cart
BROKEN HEARTLAND
By J.M. Hayes
Poisoned Pen Press, $29.95
I just finished a damn skippy book.
I fell asleep reading it last night and it’s still bouncing around my head. It’s set on election day in central Kansas. Before the polls open, the sheriff’s last working deputy wakes in the night anxious about his job, puts on his uniform and goes looking for speeders.
He is involved in a high speed pursuit that ends when his patrol car rams a school bus filled with high school students. Sheriff English — Englishman they call him — is working this debacle when he learns there has been a shooting at the high school. It seems that both of the sheriff’s daughters, his brother and the brother’s wolf felt the need to come home to help him.
He’s gonna need it.
Wow. This is the best book I’ve read in a long while, and that includes those written by Baldacci and Box.
On a scale of one to five, this is a 4½. This one has everything.
THIRD STRIKE
By Philip R. Craig and William G. Tapply
Scribner, $24
Two of my favorite authors have published their last collaboration.
It delivers a slam-bang plot and the characterization
we’ve come to love. It is set on Martha’s Vineyard, where a ferry strike has trapped the summer people and raised prices and tempers.
I think Craig knew he was dying when he wrote this book, and that makes it more poignant yet.
On page 284 he wrote, “I felt I was on the lip of the Void, ready to fall.” It doesn’t get much better than this for mystery lovers.
This is a 4½.
RUBY TUESDAY
By Mike Harrison
ECW Press, $26.95
I’ve needed a new PI after the loss of Craig. Harrison is stepping up to the plate. His character is called Eddie Dancer and he meets his newest client in the classic position — feet on the desk asking his new client for a five-letter word meaning “to turn inside out.”
She never missed a beat. “My life,” she said.
So begins this thrill ride that starts with a laid off executive, Paul Miller, defending a woman in a bank lobby from her own husband, who manages to put him in the hospital and then sue him.
Miller offers to fight the bully in the ring. Queensland rules. All bets are off and the media is now paying attention. Can Dancer help Miller’s wife call off the fight? Or can Dancer help the out-of-shape executive face the bully and win?
A strong 4.
Michele Patterson is a librarian at Schusterman-Benson Library.
 |
