When the leader of a gang of scam artists and grifters who have been cheating the citizens of Rutherford suddenly turns up dead, detective Jake Hines embarks on an investigation into the murder, a crime that could be only the beginning of a bloodbath. By the author of Triple Play.
A one-time innkeeper with a taste for adventure, Elizabeth has been a private pilot, sky diver, SCUBA diver, and liveaboard sailor. Extensive travel in the US, Canada, Mexico and Europe led to a second career as a free-lance travel writer, during which she began writing a series of police procedural mysteries set in southeast Minnesota, where she grew up. Her books contrast the sometimes gritty routine of police work with the idyllic rural scenes around a mid-size city in the upper Midwest.
This is my third book in this series and I still love it. Jake Hines has been promoted and he’s having a hard time giving it all up and moving on to a much more supervising position. Trudy is getting much tougher and we’re seeing more about what she does for a living. The gang has discovered a garbage bin that has a half naked man in it…with another man stuffed in the bottom. Bo has to deal with his wife and that’s cool. I sucked this book down in a few days and it was so satisfying. I’m so happy I tripped over this writer, Elizabeth Gunn.
I like this series. The characters and their interactions are always interesting and the crimes are odd or unusual in some way. The sport involved in this one is baseball. Recommended, but begin at the beginning with Triple play to see the way people and their relationships progress or change. These mysteries are all pretty short (not much over 200 pages) and fast-reading.
Lots of interesting twists and turns in this one, plus the way that one case ties to another is very, very interesting. I think I've only got one more reread to go, then onto new-to-me titles in this series, plus Ms. Gunn's other series set in Tucson.
Written pre-CSI. A by-the-book police procedural. Starts slow but the last three chapters picked up speed and saved what could have been an unsatisfying read.
I really enjoyed this book, perhaps more because it filled in some gaps in Crazy Eights with Jake's life, as well as those of his "crew". Certainly filled with lots of twisting plot lines.