Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for DEPTHS OF DECEIT (A Jamie Rush Mystery Book #2) by Laura Oles 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
One deadly secret.
No time to lose.
PI Jamie Rush has her hands full with small-time skip-tracing and surveillance jobs in Port Alene, Texas. The work is steady, though she still struggles to make ends meet. But when her partner, Cookie, brings in a low-paying and potentially time-consuming case, Jamie takes it on out of loyalty.
Cookie’s childhood friend, Renata, needs to find her younger sister, Leah. As Jamie digs into Leah’s past, it becomes clear that the missing woman’s life was shrouded in secrets, the kind that could jeopardize those involved in the case.
To complicate matters, PI Alastair Finn has returned, and he’s willing to reclaim his town by any means necessary. Jamie has never been one to retreat, and Alastair enjoys a good fight. Sparks will fly.
A missing woman. Felonies. Finn’s return. Every twist reminds Jamie that she’s still an outsider in this town. Jamie must prove herself all over again, and the stakes have never been higher.
Genre: Mystery, Female PI Published by: Red Adept Publishing Publication Date: May 31, 2022 Number of Pages: 292 Series: A Jamie Rush Mystery, #2
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My Book Review
RATING: 4 out of 5 Stars
DEPTHS OF DECEIT (A Jamie Rush Mystery Book #2) by Laura Oles is a character focused and driven mystery in this series featuring P.I. Jamie Rush and her sidekick Cookie Hinojosa set in the coastal town of Port Alene, Texas. While this mystery can be read as a standalone, I feel it would be more enjoyable if “Daughters of Bad Men” were read first due to evolving character arcs.
P.I. Jamie Rush agrees to take on a case for Cookie even though there is no guarantee of payment for time involved. Cookie’s childhood friend, Renata needs to find her younger sister, Leah but as they begin to investigate, they discover more secrets than they anticipated.
To complicate Jamie’s life even more, P.I. Alastair Finn has returned to Port Alene.
I enjoy this type of P.I. mystery which is character forward and not step-by-step procedural investigation if done right, and this one is. The plot is a steady pace throughout except for the faster paced climax. The dialogue and banter between the characters is entertaining and believable. The coastal town of Port Alene, Texas comes to life in this story and adds to the immersive feeling while reading the story.
This is an entertaining cast of characters that I am looking forward to following in the future.
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Excerpt
Depths of Deceit
A Jamie Rush Mystery #2
By Laura Oles
The mermaid in the truck bed was what caught Jamie Rush’s attention. The cast-iron figure peeked over the hatch, her carved, flowing hair and demure smile in view. This was supposed to be a standard identify-and-repo job. Jamie was certain she hadn’t seen a mermaid on the itemized paperwork. Brody Rutger, in addition to hiding from creditors, had added theft of a local celebrity to his resume.
The day had started strong, with a lead on Rutger and an opportunity to catch him between fishing charters, using a boat he’d quit paying on months before. Suddenly, Marian the Mermaid was caught up in the mix.
And something was going on with the weather.
The month of November normally brought a steady stream of long-term vacationers from the north—affectionally called Winter Texans—who fled harsh winters for the promise of more tepid temperatures. Those who’d already set up residence in Port Alene were likely to be disappointed. Port A, usually quite predictable in her warmth, had suddenly changed her mind. That day, she was trading humidity for frigid air, and the wind, once laced with a warm, salty breeze, was offering only a cold shoulder. The palm trees lining Island Main bristled from side to side, and the town seemed to have turned inward in response. The icy wind whistled in the gap of her Tahoe’s window.
Jamie shuddered at the weather’s frigid downturn, while her partner, Cookie Hinojosa, all but cursed Mother Nature. He believed anything under seventy degrees was downright blasphemous. Jamie tilted her head toward the gray sky and welcomed the sting of air on her cheeks, her head briefly popping out the driver’s-side window. Cookie glanced over and shook his head. “
You’re very grumpy this morning,” Jamie said. She gave him a once-over, taking note of the large Dallas Cowboys logo on his chest, the silver star claiming almost all the space between his shoulders. “I see you found your favorite winter hoodie. Probably more fun to wear when they’re winning.”
Cookie turned to her and scowled. “Et tu, Brute? You’re going to dump on our favorite team? Really?”
Jamie reached over and gave her partner’s meaty shoulder a squeeze. “They need to earn our love by playing better. And we’ve been damned patient.” She rubbed her hand up and down his sleeve, noting the fabric felt cold. “You should probably break down and buy a proper winter jacket.”
“This is South Texas. Only snowbirds wear ‘proper’ winter jackets.”
Cookie dismissed the idea of wearing anything that added additional bulk to his substantial frame. “My Hawaiian shirts are sad from neglect.”
She had to agree. A long-sleeved Hawaiian shirt would look ridiculous on anyone. She rubbed her hands together and hoped the cold snap would soon dissipate, returning the balmy temperatures Port Alene normally delivered.
“I’m going to pull back a bit,” Jamie said.
Their skip of the day, Brody Rutger, owed their client, AAA Repo Services, $15,027. Brody had ducked all attempts at collection, so Jamie and Cookie had been hired to locate him and return the boat. Jamie and Cookie specialized in skip tracing, which essentially meant finding people who didn’t want to be found. They worked skips but also some surveillance—which paid well but was boring beyond belief—and some divorce cases, which also paid well but renewed Jamie’s resolve to never get married. In Jamie’s experience, if a person disappeared, the reasons involved money, private information, or violence. And secrets—always a secret.
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Author Bio
Laura Oles is the Agatha-nominated and award-winning author of the Jamie Rush mystery series, along with short stories and nonfiction. With two decades of experience in the digital photography industry, Laura’s work has appeared in trade and consumer magazines, crime-fiction anthologies, and she served as a business columnist. Laura loves road trips, bookstores and any outdoor activity that doesn’t involve running. She lives in the Texas Hill Country with her family.
Today I am excited to be sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for BECOMING FAMILY (Dogwood County Book #3) by Elysia Whisler on this HTP Books August 2022 Romance Blog Tour. I have anxiously been waiting for this next book in this series.
Below you will find a book summary, my book review, an excerpt from the book and the author’s bio and social media links. Enjoy!
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Book Summary
Contemporary romance for fans of Jill Shalvis and Lori Foster, returning to the characters of the Dogwood County series, Book 3 follows Tabitha Steele as she plans to have her best year ever.
On her thirtieth birthday, Tabitha realizes she hasn’t much to show for her life since she left military service. Tabitha makes a hasty vow that she will make this the best year of her life, which is a tall order considering her mish-mash of unfulfilling jobs, her stagnant social life, and the crippling PTSD she has to overcome on a near-daily basis. But she thinks she can do it with the help of her beloved service dog, Trinity.
Chris Hobbs, the playful and wild-hearted bad boy of the Semper Fit gym, is Tabitha’s complete opposite. Which is why, despite his habit of dating any woman who bats an eye at him, he’s always steered clear of Tabitha, even though they’ve formed a tight friendship. Especially because of that.
BECOMING FAMILY (Dogwood County Book #3) by Elysia Whisler is another wonderful addition to this contemporary romance series featuring a community of veterans from all branches of service, their families, friends, and service animals. These books can be read as standalone romances, but the entire community of characters and their relationships continue to evolve in each consecutive story, so I feel they are best read in order.
Tabitha Steele has decided on her thirtieth birthday to take charge of her life and do what she really wants instead of just getting by. She feels she is better at handling her PTSD with her service dog, Trinity and now it is time to accomplish some goals to move her career and personal life forward.
Chris Hobbs is the flirty and playful coach at Semper Fit. He always keeps things light and his relationships short, but something about the timid Tabitha pulls at him and he wants to help her discover her strengths. With the sudden death of his abusive father, Chris must face his own past and decide if he is willing to allow Tabitha to see the vulnerable person behind the mask.
I love this series so much. I have been waiting for Chris to meet his match and I just knew there was more than met the eye with this hero. Tabitha at first seemed too timid to take on Chris, but Ms. Whisler expertly turned the tables with Tabitha being stronger than she believed and Chris covering up more than his “good ole boy” persona let on. I also enjoy how all the characters from previous stories, and I am sure more stories to come are a family by choice and play helpful roles in the current featured couple’s journey to their HEA. I love all the pets and service animals intertwine throughout these stories and especially the pitties, my favorite dogs. This book has everything I love about a great contemporary romance and that it is a series is like having a cherry on the top.
I highly recommend this romance, this series, and this author!
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Excerpt
ONE
Tabitha’s radar was lit before the woman even entered the store. The way she whipped into the parking space, killed the engine at a crooked angle and jangled the bell over the shop door like it was being throttled. Tabitha had just taken a bite of the Really Big Cookie—a birthday indulgence bought at the community college cafeteria—when the woman marched right up to the front counter and, without so much as hello, slapped down some pictures. “My father’s old Harley has been sitting in the barn for decades,” she declared, out of breath. “And I’m determined to get it going.”
Tabitha closed up her Journal of Invincibility—I am not afraid; I was born to do this. ~Joan of Arc—and tucked it behind the counter, like a mother protecting her young. The woman went on for a bit, while Tabitha tried to chew and swallow her treat. When she was done ranting, she stood there in silence. Eventually, she shook her head. “Don’t you know anything about motorcycles?” Big-breasted, big-hipped, big personality, big, brassy red hair, the customer rested her elbow on the counter and leaned against it, settling in.
