Book Review: WHATEVER IT TAKES by MJ Markovski

Synopsis

Regan Argent inadvertently uncovered a dark conspiracy that has her on the run. Forcing her to return to her childhood home, a small town just outside of Dallas, to seek refuge. Unexpectedly, she bumps into Hunter Grainger, a man she never saw coming. An Air Force pararescueman, on leave, with only one person who is supposed to know of his return home. Their unexpected meeting ignites a chain of events where they will be forced to help each other or be executed.

Review

Regan Argent has a degree in law, but after uncovering some unsavory activities at the firm and getting mugged, she returns home to her family of four brothers.  She hasn't been home in five years and still remembers the boy who was supposed to meet her after high school graduation - Hunter Grainger.  Enlisted and home on leave, Hunter has his fair share of problems, sees shadows, and remembers his best friend's sister - the one he's sworn not to get involved with. 

There's the usual questions of Regan as to why she's back and why didn't she stay in touch, and each of her brothers has his perspective. One perspective they all seem to share is that she should stay far away from Grainger. Her mother wants her married and tries to fix her up with someone from her own hometown, who also worked at the same law firm. Someone seems to be after her to make sure she doesn't tell anyone what she discovered. Given his hidden talents, Grainger is the perfect person to guard her and keep her safe.

Romantic suspense, with lots of twists and turns, and a quick pace. If you enjoy a good suspense, you'll enjoy WHATEVER IT TAKES.  Cautionary note - adult content.

FTC Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book in the hopes that I would post an honest review. This has not affected the content of my review in any way.

AMAZON

Guest Post: Carl Brookins, Author of GRAND LAC

Today, it's my pleasure to welcome Carl Brookins, author of Grand Lac and his take on amateur sleuths. 

AMATEUR DETECTIVES IN THE FICTIONAL REAL WORLD 

I’ve been participating in a local SISTERS IN CRIME chapter panel on amateur detectives. From that experience I have gleaned a number of useful ideas which I share here, thanks to my fellow sisters and my own experience. I do not maintain that these suggestions are in any way endorsed by Sisters In Crime. That doesn’t make them any the less useful for the writers who may read this piece, looking for a few pointers.

Amateur sleuths need to be special, in the sense that they have a higher level of interest or motivation. That interest can come from a very wide range of sources. My unlicensed detective, Alan Lockem, was Military Intelligence in an earlier life. His companion was a very intelligent and talented exotic dancer.

Some amateurs have friends who are cops like Betsy Devonshire, owner of a needlecraft shop, whose customers and knitting friends, and the cops bring her into crime solving. When an amateur detective has good relations with local law enforcement—and some don’t—it can add another dimension to your story. Amateurs are often able and willing to engage in questionable behavior to aid police and help solve the crime.

In the area of the paranormal, or spirit world, amateur sleuths may draw on that uncertain world for clues that ordinary citizens wouldn’t recognize. Occasionally a small group of otherwise ordinary individuals may pool their talents and boost access to the spirit world through their multiplicity of strengths. Such a group is called No Ordinary Women, a series in which the five characters refuse to accept things at face value, which leads them into danger and crime-solving of many sorts.

Nosiness is a helpful attribute. An inherent unwillingness to accept circumstances at face value is vital. Another useful attribute is life circumstance. My unlicensed detective referred to above is financially independent, as is his companion, Marjorie Kane. Thus, in GRAND LAC they can fly off to Idaho at a moment’s notice to aid Marjorie’s relative, accused of murder. Your amateur investigator must have a spouse or companion, or a career, which allows him or her to pivot to nearly full-time attention to the case (or body) that intrigue’s her. Presumably they have a normal job and life to return to after solving the case.
There are only so many relatives asking for help and so many law officers who will put up with amateur meddling, which mean an author ought to spend some time figuring out the context, social, professional and otherwise, presuming that a series will result, in a situation which does not provoke readers and reviewers like me to throw up our hands in frustration at the unlikely circumstances engaging the protagonist. 

In sum, amateur detectives are mostly (but not always) sheer invention. Those with true talent and ability often end up working as professionals for law enforcement. The others often go gently into that good night.

