Two Shades of Crazy - Christine Matthews

The private eye novel is my favorite type of mystery yarn and has been ever since I discovered Michael Shayne, Donald Lam, and Bertha Cool at the bookmobile, followed fairly soon after by the Continental Op, Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, Lew Archer, and Shell Scott. Thankfully, there are still quite a few writers who love private eye novels, too, and continue to write them.

Case in point, a brand new novel from Christine Matthews, who has garnered a lot of readers and critical acclaim for her mysteries, thrillers, horror, and Western tales. TWO SHADES OF CRAZY is set in the Southwest, in Laughlin and Las Vegas, Nevada, and Flagstaff, Arizona, and Matthews does a fine job of capturing the setting.

Gloria Watson is a PI from Chicago who has relocated to Laughlin and works out of an office in her apartment, strictly a one-woman outfit with no secretary or assistants. She does mostly background checks and security work, but a more high-profile case comes her way when a potential client hires her to clear the name of a woman who has just been convicted of murdering her lover. It seems that Gloria’s client was obsessed with the woman, although he had no romantic relationship with her, and was outside the house where the murder took place, watching her. He didn’t see the murderer himself, but he knows she didn’t fire the fatal shots.

Sensing that something is off about her client, Gloria investigates him as much as she does the murder, and she uncovers surprising information about him that makes her debate whether she even wants to take the case. But then he dies under suspicious circumstances as well, and she feels duty-bound to get to the truth about a case that turns quite complex for one where a defendant has already been tried and convicted. Not too surprisingly, Gloria herself soon becomes the target of a killer . . .

TWO SHADES OF CRAZY is a top-notch tale of deception and tangled emotions. Instead of making Gloria Watson a first-person narrator, Matthews decides to tell her story in third person, giving Gloria a slight sense of coolness and separation from the reader that works very well while still allowing her to be a sympathetic and likable protagonist. At times the twists and turns of the plot reminded me of something that Perry Mason or Cool and Lam would try to untangle, and that’s a good thing. All in all, TWO SHADES OF CRAZY is an excellent debut in what I hope will be a continuing series. I really enjoyed it.

Now Available: Sapphires Aren't Forever - Christine Matthews

A random act of violence sets the stage for SAPPHIRES AREN’T FOREVER, a chilling novel of mystery and suspense, as one woman faces an unseen adversary…and an unforeseen future. Chloe Weber, once a promising law student, still can’t remember the details of the crime that stole one of her best friends’ lives…and forever changed hers. Fearful of the big city dangers in Chicago, she finds refuge in Endo, a small “artsy” town found along the northern shores of Lake Michigan. A wannabe jewelry designer, Chloe meets a kindred spirit in Dinah, who helps her get settled. But all the while, the mystery of what happened to Chloe and her friends is heightened when the second of the victims is found murdered. Chloe realizes she’ll never be at peace until she takes matters into her own hands—despite the protests of her cop-boyfriend--and unravels the startling reason behind the vicious attacks.

Beating the Bushes - Christine Matthews

Vincent Lloyd and Baylor Kracher have something in common nobody would want: each of them has had a child disappear. In Lloyd's case, it happened several years earlier when his six-year-old daughter was abducted, raped, and murdered. The killer was never found, and a cloud of suspicion has hovered over Lloyd ever since. With Kracher, it's his fifteen-year-old son who vanishes without a trace. Haunted by his own tragedy, Lloyd volunteers to help in the search for Stevie Kracher, and a friendship forms between the two men that lasts for years, beyond the death of one of them, leading to a search that won't end until the survivor finally uncovers the truth about Stevie's disappearance.

BEATING THE BUSHES is an excellent suspense novel from Christine Matthews, dark and twisty, written in a number of different but equally powerful voices. The two protagonists are compelling characters with plenty of flaws and virtues, and throughout their search, Matthews does a great job peeling back the layers of the plot, which is a lot more complex than it might seem at first. BEATING THE BUSHES is a grim book, no doubt about that, but it's also uplifting in its own way and demonstrates the power of hope and persistence in even the worse circumstances. If you like top-notch psychological thrillers, this one gets a high recommendation from me.

Now Available: Beating the Bushes - Christine Matthews

Two fathers. One missing boy. A friendship that binds the two men, even beyond death. 

When fifteen year old Stevie Kracher goes missing, volunteers descend on a small Missouri town to join the search. One of those volunteers is Vincent Lloyd, whose six-year-old little girl had disappeared three years earlier. When her body was finally found, Vince became the prime suspect. Now he sees this new abduction as a chance to redeem himself, and to help save a child. 

Baylor Kracher is frantic to find his son. Nothing this devastating has ever happened to him; when he meets Vince he's found the only person he believes might understands his terror. Working with an Internet search group, fighting an aggressive reporter who's convinced that Vince killed his daughter, neither man will give an inch. But are they too late? And if they succeed, are they prepared for what they might find?