THE BIG THRILL:

THE BIG THRILL:

A review of THE DEVIL LAUGHED on the thriller readers webzine.

SWIFT EDGE - a Carl Brookins Review

Swift Edge

by Laura DiSilverio

ISBN: 978-0-312-62444-6

2011 release from St. Martins/

Minotaur, 291 pages.

Judicious blending of two quite different characters as private investigators carries this story of murder and identity theft on a roller coaster of humor and tension. Gigi Goldman, one half of the investigator team of Swift Investigations is inept at best. I mean how about trying a surveillance gig from a yellow Hummer? Charlie Swift is the more competent partner with background and experience and she carries the bulk of the serious investigation that is at the core of this slickly written, well-laid out story.

A world class figure skater disappears on the eve of national trials. Charlie Swift is up for the challenge of finding the guy but she keeps stumbling over her partner Gigi and Gigi’s petulant teen-aged daughter. Then the client, another figure skater, disappears, a world-renowned coach is attacked and almost everywhere she goes, somebody is shooting at Charlie. If that isn’t enough trouble, almost every male she encounters seems to be after Charlie’s body in a less destructive way. But maybe that’s just Charlie Swift’s take on the situations.

The action is constant, often funny and requires the occasional suspension of disbelief. The characters are well-drawn and consistent. This is a sometimes zany, very enjoyable addition to what appears to be a swiftly growing series of light to medium crime novels.

--
Carl Brookins www.carlbrookins.com http://agora2.blogspot.com, Case of the Great Train Robbery, Reunion, Red Sky

HONORED DAUGHTERS - a review

Fans of any southern-style epic will really love this story By  J. Thomas "The Long and the Short Of It Reviews"          This review is from: Laura Kate Plantation Series Book Two: Honored Daughters (Kindle Edition) Laura Kate O'Connell is a super-star of a clever southern bell with quick wit and a nice way with horses. Honored Daughters is truly more mystery than romance, but the romance matters and readers will really enjoy Jack Rhodes when they finally meet him. It won't be a painful wait though, as from the first moments, interest and intrigue build. Overall, the quality of the story is excellent. Epic-like adventures - and love - befall our heroine, who seems pulled in several directions most of the time. Her personal life, her decisions and future plans are complicated; Jack Rhodes is her distant, if still true love. He seems to envision an ordinary, predictable sort of future for the two of them, a future Laura Kate isn't enthused about at all. (Although after meeting him, we do realze he's more insightful than Laura Kate gives him credit for.) Before we even get to questions of romance; Agent Nyan Hill complicates her life, with his desperate effort to see the murder of his niece Dari solved. Nyan & Laura Kate's antagonistic relationship, and occasional sharp dialogue, really make reader's admire our heroine. She's nobody's fool, but is at heart a caring, almost driven person. Ferris has a distinctive voice, giving Honored Daughters a continuous, rather evocative aura. She creates a time, a place, and a series of characters that seem utterly original, yet also familiar and appealing. There are some seriously suspenseful moments, as well as more tender times; and the mystery is a real mystery, both intriguing and heart-wrenching from the start.   Although this is contemporary, there is a certain historic feel to it. The horses, the hunt club, the southern-bell comments, and Honored Daughters School itself. Although contemporary, it all has an old, old feel to it. Fans of any southern-style epic will really love this story; perfect reading by a cozy fire.

BIG WHEAT - a Carl Brookins Review

Big Wheat
By Richard A. Thompson
Poisoned Pen Press 2011
ISBN: 978-1-59058-820-8

World War I is done and Charlie Krueger’s older brother is never coming
home. Charlie, his sister and their mother must cope with an increasingly
abusive drunken father and husband. The summer of 1919 wanes and vast
acreages of the Middle West prairies are thick with ripening grain. Up the
long reaches from the banks of the Platte and the Missouri come the contract
threshing crews and their machines, most followed by raffish bindlestiffs to
supplement a farmer’s friends and relatives. The crews are often peopled by
men of questionable backgrounds and are occasionally eyed with suspicion by
local sheriffs who rarely chase criminals beyond their county boundaries.

When Charlie Krueger has a final confrontation with his father, he leaves
behind a sorrowful mother and sister and the local girl he thought he’d love
forever. He becomes a bindlestiff, traveling from farm to farm, learning
the threshing business and nurturing his love for machines.

The machines are new, complicated and prone to breakdowns. Charlie hooks up
with a marvelously conceived traveling machine repair crew that becomes his
new family. But lurking in the background is a killer, a killer who
believes Charlie saw his latest brutal deed. He seeks to find and murder
Charlie. Meanwhile, the sheriff of Charlie’s home county has developed
leads which point him toward Charlie as a murderer.

This then is the roiling plot which moves the story forward. Carefully
constructed and set against the vast reaches of the plains states, the novel
evokes a time and place and the attitudes of the people and the land in a
powerful and moving way. Readers will smell the dust, drip sweat and
shrivel under the burning sun right along with the threshing crews. They’ll
feel a clutch in the night as the sheriff and the murderer draw closer and
they’ll empathize with the casual corruption and the surmounting goodness of
the characters the author has created.

A fine, exciting and unusual well-written novel I am pleased to recommend to
all readers of crime fiction.

Carl Brookins
http://www.carlbrookins.com/, http://www.agora2.blogspot.com/
Case of the Greedy Lawyer, Devils Island,
Bloody Halls, more at Kindle & Smashwords!