Rating: 
Summary: Boldt & Co. continue to evolve
Review: 'The Body of David Hayes' is the latest installment in the drama that centers around Lieutenant Lou Boldt, family, and friends. Ridley Pearson's series has, in the past, focused on Lou Boldt, psychologist Daphne Matthews, and detective, now sargeant, John Lamoia as they used high tech forensic science, psychology, and a bit of good old fashioned detective work to track down kidnappers, killers, and rapers. Along the way, Pearson has gone into great depth about the home lives concerning the characters.Daphne and John have settled into a live in relationship. This came about in the previous novel, which featured Matthews. Consequently, these two figures, while always prominent in past novels, are really no more than side characters in 'The Body of David Hayes.' John gets a fair amount of attention, but Matthews only really appears in about a dozen pages. The attention of this novel is squarely on Lou Boldt and his wife Liz. The novel reaches back into the earlier installments of the series, and a past lover of Liz's is parolled after serving several years on his sentence for embezelling millions from the bank Liz worked out. Suddenly, Liz finds her entire world, including her career and marriage, in peril as the affair is threatened to be exposed. While the Boldt's focus on this disruption on their lives, Lou sets out to piece together what exactly is happening. An old friend appears to have gone maverick in an attempt to close the old embezzlement case. The prosecuting attorney suddenly doesn't look so good either. David Hayes is on the loose, and what he is up to is an enigma. To top it all off, the Russian mafia enters the scene. Suddenly, who is an ally and who is an enemy is not quite so clear. Crime scenes are no longer clear, and cast suspicion on many characters. 'The Body of David Hayes' continues Pearson's string of well written novels. His writing, which was always strong, has grown and he is no longer just adept at writing a suspenseful thriller, but has captured the ability to add color to everyday scenes. The turmoil between Lou and Liz is thick and suffocating. The only down point is that while Pearson kept the readers in suspense as to who exactly the 'bad guy' is, it almost becomes to confusing. Frequently, Liz or Lou would make some sort of discovery which would appear to be profound, but didn't seem to enlighten the reader much. This wouldn't be a problem if the story would then evolve from that point as if the reader had kept up. This doesn't happen a great deal, but enough to be distracting at points. All in all, its a good novel. Once I started, I couldn't put it down. I recommend it to any fan of Pearson's work or the Boldt series, and any fan of police or crime fiction in general. Some knowledge of previous novels in the series would help, but it is not essential to understanding this novel. Pearson does a good job of summing up the back story so that the new reader is informed without it becoming cumbersome.
Rating:
Summary: Boldt & Co. continue to evolve
Review: 'The Body of David Hayes' is the latest installment in the drama that centers around Lieutenant Lou Boldt, family, and friends. Ridley Pearson's series has, in the past, focused on Lou Boldt, psychologist Daphne Matthews, and detective, now sargeant, John Lamoia as they used high tech forensic science, psychology, and a bit of good old fashioned detective work to track down kidnappers, killers, and rapers. Along the way, Pearson has gone into great depth about the home lives concerning the characters. Daphne and John have settled into a live in relationship. This came about in the previous novel, which featured Matthews. Consequently, these two figures, while always prominent in past novels, are really no more than side characters in 'The Body of David Hayes.' John gets a fair amount of attention, but Matthews only really appears in about a dozen pages. The attention of this novel is squarely on Lou Boldt and his wife Liz. The novel reaches back into the earlier installments of the series, and a past lover of Liz's is parolled after serving several years on his sentence for embezelling millions from the bank Liz worked out. Suddenly, Liz finds her entire world, including her career and marriage, in peril as the affair is threatened to be exposed. While the Boldt's focus on this disruption on their lives, Lou sets out to piece together what exactly is happening. An old friend appears to have gone maverick in an attempt to close the old embezzlement case. The prosecuting attorney suddenly doesn't look so good either. David Hayes is on the loose, and what he is up to is an enigma. To top it all off, the Russian mafia enters the scene. Suddenly, who is an ally and who is an enemy is not quite so clear. Crime scenes are no longer clear, and cast suspicion on many characters. 'The Body of David Hayes' continues Pearson's string of well written novels. His writing, which was always strong, has grown and he is no longer just adept at writing a suspenseful thriller, but has captured the ability to add color to everyday scenes. The turmoil between Lou and Liz is thick and suffocating. The only down point is that while Pearson kept the readers in suspense as to who exactly the 'bad guy' is, it almost becomes to confusing. Frequently, Liz or Lou would make some sort of discovery which would appear to be profound, but didn't seem to enlighten the reader much. This wouldn't be a problem if the story would then evolve from that point as if the reader had kept up. This doesn't happen a great deal, but enough to be distracting at points. All in all, its a good novel. Once I started, I couldn't put it down. I recommend it to any fan of Pearson's work or the Boldt series, and any fan of police or crime fiction in general. Some knowledge of previous novels in the series would help, but it is not essential to understanding this novel. Pearson does a good job of summing up the back story so that the new reader is informed without it becoming cumbersome.
