Smoke & Mirrors

Don't let the title fool you. This latest from John Ramsey Miller is a straightforward story about how greed can destroy good people and those around them. Former U.S. Marshal Winter Massey is back to investigate the shooting deaths of a 19-year-old and an ex-lawman. Before long the body count grows, and Massey finds himself pitted against an old enemy. Scott Brick plays the protagonist and the assassin with equal vigor and precision. When Massey's sardonic voice challenges an opponent, the listener snaps to attention. And when another victim is matter-of-factly dispatched, Brick makes the listener appreciate how truly evil the killer can be. A.L.H. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

February 11, 2008
Winter Massey, former deputy U.S. marshal, tangles with an old enemy in Miller’s (Side by Side
) latest intense thriller. After the shooting of an African-American teen in Tunica County, Miss., Sheriff Brad Barnett suspects it’s a hunting-related accident until he spots one of Winter’s old business cards, left where the shooter set up. He locates Winter deer hunting with his family in the Mississippi Delta and secures his help. Winter asks FBI agent Alexa Keen to analyze something else left at the scene of the crime: a clove-flavored toothpick, the hallmark of ruthless assassin Paulus Styer. This time Styer, last seen in New Orleans, has some black op experts on his tail. The victim was killed at Six Oaks, a cotton plantation owned by Sheriff Barnett’s old lover Leigh Gardner, and her desperate ex, Jacob, is secretly trying to sell it. Styer abducts Leigh’s daughter Cynthia, who’s having an affair with Jack Beals, a security officer at Roundtable Casino. Kurt Klein, Roundtable’s offsite German industrialist owner, needs Six Oaks for a resort/casino complex. But at what cost? Full of breathless blood and guts action, hairpin twists and turns, Miller’s cocktail of murder and dirty business is potent and compelling.