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Rope Burn
Escaping a troubled past, former Baltimore detective Nick DeNunzio hires on as a Wyoming stock detective to stop a brutal string of modern-day cattle thefts. Chasing rustlers ought to be a lark for a city slicker cop. But when people start turning up dead, Nick realizes it’s not just cows being led to slaughter.
To catch the rustlers and stop the murders before he is the next victim, Nick must solve a seven-year-old crime, confront his own dark past . . . and become a cattle rustler himself.
To catch the rustlers and stop the murders before he is the next victim, Nick must solve a seven-year-old crime, confront his own dark past . . . and become a cattle rustler himself.
389 pages, Paperback
First published November 16, 2013
1 person is currently reading
260 people want to read
About the author
Bruce W. Most
13 books33 followersWhen not traveling, taking photographs, and playing tennis, Bruce writes mysteries in which the reader gets a fair chance to deduce whodunit before the sleuth does. Not a surprise. He grew up consuming the great whodunit writers such as Agatha Christie and Ellery Queen, and his favorite, Raymond Chandler. He read his grandfather’s entire collection of 100 falling-apart paperbacks by Erle Stanley Gardner of Perry Mason fame, a collection he still has, much to his wife’s dismay.
His latest mystery, The Big Dive, was released in 2019. He recently rereleased his award-winning Rope Burn with a new cover https://amzn.to/3u44jym, and will be releasing a new mystery, No Time for Murder, later in 2022. You can read his free crime novella, Harrington's Game, by going to: https://bit.ly/3CqVYIV.
He can be reached at https://www.brucewmost.com/
His latest mystery, The Big Dive, was released in 2019. He recently rereleased his award-winning Rope Burn with a new cover https://amzn.to/3u44jym, and will be releasing a new mystery, No Time for Murder, later in 2022. You can read his free crime novella, Harrington's Game, by going to: https://bit.ly/3CqVYIV.
He can be reached at https://www.brucewmost.com/
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
December 27, 2021
Rope Burn is a magnificent read with a strong plot that continues to evolve while not at a fast pace it is definitely a steady pace. I was very impressed with the background scenarios created here, right down to the scent of the wind. There is so much thought and texture put into the world building it was like being there, through the sheer amount of detail and what must have been hours of research. The main character Nick DeNunzio is a deeply moral and very strong man, that although he appears to be struggling with his personal demons he doesn't let that sway him from doing a thorough job when hired.
Honestly this was like taking a trip down memory lane, with a beautiful blend of Zane Grey meets Louis L'amour with a dash or three of Perry Mason and maybe Sam Spade. There is something for most everyone here with humor, drama, suspense, western setting. There were quite a few spots where I was surprised at the sheer audacity of some of the characters and I was left either gasping for breath from laughing or shaking my head wondering, just what in the world they were thinking when they said or did that. I definitely liked how the ending left room to go forward with more for a series as opposed to staying stand alone.
Needless to say, I heartily recommend this book and look forward to reading more by this author.
Honestly this was like taking a trip down memory lane, with a beautiful blend of Zane Grey meets Louis L'amour with a dash or three of Perry Mason and maybe Sam Spade. There is something for most everyone here with humor, drama, suspense, western setting. There were quite a few spots where I was surprised at the sheer audacity of some of the characters and I was left either gasping for breath from laughing or shaking my head wondering, just what in the world they were thinking when they said or did that. I definitely liked how the ending left room to go forward with more for a series as opposed to staying stand alone.
Needless to say, I heartily recommend this book and look forward to reading more by this author.
April 11, 2022
Nick DeNunzio is a Baltimore cop with a problem past. One of the corrupt cops Nick helped send to jail wants revenge. Nick is haunted by what happened and has hit the road. When his car breaks down in Wyoming, Nick takes a job as a stock detective for a local rancher to track down a rustler. But the ranchers have a haunted past of their own and the author does a great job of weaving in details of the rancher's life while revealing pieces of the past. When Nick brings his Baltimore detective skills to the rustling case, a murderer rises to the bait. This is a mystery with a literary bent that kept me turning pages.
January 19, 2022
Please note: I was given a copy of this book and have voluntarily decided to give it this honest review.
