For e-book readers only, here’s a mystery with the chops to go up against the big guys in the outdoor thriller genre. It’s not without weaknesses, but it’s a solid book and well worth the minimal price.

Two Shots begins with the assassination by sniper, at a Minnesota deer hunting camp, of a Republican political operative. Game warden Tony Leach, a former Minneapolis policeman, is among the first on the scene, but it’s properly a police matter. Only, as time passes, nothing seems to be happening in the case, and some clues Tony himself reported aren’t being followed up. Then Tony’s superior asks him to do some poking around on his own, at the request of someone high up in state government.

Tony’s tracking and detective skills make it possible for him to begin finding answers where no one else has. But some people don’t want the answers found, and they’ll do anything—anything at all—to keep the truth from coming to light.

Author Joe Albert, a Minnesota outdoors writer, seems to know his stuff when he writes about nature. But he handles human beings pretty well too. Tony Leach is a good, solid hero, and his supporting characters also come to life. The neighborhood of Bemidji, Minnesota is described with loving attention. Albert’s prose slips from time to time (he refers to “a smattering of homes” at one point, for instance), but generally it’s good, plain writing and does the job. I always like to promote a readable Minnesota author, and Joe Albert is one.

A particular delight (for me) was that, although Albert doesn’t rant much on political issues, he had the courage to make one of the villains a high ranking Minnesota Democrat. You don’t see bad Democrats very often in fiction. But let’s face it, if there’s a machine in Minnesota, it’s a Democratic machine, and that’s where you’re going to see most of the corruption.

I recommend Two Shots, with moderate cautions for language and subject matter.

In the opening novel of a series of legal thrillers that appears to be doing quite well (and deservedly, judging from this volume), To Speak for the Dead by Paul Levine introduces the character of Miami lawyer Jake Lassiter (I don’t like the name; sounds too much like the hero of a cowboy movie). Jake is a former football player with a self-deprecating sense of humor that adds a lot of charm to his narration.

When the story begins he’s defending a surgeon from a malpractice charge in the death of a successful real estate developer who left behind a seductive young wife. Jake gets him off, but he’s soon defending him against murder charges in the same case, and a complicated (I’m pretty sure I still don’t understand it all) plot unfolds, involving greed, obsession, and lots of kinky sex. There’s also a heartbreaking subplot concerning a romantic near-miss, which adds considerable depth to the story. And the ending was pretty chilling.

I enjoyed reading To Speak for the Dead. A few hints suggested to me that the author’s politics are considerably to the left of mine, but that wasn’t intrusive at all. Jake was sometimes more imprudent than I found plausible, but those mistakes were there to set up action, so I can’t complain much.

Recommended, with the usual cautions for language and adult themes.

My adjustment to the world of the Kindle e-reader has brought about some changes in my reading habits. You may have noticed that I’ve been doing more negative reviews than I used to. This is because the availability of very cheap—or free—e-books has seduced me into downloading a number of books by authors I’ve never heard of. And, as Theodore Sturgeon (I think it was Sturgeon) said, more or less, “90% of everything is crap.” I’ll admit to being kinder to authors who approach me personally to review a book (sometimes I’m so kind I say nothing at all), but generally if I read dreck I call it dreck.

Wrongful Death by Andrew Price is not dreck. It has numerous flaws, but it was a book I enjoyed, and I want to encourage the author to carry on (though I suggest finding a better proofreader).

The hero of Wrongful Death is Scott Blakely, an attorney in the town of Greenfield, Pennsylvania, a dying community in the Rust Belt. He barely squeaks by financially. This isn’t helped by the fact that he has a high sense of both morality and ethics (they’re not the same thing), though he shares a practice with one lawyer who’s a sexual adventurer and another who’s an ambulance chaser with no visible principles at all.

Scott is hired by Madeline Tashard, the widow of a local psychiatrist who died under a doctor’s care in the town’s hospital. It’s a pretty clear-cut case of malpractice. But Madeline is an oddly unsympathetic widow. She suffers from partial paralysis, but bridles when anyone offers her any assistance. She treats her young daughter with noticeable coldness.

As the story unfolds, we’re able to observe Scott’s highminded (but strategically brilliant) conduct in the case, as well as a portion of the tactics and strategies of his opponents. Not only the principles, but the town itself, face disaster if some of the parties get their way. There are surprises in store, and the final resolution will be shocking but satisfying (at least it was to me).

Wrongful Death isn’t a legal thriller, in the sense of lots of violence and action. It’s more cerebral, something I appreciated. The characters were well-drawn and believable.

The writing needs some work. Author Price is under the delusion that incredulity can be indicated by pairing a question mark with an exclamation point at the end of a sentence, and that expressions of doubt, even when framed as statements, should be indicated by question marks. He needs an editor.

But he’s able to tell an exciting, compelling story without gunfights or car chases. Kudos to him.

Cautions for adult themes and language.

This one didn’t work for me. Joseph Badal’s Evil Deeds is supposed to be “based on true events.” Those true events must be the kind that are stranger than fiction, because the story failed to convince in my case.

The hero is Bob Danforth, who starts the story in 1971 as a young, married U.S. Army officer in Athens. One day while he’s at work, his little boy Michael is kidnapped by a gang of gypsies, in the pay of a communist government. This begins a long-standing (and fairly unconvincing) conflict between the Danforths and the kidnappers. They’re all thrown together again in the wake of a second kidnapping years later, the middle-aged Danforth now being a CIA operative.

The major problem with this book was too many coincidences. Instead of setting up credible plot points, author Badal just does whatever he likes to up the stakes, ignoring logic or probability. The many reversals seemed arbitrary to me, and I felt manipulated as a reader.

Badal has also not mastered his English. He uses words wrong (“hoard” for “horde,” for instance), and at one point describes the same character two different ways (I suspect he just forgot he’d used the name already).

Also, the book was too long.

I don’t give Evil Deeds high marks. Your mileage may vary. Cautions for language, violence, and sexual situations.

This will have to be a mixed review. Gary Neece’s Cold Blue is a pretty good story, taken as a story. It’s weak, however, in two areas that matter to me. One is simple writing skills—the author’s use of language. The other is a moral problem.

Cold Blue concerns a Tulsa police detective, Jonathan Thorpe, whose wife and daughter were murdered. The crime remains unsolved. Now he’s involved in the investigation of the murders of a string of gang members and drug dealers. A female FBI investigator (gorgeous, of course) comes in to take over the investigation, and suspicion soon turns to Jonathan himself. Not without reason. It’s not a spoiler (since the synopsis on Amazon.com tells you as much) that Jonathan himself is systematically taking revenge on the people responsible for the murder of his family. And his revenge soon extends to members of the police department itself.

The story moved right along, and kept my interest (the ending was pretty satisfying, with some surprises). I had to stop, though, from time to time to shake my head over amateurish infelicities of language. Subject and object confusion, as in, “Having reached a clearing, the barn loomed before him.” Homonym confusion, as in, “Thorpe identified an even smaller click of five [people].” Misuse of words, especially when falling into clichés, as in, “At the conclusion of these chases officers aren’t able to just switch off these ‘fight or flight’ chemicals; they [the policemen] are literally drug-induced.”

These are things a good editor could fix. In spite of my being part of the e-publishing world now, I miss copy editors. Continue reading Cold Blue, by Gary Neece →