Lesa's Book Critiques: An Evil on All Hallows Eve by Heather Graham
Friday, October 31, 2025
Bitter Tea and Mystery: Books Read in August 2025
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In Reference to Murder: Friday's "Forgotten" Books: Victorian Tales of Mystery and Deception
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Jerry's House of Everything: FORGOTTEN BOOK: FASTER THAN LIGHT
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Friday's Forgotten Books Review: The Dead Certain Doubt: An Ed Earl Bunch Novel by Jim Nesbitt
With Jim
Nesbitt’s recent Facebook announcement that the new book in the series, The
Fatal Saving Grace, is coming soon, I have been reminding you each Friday
of the series to date. This is a violent crime fiction series that should be
read in order. This is the fourth book in the series and the most recent
installment.
Dallas Private
Investigator Ed Earl Burch has a love/hate relationship with West Texas. Loves
the land and its stark beauty. Does not care for many of the people---
especially the ones that have repeatedly tried to kill him. But, truth be told,
he never felt more alive than when working out there being the manhunter deal
where one kills or is killed. It was like working Dallas Homicide without the
red tape. Get the bad guys and gals, dead or alive.
In the wake of the
savings and loan collapse the last decade, these days he is off the pills and
making a good living going after the fugitive partners of real estate deals
that went bad, finding hidden asserts, and nailing dead beat developers. He has
done so well that he got his lawyer paid off and that meant he was free and
clear from that shyster. Also did well enough to open an IRA and play in the
stock market a little. He is a regular guy these guys with bad knees, mental
and physical scars, and is absolutely bored out of his mind.
He’s spending his nights
at Louie’s when he can’t sleep. Drinking and sharing war stories with a bunch
of retired Dallas cops and other folks. Those old stories bring back a lot of
memories. Also tends to sooth the voice of his long dead partner.
One memory from the past
brings a lot of pain and guilt. Juanita Mutscher, at one time had an
ex-mother-in-law, Theda Bayer. That woman had a daughter, Rhonda May Bayer.
After Theda Bayer died as a result of her own toxic ways, Burch pulled a few
strings and greased the wheels so that Rhonda Mae, who was six or seven back
then, could go back to Juanita to live at her place out in the country between
Midlothian and Venus.
It should have been a
good deal.
It was until her Daddy
came back in Rhonda Mae’s teen years, got full custody, and had Rhonda Mae move
in with him. Things spiraled out of control. Burch intervened the first few
times as she did drugs, booze and more, and repeatedly found herself deep in in
consequences and trouble with the law. But, being off the Dallas PD by this
time meant he had far less sway or markers to call in to help. He also got fed
up riding to her rescue.
Now more than a decade
later, Burch decides to go see Juanita and to make amends as best as he can.
The years have not been kind to her and she makes it clear to Burch she is not
long for this world. Her husband is dead and the next stroke she has will no
doubt will send her on her way to him in the afterlife.
She would not have
called. But, since he is at her place seeking redemption, she wants him to find
Rhonda Mae. Been over a year since Juanita last heard from her. All she knows
is that means the young woman is in trouble, not surprising since she is out in
West Texas and mixed up in one of those Texas secession groups. While all the
various groups preaching that nonsense are bad news, some are far worse than
others.
Which one Rhona Mae is
in, Juanita does not know. Juanita did save the letters that Rhonda Mae sent
and she wrote some about what she was doing so that might help. Most of them
were postmarked in Faver. A small town along the border. A place that Burch knows
and he also knows the Sheriff down there pretty well.
With a starting point, a
couple of ideas, his guns, and a handful of memories and ghosts, Burch packs up
and goes down to see if he can find Rhonda Mae. It is a quest for redemption
and to save the living, if he can. It does not take long for Burch to find
blood, bullets, and mayhem. For Burch, this is the way.
The Dead Certain Doubt:
An Ed Earl Burch Novel is
the latest read in the series that began long ago with The Last Second Chance.
As such, one expects the read to be complicated, violent, and graphic in terms
of that violence as well as intimacy between partners of the night or long-term
relationship. Such is true here as author Jim Nesbitt pulls out all the stops
in every area.
