A great month for reading, for me.

1. CUTS, Richard Laymon. Laymon books have gotten like that accident that you just have to slow down and look at, for me. They're all pretty much the same (with a few notable exceptions) but I just keep buying these Leisure paperbacks and reading them. This one's about a serial killer. Plenty of sex and violence, as usual. Laymon is a decent writer who has a way with getting the reader into the minds of his characters, even if the "mental processes" of his female characters are more like what a man fantasizes that they are... Anyway, it was a fast read, but in the end, just an average read. 7 of 10

2. DEATH WALKED IN, Carolyn Hart. An Annie Darling/Death on Demand mystery. This one finds our heroes (Annie and husband Max) involved in a murder investigation where a young boy is accused of the crime, but appears to Annie and Max (and to others who know the boy well) to be innocent. A light, fun mystery. Hart can take a subject like this and make it a fairly cozy little tale. I enjoy this series a lot. The series gets an infusion of new characters in this one, in the person of some of the new police officers for the island they call home. 8 of 10

3. BLUE HEAVEN, C.J. Box. Not a Joe Pickett game warden story. This is a standalone that finds two little kids witnessing a murder in the woods, and they are spotted by the 4 men who shoot the victim, and are chased. They escape, but the search is on. And raising the tension is the fact that the four men are all retired LAPD officers, who have moved to remote Idaho, an area that has become sort of a haven for cops (hence the title). They are able to easily insinuate themselves into the search for the kids, with the full intention of finding them, and making sure they are never seen alive again. Great story, a bit of a forced ending makes me drop it a half point in rating, but it was a fantastic trip. 9 of 10.

4. HOLD TIGHT, Harlan Coben. Another standalone from Coben, this one explores issues of privacy invasion of teenagers by parents, teen suicide, and drug use by kids. All this in a terrific story where Mike Baye's teenaged son, Adam, has disappeared and Mike is racing against the clock to find him before he does something stupid, like kill himself like Adam's friend Spencer did. Layers and layers of plot make up a "can't put it down" read from Coben. It's up there with his best. So much is going on, and it all ties up in the end very satisfactorily. I give it a 9.5.

5. MURDER OF A CHOCOLATE COVERED CHERRY, Denise Swanson. A Skye Dennison/Scumble River mystery. I love these because they are set in my general area, and my hometown is frequently mentioned in the books. Plus, they are well written, well plotted and fun light mysteries. In this one, the title refers to one of the contestants of a cooking contest, Ms. Cherry Alexander, who is murdered and then unceremoniously dumped in a vat of melted chocolate. Skye is a particant in the contest, against her wishes, forced into it by her mother, and using her mother's recipe, and she begins investigating at the behest of her chief of police boyfriend, Wally Boyd. At the same time there is a missing teenager whose parents are suing the school and the school paper for libel (or is it slander? Written word...) over something that was inserted into the paper about the girl. And there is the presence of Wally's father, Carson Boyd, who makes his first appearance in these mysteries after we readers haven't known much about him... It's a good quick read and worth the effort to track down. (The books are all over in Joliet bookstores...) I give this one an 8 with the arrow pointing up...almost gave it an 8.5, but that might be the carryover exuberance over the previous two reads...

6. DESIGNING DISNEY, John Hench and Peggy Van Pelt. A book about just what it says - the concept work involved in designing Disney theme parks. The attention to detail in this process is impressive, and this book lays out a lot of the thought processes that went into all of that detail work. I found it quite interesting, but I've become quite the Disney-phile... Not gonna rate this one.

That's it for April. Great month of reading for me. No way will I get another done by the end of today, even though I've started T.A. Pratt's POISON SLEEP, the next in the Marla Mason series, and it's grabbed me already...