“Not much, no.” A hunk of cookie fell from Tabitha’s lips and landed on the front of her Triple M Classics employee T-shirt. She hastily brushed it away and gestured to the shelves that lined the rear of the shop. “I just ring up the merchandise. Keep tabs on the floor when the mechanics are in the back.” She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples, but that just prompted images from school this morning, which she didn’t want in her head. Still, with her eyes closed, Tabitha sensed that this wasn’t really about the motorcycle. The woman was upset, possibly grieving. The motorcycle meant something to her and she wanted quick answers because she was searching for a way to ease her pain. Tabitha opened her eyes again, looked past the woman and settled her gaze on Trinity, the little black rescue pit bull who always made her feel better.
“Then get the mechanic. Or, better yet, get the owner. Where’s Delaney Monroe?”
“She’s on an errand.” Tabitha kept her gaze on Trinity, who lay near the stairs that led to Delaney’s apartment. She was catching some zees in the dog bed intended for Delaney’s dog, Wyatt. For about the third time that day Tabitha thought, What am I doing here? I’m not cut out for this.
“Delaney Monroe is who I came to see,” the woman pressed. “I heard she’s an expert on classic bikes. If you work in a bike shop, you should know about bikes. I don’t have time for this.” She straightened up and planted her hands on her hips.
“Delaney’s out. Maybe I can help.”
Tabitha turned to the sound of Nora’s raspy voice.
“I’m Nora. One of the mechanics.” Delaney’s mom had come out of the back room, wiping grease from her fingers with a shop rag. She had a cigarette tucked behind her ear, right where her temples were starting to gray. The rest of her hair was silky black and tied back in a ponytail. Nora was a small woman with a slight build, but the way she carried herself, she might as well have been six feet tall. She wore blue jeans and the same Triple M Classics T-shirt and she locked her fearless, almond-shaped eyes into the irritated gaze of the customer. “Whatcha got?” She nodded at the photographs.
The woman pushed them across the countertop. “This has been in my father’s barn for ages. He recently passed and I’m not sure if it’s worth fixing up.”
Nora went silent while she leafed through the pictures. “An old Harley Panhead,” she murmured. “Sweet. Do you know the year? Looks like a ’49.”
“Yes. How did you know that?”
Tabitha felt a shift in the air as the woman’s demeanor changed, her anger melting away, relief softening her shoulders and her scrunched-up mouth. Crisis averted.
“The window on a Panhead is only ’48 to ’65. The emblem on the gas tank in this shot tells me it’s a ’49.” Nora tapped the top photo with her grease-stained finger.
The woman stuck out her hand, a huge grin on her face. “Nelly Washington. Nice to meet you.”
“Nora.” Nora glanced at Nelly’s hand but didn’t touch her. “My girl owns this place.”
“I’ve heard good things.”
“Damn straight you heard good things. My girl’s the best.”
Nelly gave off a deep belly laugh and used the humor as an excuse to withdraw her unrequited handshake. “Can she fix it up? Make it run?”
Like a cowgirl walking into a saloon in an old Western, Delaney pushed open the shop door at that moment. The bell jangled as she strode inside, motorcycle boots thunking over the floor, helmet in her gloved hand. Delaney was taller than her mother by several inches, had the same slender build and dark hair, but in a pixie cut. Wyatt, the wandering white pit bull with the brown eye patch, trotted in next to her, still wearing his Doggles. Delaney slipped the eye protection off her motorcycle-riding companion. Wyatt spotted Trinity on his dog bed and raced over to play. He leaned on his front paws, butt in the air, tail wagging, then jumped backward and spun. When that didn’t work, he danced all around her, flipping his head and poking his muzzle in the air. Trinity, unmoved, looked to Tabitha for instruction.
“Break, Trinity,” Tabitha said, and the dogs were soon twining necks like ponies.
Nora waved at her daughter and shrugged at Nelly. “You’ll need to bring the bike in. See what’s up. Is it dry?”
“Been in the shed. Covered up.” Nelly’s gaze went to Delaney as she neared.
“She means did you drain the carburetor and gas tank,” Delaney clarified, settling her helmet on the counter. “Before you stored it.”
“Oh.” Nelly’s face went straight. “I don’t know, actually. My father is the one who stored it. Once his arthritis got too bad for him to ride.”
“That’ll make a difference,” Delaney continued, like she’d been in on the conversation from the beginning. “That, and how straight the bike was when it was put up.” She glanced at the photos. “A ’49 Panhead. Cool. Bring it in. We’ll take a look.”
“I will definitely do that. Thank you. My father recently passed away. He used to take me on rides on that bike when I was a little girl.” Nelly’s voice grew faraway, wistful. “We’d go to the general store and he’d buy me a grape soda. I loved feeling the wind in my hair.” Nelly waved a hand. “This was before helmet laws. Anyway.” The reminiscent look in Nelly’s eyes slid away and she sniffed deeply. “Are you Delaney?”
“Yes, ma’am. Don’t worry. I’ve never met a Panhead I can’t get going.”
Tabitha stuffed the rest of the cookie in her mouth and tried to sneak away, her lack of motorcycle knowledge no longer an issue. Her shift was over, she was exhausted and she was ready to go home.
“Get back here, Steele.” Delaney grasped the hem of Tabitha’s shirt and pulled her back gently. “You need to take down this lady’s information. The more you listen, the more you’ll learn. Pretty soon you’ll know a Harley Panhead on sight.” Delaney nodded at Tabitha. “She’s still learning.”
“She seems like a nice young lady.” Nelly was all smiles now, like their earlier interaction had never happened.
After Tabitha filled out a capture sheet with Nelly Washington’s information, and the woman had left the shop in an entirely different mood than the one she’d barged in with, Delaney turned to her and said, “What’s going on, Steele? You look ready to lie on the floor and call your dog for Smoosh Time.”
Smoosh Time was Delaney’s slang for the deep pressure therapy Trinity was trained to provide if Tabitha was having a panic attack. It was affectionate rather than sarcastic. Unused to affection, Tabitha liked it and had taken to calling the therapy Smoosh Time herself. Smoosh Time actually sounded really good about now. But Trinity was still on break, chasing Wyatt around the perimeter of the shop. “It’s been a long day.”
“Massage school getting you down?”
“Old Nelly was kinda rough on her,” Nora offered. She slipped the cigarette from behind her ear and stuck it between her lips.
“That’s why she’s learning as much as she can.” Delaney tapped the capture sheet. “That’s all you can do, Steele. I don’t expect you to become a mechanic, unless you want to, but you soak in everything you can while you’re here.” She glanced at her mother. “Don’t you dare light that in here, Nora.”
Nora pulled it from her lips and rolled her eyes. “I’m not. It’s just a prop, okay?”
“How many days has it been?” After some hemming and hawing Delaney clarified, “For real.”
“Half a day,” Nora admitted. “I’d gone two days and then I caved this morning. It’s so hard not to smoke after I eat. Maybe I need to stop eating.”
Delaney shook her head. “You gotta be tough, Nora. Like Tabitha here.”
“I’m not tough.” Tabitha had been enjoying watching the mother-daughter pair interact, despite how rough her day had been so far. They made her wonder what her relationship with her birth mother would’ve been like, if she’d known her. Tabitha’s relationship with Auntie El—the woman who’d raised her and the only mother Tabitha had ever known—was as old-fashioned as it got. Yes, ma’am, No, ma’am, please and thank you, respect your elders and all boundaries clearly drawn and rarely crossed. There was none of this role reversal or sarcastic banter. Life certainly hadn’t been easy, and Tabitha had been handed absolutely nothing. If that didn’t make her tough, nothing would. “Tough is just not my nature.”
Sensitive was Tabitha’s nature, for good or bad. The armor she lacked had never been very useful, not until she joined the navy and her main job in Afghanistan was to protect her chaplain from harm. She’d been pretty good at smelling trouble, hearing things nobody else heard, seeing things nobody else saw. Some had even jokingly called her Radar, after the character from M*A*S*H. It made her good at her job, despite the fact that she hadn’t been able to prevent the IED that had got her chaplain hurt, and despite the fact that the skill was kind of useless, and often counterintuitive, in everyday life.
“You’re tough-ish, Tabitha,” Nora agreed. “Which means you got potential. Just gotta stand up for yourself with lippy women like Nelly.”
“Spill it, Steele.” Delaney shot her mother a silencing look. “What’s going on?”
“You were right, Sarge,” Tabitha admitted. She hadn’t planned on discussing her day, but there was just something about Delaney, the woman she’d met at Camp Leatherneck years ago. The woman who’d helped her keep her head straight during that awful day when an IED had taken out her convoy. “It’s massage school.”
“What about it?”
“It’s the student exchanges.” Tabitha drew a deep breath. “We have to swap with our classmates once a week to practice the strokes we learn in class. At first, I was doing really well. Everyone loved my massages and said that I just had that magic touch. But then…well… I’m doing something wrong. I’m not…massaging right.” Tabitha bit down on her lower lip.
“How can you not massage right?” Nora spoke around the unlit cigarette dangling from her lips. “Aren’t you just squirting lotion on each other? How hard can that be?”
“No. We’re not just squirting lotion. It’s a lot more than that.” Tabitha was used to Nora’s directness at this point, and did her best to not let Delaney’s mother get under her skin. “You have to learn all the bones and muscles and physiology. Plus all the strokes. There’s a lot of science. You have to learn about how the body moves and how everything works together. And then you have to massage in such a way that you’re helping people. And right now, I’m not helping anyone.” Just like she hadn’t been able to help Nelly Washington with her Panhead. Tabitha wasn’t helping anyone, anywhere.
