Blog Tour/Feature Post and Book Review: Dead Drop by James L’Etoile

Hi, everyone!

Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for DEAD DROP (A Detective Nathan Parker Novel Book #1) by James L’Etoile on this Partners In Crime Virtual Book Tour.

Below you will find a book description, my book review, an excerpt from the book, the author’s bio and social media links and a Rafflecopter giveaway. Enjoy!

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Book Description

Hundreds go missing each year making the dangerous crossing over the border. What if you were one of them?

While investigating the deaths of undocumented migrants in the Arizona desert, Detective Nathan Parker finds a connection to the unsolved murder of his partner on a human smuggling run. The new evidence lures Parker over the border in search of the truth, only to trap him in a strange and dangerous land. If he’s to survive, Parker must place his life in the hands of the very people he once pursued.

Border violence, border politics, and who is caught in between. The forces behind it might surprise you.

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61440622-dead-drop?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=ggtpHIUfIq&rank=2

Dead Drop

Genre: Thriller
Published by: Level Best Books
Publication Date: July 19, 2022
Number of Pages: 300
ISBN: 978-1-68512-114-3
Series: The Detective Nathan Parker Series, Book 1

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My Book Review

RATING: 5 out of 5 Stars

DEAD DROP (A Detective Nathan Parker Thriller Book #1) by James L’Etoile is a mash-up of fast-paced thriller, Federal and local police procedural, and southern border crime mystery. This is the first book in this new series and the first book I have read by this author.

Detective Nathan Parker is called by an eccentric local named Billie about four 55-gallon drums off the side of the highway she discovered while searching for scrap. She has opened one of the drums and found a body stuffed inside. This dead drop is not the first found and all contained illegal immigrant males. The coroner discovers they have all died from fentanyl poisoning.

When Parker gets to close to several cartel operations, he is carried across the border to meet the head of the cartel and faces a horrible death, but Billie has followed him. Billie is not what Parker first perceived and he soon learns to survive, he is going to have to put his life in the hands of the people he once pursued and looked down upon.

I thought I was getting a straightforward southern border drug cartel crime story, but this story with its many twists and surprises is so much more. Nathan Parker is a man who has been in law enforcement for some time and has preconceived notions. He is also carrying a lot of guilt over the death of his partner. As Parker progresses through the story, he has his eyes opened and is discovering an empathy he did not have previously. Billie is a big part in helping Parker see the other side of his prejudice against illegal immigrants and in helping him fight and survive the antagonists. I liked Nathan and his character’s growth, but I really loved Billie. This is the first book I have read written by this author, and I will be looking for others in his catalogue. Great characters, fast-paced, surprising and a realistic ending had me reading this book way past my bedtime.

I highly recommend this first thriller in this new series, and I cannot wait for more!

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Excerpt

Chapter 1

With one good score Billie Carson hoped she could begin to repair the damage from her past. But after three hours kicking rocks in the sweltering North Phoenix sun, all Billie had to show for the effort was a bag of beer cans and three Jeep lug nuts. She knew most folks wrote her off as a scavenger, but Billie fancied herself as a treasure-hunter. It was a romantic notion, in her mind—always looking for that one big find. She’d dug up wallets, rings, car parts, and good scrap metal out here. Not the crap you tripped over in the bottom of a desert wash, but leftover copper wire from building sites and steel tire rims left behind on the side of the asphalt. The recycling yards paid you good money for that shit, but money could never really make up for the broken lives she’d left behind. How could you repay the ghosts of men you’d led to their death?

Billie looked at the meager haul in her black garbage bag and calculated she wouldn’t be able to buy a cold beer at Paula’s Roadhouse on the way home, let alone help anyone else. Besides, the Roadhouse made her sit outside on the patio with her beer, on the days she could afford one. Paula told her once she made the regulars uncomfortable and wasn’t welcome inside. The beer was cold out on the patio and she figured she wouldn’t like the company inside anyway.

She knew there were treasures out here among the Saguaro cactus and creosote brush waiting to be discovered. Hell, she found her Maui Jim sunglasses out here, you could barely see the crack in the left lens after you got used to it. If she had the money, she’d buy one of them fancy electronic metal detectors that beeped and chirped when you found the good stuff. Paula would let her inside the Roadhouse then, for sure. Until Billie found her big score, she’d keep her head down and kick some more rocks.

Dry, spindly brush dotted the roadside. Thin branches cracked when you knocked up against them. The broken limbs were sharp and left red welts if you ventured too far off the beaten path. Motorists tossed, or lost, most of the good stuff she found a few feet off the road. Billie couldn’t imagine a world where you lost hard earned jewelry out your window and didn’t bother to stop and go find it. If tourists on their way to Cave Creek, or Sedona, were so well off they didn’t need their stuff–that was fine by her.

