Review: Black Water Rising by Attica Locke

Posted on April 29, 2015April 28, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A Reviews> book reviews

Format read: ebook borrowed from the library
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genre: mystery suspense
Series: Jay Porter #1
Length: 448 pages
Publisher: Harper Collins
Date Released: June 9, 2009
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Writing in the tradition of Dennis Lehane and Greg Iles, Attica Locke, a powerful new voice in American fiction, delivers a brilliant debut thriller that readers will not soon forget.

Jay Porter is hardly the lawyer he set out to be. His most promising client is a low-rent call girl and he runs his fledgling law practice out of a dingy strip mall. But he’s long since made peace with not living the American Dream and carefully tucked away his darkest sins: the guns, the FBI file, the trial that nearly destroyed him.

Houston, Texas, 1981. It is here that Jay believes he can make a fresh start. That is, until the night in a boat out on the bayou when he impulsively saves a woman from drowning—and opens a Pandora’s box. Her secrets put Jay in danger, ensnaring him in a murder investigation that could cost him his practice, his family, and even his life. But before he can get to the bottom of a tangled mystery that reaches into the upper echelons of Houston’s corporate power brokers, Jay must confront the demons of his past.

With pacing that captures the reader from the first scene through an exhilarating climax, Black Water Rising marks the arrival of an electrifying new talent.

My Review:

It’s 1981 in Houston, Texas, and the black water that is inconveniently rising is something that is sometimes called “Texas Tea”. But no one is going to strike it rich this time, because this isn’t an oil well. This crude is rising somewhere that it isn’t supposed to be in the first place.

The story in Black Water Rising is edge-of-your-seat, thrill-a-minute scary, because that oil isn’t the first or the only thing that isn’t staying where it was put. And Jay Porter is right in the middle of the mess.

In Catch-22, Joseph Heller famously said that “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.” That’s Jay Porter in a nutshell. He’s been paranoid all of his adult life, but he’s not just certain that they are out to get him, he knows it’s true because it happened before.

In college, in the tumultuous late 1960’s, Jay was a black activist who gave speeches and raised money for the cause that he believed in. Until one day he was betrayed by someone both close to him and inside the movement, and found himself on trial on a trumped up charge of murder. Although he was found not guilty by the grace of God and one black woman on the jury who would not give in, he never lost his sense of betrayal.

It’s 1981, and he finds himself in the middle of something that he shouldn’t have had any part of. He was in the wrong place at the right time. Or the other way around.

He takes his wife on a very cheap anniversary cruise on what had been proposed as a Riverwalk through Houston to rival San Antonio. It’s a concrete ditch leading to the bayous, but someone owes him and he needs to do something special for his anniversary. His wife is 8 months pregnant and he needs to treat her to something nice.

This wasn’t it.

On the way back, they hear a scream. He rescues a white woman from the shoreline – she’s frightened and bruised. He knows that there is no way that a white woman should have been in that part of town, and the gunshots they heard just before she started screaming make him certain that this is trouble with a capital T.

He’s right. He knows that there is no good that can come of a black man rescuing a white woman. Even with witnesses, it can only turn out badly for him. He just doesn’t know how right he is. And how wrong.

It’s not because of the event itself. Because of Jay’s long-simmering certainty that someday the government will get him, just the way it has so many of the others he was involved with in the 1960s. He’s innocent of any wrongdoing now, but he is certain that the police won’t see it that way.

So Jay covers up his involvement, only to eventually discover that someone is using him to cover up something deeper and darker. His paranoia, justified as it is, nearly gets both him and his wife Bernice killed.

In the end, it both saves him and sets him free.

Escape Rating A: The depths of Jay Porter’s fear, and exactly how ingrained it is and how utterly reasonable it is has been reinforced for this reader by recent deaths of black men in Baltimore, New York, Ferguson, Florida and too many other places to list. Which is just wrong.

So Jay doesn’t trust the police, because he knows from his own experience that they are not trustworthy. He is a black man with a felony arrest record, and even though he was found not guilty of the fabricated charge, he is certain that he will be beaten first and asked questions later, if at all. It happens all the time, and he knows it.

