Tag: Caught Dead in Wyoming series

Guest Review: Left Hanging by Patricia McLinn

Posted January 21, 2014 by Judith in Reviews | 0 Comments

18140358Judith’s review of Left Hanging (Caught Dead in Wyoming #2) by Patricia McLinn

A Rodeo Producer, Dead in the Bull Pen. Accident or Murder?

From the tip of the rodeo queen’s tiara, to “agricultural byproducts” ground into the arena dust, TV reporter Elizabeth, E.M., Danniher receives a murderous introduction to the world of rodeo.

Elizabeth, until recently a top-flight TV journalist on the national stage, has been making strides in getting her footing after a dizzying demotion to tiny—and entirely foreign to her—Sherman, Wyoming. But that equilibrium faces a major challenge.

The apparently accidental death—under the hooves of rodeo bulls— of a rodeo producer preparing for Sherman’s annual Fourth of July Rodeo catches the attention of Elizabeth and her KWMT-TV colleague Michael Paycik. Not only is it a major story about the region’s biggest event, but it’s being outrageously mishandled by the station’s egocentric anchor.

As Elizabeth and Michael start to dig, area rancher Thomas Burrell joins the investigation, providing background on the rodeo and suspects—and there are plenty because the victim had many enemies. But Tom has loyalties to some suspects as well as to the rodeo, so Elizabeth doubts his commitment to finding the truth no matter what. Not to mention that both Mike and Tom have indicated an interest in her . . . they might be okay with working together in a peculiar triangle, but the points of that triangle are starting to get under her skin.

Elizabeth was on her way to the top until her long-time love relationship ended with one of her network’s executives and all of a sudden she found herself working as a special events reporter in Podunk, Wyoming–or so it seemed to her.  Sherman was one of the few towns in that sparsely populated state that even had a TV station, and as is so often the case, she was the target of small-minded news personnel who resented her presence, who were scared spitless at even having her within a thousand miles of them, and who took great delight in blocking any attempts she might make to recover what was left of her lost career.  Yet even in this unknown location murder was afoot and as the facts began to come to light–facts that didn’t seem to make sense to a woman whose finely developed instincts as a reporter were coming back to the fore.  It also became patently obvious that with no cooperation from the powers that be in that TV venue, Elizabeth was on her own unless you take into consideration the two men who seemed drawn to her and who didn’t seem willing to let her be, either professionally or personally.

This is the second book in a series that is rife with complexities of a murder that seemed easily solved and turned out to be anything but.  It is about a woman who is trying to recover her sense of self, a sense of her professional worth, and one who has to look honestly at where she is in her personal relationships and try to figure out what her future might look like.  It is another fine piece of writing from an author who knows how to put a compelling story together.  It is also a treat for readers like me who absolutely adore the mental exercise that comes with reading a story that is constantly taking us in different directions.

I think that this is also a look at Small Town America, Western style.  It’s the land of cowboys and rodeos and horses and bulls and all that good stuff–a culture built around what it means in today’s world to be a part of the world of ranching.  It’s where so much of what America has been for generations is still prized and deeply embedded in the local culture and color.  It’s a world where relationships are important, where family is a priority, and where this cosmopolitan New Yorker felt completely like a fish out of water.  It is also a culture that, while it takes its time to open itself to stranger, is populated with hearts as big as the Big Sky Country of which it is a part.  It is the place where Elizabeth dreaded the prospect of rebuilding her life and where she began to re-discover the best parts of herself.

This is more a mystery than anything else.  The love story is subsumed underneath.  It’s there but it’s off in the shadows and honestly, when I came to the end, I knew that this was a story that would go on throughout the series and that wouldn’t be one that would be obvious or easy to figure out.  Nevertheless, it’s a marvelous read and one that Ms McLinn’ fans will most assuredly love and one that will have mystery lovers salivating all over themselves.  I give it a rating of 4.25 out of 5.

The Series:
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You can read more from Judith at Dr J’s Book Place.

This title is available from Bell Bridge Books. You can buy it here or here in e-format.


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Guest Review: Sign Off by Patricia McLinn

Posted October 2, 2013 by Judith in Reviews | 0 Comments

sign-off-200Judith’s review of Sign Off by Patricia McLinn

Until a few months ago, Elizabeth “E.M.” Danniher investigated high crimes and national cases. Now, a messy divorce from her network-TV-exec husband, combined with her no-longer-quite-perky-enough sex appeal, has banished her to Wyoming, where she has to fulfill the remainder of her contract. She handles the “Helping Out” segment at Sherman, Wyoming’s only news station. Her latest assignment:assisting an elderly woman who wants her faulty toaster replaced.

But Tamantha needs her, and so Elizabeth goes back on the crime beat, trying to unravel the mystery of the missing deputy and track down a killer who intends to make sure she doesn’t live to go Live At Five with the scoop.

Is it any wonder that an author who has spent decades as a newspaper editor can write so convincingly about reporters?  I would think not.  And in this first in a new series of stories, Ms McLinn has brought us into the life of a woman who thought she had it made in the shade.  A marriage to a TV network executive, a top-rated national exposure due to years and years given over to a demanding career–both fell apart and left her hung out to dry. Now she’s working off the remainder of her contract in a Podunk TV station in Wyoming as a special interest kind of reporter who investigates scams and problems that folks can’t seem to get anyone else to care about.  It was one of those helpless and hopeless persons who called her, only this person was the young daughter of a man who had been accused of murdering the local sheriff’s deputy.  Even being released because of lack of evidence didn’t solve anything.  And because there was no clear absolving of his guilt, he is now kept apart from the daughter he adores.  It is also the circumstance that brings Thomas David Burrell into Elizabeth’s life–a recalcitrant and undemonstrative man who has deep feelings and old wounds.  But most of all he loves his daughter.  And she loves her daddy.

“You’ve got to prove my Daddy didn’t kill anybody,” second grader Tamantha Burrell tells KWMT-TV’s consumer affairs reporter, New York transplant Elizabeth Danniher.

“Now wait a minute . . . ” the startled journalist begins.

“You’re the ‘Helping Out’ lady,” Tamantha insists. “You have to help me.”

And so begins a journey of re-discovery for this intrepid woman who needs to reclaim who she is apart from all the glitz and glamour of the broadcast media, heal from the wounds of a divorce gone terribly bad, and re-embrace the investigative reporter that lives within her–a woman who can think outside the box, who can puts clues together, and who has the instincts that will lead her ultimately to solving this crime.

This is a novel about reaffirmation of one’s true self.  And as Elizabeth allows her inner self to emerge she also realizes that she can be authentic in her judgments about her co-workers, about those who seem to want to be her friends, and about the two men who come into her life and begin friendships with her.  This is one of those complex mysteries that will yank the reader all over kingdom come.  It’s the kind of story that will never allow the reader to get even a small smell of where the story is going and who the bad guy really is.  It’s also the story of the wonder Elizabeth experiences as she repeatedly realizes that she really can re-connect with that investigative reporter who dug for clues and who couple put murder mystery puzzles together.  There are lots of wonderful moments in this novel and it is one of those reads that made me feel like I had done myself a favor for having taken the time to read it.  Believe me, this wasn’t a book one could skim or speed read and make any sense out of it.  It was the kind of book that grabbed your imagination and didn’t turn loose until the last word had been read.

I hope you will pick up this book and give it a good chance to entertain you, especially if you are a mystery fan with a little bit of romance mixed in.  Really fantastic read, really fantastic story, and I happily give it a 4.5 out of 5.

You can read more from Judith at Dr J’s Book Place.

This title is available from Bell Bridge Books.  You can buy it here or here in e-format.

 


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