Book Review: The Reluctant Engineer by Jac Wright

Disclosure / Disclaimer: I received this ebook, free of charge, from the author, for review purposes on this blog. No other compensation, monetary or in kind, has been received or implied for this post. Nor was I told how to post about it

This book will be official releasing tomorrow,
but I am thrilled to be able to share it's new type of mystery with you today!

Synopsis:

Love is a Battlefield. 

The aftershocks of an affair reverberate out to those in the lives of the lovers, who will NOT take it lying down.

Jeremy Aiden Stone, is a highly skilled and qualified Electrical Engineer solving crime in the high-tech environments he finds himself in.  He tags along with his friends Harry Stavers and Stephen Barrett, criminal and corporate lawyers respectively, and solves crimes set around corporate and academic environments using his versatile engineering skills.  Jeremy is educated at Stanford and UC Berkeley which gives him the liberal attitude that the character needs to use the devices that he designs and manufactures to monitor, eavesdrop, and break into places to find the culprits, and to get himself into and out of dangerous situations in the process, without any qualms.

Jack Connor's idyllic life in the Portsmouth countryside with his billionaire heiress wife, Caitlin McAllen, is shattered when alluring Michelle, with whom he was having an affair, is found dead and Jack is arrested for the murder.   Jeremy Stone brings a top London attorney to handle his best friend’s defence.

Who is the bald man with the tattoo of a skull seen entering the victim's house?  Who is "KC" who Caitlin makes secret calls to from a untraceable mobile?  Has powerful Douglas McAllen already killed his daughter's first partner and is he capable of killing again?  Is Caitlin's brother Ronnie McAllen's power struggle with Jack for the control of McAllen Industries so intense that he is prepared to kill and frame his brother-in-law?  Is the divorce from Jack's first wife as amicable on her part as they believe it to be?  Are his sons prepared to kill for their vast inheritance?  Who are the ghosts from Caitlin's past in Aberdeen, Scotland haunting the marriage?  What is the involvement of Jack's manager at Marine Electronics?

The cast of characters is made even more colorful by the supporting entourage: the big Scott and his gang, Hosé and Heineken, who carry out Douglas McAllen’s “troubleshooting;” McAllens' bumbling solicitors McKinley and Magnus Laird; Caitlin McAllen’s handymen, Cossack and Levent; and Jeremy’s sidekick, the gay black actor working in the London West End. 

While Jack is charged and his murder trial proceeds in the Crown Court under barrister Harry Stavers’ expert care, Jeremy runs a race against time to find the real killer and save his friend's life, if he is in fact innocent, in a tense tale of love, power, and ambition. 

Review:

Wow, one would never think of engineering as being the start of a great mystery story! This book is full of so many twists and turns, that it will keep you guessing to just about the end! Jac does an excellent job in building the characters and describing the locales, that you will be totally immersed in the story by chapter two! So, be prepared to read this story ALL the way through in one sitting, as you will NOT want to put it down once you start! AND when you finish you will be wanting to know MORE about Jac and his buddies! This book is a wonderful start to a new series, that I'm sure Jac will be writing!

About the Author: 

Jac Wright is a published poet, published author, and an electronics engineer educated at Stanford, University College London, and Cambridge who lives and works in England. Check out his webpage, his blog, Facebook and Twitter pages, for more!