The events in the book bear this out, as a white union organizer beats up an unarmend young black union member, and is not merely let go, but his fake alibi is corroborated by one of the city’s most influential oil men. And it is all in the service of killing a union movement by black dockworkers to get equal pay for equal work.

Meanwhile, the woman that Jay rescued has finally been charged with murder, but the fix is in. The question in the story is about who is fixed. Whether it’s Jay, involved by accident in a mess that is none of his making; Elise, the young woman who killed a man in self-defense, or the influential businessman who contracted the hit, but is now paying for her legal defense.

Jay conducts his own investigation into the original crime. At first, he’s just trying to discover whether his inadvertent role has been revealed to the police. It becomes a race to see if he can uncover and reveal the depth of the coverup before his own body becomes part of the collateral damange.

Ironically, it takes a long time for Jay to finally figure out what this is all really about. Because it’s not about the murder, not really. It’s about a lot of big corporations and big unions manipulating everybody in Houston, and the U.S.

Jay initially only cares that they are manipulating him, using his long-standing fears to keep him in line. When that stops working, they threaten his family and his life, and they try to make him complicit in a crime that he still hasn’t discovered the depths of.

Jay carries the story along with his guilt and innocence, on his back the entire length of the book. It is so easy to see that doing the right thing in the beginning would have saved him so much grief. At the same time, the author makes is easy to understand what motivates Jay to hide as much as he can for as long as he can.

He’s a complete mess, and his fears threaten to wreck his entire life. But the author makes those fears real, and we understand how it all falls into place, and nearly into pieces.

Black Water Rising is a compelling story of betrayal and corruption. It is also a story that it is impossible not to keep thinking about. It won’t let me go.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Stacking the Shelves (132)

Posted on April 25, 2015April 24, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Stacking the Shelves

The good and bad news about midnight impulse buying, all in one tidy list. This was a week where it seemed like everything I read was a mid-series book where I not only hadn’t read the previous books, but in some cases hadn’t even known there were previous books.

After I finished each of them (Medium Dead, Seduced by Sunday and Officer Elvis) I decided that I’d had so much fun and/or enjoyed them so much that I had to get the rest of their respective series. And after I reviewed M.J. Scott’s The Shattered Court over at The Book Pushers, I discovered that she writes contemporary romance as Melanie Scott. So damn many books, so very little time.

Traditional white dress with a bouquet of flowers

between a rock and a hard place by marty wingate

this wedding is doomed by stephanie draven et al

For Review:
After Midnight (Denver Heroes #1) by Kathy Clark
After the War (Homefront #2) by Jessica Scott
Between a Rock and a Hard Place (Potting Shed #3) by Marty Wingate
Cities and Thrones (Recoletta #2) by Carrie Patel
Lawless in Leather (New York Saints #3) by Melanie Scott
The Paris Time Capsule by Ella Carey
Risk It (Rule Breakers #4) by Jennifer Chance
Ruthless by John Rector
The Star Side of Bird Hill by Naomi Jackson
This Wedding is Doomed by Stephanie Draven, Jeannie Lin, Shawntelle Madison and Amanda Berry

Purchased from Amazon:
Angel in Armani (New York Saints #2) by Melanie Scott
The Devil in Denim (New York Saints #1) by Melanie Scott
Fiance by Friday (Weekday Brides #3) by Catherine Bybee
Half a Mind to Murder (Dr. Alexandra Gladstone #3) by Paula Paul
An Improper Death (Dr. Alexandra Gladstone #2) by Paula Paul
The Last Clinic (Darla Cavannah #1) by Gary Gusick
Marcus 582 (Cyborgs: Mankind Redefined #3) by Donna McDonald
Married by Monday (Weekday Brides #2) by Catherine Bybee
Single by Saturday (Weekday Brides #4) by Catherine Bybee
Symptoms of Death (Dr. Alexandra Gladstone #1) by Paula Paul
Taken by Tuesday (Weekday Brides #5) by Catherine Bybee
Wife by Wednesday (Weekday Brides #1) by Catherine Bybee

