The Fisher King

September 15, 2016
A small-town police chief and his bad-boy twin brother have a conflicted relationship.After his wife, Julie, vanished for a year, leaving him to care for his son, Ethan, and fight off accusations that he had murdered Julie, former FBI agent Jack McBride figured he was entitled to an easy job. On the surface, Stillwater, Texas, seems like many small towns, but as Jack has learned (Stillwater, 2015, etc.), a thriving drug trade is causing all kinds of problems. Jack's relationship with attractive businesswoman Ellie Martin has been stalled by the return of Julie, saying she wants to repair their marriage. Now Ellie's running for a city council seat against Joe Doyle, successful businessman and Yourke County drug lord. Joe's tough, promiscuous daughter, Michelle, runs the day-to-day business while her husband, Chris, plays golf. Jack's twin brother, Eddie, has recently arrived in town and is working for Michelle and having sex with her while living in his brother's home. He doesn't even consider Julie out of bounds. While all this is going on, Jack and his team are investigating the misdeeds of the former police chief, whose knowledge may have earned him a watery grave. When Doyle's favorite son and his wife are murdered after a boozy night at a neighborhood party, Jack thinks he'll have to put all his other problems aside to find the killer. But it turns out that most of those problems are connected to the murders and the drug trade. So he may just be able to get his life back on track if he can solve the case.After a slow start, this combination of police procedural and romance puts the pedal to the metal and revs up the action.

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October 15, 2016
Jack McBride, the police chief of Stillwater, Texas, has both professional and personal problems to contend with after just six weeks on the job. His initial reputation of attracting crime to the quiet town is reinforced when two charred bodies are found in the ruins of a ramshackle house after it burns down. And just before Jack files for divorce from his wife, Julie, she returns, after taking off for a year and leaving Jack and their 13-year-old son, Ethan. But Jack, digging into records linking his predecessor with Stillwater's major employer, Joe Doyle, who also runs an undercover drug business, wants to make a new life with Ellie Martin, local bookshop owner running for city council against incumbent Doyle. Two more murders lead to increased criticism of the new chief and may signal the end of his career in Stillwater. The second in Lenhardt's Jack McBride mysteries, after Stillwater (2015), is a fast-moving whodunit with compelling subplots and an appealing protagonist who's likely to keep winning fans.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)