Since D.B. Cooper jumped from a plane disappearing with his loot, that scenario has been fodder for many writers' imaginations. Elmore Leonard used the storyline in his televised series Justified. Neri uses the same premise in a startlingly entertaining mystery set in fictional Tecos, New Mexico on a stretch of highway known as Route 66.
Tracy's dad, aging Hollywood hunk, Alec Grainger used to take his daughter on road trips to Tecos when she was little to cover visits he made to a young lady, Lucy, who ran a luncheonette, The Lunch Pail Café. As a girl, Lucy had a collection of these handcrafted lunch pails.
The visits stopped long ago when Lucy ended up in the big-house, accused of shooting her boyfriend. So when Daddy calls and asks her to meet him and his best friend, Philly, a wanna-be-gangster-type from the old days, Tracy and her husband Drew drive from California to New Mexico, only they do it Tracy-style, stopping at every kitschy little piece of Americana along the way, just like in days gone by.
From the Biker Bunny Bin, a storage unit where Grainger had left all of Lucy's famous lunch pails, to the Kontiki Pizza and Chinese Restaurant that only served waffles, Neri takes us on a road trip from hell. When Woody, Lucy's son and Grainger's protégé turns up dead, the family is scrutinized for their possible part in his murder and leaves Tracy on the lam from the FBI. Several mysteries unravel on this journey and all will come to fruition because as Tracy says, "Route 66 is a vortex of coincidence. An amazing number of paths cross here."
Neri maintains an entertaining arc of mystery throughout, providing a litany of characters from the quirky retired city cop masquerading as a western sheriff in a small county to the former beauty queen cum minister's wife who poses for risqué photos when she gets bored. You will be totally amused, delighted, and engrossed with this light-hearted mystery on wheels.
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Carved in Darkness by Maegan Beaumont - a review
Having read this on Kindle, I failed to notice the author's name and so my biggest surprise when finishing was to discover the author is female. This bold, eerily gripping novel ramrods itself down your throat 'til you choke. It answers questions for me personally regarding how far you can take your reader when it comes to violence and torture, apparently, pretty far. I was unable at times to take the bloody, sordid depravity of the gruesome torture and had to glance away; however, it kept pulling me back in. Beaumont knows how to keep you on the edge of your seat.
Melissa was kidnapped at fifteen, tortured, and raped repeatedly for 83 days. Her kidnapper dropped her body off at a local church. Fifteen years later, after a miraculous recovery allowed her to restart her life, she emerges under an assumed identity, her twin siblings in tow, totally separated from her past life, other than an occasional communication with her grandmother, until Michael shows up.
Michael's sister endured the same torture and he wants help in bringing the killer to justice. As you might imagine, Sabrina, as she is know known, is not excited by the idea of being bait, but her training as a police officer, and her understanding that it was just not her and Michael's sister, but a girl every year that has been afforded the same fate. Not just that, but he just brutally murdered Grandma too.
When she comes to the realization that she can no longer allow this to continue, she and Michael head home, to that little blink-and-you'll-miss-it town where one of the local yokel good-old-boys has been torturing and killing young girls for over a decade. Will they figure out which of the inhabitants of this small town is the enemy before he takes her again?
Buckle up for the ride of a lifetime, this one is the roughest rollercoaster you ever had to endure.
Melissa was kidnapped at fifteen, tortured, and raped repeatedly for 83 days. Her kidnapper dropped her body off at a local church. Fifteen years later, after a miraculous recovery allowed her to restart her life, she emerges under an assumed identity, her twin siblings in tow, totally separated from her past life, other than an occasional communication with her grandmother, until Michael shows up.
Michael's sister endured the same torture and he wants help in bringing the killer to justice. As you might imagine, Sabrina, as she is know known, is not excited by the idea of being bait, but her training as a police officer, and her understanding that it was just not her and Michael's sister, but a girl every year that has been afforded the same fate. Not just that, but he just brutally murdered Grandma too.
When she comes to the realization that she can no longer allow this to continue, she and Michael head home, to that little blink-and-you'll-miss-it town where one of the local yokel good-old-boys has been torturing and killing young girls for over a decade. Will they figure out which of the inhabitants of this small town is the enemy before he takes her again?
Buckle up for the ride of a lifetime, this one is the roughest rollercoaster you ever had to endure.
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Snapper by Brian Kimberling - a review
In an amusing novel, loosely based on personal history, Kimberling has given us a highly entertaining look at life in the heartland, rural Indiana.
Taking us in a variety of flash-backs through his relationships with friends in high school, through the early years of college, we find out all about the mysterious Lola, the alligator snapping turtle, from which the title was so aptly pulled, to commiserating with him on his relatives - we all have an uncle or grand-father that tells unbelievable stories - and the job choices we make in life. In this case Nathan, our protagonist, works for the university plotting the movements in birds, all different variety of birds, in various parts of the woods of Southern Indiana.
Told with humor and wit Kimberling injects himself on the unsuspecting public in a similar vein that Bill Bryson did with his Walk In The Woods.
A smartly written debut with lots of expectation for the future.
Taking us in a variety of flash-backs through his relationships with friends in high school, through the early years of college, we find out all about the mysterious Lola, the alligator snapping turtle, from which the title was so aptly pulled, to commiserating with him on his relatives - we all have an uncle or grand-father that tells unbelievable stories - and the job choices we make in life. In this case Nathan, our protagonist, works for the university plotting the movements in birds, all different variety of birds, in various parts of the woods of Southern Indiana.
Told with humor and wit Kimberling injects himself on the unsuspecting public in a similar vein that Bill Bryson did with his Walk In The Woods.
A smartly written debut with lots of expectation for the future.
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