Rating: 
Summary: Woods is getting old and tired
Review: Blood Orchid with heroine Holly Barker is less of a insipid tea cup of manners and money than his Stone Barrington novels; there is still some actual detection going on here. But not much. Watching the plot unfold is like watching geriatric softball -- every pitch is long and slow, and it hurts to see the batter swing and miss. Poor Mr. Woods is substituting formula for real action or real work; his works have become the lightest of light reading. I sincerely wish he had kept the regard for his readers that his earlier novels showed. If readers want respect, they would be well served to find it elsewhere. I wish I had.
Rating: 
Summary: Barker & Co. Return for a Re-Match
Review: Holly Barker, her dad Ham and her loyal Doberman Daisy return for a reprise of her work and love life in Orchid Beach, Florida. In this installment, which is set approximately a year after Holly loses the man of her dreams during a bank robbery, Holly finds another guy and that the criminal element has returned to her new home town with a vengeance.To be sure, this is nothing more than a continuation of the previous plot line with some new characters and twists. In the latest plot, the reader will witness Holly taking flying lessons, landing on a beach, taking off in a less than flight-worthy aircraft and so on. She also jumps into bed with a new flame, an FBI agent allegedly working undercover in her jurisdiction. It seems to me as if author Stuart Woods is trying to turn Holly Barker into the female version of Stone Barrington. In any case, the plotline is simple if not expected, the book reads quickly and is just as easily forgotten. This is truly a beach-read or one for a cold, snowed in afternoon. It is nothing special, even in the overcrowded detective genre. It's real saving grace is that it keeps Holly, Ham and Daisy alive as a parallel set of characters to populate the novellas that Stuart Woods puts out between the more enjoyable Stone Barrington series.
Rating:
Summary: Barker & Co. Return for a Re-Match
Review: Holly Barker, her dad Ham and her loyal Doberman Daisy return for a reprise of her work and love life in Orchid Beach, Florida. In this installment, which is set approximately a year after Holly loses the man of her dreams during a bank robbery, Holly finds another guy and that the criminal element has returned to her new home town with a vengeance. To be sure, this is nothing more than a continuation of the previous plot line with some new characters and twists. In the latest plot, the reader will witness Holly taking flying lessons, landing on a beach, taking off in a less than flight-worthy aircraft and so on. She also jumps into bed with a new flame, an FBI agent allegedly working undercover in her jurisdiction. It seems to me as if author Stuart Woods is trying to turn Holly Barker into the female version of Stone Barrington. In any case, the plotline is simple if not expected, the book reads quickly and is just as easily forgotten. This is truly a beach-read or one for a cold, snowed in afternoon. It is nothing special, even in the overcrowded detective genre. It's real saving grace is that it keeps Holly, Ham and Daisy alive as a parallel set of characters to populate the novellas that Stuart Woods puts out between the more enjoyable Stone Barrington series.
Rating: 
Summary: Mediocre
Review: I listened to the audio version of "Blood Orchid", featuring Holly Barker, chief of police in a small community in Florida. This was my first exposure to Stuart Woods' work in any form. After seeing other reviews, I know that Woods shouldn't be judged soley on the one book, this not being an example of his best work. I was not impressed with any aspect of the book. The book plodded along for a long time, but not in the sense that the plot was being developed, but that the author was filling the pages. I still don't understand the purpose of wiretapping Holly's home and have to conclude that this was filler. The ending was not surprising. I found the characters uninteresting and flat, made more so by the reading, in particular the female reader who read for Holly and the other women in the book. I don't think audio books can ever improve upon the written word, but they can certainly bring out the worst. Holly's reader spoke in a monotone with improper inflection as though she was reading the words with no sense of content. If Holly was supposed to be strong and dynamic, this did not come across. The male reader was better, even though I didn't find his voice pleasant or capable of much range. I thought that he flubbed his lines a few times, correcting himself. A quality recording would have edited them out, but it's possible that these corrections were part of the text. Holly's relationship with Grant, who seemed too stupid to be an FBI agent, was hokey. We have Holly, still hurting from the death of her fiance and not getting involved in new relationships. She then meets Grant for the first time at a dinner meeting, immediately making sexually suggestive remarks, and going to bed with him the next night. I would have thought that she'd be more tentative. The sexual banter between them was silly, particularly listening to it in audio. At the end of the book, it did not seem credible that Holly would be informed by an FBI deputy director of personnel changes at the FBI before the personnel themselves were informed. The book is intended to be a light thriller, but that's no reason for the author not to do a good job of it.
Rating:
Summary: what the???