She was an impostor in every aspect of her own life.
Nora pulled a Zippo from her pocket and flipped it open. “How do you know?” She ran her thumb over the wheel, making a clicking sound with the lighting mechanism without actually bringing the flame to life.
“I’m…” Tabitha sighed and faced the blank expressions of the women. “I’m giving the men erections.”
A round of silence passed.
“I’ve done it three times now, to three different men. So it’s not like a one-off. I’m doing something wrong.”
“Man,” Delaney said, shaking her head. “It’s always the quiet ones.”
Wyatt gave off a loud woof and everyone burst into laughter.
“Well.” Nora stuck the cigarette behind her ear and jammed the lighter in the front pocket of her jeans. “Au contraire, but I bet those men think you’re doing something right.”
“We’re definitely not supposed to get erections,” Tabitha insisted. All three men had reacted differently. Todd—young, indifferent, thought massage therapy would be an easy career field—had pretended it didn’t happen. Frank—in his forties, quiet, deliberate—had been embarrassed and would no longer make eye contact with Tabitha in class. Corbin—a loud twentysomething who called everyone dude—had eyed his own erection with detached interest and announced, “You’re doing something wrong, dude.”
Delaney shook her head. “Men are just like that. The wind blows and their dicks get hard. I wouldn’t be so down on yourself.”
“I already struggle with the science. Like right now we’re learning all the bones, with all their divots and ridges and stuff. It’s excruciating and not coming easily to me,” Tabitha said. “And now I’m screwing up the massages. I’m starting to think I’m just not cut out for it.” Just like I’m not cut out for this bike shop, she didn’t add. She already knew Delaney had given her the job out of pity. No need to shine a spotlight.
“Sounds like the bones are coming easily to you,” Nora muttered as she collected today’s paperwork from the counter and started to file it away. “You’ll be the most requested massage girl in the county. I don’t see what the big problem is.”
Delaney stifled a laugh. “Don’t listen to her. Ask Red about it later. We have the Halloween party, remember?”
The party. Tabitha died a little inside. “Right. The party. Tonight.” But Delaney was right. Tonight she could ask Constance, “Red” for short, the famous massager of humans and dogs alike, about the erections. See what advice she had to give. She’d been the one to talk Tabitha into massage school in the first place, claiming Tabitha had a gift for connecting with people. She was connecting, all right. Just not in the way she meant to.
Delaney grinned and slapped her on the shoulder. “Go home and get some Smoosh Time with your dog, Steele. Rest up. We’ll figure out the boners later.”
Elysia Whisler is the author of RESCUE YOU and other coming titles in the Dogwood County series. She was raised in Texas, Italy, Alaska, Mississippi, Nebraska, Hawai’i and Virginia, in true military fashion. Her nomadic life made storytelling a compulsion from a young age. Her work as a massage therapist and a CrossFit trainer informs her stories. She lives in Virginia with her family, including her large brood of cat and dog rescues, who vastly outnumber the humans.
Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for THE LAST OF THESEVEN by Steven Hartov on the HTP Books Summer Historical Fiction Blog Tour.
Below you will find an about the book section, my book review, an excerpt from the book, an about the author section and the author’s social media links. Enjoy!
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About the Book
A spellbinding novel of World War II based on the little-known history of the “X Troop” – a team of European Jews who escaped the Continent only to join the British Army and return home to exact their revenge on Hitler’s military.
A lone soldier wearing a German uniform stumbles into a British military camp in the North African desert with an incredible story to tell. He is the only survivor of an undercover operation meant to infiltrate a Nazi base, trading on the soldiers’ perfect fluency in German. For this man is not British born but instead a German Jew seeking revenge for the deaths of his family back home in Berlin.
As the Allies advance into Europe, the young lieutenant is brought to Sicily to recover, where he’s recruited by a British major to join to newly formed “X Troop,” a commando unit composed of German and Austrian Jews, training for a top-secret mission at a nearby camp in the Sicilian hills. They are all “lost boys,” driven not by patriotism but by vengeance. Drawing on meticulous research into this unique group of soldiers, The Seventh Commando is a lyrical, propulsive historical novel perfect for readers of Mark Sullivan, Robert Harris, and Alan Furst.
THE LAST OF THE SEVEN by Steven Hartov is an emotionally intense WWII historical fiction story featuring the fictional portrayal of a member of the historical “X Troop” who were a group of European Jews trained for covert operations by the British Army and sent behind enemy lines.
Lieutenant Bernard Froelich stumbles upon a British military camp wounded, dehydrated and barely alive after having escaped a Nazi camp in North Africa. He has traveled across the desert on an unbelievable journey. He is the only survivor of an undercover operation.
This is the story of Froelich’s odyssey of survival, loss, love, and vengeance as a Jew of German origin during WWII. The author paints beautiful and at times stark word pictures of every location of Froelich’s journey. I felt as though I was right along with him in every location and in every harrowing scene were he could have been killed. The author’s extensive research is evident throughout the story. I felt this story is important for readers to realize that there were Jewish commandos fighting the Nazis even as they faced antisemitism from some in the British army they served bravely.
I highly recommend this historical fiction based on an amazing troop of men during WWII.
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Excerpt
CHAPTER ONE
North Africa, Spring 1943
In the Sahara, the sun could make a man bleed.
It was hard to believe at first, especially if you’d ever trekked a frigid winter landscape somewhere, boots slogging through alpine snow, limbs shivering and aching bone deep. It was a challenge to imagine it, such a murderous sun, when December memory recalled teeth chattering like a Morse code key, toes and fingers numbed and raw, eyebrows stiff with frost, till all at once that blessed star emerged from charcoal clouds to save the day.
The sun was a holy thing then. The breath of God on your frozen face.
Ah, but in the vastness of that empty desert, when spring fell prey to cruel summer, when the cloudless sky was nothing but a silver mirror, the sand an iron griddle, and there was not a tree or cave or cactus to throw a shadow’s sliver. Nowhere to run from the sun. It was then that heaven’s jewel became a hunting thing, its furnace eye unblinking, merciless, and pounding.
You could shade your skull with a cap, drape your blistered neck with burlap, but still you had to see your path as your squinting eyes filled with flies who’d found the only liquid in the land. The lancing light bounced off the dunes to slowly broil your face, lips turned plaster white and split, and the oils of your nose and cheeks fried patches there like poultry on a spit. And then, the crow’s-feet wrinkles at the corners of your bleary vision turned to brittle parchment, until at last they cracked, and the most unnatural happened…
The man across the dunes was weeping tears of brine and blood. But they were not of sorrow or self-pity, for all of his emotions had hollowed out so many weeks ago. They were simply the last vestiges of all the fluid he had left, squeezed from the ducts by that relentless sun.
He was small there in the distance, and nearly weightless now, though from the way he moved it seemed he wore a yoke of iron. He was no more than an upthrust child’s thumb against the umber sands, shimmering in the steaming light of the fata morgana, an illusion where horizon met the sky.
He wore a Bedouin burnoose, tight about his oily blond curls and rough against his bristled jaw. His German staff sergeant’s tunic was girded with white salt lines of evaporated sweat, a single bandolier of ammunition, and the lanyard of a camel skin water bladder, now shriveled like an ancient’s scrotum, nothing left. One Feldwebel rank was on his collar, his Afrika Korps palm-tree shoulder patch was bleached into a ghost, and in one pocket were two lizard tails he’d chewed from time to time, though all the meat was spent. The right waist of his tunic was punched through with a bullet hole, its fringes black with dried blood, and in the left thigh of his trousers was another one just like it, the reason for his crooked limp.
In his dangling right hand, below a ragged sleeve, he clutched a German MP40 Schmeisser machine pistol, barrel down, its leather strap dragging through the sand. His left hand held nothing, the nut-brown fingers capped with broken nails with which he’d tried and failed to dig some water from the heart of a dying oasis. His breaths rattled like an asthmatic’s, yet he came on, another half an hour, another mile.
A pair of British soldiers from Montgomery’s Eighth Army watched him. They knelt behind a berm of sandbags, Tommy helmets buckled tight, sleeves rolled up and neat, shorts revealing sun-browned thighs above knee socks and tanker’s boots. They were alone, the western guards of a garrison south of Medenine, Tunisia, and they raised their bayoneted Enfield rifles to bear down on the stranger, like twins who often read each other’s minds.
At twenty feet the German sergeant stopped, unmoving, only breathing. The Cockney Tommy on the left aimed the rifle at his chest.
“Drop the bloody Schmeisser.”
The German jolted, as if surprised to hear a voice aside from his own mutterings to himself, unsure if these two Brits were real or cruel mirage. Yet he obeyed, as after all he knew it didn’t matter. The machine pistol was choked with grit and only the first shell would have fired. He opened his fingers and let the gun slip, like the hand of a dying lover, and it fell to the sand and was still.
The Tommy on the right said, “Hände hoch.” Hands up. He was a Scot and it came out as “Handerr hook.”
The German tried, but he couldn’t raise his arms higher than his waist, and his leather palms fluttered there above the sand like a maestro urging his musicians to play the passage pianissimo. His cracked lips formed a trembling “O,” though no sound emerged, and he mouthed Water, and then again—a goldfish with its face pressed to the glass of an aquarium. The Scot, keeping his Enfield trained, pulled a tin canteen from his battle harness.