At the same time, a
significant part of this book is about Burch’s history and past cases. He has
seen a lot and those deals are a major backbone of this book. Some situations,
major parts of previous books, are detailed here in multiple paragraph odes of
remembrance. As such, it would be best to have read the previous books before
embarking on this read.
The Dead Certain Doubt: An Ed Earl Burch Novel by Jim Nesbitt is a powerfully dark and very violent crime fiction read. It is also incredibly good.
Amazon Associate
Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/4qEfquw
My reading copy was an
ARC provided by the author with no expectation of a review.
Kevin R. Tipple ©2023, 2025
Thursday, October 30, 2025
In Reference to Murder: Author R&R with Richard A. Danzig
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Beneath the Stains of Time: The Man Who Died Seven Times (1995) by Yasuhiko Ni...
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In Reference to Murder: Mystery Melange
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Wednesday, October 29, 2025
SleuthSayers: Six of a Kind
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Bookblog of the Bristol Library: Why I Love Horror: Essays on Horror Literature by Becky Siegel Spratford
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Publishing ... and Other Forms of Insanity: 69 Calls for Submissions in November 2025 - Paying Markets
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George Kelly: WEDNESDAY’S SHORT STORIES #248: FERAL AND HYSTERICAL: MOTHER HORROR’S ULTIMATE READING GUIDE TO DARK AND DISTURBING FICTION BY WOMEN By Sadie Hartmann
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Jerry's House of Everything: SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: MORE OCTOBER READING
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Short Story Wednesday Review: The Perp Wore Pumpkin: A Humorous Crime Anthology to Benefit Second Harvest Food Bank
With Jay Hartman’s post below on
Facebook last week, I thought I would run again my review of this volume. By
the way, my short story, Chocked on Love, appears in the new volume coming
soon.
“With so many federal employees going
without paychecks and the number of people losing SNAP benefits, I thought it
would be a good time to remind people about our anthology THE PERP WORE
PUMPKIN, where 100% of the net proceeds from both the ebook and paperback go to
Second Harvest Food Bank and Feeding America. Buying from our website
or DriveThruFiction
allows us to donate those funds immediately. Any other reseller we have to wait
three months until the funds are paid to us. The second volume is arriving
shortly!”
Edited
by J. Alan Hartman, the recently released Misti Media anthology, The
Perp Wore Pumpkin: A Humorous Crime Anthology to Benefit Second Harvest Food
Bank, is a highly entertaining read. This is especially true if you
like puns and slap stick humor. The book also includes four Thanksgiving
related recipes offered by Jay’s sister, Lisa Lynn.
After
a short introduction by Jay explaining why he did a charity anthology, and how
it will help give back in many locations, it is on to the stories.
“The
Thanksgiving Parade” by Sandra Murphy begins where two people are working
undercover in a holiday parade. Both are very much undercover as one is
costumed as a baked potato with fixings and the other as jellied cranberry
sauce. They are not the only ones dressed as food items. They also may not be
the only ones Arlo in a certain bank, the First Federal Bank of Orlo.
The
Finley Family Thanksgivings are a notorious deal going back many years. It is
happening again in “The Vic Wore Yams” by Heidi Hunter. The kitchen fire had
caused a delay in meal prep. Then the narrator’s dad lacerated the heck out of
a finger as he tried to carve the turkey. The dog got the meat the blood hit.
But, the death at the table, and the resulting family commotion really brought
things to a halt.
Janet
saw the stumbling man from her third-floor window as “A Regular Harvest Moon
Blowout” by Daniel Sohn begins. It is only as he gets closer to her apartment
building in Columbia, Missouri, she realizes he is bleeding. She goes to help
and he has been stabbed. Stanley Tiller appreciates the help. He also just
wants to get back to his hotel room where he is supposed to be hosting the
annual holiday dinner. She agrees to give him a ride and things get even more
interesting.
“A
Diverse Thanksgiving” by Debra H. Goldstein comes next where Warden Oscar P.
Weiner is just trying to make it through his final two weeks to retirement
without any problems. That includes never having to deal with inmate Joshua
Randall ever again. While on paper he is an absolute model prisoner, Randall is
always stealing from his office as he negotiates on behalf of his fellow
inmates. This year, the annual thanksgiving dinner is not enough as he wants
more than the usual fare. The latest round of negotiations is soon underway
with Warden Weiner doing his best to control the damage and the outcome.