Nick DeNunzio is an ex-Baltimore police detective who left the force in disgrace, after killing a dirty cop in self-defense. Although innocent, Nick embarks on a trip across America to avoid his past. When his car breaks down and needs extensive repairs in a small town in Wyoming, he is approached by three ranchers who, despite his tarnished past, offer him a job investigating and bringing to justice, cattle rustlers that have been stealing their cattle. Despite his tarnished past, they believe that Nick’s experience as an honest cop and a former mounted patrol police officer gives him enough experience for the job. During his investigation, Nick discovers that there’s another old case of cattle rustling that has never been solved, yet nobody seems to want to talk about it, much less solve it. While he investigates these old and new crimes, there is another secretive danger, following him across the country, from his past, seeking revenge.
I enjoyed reading this book and would recommend it.
Nick DeNunzio is an ex-Baltimore police detective who left the force in disgrace, after killing a dirty cop in self-defense. Although innocent, Nick embarks on a trip across America to avoid his past. When his car breaks down and needs extensive repairs in a small town in Wyoming, he is approached by three ranchers who, despite his tarnished past, offer him a job investigating and bringing to justice, cattle rustlers that have been stealing their cattle. Despite his tarnished past, they believe that Nick’s experience as an honest cop and a former mounted patrol police officer gives him enough experience for the job. During his investigation, Nick discovers that there’s another old case of cattle rustling that has never been solved, yet nobody seems to want to talk about it, much less solve it. While he investigates these old and new crimes, there is another secretive danger, following him across the country, from his past, seeking revenge.
I enjoyed reading this book and would recommend it.
December 31, 2021
One of the best books I’ve read recently. The desert itself as the background adds a dimension of tension, then adding in the small town sheriff with the large scale rancher increases it. Nick is running from his previous life as a Baltimore mounted policeman. His car breaks down, then he gets arrested for a convenience store robbery. Out of money and needing to pay for car repairs, he gets talked into a temporary job as stock detective. There’s something that’s being covered up by everyone. How is he supposed to find the rustler when he can’t get the truth?
January 9, 2022
Never having read a Western, this was a very pleasant surprise. Good storyline, well-formed characters, lots of action, believable and hard to put down. I look forward to reading more of Bruce Most's work!
September 24, 2018
I'm not much drawn to westerns, but this one was quite well done.
February 1, 2015
Nick DeNunzio is a long way from home. He is “trying to get his bearings in a bearingless land.” That’s a reference to the largely unpopulated landscape that surrounds him. It’s also a reference to the roadmap to his soul.
DeNunzio is far from his life as an ex-cop from Baltimore but he finds himself in windswept Wyoming. He’s running from the “corrosiveness of silence” and his role in police work that resulted in a “just another dead black kid in a shit part of town.” The media frenzy in the fallout focused more on the corrupt narcotics squad, not the loss of life. DeNunzio’s won’t let it rest.
Nick DeNunzio is haunted, but he learned a thing or two as a cop, including how to ride a horse on the city’s mounted patrol. That comes in handy as he gets pulled into (coerced into) helping track down a cattle rustler.
He is fish out of water, a city guy among the cows and ranch hands. But he’s learning to like the open country. “Through his travels in the West, Nick had seen land like this often, land without landmarks, where a man was unable to tell where he was going or where he had come from, and often did not care.” Nick is wanted for his reputation, not his “cow knowledge.” The locals want a heavy whose reputation alone might encourage the rustler to stop his stealing ways.
“Rope Burn” does not set up like a straight murder mystery. The genre tropes require (suggest) a dead body in the first 30 pages (or less). That’s not the case here. Nick DeNunzio takes his time settling in and Bruce W. Most takes his time letting us watch DeNunzio learn the new world of small-town sheriffs, small-town media, expansive ranches and, for instance, the subtleties of cow branding. The first half of “Rope Burn” reads as much like a novel as a mystery. There’s tension and warning shots, but the first fresh body—not the last— doesn’t turn up until about half-way along. The tension is slow to build but comes full force once it arrives; the building blocks are all in place. “Rope Burn” has its boots on the ground so when the bullets fly they carry extra zip.
Like all good stories, “Rope Burn” is half plot, half character study and half setting—far more than a whole. Most wastes no opportunity to help us see the landscape and how the view is altering, or not, DeNunzio’s point of view. DeNunzio’s brooding and self-loathing carries weight. The tautness derives from whether Nick’s past will catch up with him and whether all this drifting has allowed him to find an explanation or settle his soul.
What should he have done differently? What could he have done differently? The answer comes down to speaking up, being more forthright about everything. His silence, it turned out, was deadly.