“Don’t go near him, Robbie,” warned the Tommy on the left.
The Scot pitched the water bottle, cricket-style, where it pinged against a rock before the German’s boots. But the man could hardly bend his wounded leg and leaned in half a fencer’s lunge, snatching the canteen two-handed. He unscrewed the cap and brought it, shaking, to his mouth, and raised his face to heaven as the water gushed into his swollen gullet and dribbled from his filthy beard. His body trembled, and he looked at the two men and said, in nearly perfect British English, “I am not a German.”
The Tommies glanced at one another, then back at their intruder.
“You don’t say, Klaus?” the Cockney said to him.
“Looks like a bleedin’ Jerry to me, Harry,” the Scot growled to his partner.
“He’s bleedin’ all right, mate,” said Harry sideways. “Got a couple of nicks.”
“Nicks?” Robbie snorted. “Coupla hefty caliber holes. Can hardly see `em for the flies.”
Cockney Harry craned his neck to peer beyond the German’s head.
“You all alone, mate?”
“Six others,” the German managed in a brittle whisper.
“Don’t see ’em.”
“All dead.”
“Right,” said Robbie. “And where’d ye come from then?”
The German dropped the canteen. His fingers wouldn’t hold it.
“Borj el-Khadra, by way of Tobruk.”
“Bollocks,” Harry spat. “That’s three hundred miles.” He thrust his buckled chin above the sea of endless dunes. “Across that.”
For a long moment, the trio regarded one another like drunkards sizing up opponents for a brawl. The Tommies watched the German’s hands, for they hadn’t searched him yet, while for his part he struggled to stay upright. Cockney Harry gestured at Robbie the Scot, but only with his head.
“Fire the Very pistol, Robbie. Green flare, not red. Let’s have the captain up here for a chat.”
Aside from Robbie’s flare, which arced into the silver sky and fell to earth somewhere, the trio stayed immobile until at last a throaty engine loomed. A four-wheeled open command car appeared from the north, its peeling fuselage bristling with petrol jerrycans, pickaxes, and Bren light machine guns snouted at the sky. It spewed a cloud of dust as it hove to and an officer dismounted, his captain’s cap stained with sweat, Webley pistol lanyarded to a holster. His left hand tapped a swagger stick against his muscled calf while his right fingers smoothed a short mustache. His large driver followed close, hefting a Thompson submachine gun.
The captain ambled up and stopped, his bloodshot eyes squinting at the strange tableau. Robbie the Scot turned and dipped his helmet brim, but Harry kept his rifle trained, and there were no salutes.
“What’s all this then, lads?” the captain said.
“Captured us an Afrika Korps infiltrator, sir,” said Harry.
“Sneaky desert serpent,” Robbie sneered.
“Good show then.” The captain nodded and scanned the prisoner head to foot. “Right. Summon a firing party.”
Harry turned and looked at his commander.
“Execution, sir?”
“Affirmative, Corporal.” The captain flicked his stick toward a distant rise. “And let’s stake his corpse on that hill. Perhaps it shall keep the other vultures at bay.”
“Yessir,” said the captain’s driver, and he turned back for the car to muster up a firing squad.
The captain wasn’t barbarous, but more than worn and weary, and his men were not quite sure if he was serious or bluffing. In the past few weeks, despite the routing of the Germans in the westward push for Tunisia, spies of every kind had probed his lines, including one Bedouin woman. They were often followed by marauding Stuka fighter-bombers. He’d lost four men, most painfully his major whom he’d buried and replaced, and had a fifth now dying in a tent, legless and weeping for his mother. So much, he thought, for Erwin Rommel’s “Krieg ohne Hass,” war without hate.
“I am not a German.” The intruder spoke again, and his voice spasmed with the effort.
The captain raised his chin. His driver stopped and turned. The prisoner’s accent was British, yet with a certain Berlin curl.
“That’s quite a claim,” the captain said, “given your costume.”
“He told us that shite too, sir,” said Robbie.
“Says he hoofed it from Borj el-Khadra,” Harry said. “By way of Tobruk, no less.”
The captain raised a palm to hush his men and squinted at the prisoner.
“What are you, then?”
The prisoner tried to swallow. The water hadn’t been enough. It would never be enough. His body quaked in feverish ripples now, his ragged clothing fluttering like gosling feathers. It was the proximity of rescue, now turned to sudden death, coupled with his famish, thirst, and wounds.
“SIG,” he said, tunneling in his delirium for the words. “Combined Operations.”
The captain raised an eyebrow. Harry asked him, “What’s ess-eye-gee, sir?”
“Special Interrogation Group.” The captain stroked his mustache corners. “Top secret commando unit, attached to LRDG and SAS. Mostly German Jews, but they were all killed at Tobruk, and that was many months ago.”
“Not I,” the prisoner croaked. His right hand reached into his tunic. The captain fumbled for his Webley and the Tommies’ Enfields stiffened, as the prisoner fetched a pair of British identification disks, one green, one amber, like autumn leaves on a threadbare lanyard, and they fell against his chest.
The captain glanced at them, and at the hollow bearded face again.
“Tobruk, you say. And where’ve you been since then…allegedly?”
“Captured. Escaped a month ago, or two, perhaps, I think.”
“You think.” The captain closed his fists and put them to his garrison belt. “And why, pray tell, if you were in this uniform, were you not executed as a spy? Those are Hitler’s orders, after all.”
“Because I had tea with Erwin Rommel,” the prisoner said, yet without a hint of irony that the German field marshal would have thusly intervened.
“Had a pint meself with Churchill just last week,” the captain’s driver quipped. The Tommies laughed, but the captain didn’t. There was something in the prisoner’s eyes—a sincerity of madness, or truth.
“What’s your name and rank?” he asked.
“Froelich, Bernard, second lieutenant.” He pronounced his given name as “Bern-udd” and his rank as “left-tenant.” Then he added, “Six seven two, four five seven.”
The captain produced a small pad and pencil from his tunic pocket—ink was useless in the desert. He wrote the details down, tore the page off and flicked it over his shoulder for the driver, his eyes never leaving the desperate gleaming blue ones there before him. They were bleeding from the ducts, but he’d seen that once or twice before.
“Sergeant Stafford,” he ordered, “take this to the wireless tent and have Binks get onto Cairo. Tell them we’ll need our answer double quick.”
The driver sped off amidst a cloud of dust, but his return was far from quick. A grueling fifteen minutes passed, while the prisoner teetered on his feet. He could no longer keep his head erect, and he fought to stay awake and straight. He told himself he’d stood this way before, for hours in formations, and he dredged up images of bucolic pleasures, the Danube and the Rhine, and even Galilee. He longed for rain and felt its kisses on his face, while rivulets of something else crawled down his beard and touched the corners of his mouth. But he tasted only brine, and then the armored car returned.
He raised his chin as the driver handed back the paper to the captain, who perused it, then spoke again.
“Lieutenant Froelich, if that’s you,” he said, “do you remember your last passwords?”
“I shall try,” the prisoner whispered as he stumbled through his memory, unsure if he could find the thing to save him from a bullet.
“If I said Rothmans cigarettes,” the captain posed, “what would you say?”
The prisoner’s sunburned brow creased deeply like a cutlass scar.
“I’d tell you I don’t like them, sir…that I fancy Players Navy Cut instead.”
The captain nodded, and offered his first thin smile of the week.
“That is correct.”
And Froelich slumped to his knees in the sand, a collapsed marionette, strings cut. And then he slipped from consciousness and toppled forward, knuckles in the desert, his palms turned up to the sun he hated.
“Fetch a stretcher, lads,” the captain said. “It’s him. He’s the last of them. He’s the seventh.”
Excerpted from My Last of the Seven @ 2022 by Steven Hartov, used with permission by Hanover Square Press.
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About the Author
Steven Hartov is the coauthor of the New York Times bestseller In the Company of Heroes, as well as The Night Stalkers and Afghanistan on the Bounce. For six years he served as Editor-in-Chief of Special Operations Report. He has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, FOX, and most recently the History Channel’s Secret Armies. A former Merchant Marine sailor, Israeli Defense Forces paratrooper and special operator, he is currently a Task Force Commander in the New York Guard. He lives in New Jersey.
Today I am Sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for EDGE OF DUSK by Colleen Coble 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 Kingsumo giveaway. Good luck on the giveaway and enjoy!
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Book Description
Even though secrets lie off the coast of Rock Harbor, the truth will set Annie Pederson free—if it doesn’t kill her first.
Nine-year-old Annie Pederson’s life changed the night her sister was kidnapped. The two had been outside playing on a dock, and Annie never forgave herself for her role in her sister’s disappearance. Twenty-four years later and now a law enforcement ranger, Annie is still searching for answers as she grieves a new loss: the death of her husband and parents in a boating accident.
But Annie and her eight-year-old daughter, Kylie, aren’t the only people in the town of Rock Harbor whose lives have been marred by tragedy. While managing the property around the Tremolo Resort and Marina she inherited, Annie discovers a dead body floating in the cold Superior surf and begins to work with the sheriff’s office to tie the death to a series of other mysterious reports in the area.
