Very entertaining.

Book #11 in the series about Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett.

Each book is based around one big issue in Wyoming. This time it’s wind turbines.

When Earl Alden is found dead, dangling from a wind turbine, it’s his wife, Missy, who is arrested.

Unfortunately for Joe Pickett, Missy is his mother-in-law, a woman he dislikes heartily, and now he doesn’t know what to do—especially when the early signs point to her being guilty as sin.

But then things happen to make Joe wonder: Is Earl’s death what it appears to be? Is Missy being set up? He has the county DA and sheriff on one side, his wife on the other, his estranged friend Nate on a lethal mission of his own, and some powerful interests breathing down his neck. …

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One of the hottest books of 2021 is great.

Though the writing is average … AND the book could have been shorter … the PLOT is excellent. It kept me going. I didn’t see the twist coming until close to the end.

… “The Plot” is her gutsiest, most consequential book yet. It keeps you guessing and wondering, and also keeps you thinking: about ambition, fame and the nature of intellectual property (the analog kind). Are there a finite number of stories? Is there a statute of limitations on ownership of unused ideas? These weighty questions mingle with a love story, a mystery and a striver’s journey — three of the most satisfying flavors of fiction out there.”

— The New York Times

Jacob Finch Bonner was once a promising young novelist with a respectably published first book.

Today, he’s teaching in a third-rate MFA program and struggling to maintain what’s left of his self-respect; he hasn’t written―let alone published―anything decent in years.

When Evan Parker, his most arrogant student, announces he doesn’t need Jake’s help because the plot of his book in progress is a sure thing, Jake is prepared to dismiss the boast as typical amateur narcissism. But then…he hears the plot.

… When he discovers that his former student has died, presumably without ever completing his book, Jake does what any self-respecting writer would do with a story like that―a story that absolutely needs to be told. …

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Another excellent murder mystery in the Cork O’Connor series.

The author was inspired by the true story of Dennis Hale, sole survivor of the wreck of a ship called the Daniel J. Morrell on Lake Superior in 1966.

In the novel, a similar ship wreck survivor plots revenge on who he thinks was responsible the disaster — wealthy industrialist Karl Lindstrom.

At the same time in Aurora, Minnesota (population 3,752), there is brewing controversy between Lindstrom’s logging company and the Anishinaabe tribe who consider the old growth trees sacred.

I really enjoyed the first book in this series about DC Smith, a brilliant veteran cop near retirement age.

But For The Grace is #2 — and I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much.

The writing is skillful, with some dry British humour.

But DC Smith himself was not nearly as likeable.

DC Smith is assigned to the suspicious death a woman who lived in a retirement home. DC is masterful in his interview techniques.

One theme is assisted suicide which is still illegal in the time of the book.

It’s a good book but not a great book. The ending, in particular, I found disappointing.

Joe Pickett novel #12.

Finally.

A book featuring fan favourite antihero Nate Romanowski.

In 1995, Nate was in a secret black-ops Special Forces unit abroad when his commander did something terrible.

Now high up in the government, his commander is determined to eliminate anyone who knows about it, and Nate knows exactly how he’ll do it—by striking at Nate’s friends to draw him out.

The 10th novel in the Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett series.

Possibly the best, so far.

Astonishingly, the bad guys are based on a true story.

It’s Joe Pickett’s last week as a temporary game warden in the mountain town of Baggs, Wyoming, but his conscience won’t let him leave without checking out the strange reports coming from the wilderness: camps looted, tents slashed, elk butchered.

What awaits him is like something out of an old campfire tale, except this story is all too real-and all too deadly.

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Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Best Cork O’Connor book, so far.

When a high school student’s body is found and her boyfriend goes missing, tough-as-nails former sheriff Cork O’Connor is forced into the center of an eerie mystery with a shocking twist ….

… all evidence points to her boyfriend, local bad boy Solemn Winter Moon.

Despite Solemn’s self-incriminating decision to go into hiding, Cork O’Connor isn’t about to hang the crime on a kid he’s convinced is innocent.

… And when Solemn reappears, claiming to have seen a vision of Jesus Christ in Blood Hollow, the mystery becomes thornier than Cork could ever have anticipated.

And that’s when the miracles start happening.

williamkentkrueger.com

I’m well into the Wyoming Game Warden Joe Picket series.

Book #9 is Below Zero. I’ve enjoyed them all — but this one is best so far, for me.

The bad guys are ecoterrorists. And they have Joe’s foster daughter, April, who he believed to have been killed in an explosion 6 years earlier.

Sometimes titled Extraordinary People.

Peter May is a good writer.

This book reminded me a bit of Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, a scavenger hunt for clues to a murder.

In this book, half-Scottish, half-Italian Enzo MacLeod used to be one of the top forensics experts in Scotland, and now he lives in Toulouse, working as a university professor.

Divorced in Scotland and widowed in France, he has an estranged Scottish daughter and a French daughter he has raised by himself.

Enzo foolishly enters into a bet that he can solve the cold case of a murder (disappearance?) 10 years past.

He follows a series clues deliberately left behind by a killer.

The first half of the book I found entertaining with many surprising and quirky situations. But ultimately it’s hilariously over-the-top. A bit embarrassing for such a skilled wordsmith.

The even bigger problem for me is Enzo MacLeod himself. Quick to anger. Quicker to drink. He’s an unlikable jerk. And not as smart as he thinks.

I might carry on to the second book in the Enzo Files Series.

Possibly the best in the series, so far.

Blood Trail (#8)

Game wardens have found a man dead at a mountain camp-strung up, gutted, and flayed as if he were the elk he’d been hunting.

Is the murder the work of a deranged anti-hunting activist or of a lone psychopath with a personal vendetta?

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