Wrecked

January 13, 2014
Josie Gray faces her most personally and professionally challenging case yet in Fields’s engaging, if overly complex, third mystery featuring the Artemis, Tex., police chief (after 2013’s Scratchgravel Road). When Josie’s boyfriend, accountant Dillon Reese, goes missing and becomes a suspect in the shooting murder of his secretary, Christina Handley, Josie cedes the lead investigator role to another officer. An absurdly high ransom demand ($9 million) and a frightening video of a captive Dillon clarify the situation, though the motivation of the kidnappers remains a mystery, as does Christina’s seemingly senseless killing. Despairing of ever raising such a ransom, Josie turns for help to her hostage negotiator friend, Nick Santos. The narrative alternates between border tensions; the unpredictable actions of Dillon’s clients, like junk car dealer Wally Follet and ruthless millionaire Julian Beckwith; and Dillon’s increasingly desperate captivity. The action builds to a satisfying climax, as Josie races to locate and rescue her lover. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary Agency.

February 15, 2014
In Fields' (Scratchgravel Road, 2013, etc.) third novel featuring Josie Gray, the Texas police chief's latest case hits far too close to home. Josie Gray, chief of police of the West Texas border town of Artemis, is baffled and hurt when Dillon Reece, her devoted lover, stands her up for an informal dinner date. Insecure about his fidelity, she slinks home instead of checking up on him. When she stops by his accounting office the next day, she's aghast to discover his secretary shot dead in her chair. Then Josie finds her home broken into and an email containing photos of Dillon in captivity. Her worst nightmares come true with a ransom demand for $9 million--and a down payment of $50,000 by the end of the day--if she wants to keep Dillon from losing an arm. Josie is frantic; she doesn't have even enough money for the down payment. Although she's turned the investigation over to a trusted senior officer, her fear that the kidnapping is retribution from a Mexican drug cartel and her frustration with the FBI agents called in to handle the case make her hire a hostage negotiator. A dealer in wrecked cars also disappears, and a pendant of Santa Muerte, the saint of death, is an enigmatic clue to what's happened and why. Josie's desperate race to save Dillon is all too plausible, though it would have been even more effective without a catalog of even minor characters' wardrobes, hairstyles and home furnishings. The prize-winning Fields compellingly evokes the remote Texas border town but compromises the suspense with Josie's self-obsessed guilt and anxiety and the book's inconsistent pacing.

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March 1, 2014

Tough-as-nails police chief Josie Gray strikes back when a Mexican drug cartel kidnaps her lover from their Texas border town. This is Fields's third entry in her impressive Hillerman Award-winning series (after Scratchgravel Road).

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 15, 2014
When Artemis, Texas, police chief Josie Gray's lover, accountant Dillon Reese, fails to show up one evening as planned, sending only an uncommonly terse text, Josie's insecurities kick in. Picturing Dillon with his pretty young secretary, Christina, Josie waits until morning to check further and finds Christina dead in her office chair and Dillon vanished. Letting Officer Otto Podowski head the case, she learns that Dillon has been kidnapped with a $9 million ransom demanded from her. Josie suspects that the Medrano cartel, with which she has a history, is behind the kidnapping, but the size of the ransom stuns her. Only after digging deeper into the federal indictment against Wally Follet, a client of Dillon's and owner of a local junkyard, does Josie pull things together. Meanwhile, even with the FBI called in, Josie employs a hostage negotiator with a record of success in hopes of getting Dillon back alive. Fields' third Josie Gray outing (after Scratchgravel Road, 2013) is emotionally taut, building to a breathtaking climax and portraying, in the process, the danger inherent in a Texas border town and presenting Josie, previously wary of commitment, with new challenges. More fine southwestern crime fiction by an author who clearly loves the locale.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)