2015; 250 pages. Book 5 (out of 7) in the “Dead Red Mystery” series. New Author? : No. Genres : Women Sleuths; Crime Mystery; Arizona.
Overall Rating : 8*/10.
Bosses can be scumbags sometimes. Just ask the cousins Lalla and Pearlie Bains, who
are working for PI Ron Barbour as interns so they can get
their Private Investigator licenses.
Barbour’s business has slacked
off recently, which means Lalla and Pearlie’s slice of the income has shrunk to a meager sum. Now they’ve just
discovered their boss has been hiding cases, and dollars, from them. What a scumbag! They're so angry they could just kill him.
Except that someone has beat
them to the punch… er… slaying. They drive out the Barbour's house to confront him, and catch a glimpse the body of their boss dead on the floor of his house just before the
whole place goes up in smoke. The police soon arrive on the scene, and try to find out who did what to
Barbour.
Say, how come they’re looking at Lalla and
Pearlie so suspiciously? It’s almost as if
they think Lalla and Pearlie might have done it.
What’s To Like...
A Dead Red Miracle
is the fifth book the R.P. Dahlke’s entertaining Dead
Red Mystery series. Pearlie,
Lalla, her husband Caleb, and Lalla’s dad Noah have recently relocated from the fertile
fields of Fresno, California to the desert dryness of Sierra Vista in southern
Arizona.
As mentioned, Lalla and
Pearlie are in the process of applying for their Private Investigator licenses,
which requires some on-the-job training. Their mentor/boss’s demise puts those plans
in jeopardy. But it also gives
them an opportunity to do some serious sleuthing.
The case rapidly become more
complicated. There are several more deaths
to look into, various suspects and material witnesses to track down, and two
youthful delinquents (the Garza brothers) to find suitable foster parents to take care of. Things become so hectic that Lalla and Pearlie have to hire additional help.
The story is told from the first-person point-of-view, Lalla’s. Snarky wit, mixed with friendly banter,
abounds between our two protagonists as they try to determine the
perpetrators. There is a nice bit of
Native American culture blended into the tale, although the genre listed in the Amazon blurb, Native
American Literature, seems a bit of a stretch.
Things build to a suitably
exciting ending, with all of the various plot threads (I
noted ten of them) getting tied up.
The killings are solved mostly by Lalla’s logical thinking along wiht some
fortuitous circumstances. The story closes with a
short but catchy Epilogue involving two pairs of siblings. The sisters Velma and Zelma give our heroes a neat
little plot twist, and the resolution of the Garza brothers’ future will warm
your heart.
Ratings…
Amazon: 4.4*/5, based on 1,429 ratings
and 303 reviews.
Goodreads: 4.14*/5,
based on 709
ratings and 72 reviews.
Excerpts...
“I thought you enjoyed the company of your
landlady.”
“She wants me to become a vegetarian.”
“Sounds like a good idea. You are a heart patient, you know.”
“I’m a secondhand vegetarian. Cows eat grass, I eat the cows, and I’m going
to continue to enjoy eating that way till I die, thank you very much.” (loc. 1014)
“If you can’t pay your rent, we have a
spare couch.”
“Ew-w-w.
I’m not that poor.”
“Since we’re talking about men, how was
your date with the trainer from the gym?”
Pearlie’s mouth twitched. “Just because a man has Genius printed
on his T-shirt, doesn’t mean he is one.”
I grinned.
“Not hunky enough to ignore his IQ, huh?”
“Not
if he was wrapped in bacon and came with his own trust fund.” (loc. 1814)
Kindle Details…
A
Dead Red Miracle sells for $4.99 right now at Amazon. The other six books in the series cost either
$3.99 (first and last books) or $4.99 (the rest of
them). R.P. Dahlke has three other
e-books available, ranging in price from $3.54 to $3.99. Two are part of a romantic
sailing mystery trilogy, the third, and most recent, is a paranormal mystery.
“Damian broke into
your office again and you reward him with a job?” “We’re short-handed.” (loc. 1967)
The cussing is pleasingly
sparse, just five instances in the first 20%, plus one racial epithet later
on. I love it when an author doesn’t
have to resort to excessive foul language to set a scene.
My main gripe is my usual one
for this series. The editing is
atrocious, and seemed to get worse as the book progressed. The typos included: Ifinally/I finally; waived/waved, sixty’s/sixties,
gapped/gasped, and the embarrassing Barber/Barbour;
and Damion’s/Damian’s, just to name a
few. There were also occasional missing
words and/or misplaced plurals, plus one continuity issue – referencing a
person who wasn’t present.
But if you don't let the errata bother you, you’ll find A Dead Red Miracle to be
an engaging tale where character development is just as important as the
whodunit aspect. The book kept my
interest throughout, which was also true of the first four books in this
series.
8 Stars. At 250 pages, A Dead Red Miracle was still a novel of acceptable length, but Book 6, A Dead Red Gamble, drops off to 179 pages, and Book 7, A Dead Red Horse Thief, is a mere novella-length 119 pages. That last book was published in 2019, so I’m assuming that means R.P. Dahlke is finished chronicling Lalla’s adventures. If so, then I for one, am bummed.
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