The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 4-19-15

Posted on April 19, 2015April 17, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Giveaways> The Sunday Post> Virtual Nightstand> Winner announcement

First and foremost, I want to thank everyone who participated in my Blogo-Birthday celebration for their suggestions. I very much appreciate the kind words, and will take the suggestions seriously. I know Reading Reality needs a makeover, and I’m on a waiting list to get that done. (I actually CAN carry a tune in a bucket, but I can’t draw a bath. My graphic and artistic skills are seriously limited, so I need help!)

On the more directly bookish front, I was surprised when I looked at next week’s schedule and saw that all my books are blog tour books next week. When I was in school, even though I loved to read, I hated to read anything that was assigned. I guess that because I assigned these to myself, it doesn’t feel quite the same. And of course I only sign up for tours when I really think I’m going to like the book. It usually works out that way.

Current Giveaways:

$25 Gift card + ebook copy of Ivory Ghosts by Caitlin O’Connell

Winner Announcements:

The winners of the $10 bookish prizes in my Blogo-Birthday Celebration are: Jennifer K., Ann S., Michelle L. and Amyc.

Blog Recap:

B+ Review: The Dream Lover by Elizabeth Berg
A Review: The Bookseller by Cynthia Swanson
B Review: One Bite Per Night by Brooklyn Ann
B+ Review: BiblioTech: Why Libraries Matter More Than Ever in the Age of Google by John Palfrey
B Review: Ivory Ghosts by Caitlin O’Connell + Giveaway
Stacking the Shelves (131)

Coming Next Week:

Bite at First Sight by Brooklyn Ann (blog tour review)
Last Night at the Blue Angel by Rebecca Rotert (blog tour review)
Medium Dead by Paula Paul (blog tour review)
Seduced by Sunday by Catherine Bybee (blog tour review)
Officer Elvis by Gary Gusick (blog tour review)

Review: Ivory Ghosts by Caitlin O’Connell + Giveaway

Posted on April 17, 2015April 16, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways

Format read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: thriller, mystery
Series: Catherine Sohon #1
Length: 294 pages
Publisher: Random House Alibi
Date Released: April 7, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo

In a blockbuster debut thriller brimming with majestic wildlife, village politics, and international intrigue, a chilling quadruple homicide raises the stakes in the battle to save Africa’s elephants.

Still grieving over the tragic death of her fiancé, American wildlife biologist Catherine Sohon leaves South Africa and drives to a remote outpost in northeast Namibia, where she plans to face off against the shadowy forces of corruption and relentless human greed in the fight against elephant poaching. Undercover as a census pilot tracking the local elephant population, she’ll really be collecting evidence on the ruthless ivory traffickers.

But before she even reaches her destination, Catherine stumbles onto a scene of horrifying carnage: three people shot dead in their car, and a fourth nearby—with his brain removed. The slaughter appears to be the handiwork of a Zambian smuggler known as “the witchdoctor,” a figure reviled by activists and poachers alike. Forced to play nice with local officials, Catherine finds herself drawn to the prickly but charismatic Jon Baggs, head of the Ministry of Conservation, whose blustery exterior belies his deep investment in the poaching wars.

Torn between her developing feelings and her unofficial investigation, she takes to the air, only to be grounded by a vicious turf war between competing factions of a black-market operation that reaches far beyond the borders of Africa. With the mortality rate—both human and animal—skyrocketing, Catherine races to intercept a valuable shipment. Now she’s flying blind, and a cunning killer is on the move.

My Review:

This story is about charismatic megafauna, our use, misuse and abuse of and by them, and murder.

I’m in love with the phrase charismatic megafauna, because it so fits. The author is talking about elephants in this particular story, but I’ve also lived in proximity to a one of the other animals in this group. Bald eagles are everywhere in Alaska, including Anchorage, and in their native habitat they are a messy and opportunistic species. They do an excellent job of keeping the pigeon and Canada Goose population way down in Anchorage – and they also occasionally carry off a small poodle. So while I have no familiarity with elephants except in zoos, I have a tiny idea of the differences between the ways that people who have to live with one of these species and people who are merely enraptured by their press coverage diverge.