Rating:
Summary: excellent fast read
Review: Another excellent read from Pearson. The book
moves FAST.
Some parts of the ending seem far fetched, but oh well
it was a fun ride.
Rating: 
Summary: Pearson writes action better than emotion
Review: David Hayes' body - dead or alive - takes the spotlight in the personal as well as the professional stages of Pearson's latest Lou Boldt novel. Hayes' body first turns up missing - amid a welter of blood - when Seattle Police lieutenant Boldt responds to an assault on old friend and colleague, Danny Foreman, who had staked out Hayes on no one's orders but his own. Hayes, a former computer whiz at Liz Boldt's bank, has just completed his stint for a wire fraud of 17 million dollars - which was never recovered, or traced to its owner. But Hayes turns up again the next day - phoning Liz to beg her to get him into the bank so he can access the computer and give the money back to its ruthless owners, the ones who have already taken two of his finger nails for incentive. Anguished and terrified, Liz does what she has to - tells Boldt Hayes was the man she had an affair with five years before, reopening that old wound and rocking their marriage once again. Pearson intertwines the marital upheavals with the suspense of police work, and the suspense part is a lot more successful. The criminals are smart and vicious, the police work dangerous and the various intrigues keep the pages turning and the questions coming. When pitting cops against criminals Pearson knows how to ratchet up the tension, but the writing strains against the byplay of painful emotions and the struggle to make a marriage work. The nail-biter climax is satisfyingly long and complex and meticulously choreographed and almost redeems the Boldts from their tawdry past.
Rating: 
Summary: MAKE A DECISION, RIDLEY!!!!!
Review: Either write romantic suspense where all the stories have happy endings and the couples get together and stay together or right a gritty police procedural with real human emotions. don't try to combine the two--this effort was a mediocre one at best. The Art of Deception was much better.
And did you review any of your previous works in the series, before writing this--because it doesn't fit the timeline that the other books set out. Liz's affair with David Hayes couldn't have happened six years ago--by my alculations, that would have made it in the middle of No Witnesses--a good example of your writing. And you established in that book, and in Art of Deception that LIz knew about Daphne.
Finally, Lou whines too much and lies too much to himself about his feelings. Either get rid of him, or demote him to minor character status and bring on John and Daphne. I wish I got a copy of the connecting chapter; maybe that would explain a few things.
Rating: 
Summary: WAIT--Check this one out from the library if you must read
Review: from the timeline descreptancies (Which Anne & Elizabeth have graciously and carefully pointed out), to the Whiney discordant BS that Lou Boldt dishes out in this book, to the big publisity stunt the Pearson people pulled to try to get us to buy this hardback (the "Lost Chapter" signed by Ridley if you buy the hard back between April 6th and 23rd--I wasn't eligible because I bought it before April 6th from an Amazon marketplace distributor), this book has proven to be a huge disappointment. The thing is that the "lost chapter" is now available for FREE on Ridley Pearson's website. It is even more poorly written than the book--just plain sleaze, not the good romance and lovemaking that Susan Andersen, Stella Cameron, Karen Young, and Linda Howard write--it's just bad sleaze.
