In our living room, Linda and I have some bookshelves. One of those shelves is full of Gerry Boyle’s books. I especially enjoy Gerry’s main character, Jack McMorrow, a news reporter who lives in Maine but writes for the New York Times.

I first got to know Gerry Boyle when he was a newspaper reporter and columnist in central Maine. And I’m very pleased that he’s become such a successful author who has written 15 mystery novels and won a number of awards.

Gerry’s new novel, Random Act, published by Islandport Press, is very compelling. I intended to read it over five or six days but once I started I just couldn’t stop and I read it in two days.

I don’t want to give away the plot, but it includes a crazy man who kills a nice lady with a hatchet right in front of Jack McMorrow. There’s also a woman whose husband was killed, and she reunited with childhood sweetheart, arriving at his Maine home with a satchel full of $100 bills totaling $2 million.

And this is only a small part of the story. I will also tell you that McMorrow, researching all of this for his story in the New York Times, gets way too close to the action. And I will say, once you start reading the book and get to the place where the man kills lady with a hatchet, you may find the cover of the book kind of creepy. It’s a man in the darkness carrying a hatchet!

All of Gerry’s novels are set in Maine and you will recognize the places. If you have never read any of Gerry’s novels, I guarantee once you read Random Act, you will want to purchase and read a lot more of his novels. And before you know it, just like Linda and me, you’ll have a shelf full of Gerry’s novels!