Category: Book Review

Book Review, Golden Age Article

Book Review: Nothing to Hide

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Nothing to Hide begins with Roland March investigating a murder where the victim was beheaded and skinned. An FBI Agent gives him the name of the victim but then he sees the supposed victim at the same spot where his partner is gunned down, Marsh knows he’s on to something bigger.

On Administrative leave while the police investigates his shooting of the man who killed his partner, March continues a quiet investigation into a dark world of ex-CIA men, and drug and gun running, where no one is quite what they seem and no one can be trusted.

The book is a major departure from previous books with its emphasis on clandestine intelligence and Mexican gun running, it reads more like a spy novel at points rather than a police procedural.

Unlike in previous books where Marsh’s personal life with supporting characters is a subplot, here it feels more like background or characterization. The book spends less time on his current relationships and more time on his past when he was a Marine lieutenant who encountered a mysterious man who offered him an entirely different path.

From a character standpoint, this is a fascinating story. The flashbacks tie into the main storyline. It also gives us a picture of who Roland March is and why he does what he does. This is an important question. March’s beloved Captain is forced out by politics and replaced by his old boss, a woman whose leadership style is to make a cult of personality around her. His administrative leave is drug out by the Internal Affairs division despite evidence that he did nothing wrong. I found myself wandering whether March would ride off into the sunset to spend more time with his oft-traveling wife.

By the end of the book, I realized that wasn’t going to happen and this book revealed why. Nothing to Hide paints a portrait of a man whose dedication to justice sometimes borders on fanaticism. He walks a fine line between tenacity and vigilante madness. Arguably he goes slightly over the line in this book before coming back.

March is the type of guy that George Orwell had mind when he said, “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” Nothing to Hide is a book that left me admiring Roland March and slightly scared for him at the same time.

Rating: 4.75 out of 5.0

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Book Review, Golden Age Article, Nero Wolfe

Book Review: Family Affair

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This is the very last Wolfe novel written by Rex Stout. The book begins with a literal bang as a favorite waiter of Wolfe’s comes seeking Wolfe’s advice in the middle of the night. Archie puts him up in the South Room for safety, only for the man to be blown up by a bomb that rocks Archie and Wolfe’s world.

This case is personal for Wolfe who is determined to catch the killer himself. It’s an unprecedented case where we get a whiff of Watergate, Wolfe turns down a one hundred thousand dollar fee, and ends up going to jail all leading up to a conclusion that was shocking at the time and still is if you don’t search the Internet too much before reading.

Written while Stout was 85, the book was clearly intended to bring the series to an end. I lost count of the number of times Archie said something happened for the first time. In one scene, Archie gives one person a thousand to one odds on something and he ends up being wrong. Cramer shows a softer side even while Wolfe abandons all pretense of anything but perfunctory cooperation with the police.

This is a book that you should ideally read at the end of the other Stout books, or at least after reading a couple dozen. You can’t appreciate how deeply ingrained the rules that get broken in this book are unless you understand the world these characters inhabit.

Family Affair doesn’t give us new insights into Wolfe’s past but it does tell us a lot about what matters most to him and his closest associates: honor. There is an honor in being the greatest detective in the world and someone people can turn to, and there’s honor in working for him and woe to the person who puts that at risk.

The book is a perfect finale and it leaves me a little bit hesitant to pick up Robert Goldsborough’s Wolfe novels, because I can’t imagine anything doing a good enough job to follow up this story.

Rating: Very Satisfactory

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You can find all the Nero Wolfe books in Kindle, Audiobook, and book form on our Nero Wolfe page.

Book Review, Golden Age Article, The Saint

Book Review: The Saint v. Scotland Yard

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The Saint, a character who remained popular for decades and has been portrayed by everyone from George Sanders and Vincent Price to Roger Moore and Val Kilmer, got his start in literature.

The Saint v. Scotland Yard  is a book published in 1932 and it collects three novellas, each featuring the Saint working outside or even against Scotland Yard, near the start of the character’s literary career . . “The Inland Revenue” sees Simon trying to shut down a blackmailer. “The Million Pound Day” pits the Saint against a ruthless gang of kidnappers who have a plan to force the printing of a million pounds in fake Italian currency. The final story, “The Melancholy Journey of Mr Teal” finds the Saint trying to steal a jewel thief’s loot before the thief’s caught by Scotland Yard.

Overall, the stories are decent for the period. They’re much more adventures than they are mysteries. The cases are well-written and fun to read.

