First things first: WHAT HAPPENED TO S. D. THAMES?

This Christian author produces a string of extremely good mystery novels, and then he just disappears. Sometime around 2018, as far as I can judge. Maybe he was a victim of Covid. Maybe he decided novel writing was too time-consuming a hobby. Maybe he’s left his legal career and become a missionary. All I know is that a web search tells me he doesn’t seem to have died.

It’s kind of like a mystery story where a detective is trying to locate a missing person, goes to his home town, and everybody denies ever knowing him.

But that’s not important to this review (except to warn you that another installment in this very good series doesn’t look to be forthcoming).

Okay, now that that’s off my chest, I’ll review Be Still My Soul, a prequel novella to the Milo Porter mysteries. It tells how our hero first got into the private eye business.

Milo is a veteran of the War on Terror, in which he enlisted to avenge his father, a victim of 9/11. He came home suffering from PTSD. He’s seeing a counselor and taking medications, but sometimes he still has hallucinations. He’s gotten a job as a process server, which brings him to a rundown, stinking house in rural Florida, where an old woman knocks him unconscious with a frying pan.

His situation gets worse when people who should know inform him that the woman who hit him does not even exist, and he must have hallucinated her. On the other hand, he meets a girl and falls in love at first sight.

The story only gets weirder after that.

I greatly enjoyed Be Still My Soul, and wish it had been a full novel. I wish there were more Milo Porter books too, or just anything from S. D. Thames.