Billie spotted a set of tire tracks off the asphalt and her heart began to race. What if she found a broken refrigerator dumped in the brush? She could eat for a month on what she’d pull for scrapping a hulking appliance. She’d figure a way to drag it out of the desert before someone else grabbed it. The wide tracks bent behind a rock outcropping digging three inches into the sandy desert floor. Billie knew the vehicle was laden with treasure if it left tire tracks up to her ankles.

She slipped a dingy blue bandanna from her head and wiped the gritty sweat at the back of her neck. A makeshift canteen, fashioned from a Gatorade bottle and a length of drapery cord hung from Billie’s neck. She unscrewed the plastic cap and poured the last of her water on the bandanna. The soaked cloth cooled her head for the climb to the top of the hardscrabble rock outcropping.

The view from the small rise looked down into a deep, sandy wash where the memory of scant seasonal rainfall from the monsoons faded into chalky dust. Patches of tinder-dry brush lined the edges of the dry bed. The heavens hadn’t seen fit to nourish their shallow roots for months. A moonscape of tumbled rocks, sand, and broken branches, left behind by a distant flash flood, lined the bed. At the center of the sandy basin, the deep ruts ended. A second set of tire tracks painted a story of a stop before backing into the middle of the sand. At the end of the tracks no prize waited for her; no refrigerator, no mattress, not even a crumpled beer can. Whatever it was, Billie figured someone else got here first. She crawled down the rock ledge to the floor of the basin, kicking smaller rocks and watching for rattlesnakes along the way.

Down in the wash, the dry brush was taller than it seemed from the view up on the rise. Thin dried fingers of creosote bush towered over Billie’s five-seven height, and the vegetation screened off access to the dry bed. The brush lay crushed and broken at the edge of the parched earth where the vehicle punched through the barrier. Billie hiked the plowed path, where dry shattered twigs snapped under her boots releasing the acrid resin smell from the creosote bush.

Hidden from the road, Billie knew this was the perfect spot for a quick illegal dump. Yet, there was nothing here. Maybe it was a quickie dump of another sort, she thought, a make-out spot for a couple of hormone-engorged teenagers.

She turned and spotted a bright white patch in the brush at the bottom of the draw. A few steps closer and Billie made out four fifty-five gallon drums partially hidden under a layer of broken creosote branches. She wouldn’t have seen them if it weren’t for the blue and white stripes emblazoned on the sides of the containers.

“Well, shit. This don’t get any better.”

Billie swiveled around and tried to catch a glimpse of anyone who might be keeping an eye on the barrels. She knew she wasn’t the smartest woman, but what she did know was people who stashed things in the desert, generally don’t want them found. She also knew you dumped things out here to get rid of them fast.

Billie got on her knees next to one of the barrels, tossed off the layer of broken branches, and the hot metal surface burned her palm. She wrapped her bandanna around her fingers and forced the barrel upright. It was heavy, but she felt the contents shift as the barrel moved. She figured a land developer or machine shop owner needed a place to dump used oil, or chemicals they’d have to pay the county to take off their hands. Billie figured the empty drums would net her ten bucks a piece, easy. She’d dump the oil, or whatever was in the cylinder, back in the dusty wash. Her daddy always poured his motor oil out in the desert and Billie never even saw so much as a sick coyote.

She strained with the locking ring on the lid. It wouldn’t budge. Billie ran a finger across dark marks where tack welds burnt the paint away from the locking ring.

Something good was in this barrel, for sure. Why go through this effort for used motor oil? If it was old pesticide, maybe she could wrangle a reward from one of them cactus-lovin’ environmental places.

Billie grabbed a rock and hammered it against the welds. They chipped away after a few blows, and the bent locking ring fell at her feet. With the blade of a folding knife Billie kept on her belt, she pried under the lid. The lid popped and released a strong odor from within the sealed container. Billie grabbed her bandana and held it over her nose. The stench was unmistakable–decomposing flesh.

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Author Bio

James L’Etoile uses his twenty-nine years behind bars as an influence in his novels, short stories, and screenplays. He is a former associate warden in a maximum-security prison, a hostage negotiator, facility captain, and director of California’s state parole system. He is a nationally recognized expert witness on prison and jail operations. He has been nominated for the Silver Falchion for Best Procedural Mystery, and The Bill Crider Award for short fiction. His published novels include: Black Label, At What Cost, Bury the Past, and Little River. Look for Dead Drop in the summer of 2022.

Social Media Links

www.jamesletoile.com
Goodreads
BookBub – @crimewriter
Instagram – @authorjamesletoile
Twitter – @jamesletoile
Facebook – @AuthorJamesLetoile

Purchase Link

 Amazon

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RAFFLECOPTER GIVEAWAY

https://kingsumo.com/g/u3ucmk/dead-drop-by-james-letoile