Those who know the Saint from golden age mediums like radio or the Sanders movies may not recognize much about this early version. While the Saint’s billed as the “Robin Hood” of modern crime, the Saint robs from the rich but seems more self-centered. Of course, as this was the 1930s, many people resented the rich and believed the police were corrupt or incompetent, so there was some catharsis in his antics for the common man of the day.

The brilliance of Charteris is that despite the Saint’s less than sterling conduct, he makes it really hard not to like him. The Robin Hood analogy seems inapt. The Saint in this book is really reminiscent of a romantic pirate. The Saint is a swashbuckler who laughs in the face of danger and death, and writes poetry in perilous situations. He and his girlfriend Pat are pure adrenaline junkies who get their kicks out of exposing themselves to danger which is kind of fun for people who live more tame lives.

While the Saint is no paragon in this book, he doesn’t hurt innocent people. Indeed, the book works because whoever the Saint crosses, we have a sense that they somehow deserve it.

The only other negative to this book are some unfortunate racial language which may make the book less accessible to some readers. Overall though, this was a decent early Saint novella collection.

Book Rating: 3.75 out of 5.0

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Book Review, Golden Age Article, Nero Wolfe

Book Review: The Mother Hunt

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A wealthy young widow has a baby left on her doorstep with the claim that the Baby was her late husband’s child born out of wedlock. She hires Wolfe to find out who the mother is.

The task is impossible but as usual, Wolfe comes up with a plan thanks to the unusual buttons on the baby’s outfit. However, when the buttons traced to its source, a nurse who’d cared for the baby-the nurse is murdered.

Wolfe and Archie find themselves in a tight spot with the cops as they try to find the mother, but are invariably forced to find the killer as well.

This was a well-done story with great characters and a twisting and turning plot that drives Wolfe from the Brownstone under the tightest spot of his career as far as the police are concerned.

The relationship between Archie and the widow is played very well and honestly I could have seen it going places. I think there’s a good case to be made that this story was where the Corpus should have ended maybe with wedding bells and respectability for Archie at last.

If not, the book marks the end of the greatest era of Wolfe stories. From 1946-63, Stout produced his best work. With A Right to Die, the tone of the rest of the books would change dramatically.

Overall, this was a wonderful Nero Wolfe novel and earns a:

Rating: Very Satisfactory

You can find all the Nero Wolfe books in Kindle, Audiobook, and book form on our Nero Wolfe page.

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Book Review, Golden Age Article

Book Review: Fit to Kill

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It’s the 1ate 1950s and Shayne’s reporter friend Tim Rourke is on vacation in a Latin American country with a corrupt government when he meets a beautiful blonde claiming to have hot information.

Shayne is at the airport to meet Rourke, who acts out of character. Then Rourke is kidnapped while the girl disappears and Shayne is left with a lot of questions and a typewriter.

The story is okay, it’s not as good as the other two Shayne mysteries I’ve read, but Halliday provides your expected dose of mayhem, danger, and beautiful blondes.

This one suffered for having Shayne out of the picture for the first 30 percent of the book. Rourke isn’t a fun point of view character. Plus in the middle of the book, Rourke gets kind of drunk and those scenes read like   poor imitation of Craig Rice’s Mr. Malone. The solution is all a bit unsurprising and it wasn’t well set up.

Overall, Mike Shayne is still good and it’s not a bad read, but Halliday had produced far better books than this one.

Rating: 3.0 out of 5.0

The copy I read plus another Michael Shayne mystery are available on request with the first donation received of $50 or more for listeners in the US or Canada.  See details here.

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Book Review, Golden Age Article, Nero Wolfe

Book Review: Death of a Doxy

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In Death of a Doxy (1966), Archie agrees to a favor for Orrie Cather and reclaim an item from the house of a young woman. Instead, Archie finds the woman dead and smells a set up. Archie extricates himself, but Orrie, a long time associate of Wolfe’s, is charged with murder.

In a conclave with Wolfe, based on the strong conviction of Saul Panzer, the private detective decide Orrie is innocent and set out to prove it. The murdered woman was having an affair with a powerful man and the first but not last task is to find this man.

Death of a Doxy is a solidly written story. The character of Julie Jaquette, a successful nightclub singer who does an impromptu song and dance for Wolfe, which is, without a doubt the greatest moment of the book. Jacquet showed that Stout’s ability to write memorable characters was still very much intact.