Boldt cvan'[t seem to reconcile the fact that Daphne has grown beyond loving and yearning for him, and John has grown beyond the need for a mentor. Daphne and John have found themselves in each other and a baby that needs both of them and Boldt resents this. He also resents his wife's affair which (as the lost chapter points out) was his own fault--he's a workaholic. But this time, we only see Boldt's POV (90% of the time anyway) and he uses every opportunity he can to punish Liz--even to the point of throwing his one night stand with Daphne in her face, thereby distracting her from what she needs to do in the trade of clothes with Daphne and thus putting her life (and Daphne's) at risk. The other thing that bothers me is how proud Lou is of MIles--too proud, almost to the point of being a stage parent. I never really like Lou Boldt--much preferred Daphne and Bobbie Gaynes, now that I've reread the series, John LaMoia is growing on me rapidly. Reminds me strongly of John Stamos's character on Full House (the supposedly womanizing but actually very loving and sensitive Uncle Jesse Katsopolis). Boldt always struck me as a little self absorbed and I always wondered if I was giving Liz a fair shake. Well now I know I needed to give Liz the benefit of the doubt. Lou is a definite anithero. It is my opinion that Ridley Pearson has lost much of his credibility as a writer and that Time Warner will give Pearson notice that his next book better be better. Frankly, I would like to see Lou Boldt killed off and John LaMoia take his place as the real hero.
Rating:
Summary: This is Ridley Pearson?
Review: Having read all of Ridley Pearson's books and thoroughly enjoyed every one, I'm wondering if he really wrote The Body of David Hayes. It just does not measure up to his previous novels. Other reviewers have pointed out the timeline discrepancy, and I could not get "connected" with the characters as I have in the past. And to think, this is the first Pearson novel I've purchased in hardback!
Rating:
Summary: NOT WORTH THE EXCRUCIATING WAIT!!!!!!!
Review: I should have expected nothing after the First Victim but Middle of Nowhere and Art of Deception set me up to hopefully learn more about John and Daphne and their budding relationship and more about Liz. But then Ridley made it seem like those two books didn't even exist with this whiney diatribe about how horrible Lou's life is with a "cheating" wife and how he doesn't understand how his lover Daphne could go off with someone such as John LaMoia. Puhleeeeeeeeeeeeeze!!!!!
And Has Ridley spent anytime in the Seattle area recently--I don't think so!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: It passed the time well
Review: I'd like to start off by saying this is my first book on CD that I have ever listened to. So I don't know if all novels have just one reader for all the voices or if generally they have both female and male readers for the parts. But for me, the story was diminished because the man who narrated did the female parts as well as the male, and I had a hard time connecting with Liz, who was one of the main characters because of it. He sounded like a man pretending to be a woman, which reminded me a little of comedy skits on TV, so it was hard to take Liz's character seriously because of the "mental image" I had developed of a cross dressing man with a bad wig in Liz's part. Perhaps this is only my own problem and would not be a problem for others more used to the book on CD format.
The story was action packed, it kept me interested and the plot had a lot of twists and turns to it. As for the rest of the male voices in the story he did a fabulous job. They were each distinct and I could tell who was who just by how he read it. My only critizism of the story itself is that Liz and Bolt's kids were tossed in the story, and they weren't well developed and I felt that things would have been fine without them since they had no major roles in the plot line at all.
I took this on a 10 hour road trip and it did pass the time nicely. It definitely was not boring to listen to.
Rating:
Summary: Not Bad...
Review: I've been a Ridley Pearson fan for a long time. But while I enjoyed this book and devoured it in a day and a half, I agree with some of the other reviewers when they say that this is not his best effort. I'm not saying the book is bad. I'm just saying that he's kind of shifted emphasis off Boldt and Daphne and onto Boldt and Liz. That means we get a lot more about the Boldts home life, and less about the police work. In a series about a homicide cop, this book ran against the grain, becoming a novel about bank fraud and the marital relationship between a man and his wife. I applaud the character depth that Ridley went into, but I'd definitely like to get back on the main stream of things and reading about Boldt, Matthews and LaMoia again. This book seemed almost a spinoff from the original series. I also felt that the direction the story took seemed to lead Boldt to do things that were out of character for him. I'm not gonna give away any spoilers, but well go read it and you'll see what I mean. Overall, as it always is with any Pearson novel, the writing was tight and suspense masterful. If you're an existing Pearson fan, you should read this. If you're not, don't start with this book because it's not an adequate representation of the power of his work. Pick up one of his earlier novels-- like "No Witnesses" or "The Pied Piper", then come back and read this one later.
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