When your Gran’s dearest friend asks you to investigate something, you don’t ask any questions except where and who.

The who, in this case, is Samson the pig, raised by teenager Kelsey from a runt destined to be culled, a la Charlotte’s Web. Samson, as it turns out, is a YouTube star, and Kelsey’s videos keep the entire family afloat. A note here: Samson the Pig is said to have 40 million subscribers. That would make it a larger channel that The DoDo – one of the largest channels devoted to animal videos – which has somewhere around 16 million the last time I checked. So that part rang a bit false, but pulling down 200K a month did not, based on the (imaginary) size of the channel, and assuming a gigantic number of views per video.

Texas Ranger Faith McClellan, in her fourth appearance, dutifully goes to talk to the family. Mom and the son, Kyle, are not home -she’s told they’ve gone off to a hunting cabin. The housekeeper, with an accent that comes and goes, Kelsey, and her (a tad strange) father are able to answer some questions, but many remain – who would do this, and what possible motive could there be? Kelsey, of course, is brokenhearted.

McClellan walks around the house and the scene of the crime, finding a rather large secret of the son’s rather quickly. She learns that the killing was particularly vicious, with blood everywhere and the killer also decapitated the head (now missing). The carcass she loads up in her truck and takes to the morgue for the coroner to look at. She discovers another hog was also killed, although his head was not taken and the family broke down the body and cooked some of it, the rest going into the freezer.

Meanwhile, McClellen also has to do a bunch of wedding0related stuff: dress, caterers, etc. Her overbearing mother is helping – and by helping, I mean basically taking over all of it. Her fiance Graham is assisting her with the case, which she worries might be the beginnings of a serial killer, and that the killer will move up a bracket to start offing people.

The case seems to have a ton of possible suspects: the brother, a jealous girl from school, the father, the boyfriend/not boyfriend. As McClellen fears, people start dying,even as she and Graham start to get a grip on the case. About halfway through it became obvious to me who the killer was, but it was still an enjoyable ride watching McClellan and Graham make their way through to (livestreaming) denouement.

No terrible slow spots, and in this instance, the bad guy infodump at the end is warranted – it is being livestreamed, after all.

Solid four out of five stars. Plus a desire to go back and read the first three in the series, to see how McClellan came to this version of herself.

Thanks to Severn River and NetGalley for the reading copy.

After three months away from the job, FBI agent Nikki Hunt is back in the office, and expected to gradually ease her way back into full duty. That plan takes a detour when she’s tapped to lead the investigation into a heavily pregnant, due any day now surrogate for a rich couple.

Her boyfriend Rory is also having issues after finding skeletal remains on a job site. After they find a locket with the body (as well as fetal remains), Rory becomes suspect number one after it’s clear he knows who the young woman is: a girl he date briefly and then broke up with at graduation. But is the child his? Did he kill her? He doesn’t do himself any favors by being antagonistic to the police.

The FBI and local police continue their search for the mussing surrogate, but there are few clues and fewer leads. Eventually, they make a plea to the public for any information.

I read the first book in this series, but now the two between that one and this. At some point, Nikki’s ex-husband was murdered. After another agent comes to town, claiming to be working on a tax fraud case and Nikki learns that the missing surrogate is also that agent’s confidential informant, Nikki starts going through her ex’s papers, looking for clues as to why he was investigating the owner of a limo service – who has conveniently flown to NY and disappeared.

Nikki gets the scoop on the missing surrogate, who once was held by a sex trafficker for a period of time before she escaped. Is he back now, and reclaiming her?

Nikki and company find more skeletal remains, and more fetal remains with them, and eventually determine how the girls were likely chosen, and based on descriptions given by the missing surrogate, zero in on the likely suspects.

The story is good, and there aren’t any dragging parts, even when the characters are moving between locations. My only dislike is Rory – I get it, his brother was wrongfully accused and imprisoned for something he didn’t do, but Rory should have just lawyered up at the first second the police started sniffing around, so as to relieve some of hi anxiety about being questioned over and over. For their par, the police should have understood why he didn’t want to constantly hear their questions, fearing they would railroad him as they did his brother.

