Mainly Mysteries

Laurie R. King, Thorndike Press, 2010; Reviewed Aug 21, 2010

Mary Russell and her husband Sherlock Holmes stopped the religious fanatic from slicing open Sherlock's son's throat. His belief was that if he sacrificed during an eclipse of the moon he would become a God. Mary thought she had killed the man when she shot him in the chest. But, it turns out the man had a book in his front breast pocket and the bullet while producing a lot of blood was denied its power to penetrate to the heart and kill the man. Mary barely made her escape from the northern Scotland area in a small plane with the three year old daughter of Sherlock's son Damien but the plane was shot at by a sniper. Though the plane was not brought down immediately the pilot was wounded badly in the leg and the skin of the plane later began peeling back causing the bird to lose its aerodynamic properties and fall to the ground in a dense forest. 

Juan Gomez-Jurado, Simon and Schuster, 2010; Reviewed Aug 18, 2010

A Nazi War Criminal infamous for having butchered almost a thousand Jewish children in a Mental Hospital in Germany during World War II conducting experiments on the effectiveness of various pain relief drugs is finally caught. But, he is caught by a priest who is also employed by the CIA. Father Fowler's mission is to obtain the candle the butcher retained from his Jewish loot and the copper map contained therein. That map would lead him and an unlikely group of adventurers on a quest to find and recover "The Ark of the Covenant". Fowler was sent on the mission of getting possession of the Ark for the Vatican. Other members of the expedition had other plans for the Ark.