At the same time, her first love, Jon Dustan, returns after nine years away, reigniting the town’s memory of a cold case he’d been suspiciously linked to before he left to pursue his orthopedic residency. For the sake of her investigation and her heart, Annie tries to stay away. But avoiding Jon becomes impossible once Annie realizes she is being targeted by someone desperate to keep secrets from the past hidden.
In this new series, bestselling romantic-suspense author Colleen Coble returns to one of her most beloved towns, where familiar faces—and unsolved cases—await.
Genre: Romantic Suspense Published by: Thomas Nelson Publication Date: July 12th 2022 Number of Pages: 352 ISBN: 078525370X (ISBN13: 9780785253709) Series: Annie Pederson #1
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My Book Review
RATING: 3.5 out of 5 Stars
EDGE OF DUSK (An Annie Pederson Novel Book #1) by Colleen Coble is the start of a new suspense series featuring a female ranger with romantic and Christian elements. This book has some characters carried over from Ms. Coble’s other books set in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, but I did not feel as though I needed any back story or was missing anything.
Annie Penderson was only nine-year-old when she and her younger sister, Laura were attacked as children. Annie was stabbed and left for dead while Laura was kidnapped from the dock of their Upper Peninsula home and never found. Twenty-four years later, Annie is a LEO ranger who still feels guilty for not protecting her sister and continues to search for her, while also being a single mother after the boating accident which killed both her husband and her parents.
While maintaining on the side the Tremolo Resort and Marina her parents left her, Annie finds a dead floating by the docks. It is the body of a missing hiking/camper, and he is not the first in the area to go missing.
At the same time, Dr. Jon Dustan returns to the area to sell his family’s summer cabin after his father’s stroke. Jon was Annie first love, but after a fight that tore them apart and suspicions from long ago tying him to two missing girls, he left the area for college. Annie wants to protect her heart, but when the missing girls’ bodies are discovered in an old cabin on the resort lands, it throws the two together again in hopes of solving the mystery once and for all.
This book has a lot happening in multiple plot lines. Some questions are answered in this book and others are set up to be continued in future books in the series. I liked the multiple mysteries and trying to figure out if they were connected or not. I did not feel the ending of the missing hikers/campers case was believable especially when you discover who else was complicit in the cover-up. I am interested enough to continue with the series to discover other solutions to the unsolved mysteries though. The Christian elements were minimal. The romantic elements had a few problems for me. I do not like when a misunderstanding lasts for almost an entire story, when the two supposed grown-ups can sit down and discuss their feelings sooner. This made it difficult for me to really connect with Annie and Jon who appear to be carrying this series forward.
Overall, this was an OK start to this new series. It has a few problems for me, but I do want to continue reading to discover where the cliff-hanger to one of the many mysteries leads.
***
Excerpt
PROLOGUE
“WAS THAT THE WINDIGO?” NINE-YEAR-OLD ANNIE
Vitanen yanked her little sister’s hand to pull her to a stop in the deep shadows of the pines. Chills trickled down her spine, and she stared into the darkness. “Did you hear that?”
“It was just the loons,” Sarah said. “Daddy said there’s no such thing as the Windigo.”
Annie shuddered. “You’re only five—you don’t know that.” While at school she’d heard the story about the fifteen-foot- tall monster who ate humans. Annie peered into the shadows, searching for sunken red eyes in a stag skull staring back at her. The Windigo particularly liked little girls to fill its hungry belly. Sarah tugged her hand free. “Daddy said it was just an old Ojibwa legend. I want to see the loons.”
She took off down the needle-strewn path toward the water.
Annie’s heart seized in her throat. “Sarah, wait!”
Daddy had always told Annie she was responsible for her little sister, and she didn’t want to get in trouble when their parents found out they were out here in the dark. Sarah had begged to come out to see the loons, and Annie found it hard to say no to her. This was the first time they’d been to their little camp on Tremolo Island since the summer started, and it might be a long time before they had time to visit again. Daddy only brought them to get away when he had a lull at the marina. Annie loved it here, even if there wasn’t any power.
Her legs pumped and her breath whooshed in and out of her mouth. She emerged into the moonlight glimmering over Lake Superior. Her frantic gaze whipped around, first to make sure the Windigo hadn’t followed them, then to find her sister.
Sarah sat on the wooden dock with her legs dangling over the waves. Lightning flickered in the distance, and Annie smelled rain as it began to sprinkle. Clouds hung low over the water, and the darkness got thicker.
“We need to go back, Sarah.” While they could still find their way in the storm.
“I want to throw bread to the loons.” Sarah gave her a piece of the bread they’d gotten from the kitchen.
Annie jumped when the loon’s eerie yodel sounded. The oo-AH-ho sound was like no other waterfowl or bird. Normally she loved trying to determine whether the loon was yodeling, wailing, or calling, but right now she wanted to get her sister back into bed before they got in big trouble. They both knew better than to come down here by themselves. Mommy had warned them about the dangers more times than Annie could count.
She touched her sister’s shoulder. “Come on, Sarah.”
Sarah shrugged off her hand. “Just a minute. Look, the loon has a baby on its back.”
Annie had to see that. She threw in a couple of bread pieces and peered at the loons. “I’ve never seen that.”
“Me neither.”
The loons didn’t eat the bread, but she giggled when a big fish gulped down a piece right under their feet.
When she first heard the splashing, she thought it signaled more loons. But wait. Wasn’t that the sound of oars slapping the water? A figure in a dark hoodie sat in the canoe. Did the Windigo ride in a canoe?
The canoe bumped the dock, and a voice said, “Two to choose from. It doesn’t get much better than that.”
The voice was so cheerful, Annie wasn’t afraid. Before she could try to identify who it was, a hard hand grabbed her and dragged her into the canoe. “I think the younger one would be better.”
The sudden, sharp pain in Annie’s neck made her cry out, and she slapped her hand against her skin. Something wet and sticky clung to her fingers. In the next instant, she was in the icy water. The shock of the lake’s grip made her head go under.
She came up thrashing in panic and spitting water. Her legs wouldn’t kick very well, and she felt dizzy and disoriented. She tried to scream for Daddy, but her mouth wouldn’t work. Her neck hurt something awful, and she’d never felt so afraid.
She’d been right—it was the Windigo, and he meant to eat her sister.
“Sarah!” Annie’s voice sounded weak in her ears, and the storm was here with bigger waves churning around her. “Run!”
Her sister shrieked out her name, and Annie tried to move toward the sound, but a wave picked her up and tossed her against a piling supporting the dock. Her vision went dark, and she sank into the cold arms of the lake.
The next thing she knew, she was on her back, staring up into the rain pouring into her face. Her dad’s hand was on the awful pain in her neck, and her mother was screaming for Sarah.
She never saw her sister again.
ONE
TWENTY-FOUR YEARS LATER
LAW ENFORCEMENT RANGER ANNIE PEDERSON RUBBED
her eyes after staring at the computer screen for the past two hours. She’d closed the lid on an investigation into a hit-and-run in the Kitchigami Wilderness Preserve, and she’d spent the past few hours finishing paperwork. It had been a grueling case, and she was glad it was over.
“I’ll be right back,” she told her eight-year-old daughter, Kylie, sitting on the floor of her office playing Pokémon Go on her iPad.
Kylie’s blonde head, so like Annie’s own, bobbed, too intent to respond verbally.
Kade Matthews looked up when Annie entered his office. Over the past few years he’d moved up and become head ranger. Kade’s six-feet-tall stocky frame and solid muscles exuded competence, and his blue eyes conveyed caring. Annie thanked the Lord every day for such a good boss. He was understanding when she needed time off with Kylie, and he let her know he valued her work and expertise. “Ready for a few days off?”
“Really? With all this work on your shoulders?”
He nodded. “I can handle it. I know this is a busy time for you.”
“I do have a lot of work to do out at the marina.”
Since her parents and husband died two years ago, she’d been tasked with running the Tremolo Marina and Cabin Resort. She managed with seasonal help and lots of her free time, but summer was always grueling. It was only June 3, and the season was off to a good start.
He cleared his throat, and his eyes softened. “I’m glad you stopped in. I didn’t want to send this report without talking to you first.”
“What report?” Her tongue felt thick in her mouth because she knew the likely topic.
“A child’s remains were found down around St. Ignace.”
It didn’t matter that it was so far. That route could have easily been chosen by the kidnapper. It was a common way to travel from lower Michigan to the U.P. “How old?”
“Five or six, according to the forensic anthropologist. I assume you want your DNA sent over for comparison?”
“Yes, of course.”
They’d been through this scenario two other times since she’d begun searching for answers, and each time she’d teetered between hope and despair. While she wanted closure on what had happened to her sister, she wasn’t sure she was ready to let go of hope. Though logically she knew her sister had to be dead. People didn’t take children except for nefarious purposes. Annie didn’t know how she’d react when word finally came that Sarah had been found.
Relief? Depression? Maybe a combination of the two. Maybe even a tailspin that would unhinge her. All these years later, and she still couldn’t think about that night without breaking into a cold sweat. Avoidance had been her modus operandi. Not many even knew about the incident. Kade did, of course. And Bree. Jon too. Probably some of the townspeople remembered and talked about it, too, but it had been long ago. Twenty-four years ago.
Nearly a quarter of a century and yet just yesterday. “How long before results are back on DNA?”
“Probably just a few days. With children they try to move quickly. I’ll get it sent over. You doing okay?”
She gave a vigorous nod. “Sure, I’m fine. I’ll file this report and get these pictures sent to you.”
