Where’s My Son? by John C. Dalglish is a police procedural with a terrific premise. It also has the virtue of being (judging from a few hints in the text) a Christian novel that doesn’t preach. Unfortunately, it also exhibits a number of first novel weaknesses. I think the author may be capable of much better stuff.

The story starts well (from one perspective), balancing three horrifying plot strands. An amoral operation in false adoptions retains a felon to find and steal a baby for them. A childless couple suffers the heartbreak of multiple miscarriages. And a pair of loving new parents do not know they are being watched, and their lives are about to be torn apart.

It’s only once the kidnapping has been committed that the book’s hero is actually introduced (this, by the way, is in most cases a mistake. Authors are usually well advised to bring the main character in as early as possible). Here the hero is Detective Jason Strong who, sadly, does not live up to his surname. He’s hard-working and compassionate, but he comes off pretty stiff. No back story, no private life. Some readers don’t care about such matters in a good puzzle mystery, but this isn’t a puzzle mystery. It’s a police procedural in which we know whodunit before the detective does. Another problem is that Detective Strong doesn’t actually do much detecting. He follows leads, but his big breaks come from luck. That may be true to life, but it weakens a novel. The fact that he prays for guidance at one point is what tipped me off that this is a book by a Christian.

There are also a number of stylistic problems. At one point, two characters meet and just waste time:

“Hi, Wade. How ya doing?”

“Good, you?”

They shook hands.

Tip for authors: Unless some major clue is going to be dropped in the course of two characters greeting each other, just say, “They said hello and shook hands,” or something like that. Or skip the greeting altogether. The reader will know they went through the pleasantries. It just slows your story down.

At another point, a character is thinking about his wife, and in the next paragraph we’re told the same character “let his mind wander” to her. It doesn’t need to wander that way if he’s already thinking of her.

Most disappointing is the ending. Sudden and spare, it reads more like a synopsis point than a fiction passage. This relates to the weakness of Det. Strong’s character. If he had a life and friends, he’d have someone to bounce his decision off, and the scene would have a lot more resonance.

All in all, a good try. I wish the author the best as he improves his craft. Caution for a few passages of strong language.

I found Ken Casper’s As the Crow Dies a competent mystery. I neither loved it nor disliked it. I’m not entirely sure why I didn’t like it more than I did. The characters are well drawn, the prose professional (always a pleasure, that), and the mystery puzzling (though I did guess the murderer before the end).

Jason Crow, son of a successful local restaurant owner, comes home to his West Texas town in 1968, a double amputee from wounds received in the Vietnam War. Once an NFL hopeful, he’s self-conscious about his disability, and insecure about his future with his girlfriend, Michiko.

His reunion with his wise, supportive father, to which he’s looked forward greatly, is not to be. He comes home to find police cars in the driveway, and he’s told his father has shot himself in his office—with Jason’s own gun.

Jason cannot believe his father would ever do such an insensitive thing. So, relying on his army buddy Zach, who has become a sort of personal attendant, he sets about discovering who among their friends and relations hated his father—and him—enough to commit murder in this way.

There are lots of leads, pointing in various directions. There’s enough infidelity, old hate, and bigotry in the town to provide a snake’s nest of motives. The depiction of Jason’s growing maturity as he learns to live a new kind of life is one of the book’s strengths.

I think my main problem with As the Crow Dies was that something I usually like in a story—lots of well-drawn, well-rounded characters—in this case produces soap opera moments from time to time. I was worried about anti-Christianity, but although a cultish “church” does provide some suspects, that church is so unorthodox that it doesn’t really come close to home.

You may like it more than I did. I don’t disrecommend it. Cautions for language and adult situations. As is so common nowadays, premarital sex is generally taken for granted.

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.