Dead Blow

October 7, 2019

Horseshoer Rainy Dale may be a little lacking in social skills, but she is kind and empathetic. She's supposed to be planning her wedding and making new friends, but she and boyfriend Guy quickly get involved in two incidents that have burdened the town of Cowdry, OR: the death of farmer Cameron Chevigny, whose tractor fatally rolled over on him, and the disappearance of a young woman named Arielle Blake. How did an old hand at driving tractors end up killed in such a way? When Rainy is asked to shoe the widow's horses, and Guy volunteers to search for Arielle, a ton of questions emerge: Was the tractor death an accident? Is Arielle's disappearance somehow tied to the incident? Rainy uses her singular skills as a shoer to solve these mysteries and create new friendships in the process.

VERDICT Preston's second "Horseshoer" mystery (after The Clincher) is another refreshing change from grim mysteries about serial killers and political plots. Readers of contemporary Westerns, horse fiction, and light mysteries will like this one.--Patsy Gray, formerly with Huntsville P.L., AL

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2019
Horseshoer Rainy Dale is advised to be careful when she goes to work on the Buckeye, a big ranch whose owner, Cameron Chevigny, recently died in a tractor accident. His widow, Donna, gains Rainy's respect for trying to keep the family business going, but Rainy is taken aback when Donna's dog brings her a woman's glove with a hand still in it. The hand is found to belong to a missing woman who was one of Cameron's several paramours, raising the issues of how she died and whether his death was really an accident. And then there's Dragoon, the Buckeye's dangerous bull who tries to kill horses. An unlikely sleuth, Rainy is more comfortable with animals than with people, except for her fianc�, Guy, the chef who feeds her spinach starters when she longs for a burger. Still the "New Girl" after a year and a half in Cowdry, Oregon, Rainy wants a friend, and she finds one in the woman she asks to be her maid of honor. A winning follow-up to the series opener, The Clincher (2018), and a must for horse lovers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)