The Printed Page

Title: The Timer Game (A Grace Descanso Novel, book #1)
Author/website(s): Susan Arnout Smith
336 pages
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Publication date: January ’08
Genre: Suspense/murder mystery
Review book or pleasure reading: Pleasure reading
New-to-me author: Yes
Would I recommend this book: I would
Would I read more from this author: I started the 2nd Grace Descanso, Out At Night, as soon as I finished The Timer Game
Journal notes: Pleasure reading – no review.

Do you really want to play?

Grace Descanso was going to be a pediatric heart surgeon–she was a brilliant up-and-comer with a bright future in a heart-breaking, innovative field. Then she took two months off to work in a clinic in Guatemala, and came back nearly destroyed. She won’t talk about why, but she quit medicine altogether. Now, five years later, Grace is a crime scene tech in San Diego, going to AA meetings, scraping by and living to be a mom to five-year old Katie.

Everything falls apart again when Grace is summoned to work what looks like a routine crime scene. Hours later, two colleagues have been brutally murdered and Grace herself is under investigation for shooting the killer. Katie’s all she’s got. But when Katie is snatched, Grace is thrown into a nightmare world of timed riddles that she must solve in order to find her daughter before it’s too late. Welcome to The Timer Game.

Title: Out At Night (A Grace Descanso Novel, book #2)
Author/website(s): Susan Arnout Smith
293 pages
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Publication date: March ’09
Genre: Suspense/murder mystery
Review book or pleasure reading: Review book
New-to-me author: No
Would I recommend this book: DNF’d @ pg. 131
Would I read more from this author: No
Journal notes: One word – boring. While I enjoyed The Timer Game and thought it was a decent murder mystery I couldn’t develop one iota of interest in Out At Night.

The next installment of Susan Arnout Smith’s gripping detective series starring CSI detective Grace Descanso. Opening just one day after the ending of The Timer Game, CSI agent, Grace Descanso has to come to terms with the reality of introducing Mac into Katie’s life, as her father. As the three spend time together in the Bahamas, Katie begins to develop a bond with her father. Grace knows that life as she knew it, with her daughter, has come to an end. It is not long before Grace’s personal life is interrupted. Thaddeus Bartholomew, a history professor is forced at gunpoint to drive to a soy field. As he lies dying, he leaves a message on his answerphone at home in Morse code: find Grace Descanso. Cut off before finishing, the FBI need to know why he asked for Grace. A journey into a world of activism and violence, secrets and lies, ‘Out at Night’ is a break neck rollercoaster of a thriller, gripping from the first page until the last.

(Out At Night was provided to me by Nicole at Authors on the Web. I was not paid and this book is being passed along to the another book blogger through Read It Forward )