Rating: 
Summary: Great reading experience
Review: Holly Barker is going to the chapel to get married. Her best friend Daisy, her Doberman Pincher, will serve as the maid of honor. However, Holly's elation abruptly turns to horror when her fiancé is murdered during a bank robbery that turned violent. Holly leads the official investigation that takes her to a town not found on the most detailed of maps. The inhabitants are white supremacists who recruit Holly's dad Ham into joining their organization.
Ham pretends to join the militia and quickly assumes a key role amidst the group. Holly and her law enforcement peers obtain Ham's cooperation and he places listening devices in the organization's encampment. This enables them to learn that Ham is selected to assassinate a VIP, but no one knows whom the intended victim is. Unless they can learn the identity of the target, someone will die.
Stuart Woods has his more famous character Stone Barrington makes cameo appearances in ORCHID BLUES, which allows fans to feel a greater connection to the Barker series. Holly is a humorous independent soul who copes with grief by diving headfirst into a mystery filled with more twists and turns than that found in a maze. This is a good read on a cold winter's night. Harriet Klausner
Rating: 
Summary: A quick and fun read.
Review: Holly Barker is the cities Police Chief and is accompanied by her best friend Daisy, her Doberman Pincher. The book starts with Holly waking up on the morning of her wedding day. However, her day takes a sharp downturn when her fiancé is murdered during a bank robbery that turned violent. Holly leads the official investigation with the aid of her friend in the FBI. The investigation leads her to a town that is not shown on any maps. The inhabitants are white supremacists who recruit Holly's dad Ham into joining their organization. Ham pretends to join this group and is quickly given a key role within it. His infiltration of the group enables the law enforcment agencies involved to learn that Ham is selected to assassinate a VIP, but no one knows whom the intended victim is. Unless they can learn the identity of the target, someone will die.
Rating:
Summary: Sequel to "Orchid Beach"
Review: Holly Barker, Chief of Police of Orchid Beach,returns in this sequel by Stuart Woods. At the beginning of the book, Holly is planning to marry lawyer Jackson Oxenhandler. Violent and unexpected events occur, and suddenly Holly and her father Ham are pursuing a group of murdering bank robbers. Ham infiltrates a left-wing group and walks a narrow line as a double agent. He and Holly work in connection with an FBI agent, but they are never sure whom they can trust. Woods has a lean writing style which is driven by dialogue and does not contain much description or detail. If you enjoy this style, as I do, this is recommended reading.
Rating:
Summary: Small Town Chief of Police Solves a Big One
Review: Holly Barker, local chief of police, is about to be married to her fiancé when he is killed during a robbery attempt at the local bank in the town of Orchid, Florida. Holly assigns herself to the case, but there is little evidence. Holly's father, Ham, retired Army non-com, accompanies her on a visit to a small town to follow a lead, and they find themselves at an unadvertised gun show in what appears to be a militia encampment. Following a hunch that these people might be involved with the bank robbery, Ham, at great personal risk, infiltrates the organization, and they soon start to depend on him because of his expert marksmanship. The racist militia group involves Ham in a plot to assassinate a VIP, but he is aware all along of how expendable he is to them. Stone Barrington, featured player in many Woods' novels, makes a few cameo appearances mainly to lend moral support to Holly, but disappointingly he has no major role in this novel. However, Ham and Holly (and her dog Daisy) are well-developed, strong and interesting characters who carry the plot well. I'm sure we'll be seeing them in other novels. The nasty, evil militia were too one dimensional and stereotyped to be believable, and I hope the next time Woods writes about Ham and Holly he gives them something more interesting to do.
Rating:
Summary: Follow up to Orchid Beach
Review: Holly's back in the action. One of Stuart Woods' better books. Fast pace, interesting plot. Read in one day.
Rating: 
Summary: an insult to readers
Review: i am glad to see so many reviewers are angry about the woeful lack of work the author put into this book. it is riddled with errors and so sloppy it could have been written in a weekend, as has been pointed out.
i couldn't help noticing that one of the militia leaders, peck, comes to ham's house--drinks whisky out of a glass and also shoots a pistol. both would leave prints. yet the cops and fbi are complaining that they have no fingerprints from the bank, and they even ask ham to get some out at the militia compound. DUH! i have enjoyed wood's earlier books but in recent ones he appends a most arrogant message, telling people not to write to him pointing out his errors. his knowledge of crime scene investigation and police procedure is pathetic, given what the ordinay person knows today from tv shows and properly researched thrillers.
you know a writer has nothing to say when he starts putting animals in his books to make up for lack of content and characterisation.
this old fart is well past it and his books are now not worth buying.
