Where Evil Hides

Rating:
Summary: A gripping mystery
Review: "Where Evil Hides" is an excellent homewtown mystery story. The mystery at the heart of the story was enthralling and kept me reading. The side stories between the various characters also added greatly to the plot. I felt like I understood the locals since Mr. Hovey gave a glimpse into their personal lives. Overall this is a great novel and if you like mysteries or a little small town intrigue I would recomend it.

Rating:
Summary: A gripping mystery
Review: "Where Evil Hides" is an excellent homewtown mystery story. The mystery at the heart of the story was enthralling and kept me reading. The side stories between the various characters also added greatly to the plot. I felt like I understood the locals since Mr. Hovey gave a glimpse into their personal lives. Overall this is a great novel and if you like mysteries or a little small town intrigue I would recomend it.

Rating:
Summary: Good but not great read.
Review: I bought the book not only because I love mystery, thriller and horror novels but because I happen to live in Pine County. I was a little disappointed with the name changes of some of the places visited in the book, like the Grant House being the Frank House instead and also question why he had to plop a fictional town (Pine Brook) into the county.

Halfway through I was yelling at the main character for not seeing the obvious and not putting together the few real clues and eyewitness reports he had right in front of him. The brightest spot of the whole book is the friction between the county coroner and the undersherrif and I feel this part could have been expanded on more and had it conflict more with the solving of the case.

While the author hits home with some of his characters and has great subplots the main mystery of the story is too contrived.

Rating:
Summary: attention caught
Review: I'm one who rarely sits down to read a book. I don't enjoy reading,to hiper I think. Where Evil Hides caught my attention because it was written about Pine Co. which is the next county south of my home. Once I started reading the book I couldn't put it down.I was able to visualize the towns, the country roads and many of the characters brought back memories of similar people in my life. I felt the book was well put together and I'm looking forward to his next book.

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful depiction of rural Minnesota
Review: In "Where Evil Hides" Dean Hovey does a marvelous job of depicting the job of a sheriff in this fast paced Murder Mystery set in rural Minnesota.

Rating:
Summary: Great Work by New Author
Review: Pine County lies on the eastern edge of Minnesota roughtly midway between Duluth and the Twin Cities. It's a rural county of vast stretches of cut-over timber land, isolated homes, and small towns and hamlets. It's small police force consists of the County Sheriff and his uniformed and civilian staff. When a corrupted individual begins a reign of rape and murder, the Sheriff's force of deputies and its principal investigator is hard-pressed to contain the violence, protect vulnerable women, and find the perpetrator.

In his debut novel, Dean Hovey demonstrates strong skills as a story-teller. He has a fine sense of pace and of the people in his novel. In addition, a couple of sub-plots are nicely linked to the primary story and are satifactorily resolved, as is the mystery itself.

The book is attractively packaged by a relatively young Minnesota publisher. I look for more good things from this author and this publisher.

Rating:
Summary: Good but not great read.
Review: Wow.. I am an avid reader of John Sanford, Robin Cook and James Patterson. This first novel from Mr. Hovey blew me away. A twisting, turning plot, with wonderfully extensive backstory on his characters, made for a great read. I find myself mildly cynical of new authors, and what a lovely surprise here! He captured the feel of small-town Minnesota without being at all patronizing or cliched. There was also no sense of jadedness, or boredom with his characters that I find with some other "seasoned" authors. I pride myself in my ability to figure things out as soon as possibe, and boy, was I surprised. I certainly hope he continues to write, because I'd love to continue in his world. Thanks, Dean!