The mystery tied together nicely, and there were some pretty gruesome deaths in this one, so if you don’t have a strong stomach, you might want to skip this one, or at least skim or skip the fire scene.

Overall: a solid four out of five stars.

Thanks to Bookouture and NetGalley for the reading copy.

If I had to sum up this book in one word, that word would be: annoying.

Charlie Waldo is a former cop who helped send an innocent man to prison, only to turn around, do a ton of work to help get him released, only to see that man murdered before he got out (I think, on that last part – pretty sure he was still in when he was murdered). Waldo resigns from the LAPD, buys a small house up in the hills, and rarely comes off the mountain.

Except in fire season, because he’s living in Idyllwild (which was almost burned right off the map in real life during that rather heinous fire season of 2018). Before he leaves, though, a trafficker by the name of Don Q wants something. These two apparently have some history, which I found I didn’t care about. Don Q wants Waldo to find out the identity of a homeless man who seemed to have drowned in a fountain. Waldo doesn’t want to do it, but I’m guessing when a well connected and sort of powerful drug dealer tells you to do something, you just do it.

Here’s some of the annoying: Don Q tries to give him an envelope of cash – take it, dummy, you don’t have a job – but Waldo is wedded to this minimalism thing he started after resigning from the LAPD, and he already has 100 Things (yes, it’s capitalized). Don Q takes care of that for him by taking his laptop and leaving the money. Other annoyance: Waldo donating big pieces of his money to charities. There’s nothing wrong with this, of course, if you don’t have giant signs screaming that you need therapy. Waldo does need some serious therapy.

Meanwhile, the girlfriend he ghosted to go worship at the altar of minimalism in the hills needs him to come sit in on a meeting with a prospective client. He agrees, but not until we get another dose of the 100 Things stuff, this time bitching about the things the girlfriend has in the house.

But they go, and it’s a scripted reality show judge who wants to get another lawyer off her back and break her contract with (disguised Netflix) in favor of syndicating herself, which would yield many more zeroes on her paycheck. Lorena, Waldo’s girlfriend, and the rest of her crew work on that.

Someone is also trying to blackmail the judge, and she talks privately with Waldo about that, telling him to go figure it out. That sets Waldo off on a quest to solve a 35 year old crime that was ruled an accident: a pledge to a frat who wandered off and fell off a small cliff. I think the mystery was two levels too complex, really, and it didn’t have to be.

Throughout all this, we get ample helping of Waldo fetishizing minimalism and his 100 Things rule, and I have to say that crap got old, really fast. He also has a hangup about carbon emissions and is constantly on Lorena’s case about it and worrying about his own footprint as he flies around, since the case takes him out of LA. I get it, we should be more concerned about the environment, but there’s a patience level for everything, and Waldo blew that up for me by the end of the fifth chapter.

Meanwhile, Don Q is on Waldo’s case about the homeless dude, who Waldo finds out was a man the others in the same homeless “camp” called The Professor. The solving of this mystery involves two brothers, an almost abandoned property, a grave, and a dog.

By the end, I decided the only people who were not entirely vile or overly annoying were the homeless people The Professor knew, and Don Q.

It’s written well enough – although in my head, I assigned a very whiny voice to Waldo when he started in on the 100 Things or carbon emissions stuff – and the mystery is okay, even if a bit too complex for its own good.

Three out of five stars.

Thanks to Severn House and NetGalley for the reading copy.

Nothing starts a book off right like having someone getting their arm chainsawed off by a career criminal. Amazingly enough, it turns out to be self-defense.

That pulls us into the story. But it is not quick to action, at least for DI Barton. Instead, we pop into the POV of a prisoner, and how he has always been top dog in prison, but he’s older now, slower, and can’t take down the prisoners who attack him in his cell (which he shares with the career criminal’s son). This takes up a good part of the beginning, since this is where the prisoner is getting to the area of the prison where the child molesters are. There, he discovers that the father of his best friend is in the same block. His best friend committed suicide in front of this prisoner and the career criminal above, as his father had moved on from abusing him to abusing his younger brother. He figures justice needs a little help, since the man was going to be released soon (as were a few others on the block, including the POV prisoner) so he smothers the old man in his cell.