Rating: 
Summary: Not So Blue
Review: I had hoped that ORCHID BLUES would be on a par with Stone Barrington, but alas, it is not. It is a quick read but there is no real character development and I think Woods does himself and his readers a dis-service. The characters are so poorly drawn that I lost interest in them very quickly. This book is ordinary... I can't recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Good for my particular mood
Review: I had spun my wheels trying to read two other novels before getting to this one. I'd read half of each novel. So when I got to this one, my expectations were pretty low. This was definitely a page-turner. I thought I was going to be extremely disappointed when I saw that Barrington character turn up. Especially with Woods' occasional references to Holly's wondering if she'd every sleep with someone again. I was braced for her being Barrington's latest conquest. Fortunately, that didn't happen. So there you see my low expectations. Desperation to finish a book I read and dread that Holly would be the next woman to fall all over herself over Barrington. Thus, as I've stated, the book was a page-turner. Some criticize Woods' dismissal of Holly's grief; I was grateful that the plot moved on with minimal wallowing. There was a case to solve and Holly had to put her feelings aside. Okay, it was a far-fetched case and all that, but it was like watching network TV when you're too tired to do anything useful. It passed the time. The best part of the book, though, was the author's notes at the end. Pretty humorous. "Write me only if you're going to praise me otherwise don't bother." I like the guy's nerve. This is the type person who would make Barrington his protagonist. Kind of immersed in his own fantasy.
Rating:
Summary: And One Star is Very Generous
Review: I hate when publishers do this. They take a very short novel, probably less than 200 pages in normal print, and sell it at an exorbitant price by using large print and double spacing to fool readers into thinking the book in question is something worth buying. It isn't that quantity equals quality. Rather, it is that the lack of quantity can indicate a total absence of plot and character development, which is exactly the problem with Stuart Woods' "Orchid Blues". There really is no reason to read this book since everything you need to know about it can be summed up in one sentence. Racist militias are bad. Police Chief Holly Barker is supposed to marry her beau, Jackson Oxenhandler (no, really) as the story begins. Jackson stops off at the bank and ends up in the middle of a robbery. Like any attorney, he can't seem to keep his mouth shut. Before you can say Jackson Oxenhandler, he goads one of the shotgun-wielding robbers into shooting him. No, it wasn't the bullet. It was terminal stupidity killed the Oxenhandler. Holly, her father Ham Barker, and her FBI friends are quickly on the trail of the danged racist militiamen who are responsible. Of course, they left nary a clue, but they can't fool Holly. Ham, an ex-army superhero, quickly infiltrates the militia. (In this book, everything happens quickly. It has to.) Hey, so what if Ham's daughter is the Police Chief, and Ham's future son-in-law was killed in the robbery. None of those dumb militia guys are going to see a problem here. Actually, no one in this book stops to think about anything. The militiamen are supposed to be so concerned about infiltration. Yet their lack of follow up on Ham borders on incompetence. Then there is the head FBI agent who is more concerned about guarding his turf then he is with protecting the innocent. Clearly, stupidity keeps the plot moving forward. Soon Ham has been singled out to assassinate someone. But who can it be? Anyone who reads this and can't figure out the target at least 50 pages before he is revealed deserves to end up on that bank floor with Jackson. The characters themselves are so poorly drawn it is almost astounding. Holly's boyfriend is murdered, and she hardly pauses to express any emotion. Sure, every now and then she drops a tear or two, but it always seems to be an afterthought by the author. There is another problem with Holly and Ham. She supposedly has spent twenty years in the Army and then risen to chief of police. Even assuming she rose quickly through her small town police force, this would make her at least in her mid forties, and would likely put her father at least in his mid sixties. Yet, you never get the sense of their ages. That could have been a significant part of the story, if there actually had been a story here. Woods also throws in a cameo appearance by a character named Stone Barrington who apparently is the main character in several of his books. Stone's presence in the bank is as contrived as anything else that happens here. Before you know it, Holly is sharing sensitive case information with him. However, he really serves little purpose here. I don't know if he's in the book to try to get Stone fans to read this mess or to hook people reading this book into buying other books about Stone. (Personally, I'd rather read books about someone named Oxenhandler.) There are two very funny pages in the book. In a burst of egomania, Woods adds an Author's Notes section at the end. In this section he tells us the right and wrong ways to contact him and what he will and won't read or respond to. Actually, he seemed to put more thought into this then he does to anything else in "Orchid Blues". I thought about sending Woods a copy of this review, but it probably wouldn't be on the approved correspondence list.
Rating:
Summary: another winner from woods
Review: I have been a fan of Stuart Woods for quite some time now and still get excited when I see a new title by him. He does a stupendous job of creating characters that the reader can easily associate with, and instantly care about. This remains true for Holly Barker and her father Ham. I've read some other reviews that credited Woods' use of previously existing characters to populate his newer titles. I must commend him on this practice as well. Stone Barrington pops up in Orchid Blues, only briefly and with limited plot importance, to give a familiarity to this novel and its setting. As always, I greatly enjoyed Woods style and choice of settings. His knowledge of technology is extensive, yet he explains it in layman's terms. My only criticism would be to provide better closure, or perhaps explanation, on the relationship between the heroine Holly and her FBI friend Harry. Tensions and mistrust existed between them at the end and were never resolved. Otherwise an excellent read and great fun. Brian DuBois
author of The Gory Details
| 