But no one hunts eagles for their tusks.

Elephants are beautiful and majestic. They can also be destructive. But the ivory in their tusks can be worth a fortune. And that’s where the story in Ivory Ghosts begins.

Catherine Sohon is a pilot. She is also utterly fascinated with elephants, both in spite of and because of her experiences as an elephant census pilot working in Kruger National Park in South Africa. After her fiancé’s tragic death at the paws of a water buffalo, Catherine can’t bring herself to leave Africa. But she desperately feels a need to leave Kruger, and she needs to do something, both with herself and for a living.

elephants in bwabwata — Elephants in Bwabwata National Park

She takes a job in the Bwabwata National Park in Namibia, working for a slightly mysterious wildlife protection agency. Her ostensible job is to fly an elephant census in the protected areas, but her real job is to find out who is poaching ivory in and smuggling ivory through the contested Caprivi region.

Catherine trips over a jeep full of dead humans and ivory tusks on her first night in the Park. It never gets any less bloody from there.

Catherine finds herself caught in a web of contradictions. She wants to protect the elephants from the humans, but sometimes finds herself in a position of protecting the humans from the elephants. She is told that she can trust the environmental officials on scene, but she is keeping a huge secret from them, and vice versa.

The man she thinks is the most hostile turns out to be the most trustworthy, in spite of his initial boorishness and her agency’s mistaken belief that he may be in on the smuggling. The person she most trusts turns out to be an irredeemable villain. Even worse, a villain who seems to have government officials in his pocket.

She’s told that the problem is local. She eventually discovers that the rot stretches all the way from the local government to organized crime triads in Hong Kong.

In Ivory Ghosts, Catherine travels into her own personal Heart of Darkness. While her personal ghosts finally get expiated, she comes all too close to becoming a ghost herself.

Escape Rating B: While I enjoyed Ivory Ghosts, it had the feeling of a “dropped into the middle” kind of story.

Some of that is literal. Catherine is dealing with her own ghosts by trying to suppress them, so we know that she is running from something without having the details on exactly what she is running from. It takes a while for Catherine to reveal her feelings about what happened to her fiancé, and her own feelings of guilt as well as loss.

Finding the jeep full of bodies is also a literal “dropping in”. There’s bad stuff going on, it’s been going on, and she trips over it the first night.

Catherine has been living in Africa, and working in African game parks and preserves for a few years. She is familiar, at least from an outsider’s perspective, with some of the culture and the way that life works. Readers may not be, and a bit more exposition about the government culture, bureaucracy and corruption would have been helpful. Likewise, a bit more explanation of who the native leaders are and what their titles/positions represent would have made some things a bit less opaque. Your mileage may vary.

There’s a difference in narrative between a point-of-view character who is as lost as the reader and a POV character who knows it so well that he or she isn’t saying enough. I felt like Catherine was a bit of the latter.

I never did get a handle on Craig, Catherine’s boss at the mysterious WIA. Who are they and what do they do? What do they claim to do? I found myself wondering, fairly often, if Craig and the WIA were the good guys or the bad guys.

In the early stage of the book, and of Catherine’s relationship with the local agent Jon Baggs, Jon refers to Catherine’s Karen Blixen complex and wants her to get it out of her system and go back where she came from. Catherine is not reenacting Blixen/Dinesen’s Out of Africa experience, and doesn’t intend to, but there is certainly that feeling that Catherine, like Blixen, has fallen in love with Africa and is looking for any excuse to stay, whether she wants to save the place (an impossible but common notion) or not.

In the end, Catherine uncovers one deadly conspiracy, but it is clear that she has just touched the surface of the ivory trade. There are murky depths yet to be explored.

I’m glad that Catherine is planning to stick around and explore them. I hope we’ll see more of her story.

TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY

This tour includes a Rafflecopter giveaway for a $25 eGift card to the eBook Retailer of the winner’s choice + an eBook copy of IVORY GHOSTS.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Stacking the Shelves (130)

Posted on April 11, 2015April 10, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Stacking the Shelves

A big list, for reasons that will be revealed at some point in the future. Maybe. Resistance is probably futile in any case. I see books and I want to read them. All of them.

The title on the list that I’ve been looking most forward to is The Talon of the Hawk by Jeffe Kennedy. I’ve adored that series, so I can’t wait to read the conclusion. In the case of falling in love with the cover, Valentine reached out and grabbed me. Hopefully in a good way.

Pageflex Persona [document: PRS0000032_00033]

For Review:
The Bleiberg Project (Consortium #1) by David S. Khara
Carolina Man (Dare Island #3) by Virginia Kantra
Darwin’s Watch: The Science of Discworld III by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen
Deadly Lover (Forbidden Lovers #1) by Charlee Allden
Disguised with the Millionaire by Debra Andrews
Domesticated by Richard C. Francis
Find My Way Home (Harmony Homecomings #1) by Michele Summers
First Daughter (Dharian Affairs #3) by Susan Kaye Quinn
Freedom of Speech by David K. Shipler
The Golden Isles by Carol Tonnesen
Heat Exchange (Boston Fire #1) by Shannon Stacey
Hell or High Water (Deep Six #1) by Julie Ann Walker
The Last Moriarty by Charles Veley
The Morgenstern Project (Consortium #3) by David S. Khara
Riding Irish (Sinners & Saints #1) by Sara Brookes
The Shiro Project (Consortium #2) by David S. Khara
The Silver Promise by William C. Walker
The Talon of the Hawk (Twelve Kingdoms #3) by Jeffe Kennedy
Texas Summer by Leslie Hachtel
Valentine (Brotherhood of Fallen Angels #1) by Heather Grothaus
The Widow’s Son (Rare Book #3) by Thomas Shawver
Wings in the Dark (Jack & Laura #3) by Michael Murphy

Borrowed from the Library:
By A Spider’s Thread (Tess Monaghan #8) by Laura Lippman

The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 4-5-15

Posted on April 5, 2015April 3, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Giveaways> The Sunday Post> Virtual Nightstand> Winner announcement

Today is my birthday. As is so often the case, my birthday is in the middle of Passover. As a kid, this was always a big pain, because, well, no cake. Also no party until after, because, well, no cake. Basically no cake. Now I’m a grownup and I can do whatever I want. I also prefer things like chocolate mousse or ice cream that are not cake. Not that I don’t like cake, but for one or two people, there are alternatives. A bunch of six or seven year olds want cake. With candles.

I would now need more than enough candles to set off the smoke detectors, if not the fire alarm. C’est la vie. Always happy to still be having vie.

Now if you want a present for my birthday, my annual Blogo-Birthday celebration and giveaway starts tomorrow. In the meantime, there are still a couple of days left in the Fool for Books Giveaway Hop.

Coming Next Week:

4th Annual Blogo-Birthday Giveaway
Wildfire at Larch Creek by M.L. Buchman (review)
The Fifth Heart by Dan Simmons (review)
Doc by Maria Doria Russell (review)
Bite Me Your Grace by Brooklyn Ann (review)

Review: The Kill Shot by Nichole Christoff + Giveaway

Posted on April 3, 2015April 3, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways

Format read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: thriller
Series: Jamie Sinclair #2
Length: 282 pages
Publisher: Random House Alibi
Date Released: March 17, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo

Jamie Sinclair’s father has never asked her for a favor in her life. The former two-star general turned senator is more in the habit of giving his only child orders. So when he requests Jamie’s expertise as a security specialist, she can’t refuse—even though it means slamming the brakes on her burgeoning relationship with military police officer Adam Barrett. Just like that, Jamie hops aboard a flight to London with a U.S. State Department courier carrying a diplomatic pouch in an iron grip.