“Bree told me to ask if you wanted a puppy, one of Samson’s.
There’s a male that looks just like him.”
She smiled just thinking of her daughter’s delight. “Kylie has been begging for a puppy since we lost Belle. How much are they going for?”
The little terrier had died in her sleep a month ago at age sixteen, and they both missed her. Samson was a world-renowned search-and-rescue dog, and his pups wouldn’t come cheap. She ran through how much she had in savings. Maybe not enough.
“We get two free pups, and Bree told me she would give you one.” “You don’t want to do that,” she protested. “You’d be giving up a lot of money.”
He shrugged. “We have everything we need. Head over there in the next few days, and you can take him home with you before our kids get too attached and bar the front door.”
She laughed. “Hunter says he’s marrying Kylie, so I think he will stick up for her.”
Kade and Bree’s little boy was four and adored Kylie. She was good with kids, and she loved spending time with the Matthews twins.
“You’re right about that. I’ll let Bree know you want him. He’s a cute little pup.”
“What are you doing with the other one?” “Lauri has claimed her.”
Kade’s younger sister was gaining a reputation for search-and- rescue herself, and she already had a dog. “What about Zorro?”
“He’s developed diabetes, and Lauri knows he needs to slow down some. She wants a new puppy to train so Zorro can help work with him.”
“She might want the one that looks like Samson.” “She wants a female this time.”
She glanced at her watch and rose. “I’ll get out of here. Thanks again for the puppy. Kylie will be ecstatic.”
She went back to her office. “Time for your doctor appointment, Bug.”
Kylie made a face. “I don’t want to go.”
At eight, Kylie knew her own mind better than Annie knew hers most days. She was the spitting image of Annie at the same age: corn silk–colored hair and big blue eyes set in a heart-shaped face. But Annie had never been that sure of herself. Her dad’s constant criticism had knocked that out of her.
She steered her daughter out the brick office building to the red Volkswagen crew-cab truck in the parking lot, then set out for town.
The old truck banged and jolted its way across the potholes left by this year’s massive snowfall until Annie reached the paved road into town. She couldn’t imagine living anywhere other than where the Snow King ruled nine months of the year. There was no other place on earth like Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. With the Keweenaw Peninsula to the north and Ottawa National Forest to the south, there could be no more beautiful spot in the world. Her devotion to this place had cost her dearly nine years ago, but every time she saw the cold, crystal-clear waters of the northernmost Great Lakes stretching to the horizon, she managed to convince herself it was worth it.
Part of the town’s special flavor came from the setting. Surrounded by forests on three sides, it had all the natural beauty anyone could want. Old-growth forests, sparkling lakes where fish thronged, and the brilliant blue of that Big Sea Water along the east side.
They drove through town, down Negaunee to Houghton Street to the businesses that comprised Rock Harbor’s downtown. The small, quaint village had been built in the 1850s when copper was king, and its Victorian-style buildings had been carefully preserved by the residents.
Dr. Ben Eckright’s office was a remodeled Victorian boardinghouse on the corner of Houghton and Pepin Streets. She parked in his side lot and let Kylie out of the back.
She glanced across the street to the law office, and her breath caught at the man getting out of the car. It couldn’t be. She stared at the sight of a familiar set of shoulders and closed her eyes a moment. Opening them didn’t reassure her. It really was him.
Jon Dunstan stood beside a shiny red Jaguar. Luckily, he hadn’t seen her yet, and she grabbed Kylie’s hand and ran with her for the side door, praying he wouldn’t look this way. She was still trembling when the door shut behind her.
Excerpt from Edge of Dusk by Colleen Coble. Copyright 2022 by Colleen Coble. Reproduced with permission from Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved.
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Author Bio
Colleen Coble is a USA TODAY bestselling author best known for her coastal romantic suspense novels, including The Inn at Ocean’s Edge, Twilight at Blueberry Barrens, and the Lavender Tides, Sunset Cove, Hope Beach, and Rock Harbor series.
Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for THE CODEBREAKER’S SECRET by Sara Ackerman on this HTP Books Summer 2022 Historical Fiction Blog Tour.
Below you will find a book summary, my book review, an excerpt from the book, the author’s bio and social media links. Enjoy!
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Book Summary
Dual-timeline historical fiction for fans of Chanel Cleeton and Beatriz Williams, THE CODEBREAKER’S SECRET is a story of codebreaking, secrets, murder, romance and longing.
1943 HONOLULU
Cryptanalysist Isabel Cooper manuevers herself into a job at Station Hypo after the attack on Pearl Harbor, determined to make a difference in the war effort and defeat the Japanese Army by breaking their coded transmissions. When the only other female codebreaker at the station goes missing, Isabel suspects it has something to do with Operation Vengeance, which took out a major enemy target, but she can’t prove it. And with the pilot she thought she was falling for reassigned to a different front, Isabel walks away from it all.
1965 MAUNA KEA BEACH HOTEL
Rookie journalist Lucy Medeiras has her foot in the door for her dream job when she lands the assignment to cover the grand opening of Rockefeller’s new hotel–the most expensive ever built. The week of celebrations is attended by celebrities and politicians, but Lucy gets off on the wrong foot with a cranky experienced reporter from New York named Matteo Russi. When a high-profile guest goes missing, and the ensuing search uncovers a decades-old skeleton in the lava fields, the story gets interesting, and Lucy teams up with Matteo to look into it. Something in Matteo’s memory leads them on a hunt that involves a senatorial candidate, old codes from WWII, and Matteo’s old flame, a woman named Isabel.
THE CODEBREAKER’S SECRET by Sara Ackerman is an engaging historical fiction/mystery story told in the two intertwining timelines of 1943 and 1965 and both beautifully depicted on the lush Hawaiian Islands. This is a standalone story filled with intrigue, murder, and HEA love.
In 1943, Isabel “Izzy” Cooper has finally realized her dream to work as a codebreaker in Hawaii to avenge her brother’s death when Pearl Harbor was attacked. She meets her brother’s best-friend and pilot, Mateo Russi and as the two share their stories of her brother, they begin to get closer, but Russi has secrets of his own.
In 1965, Luana “Lu” Freitas lands her first big assignment covering the grand opening of Louis Roosevelt’s Mauna Kea Beach Hotel. Lu meets the famous Time magazine photographer, Mateo Russi who give her publishing advice as they become friends. When a famous singer goes missing and is believed dead, Lu and Russi begin to uncover secrets which have ties all the way back to Izzy and her codebreaking during WWII.
I enjoyed both timelines in this story and the mystery conclusion which tied them both together. Izzy and Lu are both strong, intelligent female lead characters. Russi is a man who has been shaped by loss and the war and I loved that he ultimately found peace and his HEA. All the characters were fully fleshed and believable. The plot starts a bit slow, but it does pick up and pulls you in so you cannot put the book down. The author does an amazing job of painting word pictures of Hawaii and the culture which makes for another layer to the story. The WWII history and the descriptions of the codebreaking failures and successes were interesting, also.
This is an intriguing historical fiction read with mystery and romance included.
***
Excerpt
2
THE CODEBREAKER
Washington, DC, September 1942
There was perhaps no more tedious work in the world. Sitting at a desk all day staring at numbers or letters and looking for patterns. Taking notes and making charts. Thinking until your brain ached. For days and weeks and years on end. The extreme concentration drove some to the bottle, others to madness, and yet others to a quiet greatness that less than ten people in the world might ever know about. You might work for a year on cracking a particular code, only to have nothing to show for it but a tic in your eye and a boil on the back of your thigh. Failure was a given. Accept that and you’d won half the battle.
Isabel sat at her desk staring at a page full of rows and columns of five-letter groups that made no sense whatsoever on this side of the world. But on the other side, in Tokyo where the messages originated, she knew that Japanese officials were discussing war plans. War plans that were on this paper. As her eyes scanned the page, she felt the familiar scratching at the subconscious that meant she was close to seeing some kind of pattern. A prick of excitement traveled up her spine.
Suddenly, a hand waved up and down in front of her face, rudely pulling her out of her thoughts. “Isabel, you gotta put a lid on that noise. No one else can do their jobs,” said Lieutenant Rawlings, her new boss.
She forced a smile. “Sorry, sir, most of the time I’m not aware that I’m doing it. I’m—”
“That may be the case but try harder. I don’t want to lose you.”
Isabel had a tendency to hum during her moments of deepest focus, which had gotten her in trouble with her supervisors over the past year and a half while at Main Navy. In fact, she’d been transferred on more than one occasion due to the distracting nature of it. She’d worked hard to stop it, but when she went into that otherworldly state of mind, where everything slid away and the images moved around in her head of their own accord, the humming kicked back in. It would be like asking her not to breathe.
Lately, the whole team had reached a level of frustration that had turned the air in the room sour. Though they’d had success with the old Red machine, this complex supercipher seemed impossible to break. Faith was draining fast.
With her dress plastered to her back, and sucking on the second salt tablet of the day, Isabel put her head down, scribbling notes on her giant piece of paper. September in Washington burned hotter than a brick oven. Thoughts of her brother, Walt, kept interfering with her ability to stay on task. He would have turned twenty-five years old today. Would have been flying around somewhere in the Pacific about now, shooting down enemy planes, and hooting and hollering when he landed his plane full of bullet holes on the flattop. Walt loved nothing more than the thrill of the chase. Every time she thought of him, a lump formed in her throat and she had to fight back the tears. No one had ever, or ever would, love her more than Walt had.
