Mcquaid'S Justice (The Cowboy Code)

Rating:
Summary: A Riveting, Complex Mystery
Review: Carly Bishop's "McQuaid's Justice" is a story of rare complexity and depth, a mystery that left me so curious as to what was going on that I read it in one night. FBI agent Cy McQuaid is called in when a judge--and Supreme Court nominee--is threatened with extortion. Someone is claiming that the death of the judge's wife many years ago was not an accident, but murder. In the course of his investigation, McQuaid goes head to head with the judge's daughter, Amy. Amy has been deaf ever since the night of her mother's death, and in order to find the truth of what happened, she might just have to confront the worst memories locked in the recesses of her mind, with only McQuaid to support her.

That's only a portion of what is happening in this book, which introduces a wide-range of characters and serves as the first chapter of the "Cowboy Code" miniseries. I never stopped caring about Cy or Amy, and it was them, along with the riveting mystery, that wouldn't let me put the book down. There's a lot of genuine feeling in everything they experience together. This book is a great example of a miniseries book, telling a self-contained, satisfying story in 250 pages, yet leaving us with a humdinger of a cliffhanger that left me anxiously awaiting Book Two, "A Cowboy's Honor," by Laura Gordon.

Still, it wasn't a perfect book. The romance could have been developed more, and all the many pieces fit together a little too neatly, with too much reliance on coincidences to twist the plot. In any case, "McQuaid's Justice" is notable mostly for the superb mystery, which offered much more than many regular mystery novels I've read. The characters and story linger in the mind, and the series promises to offer a lot more in the months ahead. A definite must-read.