Publisher's Weekly Review
Early in Paul's exciting third contemporary western thriller featuring former U.S. Army sniper Tommy Smith (after 2016's Cheatgrass), Tommy, who has returned to his childhood home in the Sierra Nevada Mountains to start up a business as a trail guide and build a home for his growing family, joins the search for a missing 10-year-old child. In the process, he discovers a young woman's body in a pond. For Tommy, the dead woman is "somehow familiar but as vague as a bad dream." She's subsequently identified as Erika Hornberg, who's suspected of having embezzled $1 million from the bank she managed. Soon the countryside is crawling with thugs from Reno, Nev., leaving Tommy to ponder the connections among the lost child, the dead banker, and the missing money. A thoughtful man, Tommy is slow to anger but quick to defend those in need, as he does--with gusto--in the explosive finale. Clean, elegant prose compensates for the thin mystery plot. Readers will welcome Paul's comfortable world, with its loving relationship between Paul and his wife, appealing animals, and true friends. (Sept.)
Booklist Review
A young girl goes missing in the Eastern Sierras, and, although her parents aren't terribly concerned, former army sniper Tommy Smith is. When Smith, now running a trail-packing business, and sheriff's deputy Jack Harney search for the child, they discover a body just as they are caught in gunfire that leaves Harney wounded. The body is apparently that of Erika Hornberg, a local bank manager suspected of embezzling more than a million dollars who disappeared almost a year earlier. Smith, whose wife, Sarah, is also a sheriff's deputy, finds himself attempting to get to the bottom of a scheme apparently concocted by Harley-riding, former highway-patrol cop Sonny VanOwen, who doesn't like Smith's interference and is able to spot his weaknesses. In clean, spare prose, Paul spins a plot of understated but still startling violence, as Smith does what he must to protect his family and stay alive himself. The third entry in the Tommy Smith series (after Cheatgrass, 2016) is a fine western thriller with a tender heart.--Michele Leber Copyright 2010 Booklist
Library Journal Review
The third in a series, a follow-up to Paul's Cheatgrass, finds Iraq War veteran Tommy Smith, married and with a newborn, busy building his life as a guide in western Nevada's Sierra Mountain range. After reports of a missing girl reach his remote station, he joins the search and discovers something quite different--the body of a local banker, accused of embezzling a million dollars, missing for over a year. Tommy eventually crosses paths with the FBI, a ranch owner desperate to keep his property afloat, and a nasty ex-California Highway Patrolman turned biker and chop-shop owner. Tommy tries to keep his investigative, home, and business lives separate, but once things get personal, justice has to be served with the military skills he'd rather leave behind. VERDICT Readers will be transported by Paul's easygoing prose as he lingers almost philosophically on the sparse but majestic landscape and the people who choose to make their living there. Sharing qualities with authors like Paul Doiron and C.J. Box, Paul delivers a Western-themed thriller that can easily be read as a stand-alone featuring characters as quiet and as deep as the mountains themselves.--Gregg Winsor, Johnson Cty. Lib., Overland Park, KS