The book is a bit darker and cynical than many early Wolfe mysteries of the 1950s particularly with how the killer was disposed of.

The book also introduces Avery Ballou, a character who’d play a minor role in several of the later Wolfe novels, as well as provide some foreshadowing of events that would occur in the final Wolfe novel.

Overall, I rate the book: Satisfactory

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Book Review, Golden Age Article, Sherlock Holmes

Book Review: The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

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“The Case-book of Sherlock Holmes”  is  the very last Sherlock Holmes short story collection, published in 1927. It is a proverbial mixed bag. There are some stories in the book that are essential reading for Holmes fans (“The Problem at Thor Bridge” and “The Sussex Vampire”), and then there are some of the weakest stories in the Canon (“The Lion’s Mane”, “The Blanched Soldier”, and “The Veiled Lodger”), and then others that range between average to fairly good.

“The Problem at Thor Bridge” is simply one of Holmes’ best cases. There’s so much in the story and the solution is classic. The same thing goes for “The Sussex Vampire” which presents Holmes a problem that’s evocative of the supernatural but with a surprising natural solution that is pretty emotional in its own right.

Most of the worst stories came towards the end of the book. Both “The Blanched Soldier” and “The Lion’s Mane” were attempts to tell Holmes’ adventures from Holmes own perspective. While “The Blanched Soldier” was slightly better of the two, both stories were somewhat dry and uninteresting tales that it was hard to care about. The biggest failing of  “The Veiled Lodger”s is that Holmes really does nothing. He describes a mystery and then has one of the perpetrators tell him what happened. While Holmes did say something very wise in response to that, it wasn’t really a detective story.

Looking at the rest of the stories:

“The Mazarin Stone”: Told in third person, I actually thought it was a pretty fun story showing Holmes cleverness. It was a similar story to the Dying Detective, but I liked this story better.

“The Creeping Man”: This is a bizarre story and I know some people really don’t like it because it’s almost into the realm of speculative fiction, but I thought it was carried off fine and is a classic mix of horror and the detective genre, though good luck trying to guess as to what’s happening.

“The Three Garidebs”: This is once again a story that calls to mind previous adventures. In it, a man with an unusual last name stands to make a fortune just for his last name, but he brings in Holmes to discern the truth of the business. This story is not as good as “The Red Headed League” but is actually better than “The Stockbroker’s Clerk.”

“The Illustrious Client”: This isn’t a whodunit but a challenge for Holmes to stop the marriage of a naive woman to a scoundrel. This is a very well-executed story where Holmes is put to the test.

“The Three Gables”: This story of a bereaved mother receiving mysterious offers to buy her house is a very good and enjoyable story.

“The Retired Colourman”: This is actually a pretty enjoyable story though Holmes doesn’t seem as warm towards Watson in a few places. The solution is a good change of pace, if perhaps a bit melodramatic.

“Shoscombe Old Place”: The last Holmes story by Doyle and its solid. Its clearly not at the high quality of Doyle’s prime but Holmes gets a pretty engaging case with a clever and unexpected solution revolving around a race horse and the odd behavior of the lady of the manor.

Overall, this is a must for mystery fans even if Doyle is clearly past his prime as a writer in this one.

Let me add that this Oxford edition I read really was splendid and added to the reading experience. The explanatory notes section was helpful to me reading this as an American in the 21st century, as so many phrases that I’d have just glossed over or imagined what they meant. There’s also a copious amount of introductory information that provides some great background on the book and is a great resource if you can get a hold of it.

Rating: 4.0 out of 5.0

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Book Review, Golden Age Article, Sherlock Holmes

Book Review: The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

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This book is the proverbial mixed bag. There are some stories in the book that are essential reading for Holmes fans (The Problem at Thor Bridge and the Sussex Vampire), and then there are some of the weakest stories in the Canon (The Lion’s Mane, the Blanched Soldier, and the Veiled Lodger), and then others that range between average to fairly good.

“The Problem at Thor Bridge” is simply one of Holmes best cases. There’s so much in the story and the solution is classic. The same thing goes for the Sussex Vampire which presents Holmes a problem that’s evocative of the supernatural but with a surprising natural solution that is pretty emotional in its own right.