Jamie doesn’t have to wait long to put her unique skills to good use. When she and the courier are jumped by goons outside the Heathrow terminal, Jamie fights them off—but the incident puts her on high alert. Someone’s willing to kill for the contents of the bag. Then a would-be assassin opens fire in crowded Covent Garden, and Jamie is stunned to spot a familiar face: Adam Barrett, who saves her life with a single shot and calmly slips away. Jamie’s head—and her heart—tell her that something is very wrong. But she’s come way too far to turn back now.

My Review:

I read this one a few days ago, but had to wait a bit to write my review. I needed to get over my mad, because there were things that happened in this book that absolutely infuriated me. It says something that I got so involved with the character of Jamie Sinclair in the first book (The Kill List, reviewed here) that I wanted to grab her and shake her over some of her behavior in this book.

The Kill Shot is certainly another wild ride for Jamie, and if you like thrillers with female protagonists the series is looking good.

But some of Jamie’s behavior in this book will make her friends want to sit her down for a good “talking to”.

The story is pretty straightforward. Jamie’s father, the retired general and current senator, asks for Jamie’s help. Because her dad never asks for help, Jamie is immediately onboard with the project.

Dear Old Dad needs Jamie, in her role as expert security consultant and protective detail, to travel to London with a diplomatic courier and help the courier bring a famous physicist and their companion back to the U.S. using the U.S. passports that the courier has in a locked diplomatic pouch.

Not only does this sound straightforward, but the courier is a friendly enough young woman that Jamie is more than willing to guard her. Nothing in this case is presented as remotely dangerous. And not a damn thing about it is even close to what it seems.

There is a metric butt-load of danger, and every single person in the case is hiding an equivalent load of secrets.

Oh, and Jamie’s best friend and almost boyfriend from college is the British Foreign Office operative assigned to this case. He got himself into this mess in order to make one last play for Jamie. Or so he says.

This operation is a complete clusterfuck, to put it lightly. Danger follows at every turn, and Jamie leaves a trail of bad guy dead bodies behind her. Some of those dead bodies are dead because Adam Barrett, the MP that Jamie got interested in while investigating in The Kill List, has followed her to London and is shooting some of the people who are after her. Dad may have said he needed her, but that doesn’t mean he trusts her to get the job done. But then, Dear Old Dad knows a whole lot more about the job than he would ever tell Jamie.

Of course, now some of the people after Jamie are after Adam. Even joining forces isn’t enough to stop the carnage.

Can they figure out who is behind it all before Jamie and everyone she is protecting gets killed? And even if they do, can Jamie ever figure out who she can trust when everyone (including and especially Dear Old Dad) is playing her?

Escape Rating B-: Let me say this first; in The Kill List it seemed like every man Jamie met fell in love with her. Having one of her old besties start a hot and heavy pursuit did not help ameliorate this particular problem. That in this case the guy was at least half trying to distract Jamie from his downright skullduggery is only a slightly mitigating factor.

For Jamie to be believable, the men in her stories need to stop the romantic attempts. Except Barrett. (My 2 cents)

But speaking of believability, Jamie has a serious problem with her relationship with her father. It’s not just that when he says “jump”” she jumps first and asks “how high?” on the way up, it’s that she knows he doesn’t trust her, doesn’t believe her and will use any ends to justify any means. It’s that in this particular case she doesn’t demand any of the information that she needs to do her job. If he were any other client, she would have made certain to get all the particulars of her duties before taking the job, because knowing what and where the danger might be is what keeps her alive as a security consultant.

She also forgives him much too easily for leaving her out in the cold when the job turns ugly. His plausible deniability nearly gets her killed and nearly scuttles the mission she was sent on. If she was this sloppy all the time, she’d have been killed long ago.

Jamie needs some serious therapy to learn to deal with at least her reactions to her father if not with her father directly. He’s going to get her killed if he keeps this up, and she’s going to let him.

The major reason that this mission “goes South” repeatedly and often is that there is a traitor in their midst. Jamie is presented with clues multiple times that this is true and even the identity of the traitor, but she is too busy dealing with multiple firefights or their aftermath and many multiple instances of people lying to her and playing with her that she doesn’t figure out the real problem until nearly too late.