More than anything, Isabel wanted to get to Hawai‘i and see the spot where his plane plunged into the ocean. To learn more about his final days and hear the story straight from the mouths of his buddies. As if that would somehow make her feel better. She rubbed her eyes. For now, she was stuck here in this hellhole of a building, either sweltering or shivering, depending on what time of year it was.
At 1130, her friend Nora waltzed in from a break, looking as though she’d swallowed the cat. Nora had a way of knowing things before everyone else, and Isabel was lucky enough to be stationed at the desk next to hers.
“Spill the beans, lady,” Isabel said quietly.
Nora glanced around the room, dramatically. “Later.”
Most of the team was still out to lunch, save for a couple of girls across the room, and Rawlings behind the glass in his office.
“No one’s even here, tell me now.”
Nora came over and sat on Isabel’s desk, legs crossed. She picked up a manila folder and began fanning herself, then leaned in. “I’ve heard from a very good source that the brass are tossing around names for the lucky—or unlucky, depending on how you look at it—crypto being sent to Pearl.”
Station Hypo at Pearl Harbor was one of the two main codebreaking units in the Pacific. Nora knew how badly Isabel wanted to be there.
Isabel perked up. “Whose names are being tossed?”
“That, I don’t know.”
“Should I remind Rawlings to remind Feinstein that I’m interested?”
“Absolutely not.”
“It couldn’t hurt, could it?” Isabel said.
“Sorry, love, but those men would just as soon send a polar bear to Hawai‘i as a woman,” Nora said.
“You seem to forget that one of the best codebreakers around is female. And the only reason most of our bosses know anything is because she taught them,” Isabel said, speaking softly. This was the kind of talk that could get you moved to the basement. And Isabel did not do well in basements.
“Neither of us is Agnes Driscoll, so just get it out of your head. And even Agnes is not in Hawai‘i,” Nora whispered.
“There has to be a way.”
“Maybe if you dug up a cache of Japanese codebooks. Or said yes to Captain Smythe,” Nora said with a wink.
Nora and Isabel were a study in opposites. Her short red bob had been curled under and sprayed into place, her lips painted fire-engine red. She had a new man on her arm every weekend and walked around in a cloud of French lilac perfume that permeated their entire floor.
“I have no interest in Captain Smythe,” Isabel said.
Hal Smythe was as dull as they came. At least as far as Isabel was concerned. Intelligent and handsome, but sorely lacking any charisma and the ability to make her laugh—one of her main prerequisites in a man. She had no time to waste on uninteresting men. Or men in general, for that matter. There were codes to be cracked and enemies to be defeated.
“Well, then, you’d better pull off something big,” Nora said.
3
THE CELLAR
Indiana, March 1925
Five-year-old Isabel Cooper had just discovered a fuzzy caterpillar in her backyard, and was bent over inspecting its black-and-yellow pattern when a wall of black blotted the sun from the sky. Always a perceptive child, she looked to the source of the darkness. Clouds had bunched and gathered on the far horizon, the color of gunmetal and cinder and ash. Wind swirled her hair in circles. Isabel ran inside as fast as her scrawny legs would carry her.
“Walter, come look! Something weird is happening to the sky,” she yelled, letting the screen door bang behind her.
Walter had just returned home from school, and was standing in the kitchen with two fistfuls of popcorn and more in his mouth. Mom had gone to the grocery store, and Pa worked late every day at the plant, so it was just the two of them home.
Walter wiped his hands on his worn overalls and followed his sister outside. From a young age, Isabel discovered that Walt, three years older, would do just about anything his younger sister asked. By all accounts he was not your average older brother. He never teased, included her on his ramblings in the woods and never shied to put an arm around her when she needed it. Outside, the wind had picked up considerably, bending the old red oak sideways.
Walt stumbled past her and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, gaping. “Jiminy Christmas!”
Daytime had become night.
“What?” Isabel asked.
“Some kind of bad storm a-brewing. Where’s Lady?” Walt asked, looking around.
Their dog, Lady, had been lounging under the tree when Isabel ran inside, but was now nowhere to be seen. “I don’t know.”
“We better get into the shelter. I don’t like the looks of this.”
“I need Lady.”
The air had been as still as a morning lake, but suddenly a distant boom shook the sky. Moisture collected on their skin, dampening Isabel’s shirt.
“Lady!” they cried.
But Lady didn’t appear.
Walt held up his arm. “See this? My hair is standing up darn near straight. We gotta get under.”
Isabel looked at her arms, which felt tingly and strange. Instead of following her brother to the storm cellar, she ran to the other side of the house.
“Lady!” she yelled again, with a kind of wild desperation that tore at the inside of her throat.
A moment later, Walt scooped her up and tucked her under his arm. “Sorry, but we can’t wait anymore. She’ll have to fend for herself.”
Isabel kicked and punched at the air as they moved toward the cellar. “Put me down!”
Walt ignored her and kept running. His skin was sticky, his breath ragged. They had only used the cellar a couple times for storms, but on occasion Isabel helped her mother change out food supplies. The place gave her the creeps.
“What about Mom? We have to wait for her,” she said.
“Mom will know where to find us.”
In the distance, an eerie whistle rose from the earth. Seconds later, the wind picked up again, this time blowing the tree in the other direction. From the clouds, an ink black thing stuck out below. Walt yanked open the door, threw Isabel inside and fumbled around in the dark for a moment before finding the light. Roots crawled through cracks in the brick walls. They went down the steep stairs, Isabel’s face wet with tears and snot.
“Come, sit with me,” Walt said, pulling her against him on the old bench Pa had built.
Warmth flowed out of him like honey, and she instantly felt better. But then she thought about Lady and her mother, who were out there somewhere. Her whole body started shaking. Soon, a rumble sent vibrations through the wall and into Isabel’s teeth. Too scared to cry, she dug her fingers into Walt’s arm and hung on for dear life. Suddenly, a frantic scratching came from above.
Isabel jumped up, but Walt stopped her. “You stay down here.”
Walt climbed to the top and opened the door. The wind took it and slammed it down hard. A loud barking ensued, and Walt fought with the door again, finally managing to get it open and bring Lady inside. The air possessed a ferocity Isabel had never seen before.
Lady immediately ran down the steps and started licking Isabel’s arms and legs, and spinning in circles at her feet. Isabel hugged the big dog with all her might, burying her face in Lady’s long golden fur. When Walt came back down, the three of them huddled together as a roar louder than a barreling freight train filled their ears. Soon, Lady began panting.
Walt squeezed Isabel’s hand. “It’s okay, we’re safe down here.”
He had to yell to be heard. And then the light went out. Darkness filled every crack and crevice. The earth groaned. The door above rattled so fiercely that she was sure it would fly off at any moment. All Isabel could think about was her mother out there somewhere in this tempest. Soon, her lungs were having a hard time taking air in.
“I can’t breathe,” she finally said.
“It’s just nerves. They act up in times like these.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I had it happen before.”
She took his word for it, because it was hard to talk above the noise of the storm, and because Walt always knew what he was talking about. Then, directly overhead, they heard a sky-splitting crack and a thundering boom. The cellar door sounded ready to cave. Isabel and Walt and Lady moved to the crawl space under the steps. The three of them barely fit, even with Lady in her lap. Lady kissed the tears from Isabel’s face.
Finally, the noise began to recede. When there was no longer any storm sounds, Walt went up the steps with Isabel close behind. He pushed but nothing happened. Pushed again. Still nothing.
“Something must have fallen on it,” he said.
“I have to pee.”
“You’re going to have to wait.”
“I can’t wait.”
Walt banged away on the door with no luck. “Then I guess you have to go in your pants. Sorry, sis.”
Isabel began to grow sure that this was where they would live out the rest of their short lives. That no one had survived the apocalypse outside and they would be left to rot with the earthworms, roots growing through their bodies until they’d been reduced to dirt. Her whole body trembled as Walt spoke consoling words and rubbed her back.
“They’ll find us soon, don’t you fret.”
Lady licked her hand, but Isabel was beyond words, shivering and gulping for air. Every now and then Walt went up to try to push the doors again, but each time, nothing happened. She vowed to herself that she would never, ever be trapped underground again. She’d take her chances with a twister over being entombed any day.
It was more than an hour before someone came to get them. An hour of dark thoughts and silence. In the distance they heard voices, and eventually a pounding on the cellar door. “Are you three in there? It’s Pa,” said a voice.
“Pa!” they both cried.
“We got a big tree down on the door up here. Hang tight, I’ll get you out soon.”
When the doors finally opened, a blinding light shone in. Pa reached his hand in and pulled them out, wrapping them in the biggest hug they’d ever had. Never mind that the old truck was upside down and one side of the house missing.
“Where’s your mother?” Pa said.
“She went to the store,” Walt said.
Pa’s face dropped clear to the ground. “Which store did she say she was goin’ to?”
“She didn’t say, but she left just as soon as I got home from school,” Walt said.
Only half listening, Isabel spun around in disbelief at the chaos of branches and splintered wood and car parts and things that didn’t belong in the yard. Sink. Baby carriage. Bookshelf. It appeared as though the edge of the tornado had gone right over their place, leaving half the house intact, and obliterating the rest.
“Son, stay here with your sister. And stay out of the house until I get back. It might be unstable,” Pa said, running off to his car.
“Mom will be okay, won’t she? The store is safe, isn’t it?” Isabel asked.