Most of the worst stories came towards the end of the book. Both “The Blanched Soldier” and “The Lion’s Mane”  were attempts to tell Holmes’ adventures from Holmes own perspective. While “The Blanched Soldier” was slightly better of the two, both stories were somewhat dry and uninteresting tales that it was hard to care about. “The Veiled Lodgers” biggest failing is that Holmes really does nothing. He describes a mystery and then has one of the perpetrators tell him what happened. While Holmes did say something very wise in response to that, it wasn’t really a detective story.

Looking at the rest of the series:

“The Mazarin Stone”: Told in third person, I actually thought it was a pretty fun story showing Holmes cleverness. It was a similar story to the Dying Detective, but I liked this story better.

“The Creeping Man”: This is a bizarre story and I know some people really don’t like it because it’s almost into the realm of speculative fiction, but I thought it was carried off fine and is a classic mix of horror and the detective genre, though good luck trying to guess as to what’s happening.

“The Three Garidebs”: This is once again a story that calls to mind previous adventures. In it, a man with an unusual last name stands to make a fortune just for having his last name, but he brings in Holmes to discern the truth of the business. This story is not as good as “The Red Headed League” but is actually better than “The Stockbroker’s Clerk.”

“The Illustrious Client”: This isn’t a whodunit but a challenge for Holmes to stop the marriage of a naive woman to a scoundrel. This is a very well-executed story where Holmes is put to the test against a clever adversary who is a master at manipulating the sympathy of women.

“The Three Gables”: This story of a bereaved mother receiving mysterious offers to buy her house is a very good and enjoyable story with a satisfying solution.

“The Retired Colourman”: This is actually a pretty enjoyable story though Holmes doesn’t seem as warm towards Watson in a few places. The solution is a good change of pace, if perhaps a bit melodramatic.

“Shoscombe Old Place”: The last Holmes story by Doyle and its solid. Its clearly not at the high quality of Doyle’s prime but Holmes gets a pretty engaging case with a clever and unexpected solution revolving around a race horse and the odd behavior of the lady of the manor.

Overall, this is a must for mystery fans even if Doyle is clearly past his prime as a writer in this one.

Let me add that this Oxford edition I read really was splendid and added to the reading experience. The explanatory notes section was helpful to me reading this as an American in the 21st century, as it gave meaning to so many phrases that I’d have just glossed over or imagined what they meant otherwise. There’s also a copious amount of introductory information that provides some great background on the book and is a great resource if you can get a hold of it.

Rating 4.0 out of 5.0

Book Review, Golden Age Article, Nero Wolfe

Book Review: Too Many Clients

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In Too Many Clients, Archie is asked by a man named Thomas Yeager to find out if anyone is following him and gives him an address in a poor part of town. However, the man turns out to be Yeager and the real Yeager’s body is found near the address, Archie visits it and is shocked to find a very elaborately designed love nest.

Archie and Wolfe have a mystery on their hands and the “client” who hired them set them up to discover the body and they have to get to the bottom of who hired them and who committed the murder and pick up multiple several offered clients, many of whom want to suppress the existence of a very embarrassing room.

Overall, this was a very well-crafted later Wolfe mystery with a wide range of suspects, a great premise, and some solid scenes in the Brownstone. It doesn’t quite deliver those little human touches that the very best Wolfe’s do, but I still highly recommend it.

Rating: Satisfactory

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Book Review, Golden Age Article

Book Review: Pattern of Wounds

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The latest murder Houston homicide detective Roland March investigates seems awfully familiar. March believes that the killer staged the scene of a dead one in a pool based on pictures from the book on the first big murder he ever solved, the Kingwood Killings. While higher ups dismiss the idea, some people think there’s a pattern to the book: that a serial killer was behind the latest killing, as well as several others, including March’s signature case. Worst of all, the writer who lionized March becomes an adversary who believes that he and March blew the original case.

This book succeeded in upping the ante from the first book with March having to deal with the potential of his entire career being reduced to rubble by this new allegation. He has to struggle to find out who is friends are really. March is all too human character who makes enemies who are willing or even anxious to see him taken down a peg, and he struggles to find someone who he can rely on as an ally. March’s big problem is that in the midst of a case, little niceties like gratitude are overlooked which only builds more resentment.

One of the more interesting character bits in this story was March’s interaction with a New Orleans police officer who had officially gone dirty and begun to coerce confessions. It’s scary for readers to realize that March is often just a step or two away from crossing the line, though March seems to think he’s a little bit further away than he is. We also get some good back story on what had put him on the outs at the start of the previous book.

