Sara's Review: Detective Lessons by Bill Larkin
Author Provided Copy
Publisher: Spyglass Press
Released: September 17, 2014
Genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
Length: 263 pages
Format: ebook
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Blurb
Orange County Sheriff’s Deputy Kevin Schmidt is trying to get used to working Harbor Patrol in Newport Beach, an assignment forced on him after arresting the son of a commanding officer. A wealthy boater asks Schmitty for a personal favor: find his missing son. Schmitty reluctantly accepts out of curiosity….and boredom. He isn’t bored for long. Schmitty reluctantly teams up with Megan McCann, an attractive private investigator with her own set of rules. Finding a body in the trunk of a BMW sends Schmitty and Megan on an adrenalized trail through Southern California unraveling a sophisticated real estate scam. Determined to find the missing heir apparent, but caught in the middle of a shocking web of greed and corruption, Schmitty must figure out how to make justice prevail and who to bring down.
Three Boundless Stars
I was provided a copy of Detective Lessons in exchange for an honest review. The story was interesting and had a lot of potential; but I found it bogged down with a lot of superfluous details. I don’t live in LA, and I am not going to pull out a map to see where they are going, so describing the freeway changes and where they were constantly driving just got annoying. I am a big believer in less is more; if it doesn’t contribute to the story in some point there is no point telling us about it. Then the ending was like a quintessential action movie. I, one, guessed what our hero was going to do before he did it; and two, cringed a bit at the lack of originality.
The mystery was well thought out with a lot of twist and turns that keeps you guessing. There are a lot of different players involved in this missing person’s case. I enjoyed the banter between the two leads, yet at the same time I found Schmitty a contradiction; with all the rules he broke and the excessive force he used, Is he a good cop? It’s questionable in my mind.