Hard Cash Valley by Brian Panowich

May 11, 2020

Hard Cash Valley by Brian Panowich

Dane Kirby has been drifting through life since the death of his wife and daughter ten years earlier.  A former fire chief, now part-time investigator for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Dane has a girlfriend who loves him and friends who care deeply but he can't seem to connect with them and spends more time talking to his dead wife than he does with the living.  He is unexpectedly called in by the FBI when a small-time hoodlum from Georgia is found horribly murdered in a Florida motel.  The murdered man recently won $1.2 million on cockfighting but both the money and the man's younger brother are missing.  Kirby teams up with an agent who is less than thrilled to be working with him, and they follow the money and the kid back to Kirby's home grounds in Georgia near Bull Mountain.

Brian Panowich returns to the Georgia mountains from his first two thrillers.  A few characters recur but this is largely a new cast and the focus is not on the Burroughs clan.  This is a fast-paced quick thriller that keeps the reader turning pages.  Panowich's characters are what make the story notable, despite their dumb mistakes and decisions (as I've told fellow librarians, if characters didn't make dumb choices, there wouldn't be a novel).  The ending is a little sappy but if you like a feel-good or hopeful ending, you'll be okay with it.

Many thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for providing a review copy in exchange for a review.

Verses for the Dead by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

March 19, 2020

Verses for the Dead by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Early in the morning, an elderly Florida woman and her dog visit the local cemetery where the dog finds an unusual object on a grave, which turns out to be a human heart.  The FBI is called in to investigate the gruesome discovery, more hearts are discovered on graves (all old suicides), and it soon becomes evident that a serial killer, who calls himself Mr. Brokenhearts, is at work.

There has been a reorganization at the FBI and Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast finds himself with (gasp!) a partner.  It’s that, or leave the FBI (or maybe get shipped to a remote FBI office out west).  Agent Coldmoon is a Native American junior agent who is the polar opposite of Pendergast, specifically chosen by Pendergast’s boss Pickett to be Pendergast’s partner and keep an eye on him.  Pendergast follows a hunch that the new murders are somehow connected to the graves where the hearts are found.  His hunch leads him and his new partner from Florida to Maine. 

Agent Pendergast is the main character in one of my favorite mystery series.  This is a strong entry in the series which could be read as a stand-alone title, although I missed hearing more about some of the regulars like Constance and Vincent.  Agent Coldmoon is quite an interesting character on his own, and I hope we see  more of him.  It was interesting that the late William Smithback’s brother Roger Smithback makes an appearance as a whiny Miami journalist.

Preston and Child write other books together in addition to the Agent Pendergast series, and for some reason, their other books are never as good.  I don’t know if that’s because they put so much into the Pendergast series that they just use leftover ideas for the other books or what. 

The library is still open but will be limiting hours next week.  Stay well and keep reading!