2018; 163 pages. Book 6 (out of 7) in the “Dead Red Mystery” series. New Author? : No. Genres : Women Sleuths; Crime Mystery; Arizona.
Overall Rating : 6½*/10.
Order in the court now, somebody shot young
Judge Gavin Borrega! In the
courthouse! In broad daylight!
Where’s the security
video? Where were the court guards? Heck, rumor has it the judge had even hired
some private guards for added security. Where were they?
Maybe it was politically
motivated. It’s been said that Judge
Borrega was being groomed for a run for the governor’s office. Maybe it was some jilted lover. Gavin was indeed a handsome
fellow. Maybe it was our hero, Private
Investigator Lalla Bains. She had a meeting scheduled with the judge at the same time as
the murder took place.
Hmmm. Or maybe it had to do with those dozens of
fluttering, squawking chickens which somebody dumped into the courthouse
just before the shooting took place! That
couldn’t have been just a coincidence!
What’s To Like...
A Dead Red Gamble
is the sixth, and penultimate book in R.P. Dahlke’s Dead Red Mystery
series. It is set in Cochise County in
southern Arizona, in the fictional town of Wishbone.
The story's structure is the usual for this
series. Lalla and her
PI partner (and cousin) Pearlie get drawn into investigating Borrega’s
murder, albeit in an unofficial capacity.
Lalla’s husband, Caleb, is the police chief, and would rather his wife
sit this case out. That’s reasonable. Her father, Noah Bains, is critically ill, which leads to the problem of who’s going watch Noah’s two foster children, Rocky
and Jimmy.
Naturally, the initial murder
case rapidly gets more complex, with other killings, both past and present,
coming into play. There are other personal and professional issues
as well. Pearlie and her beau, Harley,
are no longer on speaking terms, and neither will say why. Lalla and Pearlie’s move into a new office,
only to find it’s …erm… broomed. And the
cash-strapped Bains-&-Bains Detective Agency can receive a healthy bonus
check if they can provide proof that an insurance client is faking an injury. Hmm. How do you go about proving that?
That’s a lot of plot threads
to deal with in ja novella-length book, but R.P. Dahlke manages to get them all
tied up. The story is told in the
first-person POV (Lalla’s), and the chapters are relatively short (8½ pages
average), with 19 of them covering the 163 pages. A Dead Red Gamble is both a standalone
tale and part of a series.
Ratings…
Amazon: 4.5*/5, based on 326 ratings
and 60 reviews.
Goodreads: 4.38*/5,
based on 208
ratings and 30 reviews.
Excerpts...
I felt sorry for Allison. I heard her smarts had landed her a co-anchor
job on Channel Five. Unfortunately, the
station was following the growing Fox News practice of requiring female anchors
to wear tight dresses and enough makeup to look like they were nightclubbing
instead of reciting yesterday’s city council fights and today’s traffic
jams. Today, someone had decided that
she could do without her glasses and things weren’t going too well for the poor
girl. (loc. 727)
Since I promised to do Pearlie’s process
serves while she went to Phoenix to get information on Judge Borrega’s
stepfather, the senator, I got out her list and checked off the ones for which
I’d need special props.
What sounds really simple, hand a person a
summons to court, write up a report and turn it into the court or the law firm,
doesn’t always go well. At least not for
me. Pearlie, with her big blue eyes,
dimples and full-figured curves is a natural.
Women appreciate her gutsy attitude for the job, and men, well they
usually drool, so process serving is easy for Pearlie. (loc. 1423)
Kindle Details…
At the moment, A Dead Red Gamble sells for $4.99 at Amazon. The other six books in the series are all in
the $3.99-$4.99 price range.
The author has three other e-books available, each priced at $4.99.
“You can’t hire a
guy with Prosopagnosia.” (loc.
1543)
There’s only a small amount of
profanity. I noted just 6 instances in
the first 25% of the book, five “hells” and
one “damn”. I don’t recall any “adult situations” in the story.
The editing is good, and is
mostly confined to punctuation issues: a missing comma here, a misplaced
apostrophe there, etc. There were a
couple instances of hyphens inserted into compound words (example: news-people/newspeople), but I have
a feeling those crept in during the conversion-to-digital stage.
My biggest issue was with the
ending,. It felt rushed to me. For most of
the book Lalla noses around, coming up with a variety of possible suspects and
motives. That was good. But instead of things building to an exciting
climax, or Lalla using Sherlockian reasoning to peg the suspect, one of the
characters simply reveals to her (and the reader) who killed who and
why. I found it disappointing. I don’t recall the earlier books in the
series having endings like this.
Bottom line: if you primarily read cozy
mysteries for the “cozy” human activities and not the “mystery” elements,
you’ll enjoy A Dead Red Gamble, despite its
brevity However, the Mystery angle always
takes precedence for me.
6½ Stars. Acronym Alert!! The term “BOLO” popped up in the story, and without a translation. My geezer brain tried various combinations, most of them involving “Buy One, L-Something, One”, none of which worked. It turns out to be police-speak for “Be On the Lookout”. Now you know.
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