Now Barton makes an appearance, as any unexplained death in the prison has to be investigated. From the looks of it, it’s just old age. Barton and one of his team members, Strange, interview the 60 or so inmates on the block, looking for a possible killer. They’re all creepy in their own way, but none seem like killers. The autopsy reveals some things that may be consistent with suffocation, but then again, may not be. Result: inconclusive, leaving Barton to figure it out.

Then one of the released pedophiles is found dead, and Barton believes it’s all connected, so his team starts digging. Are they being targeted? If so, by whom,and why, other than they’re all scumbag deviants?

It’s a good investigation, and flows along smoothly, with occasional scenes from Barton’s home. His mother has dementia, with moments of clarity, but he and his wife and kids are happy to be able to spend whatever time she has left with her.

As the story moves toward its end, the bodies are piling up, and strangely, the prisoner who killed the old man in prison turns out to be a bit of a sympathetic character. the pedophiles, not so much.

There aren’t any real draggy parts in the middle/guts of the investigation. I’ve not read any other books in the series, and that made keeping track of all the people on Barton’s team a little difficult. Additionally, they have a shared history that would have been helpful to know about before going into this book, but it can be read as a standalone.

Generally, I’m not a fan of mysteries where there aren’t enough clues for the reader to determine who the murderer is, but the mystery is so complex here, and the story well told, so that issue is offset for me.

Four and a half stars out of five, rounded up to five.

Thanks to Boldwood Books and NetGalley for the reading copy.

Pear Blossom Jubilee Masterson – yes, raised on a commune, isolated from the world – is an aspiring filmmaker who is sleeping with her (married) advisor. We’re off to a great start!

As it turns out, only her advisor calls her Pear Blossom, so we’re not stuck with unending litanies of that name. Everyone else calls her June. June has – for the last time – change the subject of her film. It’s going to be a film about a 20 year old cold case: the disappearance of Greer Larkin, a mystery novelist. Larkin was a hit at age 14 with her first murder mystery, and after that, was withdrawn from school, and isolated from the rest of the world. Larkin is June’s favorite writer, as they share the same general upbrringing, on their own tiny island in the sea of humanity, and because June loves the stories. June has read and reread all the books, and she participates in a forum at greersgone.com where she and other fans of Larkin’s endlessly speculate about what could have happened and post whatever clues they believe they have about the disappearance.

June sends out emails to Larkin’s mother Blanche (high and mighty, with money and lawyers out the wazoo), Jonathan (fiance and general scumbag), Rachel (devoted friend who wanted more than friendship) and Bethany (Larkin’s agent). When she gets replies, it’s an opportunity to see how each one thinks, and their guesses as to what happened. The women all blame Jonathan, of course, and that’s only natural. The partner is always the first and primary suspect. His motive? Money- there’s an account in the Caymans under his name with a whopping $18 million in it. But the account is frozen and Blanche doesn’t want another nickel of Larkin’s money going to him.

Rachel blames Jonathan as well, claiming he was abusive to Larkin, something he denies. Bethany blames Jonathan too, not just for Larkin’s disappearance but for the quality of her writing deteriorating, something Rachel also throws at Jonathan’s feet, claiming he controlled Larkin with booze and drugs.

June interviews them all, and casts general questions to the forum so as not to tip them off there’s a film being made about Larkin’s vanishing. June seems to be able to do better than the police did – of course, that was before the internet is what it is today – and as she gets further and further toward the answer, someone dies, and she is threatened as well unless she stops her investigation.

It’s a fun book- not for the death and disappearance and threats, of course, but for the way in which June goes about putting the pieces together, and her (sometimes) inventive ways of getting information.

Side note to publishers and/or writers who use domains in their books: go register the thing and put content on it.

The ending is a bit tropey, with the villains giving up an infodump about their why, but it is coherent, consistent reasoning, even if a little weird. There are a few instances, and one in particular where something is presented to June that could have been presented to the police back in the day to help them, and it’s odd that the character didn’t do that. Other than these things, it’s a solid, fun read.

Four out of five stars.

Thanks to Crooked Lane Books and NetGalley for the reading copy.