. But as Freddy's case is a turning point for him - the public's sympathy for the poet-murderer, the rebel, the killer as greater soul - stirs something dormant in Phillip.
To stop Freddy, and to vindicate Mindi, Phillip will have to violate his oath, even break the law. But with the help of Mindi's best friend Lisa, he gives Mindi back the truth of her life and death. And he'll deliver a comeuppance to a killer with a book. - FROM THE BOOK BACK
ABOUT THE AUTHOR...Debut novelist, Jeff Cohen, author of The Killing of Mindi Quintana, is a quintessential Philadelphian, a successful attorney, and a prominent business entrepreneur. In an age of endless fascination with celebrity murderers, his novel delivers what all too often is lost: justice.
FOLLOW THE AUTHOR...Twitter - Website - Facebook
FROM THE BOOK FAERY REVIEWS...It took me some "speed reading" to get through the first 100 or so pages but once past the the novel got more engaging and had me turning page after page. Cohen's main character Freddy reminded me of some creepy guy us females try to avoid. You know the ones who seem nice and appear everywhere you go or keep doing things that make you uncomfortable? Then the moment comes and he snaps (figuratively and literally)...that would be Freddy. For a moment I felt like I needed a bath from the disgust I felt towards Freddy a moment after killing her. Throughout The Killing of Mindi Quintana, you watch the main character Freddy change from an "unnoticeable" man to this viscous fame seeking killer who get's blind sighted in the end.
NOTE to sensitive readers: This novel does contain cursing and some graphic details of the murder.
A copy of the book was provided to me for review. Receiving a copy didn't persuade my opinions one way or the other.
Forty-Eight X: The Lemuria Project, Barry Pollack – Review
TITLE: Forty Eight X: The Lemuria Project
AUTHOR: Barry Pollack
PUBLISHER: Medallion Press
PUBLICATION DATE: December 1, 2009
PAGES: 338
GENRE: Fiction, Political Thriller
On the tropical island of Diego Garcia in the middle of the Indian Ocean, the United States has gathered together its most talented geneticists to work on the top-secret Lemuria Project. These secret experiments create a revolutionary new warrior so strong and so valiant that the age of casualties of war would become only a sad and distant memory. Haunted by a dark and dangerous past, Colonel Link McGraw is the officer chosen to train these new soldiers. He understands the rules of engagement and agrees to serve his country, reestablish his professional reputation, and secure his freedom in the process. As a trained and commissioned officer in the United States Armed Forces, McGraw knows what constitutes the perfect soldier: following orders without question. When Egyptian beauty Fala al Shodaha and Israeli Joshua Krantz, scientists in their own right, stumble across the top-secret project, they are determined to uncover its true nature and pursue their quest to Diego Garcia. Tensions mount as Krantz and McGraw clash over the project—and vie for the affection of the lovely Fala. When they discover they aren’t the only ones on the island competing for her attention, shocking truths are revealed that beg the question, Is it too late to save themselves—and the entire human race—from almost certain annihilation? - FROM AMAZON.COM
FROM THE BOOK FAERY REVIEWS...For my first political thriller, this was an excellent one. Fascinating read with science, history, and politics. Enjoyed it and recommend it to others looking for a good scientific military thriller. Since it's a keeper for my shelves, I give it a 4. 
If you're interested in my sentence tease from the book, read it here. And while you're here, check out Barry Pollack's author guest post.
This book was provided to me through the Pump Up Your Book virtual book tour.
Receiving a copy to review did not persuade my opinions of the author's book.
Forty Eight X – The Lemuria Project, Barry Pollack – Author Guest Post
TITLE: Forty Eight X - The Lemuria Project
AUTHOR: Barry Pollack
PUBLISHER: Medallion Press
PUBLICATION DATE: December 1, 2009
PAGES: 338
GENRE: Fiction, Political Thriller
On the tropical island of Diego Garcia in the middle of the Indian Ocean, the United States has gathered together its most talented geneticists to work on the top-secret Lemuria Project. These secret experiments create a revolutionary new warrior so strong and so valiant that the age of casualties of war would become only a sad and distant memory. Haunted by a dark and dangerous past, Colonel Link McGraw is the officer chosen to train these new soldiers. He understands the rules of engagement and agrees to serve his country, reestablish his professional reputation, and secure his freedom in the process. As a trained and commissioned officer in the United States Armed Forces, McGraw knows what constitutes the perfect soldier: following orders without question. When Egyptian beauty Fala al Shodaha and Israeli Joshua Krantz, scientists in their own right, stumble across the top-secret project, they are determined to uncover its true nature and pursue their quest to Diego Garcia. Tensions mount as Krantz and McGraw clash over the project—and vie for the affection of the lovely Fala. When they discover they aren’t the only ones on the island competing for her attention, shocking truths are revealed that beg the question, Is it too late to save themselves—and the entire human race—from almost certain annihilation? - FROM AMAZON.COM
AUTHOR GUEST POST...I've been writing for forty years and have made it a habit to clip articles or record notes about interesting things I read or hear about. They sit about like dormant seeds, ready to germinate if you fertilize them with good characters and plot. One such story I saved was an obituary of Robert Graham who died in 1997. Graham was an American entrepreneur who made millions designing the first plastic eyeglass lenses. He was also a eugenicist, an out of favor theory that suggests that "nature is more important than nurture," that it is our genes that make us predominantly who we are, not our upbringing. Graham became most famous perhaps for creating what was colloquially called "the genius sperm bank," a repository of sperm provided by Nobel prize winners. His life story led me to do more research on eugenics, then genetics in general. And, with daily headlines describing a world entangled in an apparent never ending battle with terrorism, I wondered why we couldn't use genetic engineering to create a chimera, a soldier part animal, part human, to fight our battles and put an end to the atavistic process of bloodying our our best and brightest young people on battlefields. It's science fiction but not so much a fantasy that it couldn't soon fall into the realm of science fact. And, then the story unfolded.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR...Barry Pollack, who still works in the frontline trenches of medicine as an ER doctor, has a creative life that spans a variety of venues. After a master’s degree in film from Stanford and a fellowship at the American Film Institute, he began as a documentary filmmaker and went on to write and direct two feature films — MGM’s Cool Breeze in 1972 and the Fanfare release This is a Hijack in 1973. In 1980, Pollack graduated from the University of Oklahoma Medical School and began a new career as an emergency physician. However, he never stopped writing. Pollack’s subsequent work includes several prime time television dramas, such as Trapper John, M.D. and Hotel, magazine short stories, several screenplays, and ten years of newspaper columns for the Ventura County STAR in California. Forty-Eight X, his debut novel, was published by Medallion Press in December 2009.