The mystery is better than in the previous book. No breaks seemed overly convenient, and Bertrand was very skilled with throwing suspect after suspect at the readers, leading to a realistic but explosive conclusion.

The only negatives I can find is that the inclusion of the Teresa, a major character from the first book felt pointless in this one and she didn’t really do anything. Also, while the book description makes a point of describing March’s marriage as troubled, there’s very few hints of this in the actual story.

Still, a fascinating and engaging read for mystery fans that I wholeheartedly recommend.

Rating: 5.0 out of 5.0

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Book Review, Nero Wolfe

Book Review: The Doorbell Rang

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In The Doorbell Rang, Nero Wolfe is hired by a wealthy woman to get the FBI to stop annoying her. She apparently gained the attention of the FBI after purchasing and distributing 10,000 copies of Fred Cook’s expose of the FBI called, “The FBI Nobody Knows.”

Wolfe is reluctant to take on the case, and Archie is too. But Wolfe’s pride won’t allow him to refuse to take on a case for fear of the FBI. Wolfe’s decision leads to them coming under surveillance, and Archie learns from their nemesis Inspector Cramer that the FBI is trying to get their licenses lifted. However, Cramer resents the attempt and actually saves their licenses and tips Archie off to a murder where the FBI may be covering up.

Archie and Wolfe seek to solve convuluted murder and find how the FBI is involved.

The book is pretty solid and includes one of Wolfe’s greatest schemes and one of the most memorable moments when Wolfe refuses to speak to the unnamed but implied visitor at the door at the end of the book.

The Doorbell Rang  does drag a bit in the middle, with all of Wolfe and Archie’s efforts to dodge potential FBI surveillance of the house by not speaking or speaking in certain ways despite. The problem is that while I could understand how the FBI could tap their phones, I have no clue how they could get in the Brownstone to actually bug anything. For me, their paranoia goes quickly from being slightly humorous to somewhat tedious.

This does further the book’s propaganda ends with a clear message: Our (mostly) law abiding pals Wolfe and Archie shouldn’t have to live like they’re in a police state and neither should any other American as many did thanks to the FBI. It works as far as it goes, but I think the degree to which Stout played this hurt the narrative a bit.

Still, I give this a:

Rating: Satisfactory

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Book Review, Golden Age Article

Book Review: Stranger in Town

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Brett Halliday knew how to catch a reader’s attention from the get-go. The book begins with Michael Shayne stopping for a drink in a small Florida town. A beautiful young woman walks out to him and then two hoods drag him out of the bar, beat up and nearly run him down with their car.

Shayne gets thrown in jail after blowing his top in a confrontation with the local police force but hangs around town determined to find out who the woman was that fingered him and why she did it. Along the way, Shayne discovers that she was an amnesiac who stumbled into town and was supposed to have been taken back to her father in Orlando. Shayne discovers the story was a lie and to find the truth he has to untangle a web of crime and corruption.

The book buzzes along and is a fast paced story filled with plenty of suspense and great plot twists and action throughout most of it. The only flaw in the pacing is that the book does slow down about 3/4 of the way through before wrapping up strong with the last chapter and a half.

The book also gives some keen insights into social attitudes of the mid-1950s and deals with a hot topic of today. Even though Shayne is no huge moralist, he reflected the values of his time in a way that’s intriguing or sad depending on your point of view.

Rating: 4.0 out of 5.0

The copy I read plus another Michael Shayne mystery are available on request with the first donation received of $50 or more for listeners in the US or Canada.  See details here.

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Book Review, Golden Age Article, Philip Marlowe

Book Review: The High Window

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Philip Marlowe is hired to recover a lost coin for a crotchety widow. She suspects her daughter-in-law and wants Marlowe to arrange for her daughter-in-law to divorce her son.

Marlowe, of course, encounters a ton of obstacles and a mounting body count. In addition, to the official side of the business, he suspects something is really wrong with the old woman’s secretary, who is being mistreated.

The case is somewhat average fare. It’s by no means a bad story but it’s also not The Big Sleep and it’s not Farewell, My Lovely. It has its moments such as when Marlowe is justifying non-cooperation with the police on the basis of a case they mishandled through corruption, and then later he admits the story was made up and later on, says maybe it wasn’t. However, the characters aren’t as good and the dialogue isn’t either. In addition to this, there are few less threads that are left hanging and there are a few more, we really don’t care about.

