Their Frozen Graves by Ruhi Choudhary, Cold Wind by Paige Shelton, Noose by Eric Red, They Disappeared by Joy Ellis

 I'm trying to catch up with some reviews before 2021! 

Their Frozen Graves is the second book in this series featuring Detective Mackenzie Price.  Although I've not read the first book, the book works as a stand alone.

from description:  

"When two bodies are found dumped in a vast lake in Lakemore, Washington, Detective Mackenzie Price is first on the scene. She identifies one of the victims as Katy Becker, a local known for her work helping the community. The other victim looks strikingly similar.

Still grappling with a shocking revelation from her past, Mack is only too happy to throw herself into the case. But when she goes to break the news to Katy’s husband, the investigation takes an unexpected turn: Katy is very much alive, and has never met the women who resemble her so closely."

A twisty plot and an engrossing read.  I liked Mackenzie and may look for the first book.  

Netgalley/Bookoutre

Mystery/Police Procedural.  Jan. 7, 2021

Cold Wind is another "second book" that provided enough background that it wasn't necessary to have read the first book.

from description: "Beth Rivers is still in Alaska. The unidentified man who kidnapped her in her home of St. Louis hasn’t been found yet, so she’s not ready to go back."

 Benedict, Alaska seemed a safe place for Beth to  stay hidden because her kidnapper is still at large.  Secure in the fact that only a few people know about Beth and her situation, she is able to continue writing her thrillers under a pseudonym.

When two eight-year-old girls knock on the door to her office, Beth realizes that they either cannot or will not explain who they are or how they got there.  They are silent.  

Oh, and the body of a woman is found in a trapper's shed.  Beth gets busy trying to solve both mysteries.  She wants to find the girls' parents and to discover who the dead woman is why she was killed.   

I liked most of the book, but found the plot complications too far-fetched.  Not that you know this until the conclusion, but still.

The characters and setting appealed to me, but the resolution was disappointing because I couldn't get past all the coincidences in the explanation.

Netgalley/St. Martin's Press

Mystery.  Dec. 8, 2020.

The cover really speaks to you, doesn't it?  <grin>  In many ways the book lives up to the cover.  More Louis L'Amour   than Larry McMurtry, it is a pulp fiction Western with lots of violent deaths.

Joe Noose is a bounty hunter who brings culprits in alive.  Not all bounty hunters want to bother with the "alive" part, and a group of twelve bounty hunters follow Noose.  When Noose finds and captures the bank robber, they charge in.  Killing the bank robber and taking his body in for the bounty.

Noose follows them into town.  The bad guys end up killing a U.S. Marshall then frame Noose for the murder.  Now, Noose has a bounty on his head and twelve men in pursuit.

 Uh oh.  For Noose to save his own life and to get justice, a lot of bad bounty hunters are going to have to die.  

Action packed.  

Kindle Unlimited

Western.  2018.   

They Disappeared is the latest in the Jackman and Evans series by Joy Ellis. 

Ellis is a favorite of mine for her books set in the fens on the east coast of England.  

In this latest installment, Orac, the IT boss, has gone missing and everyone is concerned.   

The second thread involves three missing urban explorers.  Who is targeting these young men and why?  

Joy Ellis' plots keep my attention, and her characters have dimension.  I always speed right through her books.  

Kindle Unlimited.

Police Procedural.  Nov. 30, 2020.

Whiskey When We're Dry by John Larison

 

I read this about two weeks ago after Les mentioned it.  An epic tale of the Old West that concentrates not on the romantic aspects of the Western genre, but on the difficulties of making a life in a dangerous land.  

Jessilyn Harney had to divide her love between her failing father and her rebellious brother.  When her father died, her twin goals were to hold on to their ranch and to find her brother Noah, who has become one of the most wanted outlaws in several states.

Jess, who narrates her own story, realizes that a teenage girl is vulnerable, and so as she takes on the task of tracking down her brother, she assumes the persona of a young man.

Life on the frontier in the 1880's was harsh and violent, and Larison builds a world that reflects the difficulties with remarkable detail.  

While there are gunfights, saloons, and brothels as is many books in the Western genre, Larison's development of Jess manages to reconstruct the typical tropes through Jess's first person narrative.  

Noah Harney is also an intriguing character, and Jess's love for him, which becomes more clear-eyed as the story proceeds, is an engrossing part of Jess's journey.  Noah, a charismatic leader, is a mixture of positive and negative; Jess must accept that her brother has feet of clay.  

It's a long book that immerses you in the details of hard-scrabble lives and has epic proportions.  It isn't Lonesome Dove, but in spite of turning so much of the typical Western on it's head, Larison has created a world with the same scope.

Again, thanks Les, for this recommendation.

Purchased.

See That My Grave Is Kept Clean and The Starlight Claim

Billed as something for fans of Craig Johnson, I couldn't help but have high hopes for this one.  In the end, though, the book didn't suit me...or I didn't suit the book. 

See That My Grave Is Kept Clean (tentative connection to content) featuring Iraqi War veteran Tommy Smith is the third book in the series.  A missing ten-year-old girl, a corpse of a missing embezzler, and a sinister owner of a "titty bar" and abuser of women and underage girls, an ineffectual sheriff, and plenty of dead folks.  

