Five Card Stud: A Jake Hines Mystery

Rating:
Summary: Easy-reading was never more tedious!
Review: "Five Card Stud" is a good police procedural. It features Jake Hines, a Minnesota detective, and a huge snowstorm. In the background are Jake's girlfriend Trudy; a whole cast of unsavory midwestern characters who have nothing to do but shovel snow, play the lottery, and dream up nasty things to do to each other; and a bunch of snowplows working day and night to dig everybody out of the storm so they can get on with hurting each other.

The result is a grotesque assortment of frozen corpses, and a logic-defying puzzle. It's an entertaining book to read from the standpoint of plot and action, and the local color is realistic and fascinating.

A good book.

Rating:
Summary: The series just gets better------
Review: A strong series about an interesting detective,Jake Hines, principal investigator in the mythical town of Rutherford, Minnesota. This is the third in Gunn's series of well written, carefully plotted stories. Elizabeth Gunn was a resident of Rochester, Minnesota for several years, and her familiarity with the people, the ways and atmospheres of that region of the state are presented to good advantage in these stories.

Her characters are strong and interesting in what is essentially a police procedural. Part of the attraction of this series is the ongoing mystery of Jake Hines' background. Although he's a native Minnesotan and was educated in state school systems, Hines is an anomaly. Brown-skinned and black-haired, he stands out among mostly fair German-Norwegian-Swedish residents of southern Minnesota. He was abandoned as a newborn and in spite of a succession of foster homes, gained a good education and is now a successful, respected police detective. But Jake Hines is only the central character in a story peopled with strong and engaging characters, one of whom is Jake's love, Trudy.

Trudy is on the staff of Minnesota's crack Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, a crime scene expert. The BCA is constantly on the go, helping local law enforcement agencies solve major crimes. When Jake gets called from a late-night poker game in the dead of a frigid winter night, he already knows that Trudy is stuck in some snow-drifted town in Northern Minnesota. In Rutherford, on a Sunday night in January, the town is gripped by a blizzard that shows no signs of letting up. The temperature is dropping and a call comes in. There's a naked guy under the twenty-ninth street overpass. The naked guy is dead. Jake and other police personnel respond, however reluctantly. Their meticulous efforts to try to protect the crime scene in spite of the snow, and Jake Hines instincts as a police officer, lead his department to uncover more crimes of greed and passion.

With her outstanding skills as a writer, author Gunn demonstrates once again seamless plotting, and a strong sense of the local environment. Well-paced for lasting enjoyment, this author's locally set series will be one to follow for years to come

Rating:
Summary: The Stiff was Frozen Stiff
Review: Homicide detective Jake Hines poker game is interrupted by a murder. He's called out in cold, cold Minnesota weather to investigate a homicide, so he bundles up and goes. He finds the deceased frozen stiff, half dressed, only wearing one sock, without identification and a close range gunshot wound in the head. Jake finds out that the dead guy was a long haul trucker, but his partner and the truck have disappeared.

This book will take you through a homicide investigation, from the beginning to the end. You'll sift through the clues along with Jake and his team and you'll be amazed at the surprising conclusion. A highly recommended read.

Review submitted by Captain Katie Osborne

Rating:
Summary: Great entertainment
Review: I grabbed this off the library shelf because I was on my way to the post office and needed something to read while I stood in line. As it turned out, the line was short, but I kept reading when I got home. This is my first Jake Hines and I didn't feel lost. I liked all the characters and the fact that it took awhile to sort them out. The detecting was excellent and the pace perfect.

Only slight quibbles: Jake is awfully nice, but then I was glad to read a non-hardboiled detective. On the other hand, I wasn't completely convinced he was a guy. I mean I accepted that he was a guy and had a girlfriend, but as a guy he was almost too good to be true, what with how nice he treated everyone.

That said, I plan to start with the first book and read my way through all of them.

Rating:
Summary: Good read
Review: It is a cold night in Rutherford, Minnesota with wind chills way below freezing. Most people stay off the roads preferring to be at home with family waiting for the storm to break. Police Detective Jake Hines is playing poker with his teammates when the call comes in that a partially naked male has been found under an overpass. Since nobody else is available, Jake goes out to investigate. He expects to find a victim of the cold stormy weather but soon learns that the dead man was a victim of foul play.

Through hard work and old-fashioned police investigative skills, Jake and his crew discover that the deceased is a truck driver, who along with his partner, was returning to his home base after a run to Nogales. No one knows where the truckload of one million dollars worth of freight is or whether the partner is dead or alive. The case turns more bizarre as Jake keeps digging deeper in an effort to bring a killer to justice.

Elizabeth Gunn continues the smooth as silk Jake Hines mystery series (see TRIPLE PLAY and PAR FOUR) with a wonderful police procedural, FIVE CARD STUD. Readers watch a homicide investigation from the beginning call up to the arrest and confession. It is so well written that the audience will feel like a team member obtaining insider information. Jake remains a fabulous detective and his crew helps bring out much of his personality with their interactions and relationships. FIVE CARD STUD is a police procedural novel that is fun to cruise along with.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: Great Read, Great Plot, Great Mystery
Review: On a cold Minnesota winter night Rutherford homicide detective Jake Hines is called away from a poker game to view a crime scene. It's a colder than usual night and Jake wonders if maybe he'd hadn't made the right career decision, especially when he arrives and finds an almost naked man dead in a snow bank. Hypothermia he thinks at first, but he quickly changes his mind when he sees the bullet hole in the victim's head. The dead man was a long haul trucker who everybody seemed to like, so why had he been killed, where is his truck and what about his driving partner, where is he? A lot of questions to be answered in this book that is heavy on forensic evidence and the intricacies of police investigation. A great read, a great plot and a great mystery.

Rating:
Summary: Easy-reading was never more tedious!
Review: Shouldn't a good series include books that stand alone? Admittedly this is the first book I've read in the series, but I feel like I'm left hanging to figure out who these people are, and more importantly, WHY I should care. Not only do I find the characters flat and unmemorable, but the writing is downright juvenile, filled with not-so-witty cliches and forced one-liners. I didn't even know what Jake Hines looked like until the 57th page! Oh, and the plot development is painfully slow, as well.