Review: I LOVE Stuart Woods. I have read pretty near all of his books. However, this book bombed! WHY? Because it is just so far fetched it's unreal. Holly Barker is the chief of police in Orchid Beach, some small town that no one has ever heard of. She seems to go outside of her jurisdiction more in this book then five local cops do in a life time. She hooks up with an undercover FBI agent in the book, and trusts and relies on him, yet she doesn't even know what his undercover case is. It's just way too long and dragged out. During the first 4-5 chapters, you are able to figure out who the "bad guy" is, and you are forced to wade through 300 more pages of her not realizing it's him, and befriending him. Stick to Stone Barrington, he is at least more credible then this.
Rating:
Summary: what the???
Review: I LOVE Stuart Woods. I have read pretty near all of his books. However, this book bombed! WHY? Because it is just so far fetched it's unreal. Holly Barker is the chief of police in Orchid Beach, some small town that no one has ever heard of. She seems to go outside of her jurisdiction more in this book then five local cops do in a life time. She hooks up with an undercover FBI agent in the book, and trusts and relies on him, yet she doesn't even know what his undercover case is. It's just way too long and dragged out. During the first 4-5 chapters, you are able to figure out who the "bad guy" is, and you are forced to wade through 300 more pages of her not realizing it's him, and befriending him. Stick to Stone Barrington, he is at least more credible then this.
Rating:
Summary: The Holly Barker series seems to be declining...
Review: Normally I'm a huge fan of this series, but as much as it pains me to say this I have to agree with some of the other reviews of this book. 'Orchid Beach' was so far the best book of the series, and 'Orchid Blues' wasn't half bad, but 'Blood Orchid' is nothing more than a light and fluffy read. Stuart Woods has taken a character who I admired as a strong and independant woman and turned her into something short of being a bimbo, with the FBI agent she hooked up with in 'Blood Orchid', and now in 'Reckless Abandon' she hooks up with Stone Barrington...I understand life goes on after the death of Jackson...but does that mean all of a sudden her life needs to revolve around sex with every new guy that comes in her life? What's next, her and Harry Crisp? I miss Jackson...
Hoping the next book is better.
Rating:
Summary: No Improvement
Review: This author has had a few good efforts, "Chiefs" in particular. But since he has started w/the Stone Barrington series w/his main squeeze Carrington Barrington for god`s sake, he has fallen into the realm of Sidney Sheldon et all. No depth to either his characters or his story lines. Plots a 7th grader would reject I occasionaly pick one up ever hopeful but this condition is terminal. He will still sell his trash so he won`t work at his craft. Blood Orchid is truly a "quick read" little to pique ones ones curiosity or for that matter challenge you to think beyond the obvious. A "last resort".
Rating: 
Summary: Standard Woods
Review: This book is standard Stuart Woods: lightly entertaining and a quick read featuring familiar characters and larger-than-life crime. It is three-and-a-half star material all the way. In this story, Holly Barker, police chief for Orchid Beach, becomes embroiled in a real estate scheme that has murders attached to it. Befriending a developer who is almost killed himself, Holly gets involved from the inside as well as in her cop role. What follows is the sort of quick paced action one expects out of one of Woods's books. As entertaining as the book is, it's also far from perfect. Any veteran mystery reader will have the villain pegged pretty quickly and there are other bits of silliness. For example, I doubt most people would think that "Blood Orchid" would be a good name for a housing development. On the other hand, Holly is much more interesting than Woods's principal series character, Stuart Barrington, although not as developed as Will Lee. For a fun quick read, this book fits the bill, but in the grand pool of mysteries, this book is definitely on the shallow end.
Rating:
Summary: Holly Barker again
Review: This is another of Stuart Woods' mysteries, this time following the adventures of his female-army-MP-turned-small-town-police-chief, Holly Barker. Orchid Beach is a small town with about a hundred murders a year to liven things up a bit (or so it seems) and it's had special problems with a development outside of town that mobsters tried to use to smuggle money out of the country. In this installment, more violence ensues, and Holly has to figure out who's trying to kill her, or bug her phone, or whatever. Daisy the Dog returns (still fetching beer from the fridge when commanded) and is joined by a cute undercover FBI agent, an interesting handsome older man, several vicious criminals (including one wielding an Uzi in one hand and a pizza in the other), and an assortment of various characters. Woods has gotten to the point now where he doesn't write the story much any more, he just lets you imagine what's happening, or what people look like or think. There's not much character development outside of the actions they take, and the dialog tends to be very clipped and concise. There isn't that much meat to the story either (I figured out who the bad guy was about halfway through the story, well before Holly does), but it's fun anyway. For one thing, Woods has a wonderful way of making the story hum along so that you're turning the pages constantly and getting to the next chapter. For another, there's something to be said for keeping things concise. Robert B. Parker's made a living at it for several decades now.
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