If this were a case she had acquired on her own, she would have done some due diligence which is totally lacking in this one.

Jamie’s actions in this case drove me crazy.

On that other hand, the amount of danger and the sheer number of deadly situations that arise during this mission will keep the reader flipping pages fast until the very end. And the twist at the end is a dilly.

TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY

This tour includes a Rafflecopter giveaway for a $25 eGift card to the eBook Retailer of the winner’s choice + an eBook copy of THE KILL SHOT.
a Rafflecopter giveaway

This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Behind Closed Doors by Elizabeth Haynes

Posted on March 30, 2015April 3, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A Reviews> blog tours> book reviews

Format read: ebook provided by the publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genre: thriller
Series: DCI Louisa Smith #2
Length: 496 pages
Publisher: Harper
Date Released: March 31, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

An old case makes Detective Inspector Louisa Smith some new enemies in this spellbinding second installment of New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Haynes’s Briarstone crime series that combines literary suspense and page-turning thrills.

Ten years ago, 15-year-old Scarlett Rainsford vanished while on a family holiday in Greece. Was she abducted, or did she run away from her severely dysfunctional family? Lou Smith worked the case as a police constable, and failing to find Scarlett has been one of the biggest regrets of her career. No one is more shocked than Lou to learn that Scarlett has unexpectedly been found during a Special Branch raid of a brothel in Briarstone.

Lou and her Major Crime team are already stretched working two troubling cases: nineteen-year-old Ian Palmer was found badly beaten; and soon after, bar owner Carl McVey was found half-buried in the woods, his Rolex and money gone. While Lou tries to establish the links between the two cases, DS Sam Hollands works with Special Branch to question Scarlett. What happened to her? Where has she been until now? How did she end up back here? And why is her family–with the exception of her emotionally fragile younger sister, Juliette–less than enthusiastic about her return?

When another brutal assault and homicide are linked to the McVey murder, Lou’s cases collide, and the clues all point in one terrifying direction. As the pressure and the danger mount, it becomes clear that the silent, secretive Scarlett holds the key to everything.

My Review:

The case in this story is fascinating and incredibly chilling. Both the detective and the victim are women worth watching, although in completely different ways.

Detective Chief Inspector (DCI) Louisa Smith’s first case as a new DCI was told in Under a Silent Moon (reviewed here). It was a story where we both see into the intimate details of police procedures and watch as DCI Smith learns how to be a boss instead of just one of the truths.

She makes mistakes in both her personal and her professional life, but she gets the case mostly solved – some of it touches on organized crime organizations that have been operating for years, so just one case, no matter how big and bloody, is not enough to bring everyone involved to justice.

But while Smith is still tying up loose ends from that case, one of her very first cases as a Detective Constable, ten years ago, crawls out of the past and into the present. And it has ties to the organized crime case she is still trying to wrap up.

Scarlett Rainsford was 15 in 2003. She disappeared from a family vacation in Greece, and was never heard from again. Based on the evidence at the time, it was believed that she had been killed and her body never found.

In 2013 her body, very much still alive, is discovered in a sex trafficking sting near her parents’ home. Scarlett is not herself a prostitute, but she is working in a brothel and certainly knows what’s going on. The question is how she got there.

We see Scarlett’s story in flashbacks to her abduction and later life. Considering where she is found, it is not a complete surprise how she got there. What catches you by the throat is why she got there.

Not that she is telling, because she is keeping as quiet as possible. She doesn’t want to reveal what she knows about the brothel, and she doesn’t want to go back to her parents. (She’s 25 now and doesn’t have to.)

DCI Smith is now leading the investigation into how Scarlett got trafficked back to Britain, and where the original investigation went wrong. What she uncovers is a cesspit of lies, all leading back to Scarlett’s parents.

We’re not sure until the very end exactly what started Scarlett down the path to where she ends up, but we know it was awful. Her traffickers are neither the first nor the worst people to abuse her in her young life.