“Sure she will. Pa will be back with her soon,” Walt said.
They wandered around the yard, dazed. This far out on the country road, the nearest neighbor, old Mr. Owens, was a mile away. Drained, Isabel sat down and pulled Lady in for a hug. Pa didn’t return for a long time, and when he did, they could tell right away that something was wrong. His eyes were rimmed in red, like he had been crying. And Pa never cried.
“Kids, your mom isn’t coming back.”
That was the first time Isabel Cooper lost the most important person in her life.
Sara Ackerman is a USA TODAY bestselling author who writes books about love and life, and all of their messy and beautiful imperfections. She believes that the light is just as important as the dark, and that the world is in need of uplifting stories. Born and raised in Hawaii, she studied journalism and later earned graduate degrees in psychology and Chinese medicine. She blames Hawaii for her addiction to writing, and sees no end to its untapped stories
Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for THE SHADOW OF THEMOLE by Bob Van Laerhoven on this Black Coffee Book Tour.
Below you will find an about the book section, my book review, an excerpt from the book, an about the author section and the author’s social media links. Enjoy!
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About the Book
1916, Bois de Bolante, France. The battles in the trenches are raging fiercer than ever. In a deserted mineshaft, French sappeurs discover an unconscious man, and nickname him The Mole.
Claiming he has lost his memory, The Mole is convinced that he’s dead, and that an Other has taken his place. The military brass considers him a deserter, but front physician and psychiatrist-in-training Michel Denis suspects that his patient’s odd behavior is stemming from shellshock, and tries to save him from the firing squad.
The mystery deepens when The Mole begins to write a story in écriture automatique that takes place in Vienna, with Dr. Josef Breuer, Freud’s teacher, in the leading role. Traumatized by the recent loss of an arm, Denis becomes obsessed with him, and is prepared to do everything he can to unravel the patient’s secret.
Set against the staggering backdrop of the First World War, The Shadow Of The Mole is a thrilling tableau of loss, frustration, anger, madness, secrets and budding love. The most urgent question in this extraordinary story is: when, how, and why reality shifts into delusion?
Trigger warnings: Realistic wartime violence and death
Goodreads Rating: 4.5 *
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My Book Review
RATING: 4 out of 5 Stars
THE SHADOW OF THE MOLE by Bob Van Laerhoven is a dark and intriguing historical fiction/mystery set in France during WWI featuring a man found with amnesia and the young psychiatrist who wants to uncover his identity.
As the French tunnel beneath the German lines in the Argonne during WWI, a group of diggers discover an unconscious man in a connecting abandoned mining shaft. He is taken to the hospital at the front and when he wakes up, he claims he has no memory. The staff refer to him as “The Mole”.
Michel Denis is a young psychiatrist who volunteered to work at the front and in an explosion loses his arm. He continues to help as much as possible and he becomes intrigued with the man brought in from the tunnel called The Mole. He is determined to uncover his identity and discover how he ended up in the tunnel. The Mole asks for paper and pen and writes his story, but what is the truth?
This story is an intriguing look at the psychological impact of war on the psyche. Everyone in this story deal with the horrors of war but continue to have a grain of hope for the future. I feel this is more literary fiction with the continual psychiatric analysis of The Mole, his writing, and Michel’s thoughts on the self. That is not a negative criticism, just a heads up to readers who are looking for more of a genre style historical mystery. The settings are descriptive and the emotions palpable in both the story as told by Michel in present day and The Mole’s writing of his life. An interesting read.
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Excerpt
Part I
Prologue
’ ’, they murmured, with their heads bowed, a prayer to La Sainte Vierge1. Their voices were soft and solemn, like when they were chil‐ dren. In the shadows, their lanterns sparked the dust into a golden mist, as they hacked their way into the earth.
Jean Dumoulin used to hum softly but melodically during his work in the tunnels. His fellow diggers had nicknamed him ‘the canary’. Of late, he had taken to murmuring the bawdiest beer hall songs he knew, for the frankly insane reason that his regiment, the 13th French Infantry, had received the audacious orders to dig tunnels under the German tunnels at the spot that everybody in the Argonne-region called Fille Morte2.
That day, February 26, 1916, Jean Dumoulin had turned to inventing his own songs. Faced with the threat of German tunnels above him, he sang only in his mind. Dumoulin liked to surprise himself with whatever words came to him. The words made him feel different: not a twenty-six-year-old French soldier clawing away in near darkness, but more like a classic Greek poet, posing with a lyre on a mountain top overlooking a shimmering sea.
3
Dumoulin was crooning Ma bouche sera un enfer de douceur/tu crias ton armée de douleur3, while he used his pick-axe to clear the rubble around the entrance of an old mine gallery they had discovered. He pondered which verse would come next: ton amour armé or ton amour blindé?4
It was then he saw the body lying in the gallery. From time to time, when they were grubbing in the earth, a shovel would uncover a half-buried body. They couldn’t always tell if the stiff was German or French. Often, all that was left was a rotten lump of meat. In spite of the stench and their revulsion, the sappers would try to identify it. Who else would do so? They thought of all the missing men and their anxious relatives and loved ones and they searched the body for anything that could lead to its identification.
“Nom de Dieu,” Dumoulin hissed over his shoulder to his companion Guillaume. “Another stiff. Hope this one doesn’t break in half like the other one.” Neither had actually seen the mummified corpse of a miner, perished years ago in the coal mines, who was said to have cracked in half when tunnel diggers brought it to the surface, but the story was legendary and if you denied it, you were just a cynic.
Cursing under his breath, Jean moved forward. When his hands touched the body, he jerked away as though someone had stabbed him.
4
Chapter One
So softly treads the night.
Standing behind my right shoulder. No breath reaches my skin.
5
Chapter Two
‘ ‘, at the horizon. The Meurisson Valley, home to the field hospital which served the whole region, lay in Bois de Bolante, a low-lying part of the great Argonne woods. Dr Michel Denis walked there through the trenches. The recovery area was crudely constructed – a semi-underground complex harboring medical provisions, ammunition and food storage, bathhouses and a sickbay. Like everyone else who worked there, Denis was curious about the infamous ‘Mole’, and he wanted a closer look. The sappers digging tunnels under the German lines had found the unconscious man, dressed in civvies, in the tunnel of an old charcoal burner. A day later, the man was still unconscious.
In the sickbay, Denis went to the patient’s bed and studied his facial features. Wide ears, a somewhat beaked nose and jowly cheeks, perhaps Semitic. Denis guessed The Mole’s age at about forty-five. Baggy blue skin under the eyes. As he made these observations, Denis came closer and now he stood at the bedside. Startled, he glanced at where his own right arm, severed by a piece of shrapnel, should have been. Involuntarily, he was reaching out with his phantom limb to touch the man’s left leg. All at once, a hail of shells
6
The Shadow Of The Mole
passed over, as though the memory of that shrapnel had provoked the Germans at the north side of the Meurisson Valley. The shells drummed the basement walls with their deafening low thunder. Denis pictured the men in the icy trenches at the front, frantically seeking shelter. Since February 12th, after heavy snowfall, a light thaw had set in. It drenched the trenches with cold, gurgling mud, and inundated the mine corridors, used to infiltrate enemy territory, with melted ice: sluggish, foul-reeking, and copper-coloured.
An explosion shook the basement. Denis looked around him. Rumour had it that the Germans, being technically advanced, had electric lighting in their shelters. The French hospital had to make do with candle lanterns. As a result, bizarre shadows waved on the walls in a slow, undulating rhythm. No wonder the wounded called the hospital le pot de chambre de la France. At the moment, the chamber pot of France was a dazzling phantasmagoria of shapes chasing each other on the walls and the floor. Light and darkness played on The Mole’s face.
In the shadows, the man opened his eyes.
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About the Author
Bob van Laerhoven is a Belgian writer and traveller whose work has been translated into most European languages, as well as Russian and Chinese.
He made his debut as a novelist in 1985 with “Nachtspel – Night Game.” He quickly became known for his colorful, kaleidoscopic novels in which the fate of the individual is closely related to broad social transformations. His style slowly evolved in his later novels to embrace more personal themes while continuing to branch out into the world at large. International flair has become his trademark.
As a travel writer he has explored conflicts and trouble-spots across the globe from the early 1990s to 2004. Echoes of his experiences on the road also trickle through in his novels. During the Bosnian war, Van Laerhoven spent part of 1992 in the besieged city of Sarajevo. Three years later he was working for MSF – Doctors without frontiers – in the Bosnian city of Tuzla during the NATO bombings.
All these experiences contribute to Bob Van Laerhoven’s rich and commendable oeuvre, as the versatile author of novels, travel stories, theatre pieces, biographies, non-fiction, letters, columns, articles…
His work has received many accolades.
The Hercule Poirot Prize for best crime-novel of the year with “De Wraak van Baudelaire – Baudelaire’s Revenge”
Also for Baudelaire’s Revenge, the USA BEST BOOK AWARD 2014 in the category Fiction: mystery/suspense.
“Dangerous Obsessions” was voted “best short story collection of 2015 in The San Diego Book Review.
“Heart Fever” was one of the five finalists – and the only non-American author – of the Silver Falchion Award 2018 in the category “short stories collections.”
“Return to Hiroshima”, was listed in the top ten of international crime novels in 2018 in the British quality review blog “MurderMayhem&More”
“Alejandro’s Lie” was named the best political thriller of 2021 by BestThrillers.com