For more information visit www.barrypollack.net
Everything Hurts, Bill Scheft – Author Guest Post
TITLE: Everything Hurts
AUTHOR: Bill Scheft
PUBLISHER: Simon & Schuster
PUBLICATION DATE: April 7, 2009
PAGES: 288
Phil Camp has a problem. Not the fact that he wrote a parody of a self-help book (Where Can I Stow My Baggage?) that the world took seriously and became an international bestseller. And not the fact that he wrote the book under a phony name, Marty Fleck, and the phony guy became a self-help guru overnight. Phil cannot be Marty Fleck. He can barely be himself.
No, Phil’s problem is he has been walking with a limp for nine months. Phil is in constant pain, yet there is nothing physically wrong with his body that would cause such agony. That problem leads him to the controversial Dr. Samuel Abrun, a real doctor who wrote a real self-help book (The Power of “Ow!”) that made thousands of people pain-free.
So, what happens when the self-help fraud, meets the genuine item? Does he get better? Can he hobble out of his own way to help himself? Most important, can the reader make it through 50 pages without thinking, “Wait a minute. Is that a twinge I feel in my lower back, or just gas?”
Phil embraces Abrun’s unorthodox psychogenic theories passionately, but manages to save some passion for Abrun's daughter, Janet, a doctor herself who has her own theories, and remedies, for chronic pain. If all this weren't enough, Phil tries to delve further into his past with his unconventional psychotherapist, The Irish Shrink, even if it means revealing dark secrets he never remembered telling him the first two or three times. And if all that weren’t enough, Phil confronts his alter ego’s nemesis, right-wing radio blowhard Jim McManus, only to find out they share a common enemy – the same family.
Like Carl Hiassen and Larry David, author Bill Scheft understands that the best humor is always excruciating. That fits the story of Everything Hurts, and its lesson: that pain is the ultimate teacher. By the end, Phil Camp, the self-proclaimed “self-help fraud” turns out to be the real thing. And the real thing turns out to be flawed, confused, but hopeful. In other words, human.
Over the last decade, Scheft has contributed humor essays and short pieces to the New Yorker, New York Times, Esquire, TV Guide, George, Talk, Slate, Modern Humorist, the collections Mirth of a Nation, 101 Damnations, May Contain Nuts, Howl, The Enlightened Bracketologist and a few other places that may or may not exist anymore.
Supreme Courtship…Christopher Buckley: Book Giveaway
President of the United States Donald Vanderdamp is having a hell of a time getting his nominees appointed to the Supreme Court. After one nominee is rejected for insufficiently appreciating To Kill A Mockingbird, the president chooses someone so beloved by voters that the Senate won't have the guts to reject her -- Judge Pepper Cartwright, the star of the nation's most popular reality show, Courtroom Six.
Will Pepper, a straight-talking Texan, survive a confirmation battle in the Senate? Will becoming one of the most powerful women in the world ruin her love life? And even if she can make it to the Supreme Court, how will she get along with her eight highly skeptical colleagues, including a floundering Chief Justice who, after legalizing gay marriage, learns that his wife has left him for another woman.
Soon, Pepper finds herself in the middle of a constitutional crisis, a presidential reelection campaign that the president is determined to lose, and oral arguments of a romantic nature. Supreme Courtship is another classic Christopher Buckley comedy about the Washington institutions most deserving of ridicule. - FROM HACHETTE BOOKS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR...Christopher Buckley is the author of eleven books, many of them national bestsellers, including The White House Mess, God Is My Broker, Little Green Men, and No Way to Treat a First Lady, which won the Thurber Prize for American Humor. He has published more than fifty comic essays in The New Yorker. In 2002, he received the Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence. He is the editor of ForbesLife and lives in New York and Washington, D.C.
You can find Christopher Buckley also at the The Daily Beast.
FROM THE BOOK FAERY REVIEWS...Thanks to Hachette Books, The Book Faery Reviews is giving away THREE copies of Supreme Courtship by Christopher Buckley. THREE will US/Canada (no PO Box) candidates will be randomly chosen on October 1st. To enter for a chance at a copy of this book, please comment below.
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