All she’s ever wanted is to save her younger sister Juliette. But they are trapped in a situation where no one can truly be saved.

It’s up to DCI Smith and her team to pick up and sort out the bloody pieces.

Escape Rating A-: Smith’s personal life, her hangups about her family and her possibly together possibly apart possibly breaking up relationship with her boyfriend sometimes take focus away from a case that will chill you right down to your toes, and probably keep you awake long after you’ve finished the book.

The real tragedy in this case “is not that it occurred, but that it was allowed.” I’m paraphrasing Dragon Age Origins here, but the situation is horrible in the same way, even if the events are not.

It’s obvious from the very beginning that something is seriously wrong in Scarlett Rainsford’s family. We don’t get the details until the end, but it’s very clear that Clive Rainsford is emotionally and physically abusing his entire family in various ways. Not just the two girls, but also his wife, whom he married when she was 16 and he was 31. Annie Rainsford has no thoughts or opinions of her own, and the girls are beaten if they step just a tiny bit outside the lines he has drawn. Yet to the outside world, they present the picture of the perfect middle class white family, and no one takes a look behind the closed door – not even when Juliette attempts suicide.

It’s clear to DCI Smith that Clive and Annie Rainsford knew more about Scarlett’s disappearance than they ever told the police. Back in 2003, Smith was one of the most junior officers involved in the investigation, and even then she noticed something hinky. Now in 2013, she finds the lies and inconsistencies in the old statements, but it isn’t until the end that Scarlett reveals just how much was left out.

Clive Rainsford was a sick man, and you’re not sorry that he finally gets his just desserts. Not surprised either – only sad that Scarlett and Juliette’s closure is going to ruin the rest of their lives. Although they both may find prison an improvement – which says a lot about the family, and none of it good.

The case, and its investigation, are gripping from beginning to end. At first, I found the flashbacks to the events in 2003 distracting from the narrative, but as we get deeper into both what happened to Scarlett and the current investigation, the two stories merge seamlessly together. We need Scarlett’s perspective in order to see the lies and evasions in her parents’ story. What they said, and what they thought, versus what was actually happening, will make you want to scream and wring someone’s neck. Or curl up into a fetal ball and shake.

Scarlett’s case does tie back into the murder and attempted murder that Smith is investigating at the same time as she is covering the Rainsford case, but just not in the way that anyone expects, which is awesome and horrible at the same time.

The author was inspired to write this book after reading Slave Girl by Sarah Forsyth, a true story of a young English girl who was trafficked into Amsterdam from the UK after she answered an ad for child care workers. Scarlett Rainsford’s fictional story, like Sarah Forsyth’s true-life account, sets out to show that trafficking can happen anywhere to anyone, particularly any female one, and that it happens right under our noses. Behind closed doors.

This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 3-29-15

Posted on March 29, 2015March 29, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Giveaways> The Sunday Post> Virtual Nightstand

There has been some interesting bookish news this week – Jane Litte of the blog Dear Author revealed herself to also be the successful New Adult Romance author Jen Frederick. There has been a great deal of consternation all over the romance book portions of the interwebs. From the outside looking in, it’s easy to see both sides. If you are curious, Jane’s original post is here, and there is an interesting discussion at The Passive Voice here. The meat of the discussion (also the veg and dessert) is in the comments on the posts. Another thoughtful perspective is here on Olivia Waite’s blog. And finally, Sarah Wendell’s post on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books sheds further light (while the comments add some heat) to this mess.

I would say “enjoy” but I don’t think there’s a whole lot of that going around. See for yourself.

In bookish news around here, it was a darn good week. A Key, an Egg, an Unfortunate Remark was one of the most interesting and novel urban fantasies I’ve read in a long time. Shadow Ritual is an edge of your seat thriller with oodles of fascinating historical twists. This coming week is the Fool for Books Giveaway Hop, and on April 6 I’ll be doing a giveaway for my 4th Blogo-Birthday.

I’ve been blogging for four years as of April 4. As the saying goes, ” Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.”