Dirty Martini

Another A plus mystery in the Jack Daniels series. Jack is still reeling from her last brush with death so things are a little different with boyfriend Latham, partner Herb, and the new superintendent. X Partner McGlade keeps popping up in her life & there's a new threat to the city. Add in a new "hottie" FBI agent that makes Jack question her commitment to Latham and a very toxic new threat to the city. It takes all of Jack's skills to contain the threat to her city & livelihood!

Over the last year or so J.A. Konrath has become one of my favorite authors to read. He has a great way of making his characters stand out, and adds a great mix of humor, horror, and thrill to all his novels. I really enjoy reading the Jack Daniels series and have read all four so far, and look forward to reading all the future titles. This in my opinion is the best book of the series to date. I can definitely tell that JA is getting better at the writers craft the more work he produces. You will definitely want to check this title out! Happy Reading!

While the titles of J. A. Konrath's series featuring Lieutenant Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels are all named after drinks --- WHISKEY SOUR, BLOODY MARY, RUSTY NAIL and the recently-released DIRTY MARTINI --- these aren't lighthearted stories about wasting away in Margaritaville. The novels are set in Chicago, and the crimes and its perpetrators are dark indeed. DIRTY MARTINI had me on the edge of my seat --- not once, but twice. I won't go into too much detail, but the first time was when Daniels was in a house and the second time was when she was in a truck. Upon completion of the book, I thought I was going to require cardioversion to get my heart working properly again. Between those two scenes, however, is one heck of a story, expertly plotted and wonderfully told. Konrath starts off by introducing The Chemist, a twisted genius who plans to take revenge on the City of Chicago by poisoning its food supply. Quite honestly, the author's step-by-step description of what The Chemist does, and how he does it, is enough to make me, a city boy through and through, get a complete library of The Mother Earth News, move to the country and become entirely self-sufficient. That is even before you get to the aforementioned "house" and "truck." Meanwhile, Daniels's boyfriend has proposed, but she is afraid to say "yes," even though she wants to. She then discovers that her long-deceased father isn't dead at all. Those are relatively minor problems, however, compared to what The Chemist has planned, which is to hold Chicago for ransom. How do you catch somebody who is a master of disguise, two steps ahead of you and capable of murder performed in unexpected ways? Maybe you don't. Perhaps this is the last book in the series. You'll have to read to find out. Mystery, action, suspense and, perhaps, redemption. Oh, and a bit of very well-written erotica as well. All this is to be had in DIRTY MARTINI. One cannot reasonably ask for more, or for better, than Konrath and Daniels straight up. One more thing. At the very end of the book, Konrath gives thanks, by name, to every single bookseller he met while on his book tour for RUSTY NAIL. A cynic would call that a smart marketing move, but I call it "class" with a capital C. If you need one more reason to read DIRTY MARTINI, that is it. --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

This one is the best of the four "Jack" Daniels police procedurals Konrath has published. The first three are decent, and should be read in order so that you know the back stories of all the continuing characters before tackling "Dirty Martini." In this effort, however, all the parts fit together...the crimes are horrible and brilliant, the bad guy's identity is obscured right to the end (I had four suspects, all wrong, at various stages of reading), Jacqueline's love life is up and down and up again, and her family life undergoes a heartwarming surprise. Congratulations, Mr. K. With this entry, your female cop in Chicago joins the ranks of enduring crime fighters. I look forward to the next book with a definite thirst.

I got started on this 'Jack Daniels' series just by accident and now it's become one of my absolute FAVORITES!! I do audio books-unabridged versions-and these are really done well, with both a male and female readers doing the characters. The main character is Jacqueline(Jack) Daniels, a female Lutenient with the Chicago PD. These stories move along very well, have original and well-written storylines, keep up a good suspense throughout, and add a bit of light humor. I would absolutely recommend all of his books in this series: Whiskey Sour, Bloody Mary, Rusty Nail, and the latest--Dirty Martini (released 7/3/07). I can't wait until the next one in this series and hope it's sooner than the usual year wait!!

Five reasons to hoist a dirty martini in salute of J.A. Konrath's "Dirty Martini": 1) For once a book delivered on its promise of being "a real page turner". Between the multi-chapter booby-trapped house sequence at the beginning of the book and the multi-chapter race-against-time truck sequence near the end, you really gotta watch out for paper cuts as you burn through the pages. 2) Though I also enjoyed the previous entry in this series, "Rusty Nail", I'm glad this new entry is more of a mix of laughs and thriller-style scares than laughs and gross-out scares. That's not to say that Mr. Konrath has watered down the edgy, eye-opening stuff this time, but has rather given us a better pedigree of thrills. Anyone can do spurting blood and torture scenes. It takes a skillful writer to scare, jolt, and involve without all the blood. Make no mistake, I don't mind the occasional gross-out scene, if that's what's called for at a certain point (I just watched John Carpenter's "The Thing" for the umpteenth time on DVD the other night, after all), but it's good to know that Mr. Konrath won't automatically go for the blood as a short cut to create a memorable scene. 3) A really well-crafted plot supports all the scares and jolts. You know how the producers of the "Die Hard" movies always buy the rights to various thriller novels and then re-tool them into John McClane "Die Hard" movies? Well, this is exactly the novel they should secure if they want to make a follow up to "Live Free or Die Hard". With the booby-trapped house and speeding truck sequences I already mentioned, and the creative, elaborate plan that the villain known as "The Chemist" puts together to terrorize Chicago, this is exactly the sort of story that would set a movie screen on fire. Of course, I'd rather see this as a "Lt. Jack Daniels" movie, but I'd settle for making it into a McClane/"Die Hard" piece. It would rival the first, classic "Die Hard" in quality. But the point is, of course, that you can enjoy this great plot now in book form, and with its intended central heroine. 4) The characterizations and heart aren't left behind. Once again, we really care about Jack Daniels and her friends, making the dangerous scenes feel even more dangerous, but also making the quiet scenes real page turners in their own right. If you're at all familiar with Mr. Konrath's, uh... let's just say, slightly bawdy... sense of humor from his web site, you might wonder where he finds all the sensitivity and emotional depth when his writing calls for it. But, wherever he gets it from, it's here. 5) A big infusion of "I gotta see what happens next" permeates the book, so that we not only have to see what's going to happen within the pages of this novel, but more than ever want to see what's going to happen in the next book, "Fuzzy Navel" (that's the title, according to the author's web site). And it's to Mr. Konrath's credit that much of this quality is generated by what's going on