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Review of BIG SICK HEART by Mike Markel (see his website)
BooksForABuck.com, March 2010
Working with her young partner, Seagate has to confront a host of her own issues, starting with a broken-down family and her own drinking. With the chief breathing down her neck, trying to push her in directions that bring him favorable publicity rather than moving the case forward only makes things worse. As Seagate moves forward with the case, her own life goes more deeply into crisis mode. There are plenty of reasons why someone would want to kill Hagerty. His wife or mistress are obvious and had plenty of opportunity. Then there's the man whom Hagerty pushed from his job as he clawed his way to the top. Or could it be the politician he's been blackmailing or his fellow debater?
Author Mike Markel combines police procedure with an intriguing and sometimes disturbing character in Karen Seagate. Markel's writing drew me into the story, made me care about Seagate even when she engaged in self-destructive behavior, and gave me convincing red herrings to chase after as the real killer threatened to slip away entirely. This is Markel's first published novel (he's published a number of non-fiction works) and it looks like the start of something very special.
Four Stars
Reviewed 4/22/10
BIG SICK HEART is available from BooksForABuck.com for only $3.99. Available in HTML, Adobe Acrobat PDF, eReader, Microsoft Reader (zipped), Mobipocket/Kindle, Sony Reader and ePub formats. Click the Buy Now button to purchase BIG SICK HEART (payments processed by PayPal for your security).
It's just another job to police detective Karen Seagate and her partner Ryan Miner. Because Karen is the chief's least favorite cop, she gets lots of lousy assignments and providing security to a couple of guys debating stem cell research is one of those. Listening to the two debaters go on about football for hours afterwards while she's stuck drinking club sodas (and dying for a real drink) is the icing on the cake. But when one of the debaters, Arlen Hagerty is murdered that night, what had been a boring job becomes a high-profile case.
Want more? Read the free excerpt.
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See what one reviewer had to say (on Amazon). (Hint: here's his wrap-up: "I can't wait to see more of this author and this series.Great one!" Thanks Georges Huberty.)
See the (great) review at Pacific Book Review.com
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