The
rich tradition of hobos riding the rails is the background of “Hobo Hannah and
the Great Pumpkin Heist” by Lesley A. Diehl. Hanna, her friend, Lily, and their
Maine coon cat, T-rex, gave up the hobo life to go to home to where Hannah came
from all those years ago. They did. Soon after, Hannah was elected sheriff and
replaced the high school bully and sheriff, Hiram Noggins. The guy is still a
bully and did not take losing well. He has made threats to expose her for being
incompetent. Now pumpkins are vanishing from fields right before harvest and
pumpkin products are being stolen from stores. The loss of everything pumpkin
related could ruin Thanksgiving for everyone miles around.
The
first two stories that specifically reference Texas author Earl Staggs come
next with and begin with Barry’s Ergang’s groaner filled tale, “Buffet, the
Umpire Slayer.” Normally, Hardy Boyle stays home on Thanksgiving eating tacos,
drinking beer, and watching football. But, he was recently involved in the hunt
for and rescue of the daughters of the managing partners of the talent agency,
Binthair-Dunthat. Second rate actor, Macdonald Adamia, took them in misguided
attempt to get acting jobs. Hardy Boyle solved the case and got the daughters
rescued and back home. Now, one of the partners, Lucas Binthair, is having a
holiday meal and celebration at a closed public restaurant and Hardy Boyle is
in attendance. Good thing as when death strikes, Boyle’s friend, Detective
Lieutenant Paul Ohnius handles the case at the Belladonna. An entertaining
mystery that is packed full of groaners which is why Earl frequently referred
to the author as the “Guru of Groaners.”
Bennet
is less than thrilled to be in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He isn’t surprised his new
son-in-law has screwed up and there is no turkey in “The Last Turkey in Tulsa”
by Jim Fusilli. His daughter, Cammy, is quite upset. With her being married to
a man that never even asked for her hand in marriage, Bennet thinks her new
husband, Owen, should deal with it. Bennet’s wife, Charlene, thinks Daddy
(Bennet) should help. So, like many a smarty married man before him, after some
grumbling, Bennett sets out trying to help by trying to find a turkey for the
holiday dinner. Far easier said than done at this late hour.
Dinner
at Ann Marie’s is clearly going to be problematic and not just because the
sister-in-law is not at all hygienic in “The Chile Pumpkin Pie Rebellion” by
Linda Kay Hardie. Though that is now going to help our narrator deal with her
verbally abusive husband, Jamie. How she goes about it, and all that she has to
deal with to make things happen, is the crux of this short story that also
references the late Texas author, Earl Staggs.
Every
year Aunt Sadie makes pumpkin whoopie pies. The things are horrible because she
substitutes ingredients at random giving them a horrible taste. In “Making
Woopie” by Shari Held, it is that time of year again. The newest member of the
family, Trevor, is about to experience the annual nightmare Hopefully this year
great-great Aunt Sadie has not decided to substitute pickle chunks for pecans
again or use salt instead of sugar. Something is coming and once again
everybody assembled will just have to deal with it.
The
final story is “Pie à la Poison: A Vermont Radio Mystery” by Nikki Knight and
one with a far more serious tone and subtle humor. Jaye Jordan is divorced, a
single mom, and back home in Vermont at the radio station, WSV. She first
started out there just after college, and when everything went so wrong in NYC,
she came back home and bought the station. With her daughter with her dad and
his family on this Thanksgiving night, she is alone in the station and handling
everything including the request line. The same phone line where an elderly
woman has confessed to setting up a double murder. The question is whether Jaye
Jordan can get authorities involved in enough time to stop it in this very good
mystery tale.
One
final recipe and the often extensively detailed bios of the authors brings this
entertaining holiday anthology to a close. If you read the previous holiday
anthologies edited by Jay Hartman and you liked them, you will definitely like
this one. Many of the same authors are involved as are the usual elements of
puns and slapstick humor. As always, the recipes are a nice touch for those
cooking at home.
The Perp Wore Pumpkin: A Humorous Crime Anthology to
Benefit Second Harvest Food Bank is a fun and entertaining quick read. It features
plenty of humor, action, and mystery, and thus leaves the reader well fed at
the end.