DeNunzio’s awareness of partial truths comes in handy as he starts tracking the rustler and then the killer—or is it killers? But certain attitudes linger. “He hated himself for this, for playing the bully cop. It was just such zealotry, such reckless disregard for the consequences, that had put a young boy’s blood on his hands. It was his zealotry that had driven away his wife and his colleagues and ultimately himself. Yet he couldn’t stop himself.”
Once the bodies start piling up, DeNunzio flashes his clue-finding wits. He is analytical and a keen observer. And he’s not afraid of risking his life to prove a point to his circle of rural doubters. In the end, you can hold on as tightly as you want but if the force on the other end is more powerful, even the strongest grip in the world can still get stung.
DeNunzio is far from his life as an ex-cop from Baltimore but he finds himself in windswept Wyoming. He’s running from the “corrosiveness of silence” and his role in police work that resulted in a “just another dead black kid in a shit part of town.” The media frenzy in the fallout focused more on the corrupt narcotics squad, not the loss of life. DeNunzio’s won’t let it rest.
Nick DeNunzio is haunted, but he learned a thing or two as a cop, including how to ride a horse on the city’s mounted patrol. That comes in handy as he gets pulled into (coerced into) helping track down a cattle rustler.
He is fish out of water, a city guy among the cows and ranch hands. But he’s learning to like the open country. “Through his travels in the West, Nick had seen land like this often, land without landmarks, where a man was unable to tell where he was going or where he had come from, and often did not care.” Nick is wanted for his reputation, not his “cow knowledge.” The locals want a heavy whose reputation alone might encourage the rustler to stop his stealing ways.
“Rope Burn” does not set up like a straight murder mystery. The genre tropes require (suggest) a dead body in the first 30 pages (or less). That’s not the case here. Nick DeNunzio takes his time settling in and Bruce W. Most takes his time letting us watch DeNunzio learn the new world of small-town sheriffs, small-town media, expansive ranches and, for instance, the subtleties of cow branding. The first half of “Rope Burn” reads as much like a novel as a mystery. There’s tension and warning shots, but the first fresh body—not the last— doesn’t turn up until about half-way along. The tension is slow to build but comes full force once it arrives; the building blocks are all in place. “Rope Burn” has its boots on the ground so when the bullets fly they carry extra zip.
Like all good stories, “Rope Burn” is half plot, half character study and half setting—far more than a whole. Most wastes no opportunity to help us see the landscape and how the view is altering, or not, DeNunzio’s point of view. DeNunzio’s brooding and self-loathing carries weight. The tautness derives from whether Nick’s past will catch up with him and whether all this drifting has allowed him to find an explanation or settle his soul.
What should he have done differently? What could he have done differently? The answer comes down to speaking up, being more forthright about everything. His silence, it turned out, was deadly.
DeNunzio’s awareness of partial truths comes in handy as he starts tracking the rustler and then the killer—or is it killers? But certain attitudes linger. “He hated himself for this, for playing the bully cop. It was just such zealotry, such reckless disregard for the consequences, that had put a young boy’s blood on his hands. It was his zealotry that had driven away his wife and his colleagues and ultimately himself. Yet he couldn’t stop himself.”
Once the bodies start piling up, DeNunzio flashes his clue-finding wits. He is analytical and a keen observer. And he’s not afraid of risking his life to prove a point to his circle of rural doubters. In the end, you can hold on as tightly as you want but if the force on the other end is more powerful, even the strongest grip in the world can still get stung.
October 14, 2014
A windless day on the Wyoming prairie is like "Christmas on the Fourth of July." Those of us who have spent time there know what Bruce Most meant in this well written mystery.
Nick DeNunzio has fled the Baltimore Police Department as a detective who busted up a group of dirty cops and killed one of them. The survivors vowed to get him for this, and he started west. He gets embroiled in solving a series of cattle rustling crimes in Eastern Wyoming and still remains the target of one obsessed convicted cop.
Bruce Most does a very good job of describing the hardships and struggles of ranching, and in the process, describes the processes of branding, moving cattle, and other duties of a cowhand. He also provides a primer on how to read brands and what they mean. This book involves many characters from brand inspectors (never met one I liked), to hobby ranchers, to struggling ranchers trying to keep a third or fourth generation ranch running.
I believe it deserves more publicity than it got from the publisher. I suspect we will hear more from Most in the coming years.
