Liar, Liar by Nancy Boyarsky.

Liar, Liar is the 3rd mystery in the Nicole Graves series but it can be read as a standalone. This time Nicole has a new job as a Private Investigator and has been given the task of  babysitting a witness, the victim of an alleged rape.

Liar, Liar is told in the same style as The Swap and The Bequest with Nicole being the focus. Nicole meets a diverse range of characters as the story unfolds. The story is set in and around Los Angeles and Nancy describes her scenes very well indeed. Her novel does not dwell on the glamour and glitter of Hollywood but covers the whole region including the poor, low income parts and ethnic minorities. I loved the diversity within Liar, Liar.

I found this novel to have a very strong social message. It is all about how easy it is for everybody to simply not tell the whole truth. We are not talking about out and out criminal bare faced lies but those statements we can make were the whole truth is not spoken. Leaving out those little bits, lying by omission, is an easy mistake to make and is key to this novel.

So rather than have a regular plot were Nicole solves a mystery, Liar Liar is more like a catalogue of omissions that lead to the outcomes of this tale. I found Liar, Liar to be a GOOD read and I love the brand Nancy has developed with her character Nicole. However, I did not enjoy Liar, Liar as much as I enjoyed The Swap and The Bequest solely because the plot is not as intricate. I loved how we got the whole life of Nicole rather than just her workplace self. It was good to read how her day job affected her relationship with her boyfriend Josh. Again there was no gritty or steamy sex to read through and I found Liar, Liar to be an entertaining read that gets 4 stars from me.

The Bequest by Nancy Boyarsky.

The Bequest is the 2nd mystery in the Nicole Graves series but it can be read as a standalone. This time Nicole goes to find a workmate who is missing and finds him murdered in his home. Later she finds out there was a bequest in his will leaving everything to her. Nicole was not a close friend to this workmate and does not know why he was murdered or why he left all his wealth to her.

I enjoyed reading The Bequest because of the writing style Nancy employs. The Bequest has one very strong focus, it is Nicole. Everything is about Nicole and how she interacts with the world around her. This whole tale is told solely from Nicole’s point of view. Although Nicole is a young female, Nancy writes her tale with such skill that the reader takes on the personality of Nicole and walks in her shoes. It was simply a pleasure to enjoy this novel as though I was actually Nicole searching around Los Angeles looking for answers in this mystery.

I enjoyed the plot of The Bequest and all along I was wondering if Nicole should trust this or that character who may not be telling the whole truth. The story really played along with the issues of trust, that can so easily be taken for granted. Just as in the first novel, there was some romance along the way. Yes, Nicole did make love with this character but there is no gritty, steamy sex scenes to read through. There was no sexual tension in this novel but there was plenty of warm, romantic emotional feelings along the way.

So piece by piece Nicole got to the bottom of this mystery. Nicole travels around Los Angeles in her search for the truth and Nancy, as a local, put all those lovely details into her story. I have NEVER been to America but I loved how Nancy described Los Angeles and the surrounding area. This gave so much added value to her novel. Of course, a novel set in America written by an American, can miss the spot with some readers in other English speaking countries. I had no difficulty at all reading this book with its American cultures etc - I simply enjoyed being in Nicole’s shoes as she solved the mystery. There was just the one word though - “busboy” - what is that? I am familiar with “bus spotter”, those guys in the UK who take photographs of buses and coaches but have never come across a “busboy”. A quick check on the internet brought up this North American term.

I enjoyed The Bequest and liked how it played around with the dynamics of the workplace. Even when workmates are simply polite and tolerate each other, sometimes things are not said but one worker may be blissfully obsessed with another and their affections are taken silently to their grave.

So I find that Nancy has done it again and has written another OUTSTANDING read that gets the top score of 5 stars from me.

Execution of Faith (Danny Pearson Book 1) by Stephen Taylor.

Ex-SAS soldier Danny Pearson now works as a security guard. He does not take the easy, sit in a hut jobs but the dangerous close protection etc assignments. Stephen sets the scene when Danny stops a knife attack before moving onto his deployment in helping to prevent a terrorist attack from Islamic fundamentalists.

Execution of Faith is an action packed thriller involving the terrorism threat to our country. It is full of drama as the reader follows Danny in his race to stop the terrorist plot.

I was disappointed reading Execution of Faith. It was all comic strip action with our hero Danny being super butch and fighting his way around. There was lots of violence and many deaths in this very average plot. Character development was shallow and I did not develop an empathy for Danny. Missing was an exploration of the ideas behind Islamic fundamentalism, it was as though the bad guys were not religious fanatics but anti-social hooligans having a firework party.

This story lacked realism as Danny, our security guard hero, got access to all areas, supplied with guns etc, joined our intelligence services simply because someone put in a good word and went on international adventures on the trail of the bad guys.

Danny’s collection of contacts were always happy to do things at the drop of a hat, it became so frustrating to read. Calling in the odd favour can be permissible in fiction but to have people constantly at your beck and call is silly.

I found Execution of Faith to be a POOR read that only gets 2 stars from me. It was Stephen’s debut novel and I shall NOT be bothering with his next. This was not an intelligent OR entertaining read and is more like a comic without the pictures.

Execution of Faith was written in 2018 and is available as an Amazon Kindle eBook.