{"id":3167,"date":"2019-05-26T14:00:46","date_gmt":"2019-05-26T21:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=3167"},"modified":"2019-05-26T14:00:46","modified_gmt":"2019-05-26T21:00:46","slug":"terry-shames-a-risky-undertaking-for-loretta-singletary-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/terry-shames-a-risky-undertaking-for-loretta-singletary-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Terry Shames: A Risky Undertaking for Loretta Singletary"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This is the first Samuel Craddock mystery I\u2019ve read, largely on the advice of other readers I met at Left Coast Crime this year.\u00a0 As when I had a bookstore, the best recommendations often come from fellow readers, and I decided to give this one a try.\u00a0 I was intrigued when I sat next to Terry at a panel and she told me this was a police series, by far one of my favorite sub genres.\u00a0 This is a softer police story than say, one by Michael Connelly, but it\u2019s still a police novel and a very good one.<\/p>\n

Set in tiny Jarrett Creek, Texas, Samuel is comfortable in his community and friendly with his neighbors, including Loretta Singletary, who often stops by bearing baked goods.\u00a0 Samuel has noticed recently that she\u2019s changed her hair, which he describes as (I\u2019m paraphrasing), as kind of a color with no more of those little curls.\u00a0 Up until this point in the book I wasn\u2019t convinced the narrator was a man, but this comment convinced me.<\/p>\n

When Loretta \u00a0mysteriously disappears, though she\u2018s taken her car and a suitcase, her neighbors (including Samuel) are worried because she\u2019s asked no one to water the lawn or feed the cat and she\u2019s left dishes in the sink, something that in her tidy house seems wildly out of place.\u00a0 Samuel hasn\u2019t gotten any baked goods lately, either, and though he\u2019s been distracted by a new lady friend, once he starts thinking about it \u2013 and Loretta\u2019s disappearance is starting to drag on \u2013 he starts to seriously investigate.<\/p>\n

When Samuel gets a call from a neighboring town\u2019s police chief, telling him a woman of about Loretta\u2019s age has disappeared as well, things really heat up.\u00a0 The connection between the two women seems to be online dating and Samuel\u2019s deep dive into that world is ably assisted by younger colleagues, far more comfortable with the online universe.<\/p>\n

While I would not call this novel a cozy, it has some cozy attributes.\u00a0 Cozies often feature older characters and acknowledge that a community is made up of folks of all ages.\u00a0 It\u2019s also softer than a traditional police novel, another cozy attribute, but it\u2019s still a police novel, with the procedure part taking center stage.\u00a0 As readers, we get to be \u201cin\u201d on Samuel\u2019s investigation, and while I figured out one of the bad guys I was surprised by the neat, yet inevitable, twist at the end.<\/p>\n

This novel is told in the first person, so we know Samuel\u2019s doubts as well as the way his mind works as he figures out what\u2019s going on.\u00a0 Along with the writing, which beautifully describes the Texas countryside, the interplay between characters, the beautifully rendered small town setting, and the carefully laid down plot \u00a0made this read a stand out.\u00a0 Samuel is a gritty new Sheriff Andy Taylor for the 21st<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the first Samuel Craddock mystery I\u2019ve read, largely on the advice of other readers I met at Left Coast Crime this year.\u00a0 As when I had a bookstore, the best recommendations often come from fellow readers, and I decided to give this one a try.\u00a0 I was intrigued when I sat next to … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[5,8,142,143,139,141,140],"class_list":["post-3167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-americancozy","tag-police","tag-samuel-craddock","tag-seventh-street-books","tag-small-town","tag-terry-shames","tag-texas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3167"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3168,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3167\/revisions\/3168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}