Beaches feel lonely when it’s cold. The ocean is too icy to enjoy, and the breeze makes the loveliness of nature remote and hard. Beautiful but sad, like missing someone you loved.

You probably know by now that I’m in the tank for Alan Lee. His Mackenzie August and Manny Ramirez books are great fun, and what I’ve called Christian-adjacent.

Dark Fairytale, book 16 of the Mackenzie August series, springs from an earlier installment, in which Mack,  a private eye in Roanoke, Virginia, was coerced into participating in a secret, to-the-death mixed martial arts tournament in Italy (he won, of course, because he’s still alive). In the course of that adventure, his fiancée Veronica (“Ronnie”) killed a very evil woman, in Mack’s defense. Still, she’s not a killer type. It still bothers her, years later. She asks Mack to locate that woman’s family and see if there’s some way she can make amends by helping them.

Mack is happy to do it, of course, but it proves a difficult job. The woman and her husband led secretive lives and have left few traces behind. When Mack starts asking questions, he gets pushback and a gang of furries (I kid you not) try to kill him and Manny. That doesn’t stop him, of course. When he and Ronnie finally go on the road to find the family, the trail takes them to Amish country in Ohio, and on to northern Virginia. They encounter a desperately dysfunctional family, and are faced with a Solomonic choice as to whether they should help them, and how. I thought I figured out the trick author Lee had up his sleeve, but I was delighted to find that a couple deeper tricks were concealed inside it.

The prose and dialogue in the Mack August books are excellent, but I think it’s the characterization that’s best. You’ll really love this cast of characters. Mack and Manny are a hoot to spend time with, as they motivate each other through mock-macho cross-talk. There’s real (fictional) love here, and real community and real eternal values.

Dark Fairytale is highly recommended. Cautions for adult situations and rough language.