On the positive side Marlowe’s noble actions towards the secretary and the purity of his motives really live up to his Knight in Tarnished Armor Rep. In the end, it’s a great story but not a classic.

Rating: 3.75 out of 5.0

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Book Review, Golden Age Article, Nero Wolfe

Book Review: The Golden Spiders

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The Golden Spiders finds Wolfe and Archie in ill-temper. Archie decides to admit a neighborhood boy who comes to Wolfe because of Wolfe’s antipathy to police and the fact that he saw a woman in a car apparently in trouble. Wolfe handles the boy well and agrees to help by tracing the plate of the car.

However, the boy is murdered the next day and the case goes to another level. The boy’s mother asks Wolfe to find out why he was killed and offers her son’s savings which amounts to $4.30 to find the killer. They begin the process by placing an ad, and get a response that’s followed by another murder.

This sets Archie and the teers on an investigation that leads them to the high and low end of society and on to the trail of an extortion ring that’s the key to the whole plot.

This is really a mixed bag in terms of quality. It has more action than any other Wolfe story, including a torture scene that’s somewhat uncomfortable. To be fair about that, the bad guys started it by torturing Orrie Cather before Archie and friends turned the tables on them.

There’s also a very strong scene with Inspector Cramer that’s probably his best scene as a detective in any of the books he’s featured in. There are some good bits between Wolfe and Archie, and a pretty good final denouement.

The book’s weak point comes with Wolfe proposing a ruse for Archie that’s so transparent, it doesn’t fool anyone. It’s really pathetic and beneath the standard of fun ruses that characterize the Wolfe books.

The Golden Spiders was the basis of the pilot movie for A Nero Wolfe Mystery, and I have to say this is one case where the movie beat the book. And the biggest difference was emotional impact. The book deals with the death of a child, but it doesn’t seem to impact the characters correctly. Stout could do this and often did with tragic adult deaths which Archie or Wolfe inadvertently played a role in books like in Prisoner’s Base, but just doesn’t seem to deliver here. It’s worth noting that Pete Drossos is the only child to play a major role in any of the Wolfe stories, so writing children may not have been Stout’s forte.

There’s enough good stuff to keep this interesting, but overall I can only give the book a:

Rating: Satisfactory

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Book Review, Golden Age Article

Book Review: Back on Murder

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For Roland March, it’s pretty simple, either he’s going back (to being homicide detective) or he’s going out (as in completely out of the Houston PD) March made headlines seven years before when he solved a sensational murder, but the high expectations caused by the publicity of the case combined with a personal tragedy led to a decline in his work where he’s on one dead end assignment after another, most regularly working a sting where police capture stupid wanted felons lured into the open with the promise of winning a free car contest.

March makes some keen observations at scene of the murder of an inner city drug dealer. March believes that the murder is tied into a nationally covered disappearance of a teenage girl. He goes against orders to look into the angle and gets yanked off the case and on to the task force looking into the disappearance, another dead end. Can March somehow parlay his hunches, uncover the secrets of a group of crooked cops, and stay alive so that the get his career and life back on track.

The book is remarkably well-written and has high quality throughout most of it. March is a fantastic character with his own set of inner demons. March’s narration varies from hard boiled wry cop sarcasm to poignancy, to vivid and powerful word images that paint as clear a picture of 21st Century Houston as Raymond Chandler’s Marlowe’s stories did of 1940s Los Angeles. The character does change as the story goes on. He becomes more of a team player. At the beginning of the book, his focus is really on him: The quest to get back into Homicide. As his focus shifts to the case at hand, actually getting his man leads to real cooperation.

The mystery is a clever tangled web of intrigue that intersects with crooked cops, with honest efforts to help other, and an old rival of March’s that won’t go away. Really, everything ties together in the end and the clues are solidly laid out.

The last quarter, and the last sixth of the book in particular do suffer a bit of a slowdown with more fizzle than sizzle. Bertrand made the dubious decision to fill in a bunch of back story details towards the end of the book as we were closing in on the killers and a hurricane kills not one by two birds for our hero. These are minor issues given how good the rest of the book was.

The book is from a Christian company, but has little Christian material. March is a moral man but not a believer. The best Christians get from the book is a murder mystery that doesn’t make a Christian look like a psycho. The book is a clean read as far as profanity goes and doesn’t go for overly graphic

Overall, I enjoyed the book immensely and will be watching for the next book in the series.

Rating: 4.25 out of 5.0

Note: The Kindle version of this book is available for free.

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