Amazon
Associates Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/48eP4Gq
My
review copy came from the publisher, Misti Media, with no expectation of a
review.
Kevin R. Tipple ©2023, 2024, 2025
Monday, October 27, 2025
In Reference to Murder: Media Murder for Monday
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Publishing ... and Other Forms of Insanity: 52 Writing Contests in November 2025 - No entry fees
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SleuthSayers: Writing the Unwriteable
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Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: Constable Country by Catherine Aird
Constable
Country
(Allison & Busby, 2023) is apparently the final book in the long-running
British detective series by Catherine Aird (1930-1924) featuring Inspector
Christopher Dennis Sloan of the fictional Berebury CID department in West Calleshire,
England. Known as “C.D.” which invariably is pronounced “Seedy”, Sloan is
generally accompanied by a clueless constable named Crosby, to whom Sloan has
been unable to teach much of anything. Sloan reports to Superintendent Leeyes,
irritable, demanding, and of no assistance during an investigation. Leeyes
frequents the local Adult Education classes and is prone to quoting odd bits of
information from the latest class that may or may not be relevant to the
subject at hand. His adversarial approach to hearing about new topics has been
known to get him booted out of class, leaving Leeyes to fulminate about the
uninformed instructor.
Michael
Wakefield, part owner of the high-end printing firm Forres and Wakefield,
learns the day before the annual accounting audit of the books that the company
he has worked so hard to establish is bankrupt. He had no idea that his partner
Malcolm Forres has been systematically embezzling for years. With a new
accountant onboard who was sure to report the defalcations, Forres emptied the
bank accounts and fled to Europe in the middle of the night, leaving Wakefield facing
a mountain of debt and looming bankruptcy.
While Sloan
does not understand white collar crime and prefers a straightforward burglary,
he knows embezzlement is illegal and begins to delve into bank statements and
to interview the accountants. A day after Forres absconded, despite the stress,
Wakefield focused on printing and binding the Earl of Ornum’s latest book in
time to deliver copies for the launch party two days later. The books were
produced and a sample was delivered by the firm’s apprentice Lenny Datchet to
Ornum House, where the earl’s outrageously flirtatious twin daughters demanded
rides on Lenny’s motorbike. In return, they invited Lenny to the launch party.
The morning
after the party Lenny was found dead in one of the guest rooms in Ornum House,
expanding the scope of the Forres and Wakefield investigation. The attempted
murder of another of the peripheral players further confuses everyone.
Sloan is
practical and focused as always here and navigates between the unhelpful Leeyes
and the clumsy Crosby to a successful conclusion. The solution is innovative
and the motive unexpected. The pieces mostly fall together nicely once Sloan
sorts them out, although I found a couple of plot questions unanswered.
A pleasant
traditional mystery of which I find far too few of these days. I would like to
think that another three or four books in the series are lurking in Aird’s
papers somewhere but I suspect we would have heard about them by now. So I will
have to content myself with re-visiting the earlier adventures of Sloan and his
colleagues in Calleshire County occasionally.
Followers of
the series will not want to miss this one. Readers new to Catherine Aird should
start with an earlier title.
·
Publisher: Allison & Busby
·
Publication date: June 22, 2023
·
Language: English
·
Print length: 320 pages
·
ISBN-10: 0749030755
·
ISBN-13: 978-0749030759
Amazon
Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/43jvxnh
Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2025
Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.
Sunday, October 26, 2025
Publishing ... and Other Forms of Insanity: 21 Notable Writing Conferences and Workshops in November 2025
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Beneath the Stains of Time: The House at Devil's Neck (2025) by Tom Mead
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SleuthSayers: They Done Parker Dirty
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Bitter Tea and Mystery: Perplexing Plots: David Bordwell
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Guest Post: What Happens When Reality Catches Up to Our Stories by Jeannette de Beauvoir
Please
welcome prolific author Jeannette de Beauvoir to the blog today as she shares
some background on her book, The Everest Enigma: An Abbie Bradford Mystery.
What Happens When
Reality Catches Up to Our Stories
My
mystery series have a tendency to stay put. One takes place in Montréal,
another in Provincetown. And by and large I like that: it gives me the
opportunity to really root the stories in a sense of place, of history, of
community.
And
then sometimes stories come to me that don’t fit those strict guidelines. I’ve
occasionally dealt with them by simply writing a standalone, but the truth is,
I like series, I like being able to see characters grow and
change over time.
So
I needed a new series. A series that didn’t stay put, that collected all the
places and stories I’ve had swimming around in my head for years. I came up
with a protagonist who could afford to travel and wasn’t tied down to a 9-5
job, thanks to her family inheritance. And I knew exactly where I wanted the
first book to take place: a decade or so ago, I co-authored a mystery set in
Nepal, and there was so much more that didn’t go into that book that I wanted
to write about. Excellent!
A
brief aside here: I’m a big believer in at least a prolonged visit to anyplace
I write about. There was a thriller writer back in the 1960s, Adam Hall, who
wrote fantastic novels that took place literally all over the world. When you
read them, you really feel you’re there. I was astonished after his death to
learn that he didn’t travel. His widow revealed that he studied maps with a
ruler and a stopwatch and apparently got it right, all his car chases and descriptions
of buildings and so on. I am in awe of that but certainly wouldn’t ever emulate
it!
I
also wanted to indulge my own desire to create a dual timeline, so I started
reading everything I could about the history of mountaineering on Mt. Everest,
mostly because I wasn’t fully able to understand why people do it—that’s
another hallmark of my writing, working out motives behind practices I don’t
understand. This touched all the high points.
So:
the history. We all know that Everest was first summited in 1953 by Sir Edmund
Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa. Or—do we? Turns out there’s a real mystery
there, the question of whether George Mallory and Sandy Irvine got there first,
in 1924. Trouble was, they died on the mountain… but did they die going up or
coming down? It is hotly and passionately debated to this day.
Photo: At 22, Sandy Irvine (back row far left) was the youngest member of the 1924 expedition. Standing beside him is George Mallory, with whom he would vanish. Photograph by J.L. Noel for the Royal Geographic Society.
The
mystery deepens with the knowledge that the two men had with them a Kodak Vest
Pocket camera, and the Kodak company has indicated that, should the camera be
found, there’s a slight chance the images can be recovered. The first summit
selfie!
So
I started writing the book. George Mallory’s body had been discovered by a
National Geographic expedition in 1999—no camera, but some intriguing hints
that he may have summitted and died on the way down. Efforts to find Sandy
Irvine’s body over the next years weren’t successful, however, so I could play “what-if”
with that portion of the story… and I did. I tied it in to my fictional
current-day mystery: a Chinese climber had supposedly found Irvine and the
camera, and the controversy would be laid to rest should he be able to defect
to Nepal.
The
novel completed, it went out to beta readers, and on to rewrites, and finally
to the editors, which as we all know is a lengthy process. I had additional
rewrites because of the 2015 earthquake that changed the geography of the
mountain and indeed of Kathmandu itself—I’d spent time there, but long before that
cataclysmic event.
By
last October, the book had gone to the publisher and was well in-process, and
on October 24 another National Geographic team found part of Irvine’s remains
that the glacier had released. It looked as though my “mystery” wasn’t going to
be a mystery for long! The main climbing season on Everest is in the spring,
and my book was due to be published in June, so I was pretty anxious: a little
awkward if its publication coincided with the discovery of the camera!
To
the climbing world’s disappointment—and to my relief—no one found any
additional traces of Irvine this past spring: The Everest Enigma
still makes sense. And it’s proven to be at least moderately successful. But it
also points to the problems inherent in any writing: we capture the world as it
is when we create our stories, but after that, all bets are off.
Like
many other mystery writers, I am a big fan of the Golden Age of detective
novels: I adore writers like Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie and G.K.
Chesterton… but, as we all know, some of their work hasn’t aged well. And
that’s okay, because we’re all intelligent enough to understand that times
change—until recently, generally for the better.
This
is a mystery that may one day be solved—or at least put to rest. Nepal’s
government is never stable, and it will change, no longer provide the context I
wrote about. Ten years from now the background to my book will be incorrect.
But I have confidence that the story I’ve told will endure despite all the
inaccuracies that will some day come to light, because it’s really, always, the
story that counts.
Amazon
Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/48zPslk
Jeannette de Beauvoir is the author of historical and mystery/thriller fiction and a poet whose work has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies. She has written three mystery series along with a number of standalone novels; her work “demonstrates a total mastery of the mystery/suspense genre” (Midwest Book Review) She’s a member of the Authors Guild, the Mystery Writers of America, International Thriller Writers, and the Historical Novel Society. She lives and works in a seaside cottage on Cape Cod where she’s also a local theatre critic and hosts an arts-related program on WOMR, a Pacifica Radio affiliate. More at jeannettedebeauvoir.com
Saturday, October 25, 2025
Scott's Take: Fantastic Four: War Zone by Greg Cox
Fantastic Four: War Zone by Greg Cox is
a prose novel which I read through Hoopla which was a reissued version of the
original story which came out a long time ago. Don’t be fooled by the stylings
of the graphic novel cover as this is a regular novel.
In this adventure, creatures from the
Negative Zone are entering their universe and threatening Earth. Someone has
opened a portal into the positive universe and seeks to invade. It looks like
Blastaar and Annihulus are back to their old tricks again. It’s up to the
Fantastic Four to save the day. Again. While Reed and Ben go to shut down the portal
from the Negative Zone, Johnny and Sue will defend New York from the invaders
and protect the Fantastic Four’s portal so Ben and Reed can come home.
This is a fun read with a writer who
really knows each character. Each of the Fantastic Four are given multiple chapters
from their POV. There is a lot of detail written in to each scene. It’s a read
that constantly switches from one group to another. There is also a lot more
violence as well as a higher civilian death count than a typical Marvel read as
the consequences of invasion are felt by the people of New York.
I have never found Annihulus that
interesting, but this writer has piqued my interest in learning more about the
character. This was a really good read
set some time in the past of the Fantastic Four as both Valeria and Franklin
are little children. I think this read would be a good basis of a movie at some
point.
Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/3I6QTwF
As stated in the review, my digital
reading copy came by way of the Hoopla App and the Dallas Public Library
System.
Scott A. Tipple ©2025
Friday, October 24, 2025
Friday's Forgotten Books Review: The Best Lousy Choice: An Ed Earl Burch Novel by Jim Nesbitt
The Best Lousy Choice: An Ed Earl Burch
Novel begins with Ed Earl Burch hurting in more ways than
one. Demons haunt his dreams and are a specter barely unseen during his waking
hours. Narcotics and lots of whisky keep things a little bit at bay, though
working is what works best for the private investigator that was once many
years ago, a Dallas Homicide Detective, who believed in the law and that
justice would rule the day. Burch knows better now and has the many physical
and mental scars to show for it.
The year is 1989 and the legendary Dallas Cowboys
barely exist in name only thanks to that shyster owner out of Arkansas. The
Oklahoma Sooners suck and will always suck, as any true Texan knows, and
Louie’s Bar is the best place for booze and Campisi’s on Mockingbird is the
best for pizza. One often finds Ed Earl Burch in one place or the other, more
often Louie’s, and that means those that know Burch know where to find him. One
such person is Fat Willie Nofzinger, his lawyer, and a man that can’t be ignored.
Nofzinger holds the note on Burch’s business and has the cards that, for now,
have kept Burch out of the county jail. So, Burch has to listen to Nofzinger
and do what he wants, but he doesn’t have to like it or make it easy on him
The last thing Burch wants to do is to go out to
West Texas. He barely survived events out there last time and some folks would
love it if he came back so they could settle scores. The fact that it is a
divorce case, the type of case Burch absolutely hates, does not improve the
situation.
Fat Willie Nozfinger has a rich female client by the
name of Nita Rodriguez Wyatt. The very wealthy woman has heard of Burch, wants
him hired, and knows enough to go through Nozfinger to get him on the case. A
case from a while back and a talkative former client who was very grateful for
the help means Wyatt wants him and won’t take no for an answer. Not that
Nozfinger is going to allow Burch to say no as Nozfinger also stands to make
buck off of Burch working the case. Refusal to take the job means severe consequences
for Burch and ones he can’t accept.