Although not a book that I wanted to abandon, I had trouble connecting with the characters on more than a superficial basis and had little confidence in the plot.  

There are a lot of admirers of this series, but ultimately, it wasn't a good fit for me.

Read in May; blog review scheduled for Aug. 31, 2019

NetGalley/ Skyhorse Publishing
Crime.  Sept. 17, 2019.  Print length:  288 pages.

The Starlight Claim was an exciting survival adventure.  Nate didn't intend to make the trip to the cabin alone, but when his friend is grounded,  he decides not to back out.  But a blizzard sets in and in subzero temperatures, Nate must not only survive the weather, but must outwit escapees from a maximum security prison who have taken refuge in his family's cabin.  Thanks to his father, Nate is not without resources, both physical and mental.

from description:  Four months after his best friend, Dodge, disappeared near their families’ camp in a boat accident, Nate is still haunted by nightmares. He’d been planning to make the treacherous trek to the remote campsite with a friend — his first time in winter without his survival-savvy father. But when his friend gets grounded, Nate secretly decides to brave the trip solo in a journey that’s half pilgrimage, half desperate hope he will find his missing friend when no one else could. What he doesn’t expect to find is the door to the cabin flung open and the camp occupied by strangers: three men he’s horrified to realize have escaped from a maximum-security prison. Snowed in by a blizzard and with no cell signal, Nate is confronted with troubling memories of Dodge and a stunning family secret, and realizes that his survival now depends on his wits as much as his wilderness skills. As things spiral out of control, Nate finds himself dealing with questions even bigger than who gets to leave the camp alive.

Nate discovers an unexpected ally, but not a benevolent or selfless one.  

Although the main character is a teenager, I didn't realize at first that this was a YA novel; however, as with any good book,  The Starlight Claim will grab your interest and hold it throughout.

Read in May;  blog review scheduled for Aug. 31, 2019

NetGalley/Candlewick Press
YA/Suspense.  Sept. 10, 2019.  Print length:  240 pages

Any Other Name by Craig Johnson

Any Other Name

The best thing about NetGalley is when offers like Craig Johnson's Walt Longmire series appear.  I love this series
that I began following several years ago thanks to a post by Wendy at Musings of a Bookish Kitty.

I watched one of the A&E series episodes, but after reading the books, the series didn't work for me.  I'm sure it is a great series; I probably would have liked it if the characters were not already in my head.  

Aside from the fact that any dedicated reader of the series loves Walt and Henry and Dog, the pleasure of Johnson's writing provides another layer of appreciation.  Walt and Henry are intelligent, well-read, and thinking individuals.  This ability to create warm and thoughtful characters is one of the strongest points in these novels.  

Walt's daughter Cady is about to give birth, and she wants Walt there.  Walt, however, has let Lucien pull him into an investigation involving the suicide of a friend.  One thing leads to another, and the original case morphs into the cases that Detective Gerald Holman was working on at the time of his suicide.

As Lucian warned Holman's widow, Walt Longmire never gives up and sometimes what he discovers can be things that are unpleasant to know.  In this situation, the deeper Walt digs into the cases of three missing women, the more dangerous things become.

:)  Just a  fun thing to look for:  the lady with the raccoon.  

Read in April.  Blog post scheduled for May 4.

NetGalley/Penguin Group/Viking

Mystery.  May 13, 2014.  Print Length:  324 pages.

Hell Is Empty by Craig Johnson

I' d only read one other book by Johnson (The Cold Dish -- you know, revenge is a dish best served cold), but I liked it a lot, and Hell Is Empty ("Hell is empty and all the devils are here."  The Tempest) only made me eager to read more.

The Cold Dish was the first book in the series and the setting was a  blizzard and an arduous journey.  Strange that I've read the first and the latest in the series and that both have the weather as almost another character.  Now, I've got to seek out five books published after the The Cold Dish and before Hell Is Empty.

Walt Longmire is the sheriff of Absaroka County in Wyoming.  When several murderous convicts escape during a transfer to the FBI, killing several FBI Agents and taking two hostages,  Longmire goes after them.  The trail leads higher and higher into the Big Horn Mountains in the midst of a blizzard.  Cold as hell seems an apt description.

I missed Henry Standing Bear's presence (he has only a small role in this novel), but I liked Virgil quite a lot.  The novel has suspense, endurance, and mysticism

One of the minor characters, Sancho (a Basque deputy) has been reading Dante, and his copy of The Inferno (yall know I love The Inferno) plays a role in Longmire's hunt for the convicts.  Here we have hell featured once again.

  In the back of the novel, Craig Johnson includes the reading list that has been given to Sancho. Walt Longmire, Henry Standing Bear, Victoria Morelli, and several other characters each added 10 books to the list.  It is interesting to see the books each character deems important.  I'm always curious about what other people recommend, even fictional people.

As with the first in the series, I found Hell Is Empty to be a page turner.  Now, I've got to go back and try to pick up the other books in the series, hopefully in order.

Other reviews/ opinions:  Unruly Reader, My Random Acts of Reading,

Fiction.  Mystery/Western.  20ll.  320 pages.