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.

I had read Fallen Angel, number three in this series, last year. This one feels rougher than that one, and not as good a read. But first, a summary:

Hannah Thomas returns from a spa outing with a friend to find her fiance dead and her son missing. DI Gaby Darin and her team are called in to investigate. Could Hannah herself be the killer? Or is something from her past catching up with her?

There are bound to be some spoilery bits here, so consider yourself warned.

In book three, Darin is only an acting DI. Between then and now – in book four, I imagine, which I did not read – Darin has had “acting” dropped, and she’s now the boss for real, as it were, of her group. I find this a bit difficult, as Darin is not exactly the polished of stones: she is impuldive, curt, or even rude. She doesn’t seem to have any people skills or he ability to bridge the space between her crew and her superiors. I’ll give her a break on her relationship with Rusty, the medical examiner, because romantic relationships can be choppy waters, but she’s been mooning over him since book three, and I can’t help but think she would be better at this. Instead, she’s often snippy with him in a way that really puts a damper on things.

When Darin gets to the scene, she notes the dead guy (apparent suicide) says, “OK, missing kid.”, but there is zero urgency conveyed through this beginning, and crucial part of the investigation, either about the dead man or the missing child – a child who has a serious medical issue (type 1 diabetes, for which he wears an insulin pump. No frantic energy about searching nearby, in the event the kid was frightened by either the actions of the dead man, who is also a former cop, or by any other persons who might have been present. She doesn’t stay even a little while CSI starts going through the scene. She doesn’t pick up, it seems, that Hannah is not devastated by these events. All in all: she doesn’t seem to notice the things she should be, or doing/ordering the things that need to be done with quickness.

Since nothing is happening with urgency, it drags the rest of the book with it. There are far too many scenes where people are deciding what to have for dinner, or worrying about a colleague’s wedding. Far too much “X seemed like (something), but that wasn’t the case, here’s why: blah.” I don’t need a writer to tell me these things. I need them to show me these things, so as the characters go about their business, we can understand that Mal, for instance, generally doesn’t look like he’s paying attention, but actually is intensely focused.

Although, to be honest, nobody in this book but the villain seems to be laser focused on anything. I will give the book points for this: the villain doesn’t stand around opining on all the ways they set things up. They just say “it’s because of this thing” and then disappears, something I welcome.

This would keep you occupied on a plane or train or beach, but to me it’s a bi like cotton candy. Sure, you can eat it. But ultimately, it’s unsatisfying, and easily forgotten.

Two and a half stars, rounded down to two. I was disappointed in this, as I had expected things to get better, not worse, from the three stars I gave Fallen Angel.

Thanks to HQ Digital and NetGalley for the reading copy.

The Missing Piece is the nineteenth in a series, the lead character of which (as billed/titled, anyway) is Dismas Hardy. This book, however, features more of Abe Glitsky, a PI, and Wes Farrell, a former prosecutor, now defense attorney, who is having a midlife crisis about defending people he believes are guilty. According to some things I read, Lescroart cycles through characters, putting some (like Abe and Wes here) in the forefront, and then in the next book, putting others at the front. No problem with that!

I’ve not read any of the books in this series, and I don’t think it’s necessary to start at one and land here, as it’s fine as a standalone. There are enough details about the relationships between the characters that it easily works as a standalone.

Eleven years ago, Farrell prosecuted Paul Riley for the rape and murder of Dana Rush. The Exoneration Initiative, akin to the Innocence Project, finds new DNA evidence pointing to another man who was already in prison for the same crime. That man confessed to Dana’s murder, and Paul Riley is released. Paul heads home to live with his father. After Paul cleans up and remodels the room above the garage, his father decides Paul should start paying rent, at $2500/month. Thanks, dad. Since Paul doesn’t make much at the restaurant where he works – and certainly not enough to pay dear old dad’s price, he decides to go back to breaking and entering.

After one job, he’s back in his place, when his dad calls up to him. Paul thinks pops sounds a little off, so he shoves the loot under his pillow, opens the door, but it isn’t dad. Paul has an “Oh, shit” moment, but the person at the door shoots Paul in the head before he can do anything.

A couple of detectives show up, and Paul’s father tells them he saw the shooter: Doug Rush, the father of the girl Paul murdered. So, despite everything that screams bullshit about this – including dad’s attempt to say the money Paul has stuffed under his pillow belonging to him, the dad the scumbag – thee two just bop right over to Doug’s place. After asking him a couple of questions about where he’s been, and his refusal to tell them anything, they decide to go ahead and arrest him on the basis of Paul’s dad’s eyewitness. This is the dumbest thing in the book, given how notoriously unreliable eyewitnesses are. In any case, while getting the cuffs on Doug, one of the detectives, who clearly has some issues, beats him. Of course someone captures it on video. Doug makes a call to a detective that worked his daughter’s case,who in turn calls Farrell: Doug wants Farrell as his lawyer.

Farrell agrees to represent Doug, even though he thinks Doug is guilty. He manages to get Doug out on bail, though, then goes back to his life, talking to multiple people about his existential crisis. When Doug doesn’t appear in court when he’s supposed to, Farrell immediately goes to” guilty, he’s a runner.

But Doug turns up dead, and not by suicide. Farrell now feels guilty, talks to Hardy, and in comes Abe, to poke around at what happened, as they feel they owe it to Doug.

From there, we get a real investigation, instead of whatever the hell the detectives who arrested Doug were doing (they were suspended shortly after arresting him). Abe finds Doug did indeed have an alibi for the time Paul was shot, but it wasn’t something Doug wanted to reveal, in order to protect someone. Then yet another body shows up, and Abe dogs the case until he discovers that missing piece.

Although there is some time devoted to Farrell and his issues with working defense instead of offense, those moments don’t drag the book down. Since I’m a weather nerd, I didn’t mind the descriptions of that throughout the book. The main characters are well developed by now, of course, and they all act like real, actual people. The story itself raises questions about how possible criminals are treated, how new testing that wasn’t available years ago shows innocent people have been locked up, and what justice means or should be. The missing piece, to me, had a bit of luck involved, but sometimes, you do get lucky.

Four and a half stars, rounded up to five.

Thanks to Atria Books and NetGalley for the reading copy.

Novelist Andy Drake returns to his old neighborhood to care for his dad, who is in the beginning stages of dementia. Also living in the neighborhood is his not so secret crush, Rachel, who is now married to an emotionally abusive man and has two kids.

A quick kiss at a cookout at Rachel’s spirals into something more. Until someone leaves a note in Andy’s door, telling him to knock it off, or else. Our first mystery: who left the note? The guy with the tiny dog, who no one seems to know anything about? An older lady, on her own, who likes to sit outside with her binoculars? Rachel’s husband David?

Several weeks later, Rachel’s husband is shot dead, and Rachel and the kids have disappeared. Andy, not currently working on the book that’s due to his editor, instead starts chasing up clues, and nearly gets himself shot in the process after breaking in to Rachel’s house, looking for anything that might indicate what her husband was up to or where she and the kids might be.

From details Andy’s able to glean, it seems David’s business isn’t doing as well as it appears – and David’s partner in the business has committed suicide, it seems.

After finding a business card in the house, he dithers a bit until he calls the number and says what appears to be a code word. After the other side hangs up, Andy thinks he’s on to something: did David owe these people money? Were they capable of killing David? When Andy gets a late night visit from a stranger he deems the Visitor, he knows the answer is yes. But the visitor insists they didn’t do it, and it’s believable, both to Andy and the reader.

Andy continues to go down the rabbit hole, eventually coming out the other side. There’s quite a nice twist at the end that was not telegraphed from chapters away, and it was a nice touch that made sense of things.

My only issue was with the beginning and some of the chapters that were more stream of consciousness than narrative. I get why they’re there, as it was the easiest way to get certain information into the book without having them be full-fledged narrative parts, but I wasn’t a fan.

Other than that, however, I enjoyed it quite a lot, and I believe readers who are used to tight neighborhoods or small towns especially will as well.

A solid four out of five star read.

Thanks to Thomas & mercer and NetGalley for the review copy.

Some time ago, I tried to read Thin Air, by this same author. I gave up on it because it had one of my most hated things – a road atlas-worthy description of someone driving, for no good reason (i.e., it added nothing to the story) – and because there were a multitude of UK Englishisms that threw one out of the story (hand brake, “that lot”, etc.).

I am very happy I took another chance on Lisa Gray, because Lonely Hearts has none of that: it’s a taut, well-told story about a serial killer, a missing woman, a dead wife, and relatives rightly pissed off at several books that seem to only be written to line the pockets of the author at their expense.

We start off in 1989, with underaged Devin Palmer waiting for her sister Erika. The plan: to have a couple of drinks, and then for Devin to stay the night at Erika’s. Alas, Erika ghosts her sister and spends the night with her boyfriend. Also, alas, Devin – a slightly built redhead with fair skin – is offered a ride home with Travis Dean Ford, AKA the Valley Strangler, so named because he strangles slight, redheaded women who have fair skin with their own pantyhose.

We then go to Christine and Veronica, looking at a pamphlet for the Lonely Hearts Club, a way for people outside to write to people locked up in prison. Veronica writes to Travis Dean Ford, and eventually winds up in a “relationship”, or as much as one can have with someone on death row.

Flash forward, and we’re with Jessica, trawling through trash bags, hoping to find evidence of a man’s infidelity. While she’s doing this, Christen Ryan walks up to her, asking her to find an old friend, Veronica Lowe, and her daughter Mia – Travis Dean Ford’s daughter, that he had with Veronica somehow.

Jessica takes the case, working it alone without much contact with Connor. It seems somewhere between book one, which I did not finish, and the end of book three, they apparently hooked up. But he’s now seeing an exotic dancer, and Jessica is avoiding him.

It isn’t easy to track down someone who willfully vanishes. But Christine gives Jessica quite a lot of information, including a couple of photos. Christine says it’s very important to track Veronica down, because Ford’s wife has been murdered in her own home. Struck on the head, then strangled with pantyhose. Interestingly, Detectives Pryce and Medina find they are not Jordana’s: they were brought to the scene by the killer, deliberately. Copycat?

As we go along, bouncing between timelines and POVs, the mystery becomes ever deeper. Jessica continues to track Veronica, talks to the owner of TLHC business, her husband (who tells Jessica to stop looking for Veronica), several witnesses, trawls through newspaper archives and signs up for TLHC so she can get into the forum and research there, as well.

By now it’s fairly clear that Veronica doesn’t want to be found. We then get several chapters from Jordana interspersed, plugging her book at a bookstore, and feeling as if someone has been following her.

Meanwhile, Jessica helps out Pryce by providing what she’s found, and she’s now on the scent, which leads to another location entirely. It’s just before the end that we get Jordana’s last POV chapter, and then the end is rushing at us.

Although I figured out the killer fairly early, it was still a very good read, capturing not just the characters of Jessica and the people immediately around her, but also the families who suffered at the hand of Travis Dean Ford. One character – the father of one of the victims – complains bitterly to Pryce and Medina that they don’t know the names of the 15 girls and women Ford killed. They only know Ford’s name. I thought that an astute observation.

There are no laggy parts, and there isn’t anything that rips the reader out of the world Gray has built. The plot is sensible, and no one does anything that is out of character. I’m glad I took the chance on the series again.

A five star read.

Thanks to Amazon UK and NetGalley for the reading copy.