A Dead Draw
Robert Dugoni
373 pages
Published May 27, 2025
Thomas & Mercer
🔫🔫🔫
This the 11th book in the Tracy Crosswhite series about a Seattle homicide detective haunted by the death of her sister years earlier. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the series, but feel like it’s time he moved on about from plots referencing Sarah’s murder. This one had both Tracy and Dan being ridiculously naive and making totally dumb decisions, which was annoyingly out of character. It was too obvious what was going on and what was going to happen, and while I liked Tracy’s new friendship with autistic teenager Lydia, I felt this was one of the weaker plots of an otherwise brilliant series.
Carnival Blues
Damien Boyd
378 pages
Published on June 14th, 2022
Thomas &
🎆🎆🎆🎆
This is the 12th book in the DCI Nick Dixon series set in Somerset, which has Nick investigating a murder caused by a firework in the annual Bridgwater street fair. Lots of people had reasons to want to victim gone, but then someone else is targeted. Meanwhile Nick is being investigated for possible manslaughter by the Professional Standards unit as a result of his actions during a previous case. I’ve enjoyed all of these books and recommend reading them in order to fully understand the character arcs.
The Mercy Chair
MW Craven
510 pages/ 12 hrs 13 mins
Published on June 6th, 2024
Constable
🪑🪑🪑
It pains me somewhat to give a Craven novel only three stars, but this one was rather a disappointment compared to all the earlier Washington Poe books. I didn’t like the way most of the narrative is Poe talking to a therapist, as it just didn’t ring true in any way, and tried too hard to be clever. The explanation of the mystery made no sense and the gruesome scenes depicted were rather too dark for me. I also didn’t like the way Poe bullies Linus, the young intern assigned to him. Craven is still a gifted storyteller but this one missed the mark for me. 2.5 rounded up for the audiobook narration which was excellent as usual.
Leave a Reply