Bruce
Nick DeNunzio has fled the Baltimore Police Department as a detective who busted up a group of dirty cops and killed one of them. The survivors vowed to get him for this, and he started west. He gets embroiled in solving a series of cattle rustling crimes in Eastern Wyoming and still remains the target of one obsessed convicted cop.
Bruce Most does a very good job of describing the hardships and struggles of ranching, and in the process, describes the processes of branding, moving cattle, and other duties of a cowhand. He also provides a primer on how to read brands and what they mean. This book involves many characters from brand inspectors (never met one I liked), to hobby ranchers, to struggling ranchers trying to keep a third or fourth generation ranch running.
I believe it deserves more publicity than it got from the publisher. I suspect we will hear more from Most in the coming years.
Bruce
April 26, 2022
Get Tied Up in Rope Burn
Bruce Most’s wonderful contemporary Western, Rope Burn, felt so authentic I could almost taste the dusty landscape and smell the singed hide of newly branded cattle. Although Most grew up in pastoral Iowa, you could swear he was a native of rural Wyoming where this page-turner of a story takes place.
Nick De Nunzio, disillusioned Baltimore equine cop, has left the East Coast on soul-searching walkabout heading nowhere but randomly west. With his money running out, DeNunzio serendipitously lands a part-time job helping a local Wyoming cattle association try to nail and increasingly aggressive cattle rustlers. Nothing is quite as it seems when a few days work to make some fast cash, turns into something darker and much more dangerous. If you like the tales written by CJ Box or Craig Johnson, creator of Longmire, you’ll want to put Most’s Rope Burn right up on the shelf alongside them.
Bruce Most’s wonderful contemporary Western, Rope Burn, felt so authentic I could almost taste the dusty landscape and smell the singed hide of newly branded cattle. Although Most grew up in pastoral Iowa, you could swear he was a native of rural Wyoming where this page-turner of a story takes place.
Nick De Nunzio, disillusioned Baltimore equine cop, has left the East Coast on soul-searching walkabout heading nowhere but randomly west. With his money running out, DeNunzio serendipitously lands a part-time job helping a local Wyoming cattle association try to nail and increasingly aggressive cattle rustlers. Nothing is quite as it seems when a few days work to make some fast cash, turns into something darker and much more dangerous. If you like the tales written by CJ Box or Craig Johnson, creator of Longmire, you’ll want to put Most’s Rope Burn right up on the shelf alongside them.
June 2, 2014
An excellent story that kept me reading right to the end. The mystery and the story was great and took me back to my childhood and my love of cowboys. This novel is a modern western and Nick Denuzzio followed his instinct even though he had every reason to just drive away and forget the murders. There was one problem, common with all private detectives, and that is it is necessary to dumb down the cops.
However, the author excelled with his sensitive handling of the romance. I recommend this story.
Reece Pocock Author.
However, the author excelled with his sensitive handling of the romance. I recommend this story.
Reece Pocock Author.
December 15, 2013
This is the perfect union of mystery and modern western. Having lived in this particular area of Wyoming, I can assure you that the author has accurately portrayed the geography, the environment, and the attitudes. The ex-cop from Baltimore, Nick DeNunzio, has a lot to learn about ranching and cattle operations if he can avoid getting killed while doing it. The suspense and the mystery hang in until the very end. This book is well worth the read!
February 4, 2016
Bruce Most did a Super job of keeping the readers interest throughout the entire "Rope Burn" book.... He is to be applauded for a realistic job of portraying a Baltimore Cop out of his element but with a bull-headed stubbornness to get to the truth! The convincing descriptive narrative regarding both the lay of the land, but also the natural instincts of both the cows & the humans! Thanks, Bruce, for a first-rate mystery & "tying all the loose ends up" ......
February 15, 2016
I won this book in a Goodreads Giveaway in exchange for a review. It was interesting to read a modern day Western. The story held my interest all the way through the book and I found myself stopping to look up different things I learned in the book. It was informative, quick paced and of course a little romance added in. Thank you for the opportunity to read it.
September 8, 2014
Full of enticing, "I'm there" scene setting detail, logical plot that lives the cattle ranch Wyoming life. The old saw: "couldn't put it down"; much more enticing than modern blockbusters of religious or political/international story. Worth reread!
February 11, 2015
Authentic west! Most knows what he's writing about. He sets readers down in windy Wyoming in the hot summer with long held secrets and new twists. Lots of action and great characters.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews