Jake thought he had a fairly good, quiet, under the,radar existence in Snakebend, having left his past in the past.
When his former girlfriend, an investigative journalist, whom he left with no goodbye, shows up, not knowing that is the town he ran to when he left, and is murdered 24 hours later, his life takes on a new direction.
Determined to find out why she was there and what story she might have been chasing in his little town, Jake suddenly is a man on a mission.
Good suspense, with steady action and characters that fit perfectly in their roles.
Good read.

Jake and April were boyfriend and girlfriend who lived together in Massachusetts. After 3 years April started making excuses as to why she couldn't see Jake anymore. So he took off and went to Rattlesnake Bend, Texas. And then April showed up at his place of employment. She was a freelance reporter and she told him she was there on a hunch. They got into a little bit of an argument. She wanted him to go with her to investigate but he refused. They agreed to meet up at a bar at 9:00 that night. He went to the bar but she never showed up. The next morning, he was on the lake getting fishing bait. He discovered her body in the water. She had been killed.

The police had been told that Jake and April had been in a fight that day so they arrested him on suspicion of murder. They didn't consider anyone else. His attorney was able to get him out of jail. His friend Auggie was April's brother and since Jake had worked for a private investigator before, Auggie asked him if he would investigate April's murder. At first he didn't want to but then he agreed to do it.

He decided to go back to Massachusetts to begin his investigation. It started with Ira, who was the head honcho at the newspaper that April submitted stories to. Jake asked him what April was working on but he didn't know. Jake had broken into April's car and got her computer out. Ira had someone working for him that could break April's password. What Jake learned was that she was working on a story about a poisonous additive in a laundry detergent.

Jake was a carpenter. Damon Fox was an extremely wealthy man and his daughter Vicky wanted shelves put into her closet for her shoes. Jake learned that Damon was CEO for the company that was manufacturing the poisonous additive. At first Jake thought Damon was the one who murdered April, but then he had an alibi. He had been out of town and then Jake had to rule out Auggie, June, April's sister, and May, her twin sister. And finally, Elizabeth, April's stepmother..

The investigation took Jake all the way to heck and back but then he came up with the theory. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. And the author did a fantastic job with character development. The storyline was easy to follow and I had a hard time putting it down. I gave it five stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for allowing me an ARC Copy of this book. My words are my own, this book comes out on September 15th.

This was interesting. I do appreciate a book that will take me to different places in the world, and although I do think I’ve seen Texas quite a bit, it’s always nice to come back to it.

The story was entertaining enough, albeit fairly typical-the ex of the Main Character comes storming back into Jake, the main character’s life… and she ends up dead. The mystery is of course, who murdered her, but the way it takes to get there is… standard, but at least the ending is different.

Jake was fine enough to follow, though some of the jokes he made with his name did get a bit grating at times(and came off as very immature at times too), but I was able to get through it without much struggle, and it was a nice, quick read to settle down to in a string of quick reads, which I do appreciate.

Do I know where this is going? No, but I do think it also sets up a series pretty well, so I’m at least partially intrigued to see where this ends up if there’s more books in the series… provided there’s more development with the characters.

And more time to spend in this one setting without the main character being arrested or spending so much time in and out of jail.

Thank you once again to NetGalley and the publishers for letting me have an ARC Copy. My words are still my own.