Brief bio and links for Carl Brookins:

Before he became a mystery writer and reviewer, Carl Brookins was a counselor and faculty member at Metropolitan State University in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Brookins and his wife are avid recreational sailors. He is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and Private Eye Writers of America. He can frequently be found touring bookstores and libraries with his companions-in-crime, The Minnesota Crime Wave.

He writes the sailing adventure series featuring Michael Tanner and Mary Whitney. The third novel is Old Silver. His new private investigator series features Sean NMI Sean, a short P.I. The first is titled The Case of the Greedy Lawyers. Brookins received a liberal arts degree from the University of Minnesota and studied for a MA in Communications at Michigan State University.

http://www.carlbrookins.com/
https://www.facebook.com/carl.brookins?fref=ts
@carlbrookins

Buy links:
Grand Lac
Reunion

Guest Post: BETTY JEAN CRAIGE Author of the Witherston Murder Mysteries

Post by Betty Jean Craige, author of Dam Witherston and other Witherston murder mysteries published by Black Opal Books


A critic called my first novel, Downstream: A Witherston Murder Mystery (2014), an "environmental mystery." I admitted that it was. I had originally titled it "We All Live Downstream," but Black Opal Books suggested that "Downstream" would be more suitable for a whodunnit, and I agreed. The mystery involves the pharmaceutical pollution of our rivers by a longevity drug named Senextra that keeps people alive and healthy for well over a hundred years, though with some unanticipated side effects.

My second mystery in the series, Fairfield's Auction (2016), involves the sale of artifacts from the Cherokee civilization that dominated the mountains of north Georgia and western North Carolina for a thousand years before our state and federal governments sent a majority of them west to Oklahoma on the 1938-39 Trail of Tears. The mystery features a chicken truck stranded in Witherston during a blizzard and the liberation of the hundreds of caged chickens. And an African Grey parrot named Doolittle, who unintentionally provides clues to the murderer's identification. And a Cherokee village. And murder.

My third mystery, Dam Witherston (2017), involves three interracial (white-Cherokee) rapes and murders, one in 2017 and the other two in 1977 and 1828, which DNA tests disclose.

What do all three "Witherston Murder Mysteries" have in common? Most obviously, the mysteries all take place in a fictive town named Witherston, Georgia, twenty miles north of Dahlonega. Witherston got its name from the long line of rich Withers who obtained their wealth in the 1928 Georgia Gold Rush and the 1932 Georgia Land Lottery. The mysteries all include the same eccentric characters. The mysteries all allow the reader to participate in the detection through an online newspaper and documents such as maps, deeds, letters, and DNA ancestry results, as well as the narration.

But the mysteries have something else in common: an ecological view of the world, that is, a vision of nature and culture as an interconnected whole. If we view the world as an interconnected whole we see that we (people and non-people) are all dependent on the well-being of each other, that what we folks do here affects what other folks (and animals and plants and ice and rivers) do elsewhere. In other words, there is no outside. So we should be kind to each other and to the land, for our own well being.

This conviction motivated my teaching and research for decades at the University of Georgia, and it motivates my writing in my retirement.
My close friends called my first novel "preachy." They also criticized me for naming the animals. Thanks to a group of distinguished biologists we understand now that all mammals and birds, and some other animals such as octopuses, have consciousness. (See 2012 "Declaration on Consciousness.") So I say that the animals we know deserve names. In Fairfield's Auction and Dam Witherston, I strove not to preach, but I still named the animals.
Dr. Betty Jean Craige is University Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature at the University of Georgia. She has lived in Athens, Georgia, since 1973. Her first non-academic book was Conversations with Cosmo: At Home with an African Grey Parrot (2010).

Dr. Betty Jean Craige has published books in the fields of Spanish poetry, modern literature, history of ideas, politics, ecology, and art. She is a scholar, a translator, a teacher, and a novelist. http://www.bettyjeancraige.com/

Buy links:
Dam Witherston AMAZON
Downstream AMAZON
Fairfield’s Auction AMAZON