Review: First Chance by Kasey Lansdale

It is summer in deep Southeast Texas and all that entails as First Chance by Kasey Lansdale begins. Heat, humidity, drought, and a side of murder. It has been 10 months since 16-year-old Patience Milroy had been found with her throat cut, missing a shoe, and her clothes on backwards. She had not been raped. So why was she killed. And why were her clothes put back on her backwards? Local police have not figured out either question and are no closer to doing so than the day she was found tossed into the high grass along a roadside.

 

Darla Weaver, married, and sister to Patience, has come to see Chance Kirby. She wants to hire her to look into the case and find the killer of her baby sister. This is going to be her first case as a fully licensed private investigator, but Chance has worked cases before for her step mom, Harper Jones. So, she knows some things. Her dad, John Kirby, also does investigative work, and it seems that the apple did not fall far from the tree.

 

As the local private eye in Hopeful, Texas, down near Houston, Chance Kirby knows some people. While Chance knew a bit about the Patience case, she did not know about the case, in a nearby small town, where another young woman was found dead in nearly identical circumstances. That case seems to mirror what happened a few months later with Chance. According to Darla, the respective police departments didn’t tell each other about their cases. The cops now call it all a coincidence, but Darla does not buy that. She also does not think much of the cops, or even Chance now that she has met her.

 

Yet, Darla is desperate, and at her whits end. She decides to go ahead and hire Chance to try and get some answers. Good thing Chance has contacts in her local police department and some other folks she can count on in the weeks ahead.

 

Finding the truth about what happened to Patience and others is going to take considerable time. Chance also has her hands full with a teenage foster daughter, a dog that gets loose, and a complicated relationship with her family. All of those situations provide an enjoyable backdrop to the main story line of  Chance finding out what happened to Patience and trying very hard not to get killed doing it.

 

 

While it reads to me as this could be the first book of a planned series, I have no idea if that is the plan or not. It could just be a really good stand alone, but there are a lot of support beams here for the floor of a series. Either way, First Chance by Kasey Lansdale is a complicated and really good mystery. It is very much worth your time.

 

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/46Ctrjm

 

 

My digital reading copy came from the publisher, Blackstone Publishing, through NetGalley, with no expectation of a positive review.

 

 

Kevin R. Tipple 2026