#Review - Holmes Is Missing by James Patterson, Brian Sitts #Thrillers #Suspense #Mystery

Series: Holmes, Margaret & Poe (#2)
Format: Hardcover, 352 pages
Release Date: January 6, 2025
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Source: Publisher
Genre: Thrillers / Suspense

Success has come quickly to Holmes, Marple & Poe Investigations. The New York City agency led by three detectives—Brendan Holmes, “the brain,” Margaret Marple, “the eyes,” and Auguste Poe, the “muscle”—with famous names and mysterious pasts is one major case away from cementing its professional reputation. 
 
But as a series of child abductions tests the PIs’ legendary skills, the cerebral Holmes’s absence leaves a gaping hole in the agency roster.
  
Only by closing ranks and solving the mystery within can they recover all that’s been lost.

Holmes Is Missing is the second installment in James Patterson and Brian Sitts's Holmes, Margaret, and Poe series. This series features Auguste Poe, Margaret Maple, and Brendon Holmes. As the story opens, Holmes is not missing but self-isolating, trying to break a decades-long addiction to heroin. Meanwhile, Holmes, Marple, and Poe Investigations, along with their assistant Virginia, gets involved in what appears to be a child kidnapping ring. 6 newborns have been stolen from the nursery. 

Margaret believes this is the time to visit Holmes at the rehab in Ithaca, New York, and convince him he needs to help with this case. Holmes comes back with them, but he doesn’t feel he can help them with his case. In fact, I dare call him a whiney crybaby for much of the story. Until he meets a mysterious man who may know a bit too much about him and his mother. This "wannabee" true crime writer may have sinister intentions of his own. 

His cure for heroin is the prescription drug buprenorphine and he’s certain that the side effects dull his hyper-cognition to the point that he can’t make the extremely rapid connections that his partners need him to make as the ‘brains’ of their team. So, Poe,  Maple, and Detective Helene Grey, who has a few surprises of her own, try their best to solve this case, which ends up being connected to two other abductions, one in England. 

While Holmes is dealing with his issues, and Poe, surprisingly, has some new ones to deal with, Maple is the voice of reason and stability. Oh, and let's give Virginia credit where credit is deserved. She has been a steady addition to the team, and perhaps she will end up being more involved since the authors stunned me with the cliffhanger ending, which means that even more sinister things are on the road ahead. 

Without spoiling the event, the cast ends up at an author signing, and it's a hoot, especially when the authors of this book toss in some really big names to antagonize Poe, Holmes, and Maple. 

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#Review - Lies He Told Me by James Patterson & David Ellis #Thrillers #Suspense

Series: Standalone
Format: Hardcover, 384 pages
Release Date: September 30, 2024
Publisher: Little, Brown, and Company
Source: Publisher
Genre: Thrillers / Suspense

An attorney and mother of two discovers her husband’s secret life—and it might cost them all their lives.

Everyone in Hemingway Grove, Illinois, knows David and Marcie Bowers.

David owns the local pub.

Marcie is a former big-city lawyer who practices family law.

When David jumps into Cotton River to save a drowning stranger, he’s celebrated as a hero. His muscled physique, shaved head, and piercing blue eyes are broadcast on every news outlet.

For most people, newfound fame is a lifeline.

For David Bowers, it’s a death sentence.

For Marcie Bowers, it’s a test.

A wife knows the difference between a loving husband and father and a cold-blooded assassin. Right?

Lies He Told Me, by co-authors James Patterson & David Ellis, is a Thriller that explores how much a wife actually knows about the man she married. Marcie and David Bower are married with two children and still crazy in love with each other. Marcie, a former member of a highly prestigious Chicago law firm who left after finding it hard to defend a man based on lies, is now content practicing family law. David is the owner of Hemingway’s Pub, a local bar and restaurant that does well. 

On the night of David's birthday, David and Marcie witness a car drive off a bridge into the river below. When David heroically jumps into a river to save a man, he is hailed a hero, his photo is everywhere, and his pub is filled with people congratulating him. While somewhat understandable, Marcie cannot comprehend why the notoriety makes David so uncomfortable. Then a journalist shows up asking questions and investigating David. 

