The Cues by J Michael McGee
Publisher's Blurb
The Cues finds teacher Pat Riordan settling into a new post at the local university. Having exonerated himself a year earlier as a suspect in a missing persons case, Riordan is asked by a colleague’s widow to look into her husband’s death—and so, reluctantly, Riordan once again finds himself in the fold of a who-done-it case.
Teaming up with another colleague Phil Rister and former homicide detective Mike Finn, who has returned to the Midwest to find answers to the three-decades-old murder of his cousin, the trio follow leads connecting the old murder to the present-day death of Riordan’s colleague and a series of unsolved cases of missing women. The connections they make, which they come to call the cues, take them into the dark underbelly of the college town they thought they knew and the powerful forces behind it.
The Cues is the third novel in the Pat Riordan series, following Bricked and The Slip Swing.
Review
Pat Riordan’s colleague Joe dies unexpectedly in hospital
following a fall. He is approached by Kate, the grieving widow, at the funeral
to look into the death as she feels it is suspicious due to a letter she found
among his belongings.
Pat is a university lecturer who was supposed to help Joe
and another colleague Phil se up a new syllabus which would involve getting
students to investigate missing person cold cases.
As Pat, Phil & former homicide detective Mike Finn put eir heads together to look at old cases they start to make connections or ‘cues’ which propel them into a decades old conspiracy of murder and misdirection. Could Joe have stumbled on a deadly secret?
What I loved about this mystery was the way the author made the characters, both main and minor, full of personality and easily identifiable. So many books make the mistake of having too many two dimensional additional headcount with very similar names and traits making them difficult to differentiate.
What also stands out is the author’s ability to bring to the table his knowledge of his previous experience both as a teacher and within the criminal justice system to give the plot and the characters a realistic edge.
The plot is nicely merged with the character’s personal lives although everything that happens eventually ties into the case at some point.
If anything, a few extra red herrings could be thrown in to put the reader off the scent and the use of a more subtle flag for key points to put off the moment when the reader pieces the clues, or should that be cues, together just ahead of Pat himself.
The story starts off really strong and finishes with a flourish but slows down a bit in the middle due mainly to a fair amount of superfluous debate and discussion around the connections and clues.
Pat Riordan is a nicely developed character which probably comes from having two outings already in ‘Bricked’ and ‘The Slip Swing’
So, to sum up - great characters, a decent plot and a good ending which could possibly be improved with dropping a few thousand words in the middle to keep the story fresh and flowing
Overall I enjoyed the story and I’m happy to award it 3 and a half stars –
Probably 4 stars had the final word count been trimmed a little to maintain the
early promise.
In between those jobs, I worked as a college speech instructor, a freelance writer, a newspaper reporter and a high school teacher. I took time-out to travel overseas, hike the Grand Canyon several times and return to school to earn three master degrees.
The young girl’s death decades ago also prompted me to become a “paperback writer” of mysteries.
As an investigator for 15 years, I heard first-hand stories from men who committed crimes. Later, as a mental health therapist at a prison, I developed a keen ear for hard and realistic dialogue.
I wrote my first book Bricked after teaching in a school for at-risk students. Pat Riordan, the protagonist in my trilogy, was introduced in this novel.
While Bricked is fictional, the episodes and mannerisms of the characters personify life inside a school for disenfranchised youth.
In the follow-up novels, The Slip Swing and The Cues, Riordan, the teacher, has also taken on the role of an amateur shamus.
The Slip Swing has a paranormal bent. The third book, The Cues, finds Riordan uncovering facts surrounding an unsolved murder and the whereabouts of local missing women.
Each book is driven by hard dialogue, reflecting my years working in the criminal justice system and my experiences as a teacher.
My intent was to provide a fresh twist for the reader of mysteries and for the detective in all of us. Here is a link to my webpage to learn more about the Pat Riordan trilogy: https://www.jmichaelmcgee.com/
I am now working on my fourth novel,
I am always interested in hearing about your experiences. I hope you’ll share your thoughts, whether about writing or the affairs of our world.
If you have a book you'd like to be featured on the blog you can submit it by emailing torchwood1968@gmail.com
or by contacting me on Twitter https://twitter.com/kevin_cannon
Fancy becoming a book reviewer - check out Reedsy Discovery and earn $25 for your first review
Comments
Post a Comment