Hating every second of it, all Burch can do is pack
up and head out to West Texas. Plan is to do his five days of supposedly easy
money and pocket his cash, while also separately slashing a bit of his debt to
Nozfinger, and get back to Dallas without anyone being the wiser. That was
before the gun play, public and not so public carnage, a possibly bent sheriff,
an obvious and very bitter family feud, and more come into play. Ed Earl Burch
is in a world of trouble before he hits the sun-baked wilds of West Texas and
things are only going to go downhill in an escalating violent way.
The Best Lousy Choice: An Ed Earl Burch
Novel is the third in the series that began with The
Last Second Chance followed by The
Right Wrong Number. One expects before one opens the book that
there will be plenty of action, carnal adventures, frequent carnage, along with
plenty of observations about Texas history and some sarcastic comments about
life in the great state of Texas. Things will be graphic and detailed in terms
of settings, language, and violence. Author Jim Nesbitt meets and exceeds those
expectations in The Best Lousy Choice: An Ed Earl Burch Novel.
This review is a mere West Texas mirage glimpsed on
the distant horizon down a crooked two-lane macadam roadway. The review just
does not do the book justice and the read is an intense and a violent crime
fiction read. A book that, like the series itself, is highly recommended. It
would be best to read in order, but do what you will.
Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/42WbDhT
Material in the form of an ARC was provided with no
expectation of a review.
Kevin R. Tipple ©2019, 2025
Thursday, October 23, 2025
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Tuesday, October 21, 2025
Gravetapping: Booked (and Printed): September 2025
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Jerry's House of Everything: OVERLOOKED FILM: EARTH VS. THE SPIDER (MST3K VERSION, PLUS A SPECIAL BONUS!)
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Carstairs Considers....: Book Review: Haunted House Ghost by James J. Cudney (Braxton Campus Mysteries #5)
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Publication Day Review: The Proving Ground: A Lincoln Lawyer Novel by Michael Connelly
Set two years after the events in Resurrection
Walk, Micky Haller is doing things quite differently now. Gone,
except for one car, are the Lincolns that made him very well known as “The
Lincoln Lawyer.” Gone as well is the old office. Now his office is in the
warehouse that used to store, among other things, the fleet of cars. He still practices
law, but he is no longer fighting criminal cases. He now practices civil law
which can be just as important.
The team remains intact. The cases
remain huge. And, as always, vitally important for his clients.
That is certainly true for the major
case that Haller and the team are handling as The Proving Ground: A
Lincoln Lawyer Novel by Michael Connelly begins. The case is Randolph
Versus Tidalwaiv Technologies LLC before Federal District Court Margaret
Ruhlin. The case, basically, boils down to this: a mom had her only child, a
teenage daughter, murdered by another teen because the AI program told him to
kill. Not only are the big tech companies watching the case, and possibly considering
buying Tidalwaiv Technologies, the mainstream media is covering the case to
some extent.
Haller is fighting an uphill battle
against a cutting edge tech company with money, resources, numerous non-disclosure
agreements, attorneys, and much more in their arsenal to force an end to the case,
one way or the other. They are willing to settle the case at an amount, that for
them, is less than pennies on the dollar. They also refuse to make an admission
of wrongdoing or apologize for what happened and the tragedy that occurred because
of their product.
But, they are dealing with a mom who
will never get back what she wants most—her daughter alive and well. She knows
the AI companion told her daughter’s ex-boyfriend to kill her. She is sure it
never would have happened without that thing telling him to do it. If she can’t
have her daughter back, she wants the next best thing—a judgement against the
company to force them to be accountable for what they knowingly did and didn’t
care.
Brenda Randolph is not going to settle
for less, no matter what.
What follows is a complex read full of
cross and double-cross inside the courtroom and out. Going in, you know Haller
is probably going to win as that is what he usually does. The question is how?
Along with entertaining readers in that journey,
author Michael Connelly provides some scary insight into aspects of Artificial
Intelligence and the use of it to generate companions for teens and others. It
isn’t just the possibility of terminator robots that should scare you.
The Proving Ground: A Lincoln
Lawyer Novel
is a mighty good read and well worth your time.
Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/46mcxoO
My digital ARC came from the publisher,
Little, Brown and Company, through NetGalley, with no expectation of a positive
review.
Kevin R. Tipple ©2025
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