Right after this strange things start to happen. Someone steals their dog for a day, their home is broken into, and items turn up in the wrong places. Enough to scare Marcie especially as Marcie would have said she knows David inside and out. Or does she? Engaging the local police, one who Marcie was once linked to, these are apparently random attacks, but the reason remains a mystery. Things continue to get worse, and David becomes more troubled. He begins keeping things from Marcie, which she finds additionally problematic. 

Then things get worse when Marcie discovers that David lied to her. His explanation feels very wrong to her. She starts to wonder if David’s celebrity status has brought unwanted attention of a dangerous kind. A kind from her past in Chicago. However, the scary truth that Marcie faces is that she may know less about her loving husband than she ever imagined. David’s lies begin to create a wedge between himself and Marcie, which only fuels a desire to get to the truth.

One of the best things about this book is that the authors didn't reveal too much all at once. They let the reader sit back and try to put what happened in Marcie's past, together with what is happening now that David's celebrity status seems to have brought the wrong attention down on them. Plot is key to the story of this nature. The authors keep things on point and surprise the reader at various times in the novel, especially as the truth emerges and David Bowers is revealed to be the man he wants no one to recognize. 

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#Review - Holmes, Marple & Poe by James Patterson, Brian Sitts #Mystery #Thriller

Series: Unknown
Format: Hardcover, 352 pages
Release Date: January 8, 2024
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Source: Publisher
Genre: Thriller / Mystery

In New York City, three intriguing, smart, and stylish private investigators open Holmes, Marple & Poe Investigations. Who are these detectives with famous names and mysterious, untraceable pasts?

Brendan Holmes—The Brain: Identifies suspects via deduction and logic.

Margaret Marple—The Eyes: Possesses powers of observation too often underestimated.

Auguste Poe—The Muscle: Chases down every lead no matter how dangerous or dark.

The agency’s daring methodology and headline-making solves attract the attention of NYPD Detective Helene Grey. Her solo investigation into her three unknowable competitors rivals the best mysteries of Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Edgar Allan Poe.   

Holmes, Marple, & Poe, by James Patterson and Brian Sitts, is a twisted story featuring some very familiar names straight out of the works of the best mysteries of Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Edgar Allan Poe. In New York City, three intriguing, smart, and stylish private investigators open Holmes, Marple & Poe Investigations in a building that used to be the sight of a bakery. A bakery where a mystery waits to be investigated. Who are these detectives with famous names and mysterious, untraceable pasts? 

Brendan Holmes—The Brain: Identifies suspects via deduction and logic. He has an acute sense of smell, and takes after his namesake, Sherlock Holmes, by being addicted to heroin. Margaret Marple—The Eyes: Possesses powers of observation too often underestimated. Margaret may have a perfect memory as well. Auguste Poe—The Muscle: Chases down every lead no matter how dangerous or dark. Auguste loves his classic cars like the 1966 Pontiac GTO. The identity of Holmes, Margaret, and Poe remains an elusive puzzle, adding an extra layer of mystery to a story that has six different mysteries to resolve.

But let's not forget about the fourth member of Holmes, Marple, and Poe, and that would be Virginia, the office manager, who can solve almost any problem, including predicting what everyone needs at all the right moments. She fits in nicely, and even offers her own brand of assistance, as well as helping solve a death from 1954 in the building they now own. The agency’s daring methodology and headline-making solves attract the attention of NYPD Detective Helene Grey, who once worked for the FBI. 

Her solo investigation into her three unknowable competitors who seem to have no background that she can trace back to see if they are real, or just hoodlums looking for a way to get in her way. She is also the only cop who falls in bed with one of the the investigators. The team’s first cases is that of Sloane Stone an attorney who disappeared. The second case is that of Huntley Bain who claims that someone told some priceless art from him. 

As with almost every single James Patterson novel, the chapters are short, and the book flows from beginning to end. Each chapter deals with one of the main characters' complex personalities as well as the disappearance of people and how it is solved. The supporting characters add to the story that makes it so much more interesting. The authors have left an open ending to this story which I hope indicates that there might be a sequel in the not-to-distant future.

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