Book Review: The Dead of Night by Jean Rabe

Disclosure / Disclaimer: I received this ebook free of charge,from RABT Book Tours 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, all opinions are my own.


Thanks for stopping by on our stop for this great book that came out on the 1st!


Synopsis:

As Sheriff Piper Blackwell rushes to a clandestine meeting with an aging, paranoid veteran who believes spies are trailing his every move, she is caught in a fierce thunderstorm. Pounding rain drums against the bluff, washing away the earth and revealing a grisly secret someone tried to bury a long time ago.

Putting a name to the skeleton on the bluff, and searching for the thief who robbed the old veteran of his life’s earnings, sends Piper delving into the sleepy towns that dot her rural county. Now she’s digging into pasts perhaps best left alone.

Accompanied by Chief Deputy Oren Rosenberg, Piper seeks to expose a truth someone wants to remain forever hidden. The investigation may have started with a thunderstorm, but Piper aims to finish it and find justice. Uncovering fragments of Spencer County’s history could prove more dangerous—and deadlier—than she ever expected.


Book Excerpt:

It was a big red Case tractor, double wheels on the back, hitch, with a raised disc harrow attachment used for cultivating the ground prior to planting—all of it caked with dried mud and in need of washing. Piper was stuck behind it on 66, on her way to Hatfield, an unincorporated dinkburg where Mark the Shark lived.

Piper figured this ten-mile endeavor would take her an hour away from her cold case—fourteen minutes to Mark’s, fourteen minutes back, and a half hour at the bank or looking through his records to show him the bookkeeping error and ease his conspiracy fears.

But the tractor was fouling her time-frame.

It belched fumes; her windows rolled down, the stink wafted inside and made her eyes water. It was noisy, overwhelming the oldies station she’d had on and just now clicked off. It was slow, riding in the center of the road, impossible for her to pass on either side without risking the ditch. And it wasn’t traveling straight, sometimes in the proper lane, sometimes veering into the left lane. Usually it held to roughly the middle.

She honked.
The driver raised his left hand and flipped his middle finger.

“Really?” Piper stuck her head out the window and hollered, “Pick a lane!” Then thinking he might not be able to hear over the racket the tractor was making, she used the PA in her car. “Pull over. Spencer County Sheriff. Pull over.”

The tractor had no rearview mirrors that she could see, and the driver hadn’t turned around to notice who was honking at him.

She honked again, this time laying on the horn. Piper really didn’t want to further delay her visit to Mark Thresher’s and subsequent return to the alluring skeleton case by citing the farmer for a simple traffic violation, but— She honked a third time, the driver took both hands off the wheel and gave her the dancing double middle fingers. The tractor, which according to the speedometer in Piper’s Ford was going about twenty miles an hour, shimmied to the right. As she started to pass, and reached to turn on her flashing lights, it sped up, drifted back to the left, and nearly clipped her front fender. She pumped the brakes and eased behind it, matching its speed—twenty-five miles an hour now. A boxy station wagon pulled behind her, and another car was coming farther back. Fortunate no one was in the opposite lane at the moment.

The tractor wobbled farther right, then left, shuddered, and went faster still. Thirty miles an hour.

“What the hell?”
Then the driver tossed an empty whiskey bottle off to the side of the road.
“That’s it.”

She turned on the siren and called the dispatcher to report her impending traffic stop. No license plate on the tractor, so no identification to note. Fleeing to avoid arrest, failure to yield, she mentally started writing the charges. She couldn’t yet add DUI—that would have to be proven.

It looked like the driver—she guessed him to be young to middle-aged, as he had a flowing mane of ink-black hair—was finally going to acquiesce. He slowed to twenty, then ten, and pulled to the right, one of the big back tires drifting to the berm. A car and a motorcycle appeared in the opposite lane and zipped past. Piper continued to follow the tractor, the station wagon still behind her. Then she cursed when he sped up again. How fast could a farm tractor go? It jinked left, the sudden motion causing the tractor’s back right set of tires to come off the road. They dropped back down with a clatter and the disc harrow made an ominous clunking sound, came loose, and cut into the blacktop, leaving grooves like open wounds.

“This is just absolutely wonderful.” Piper’s lip curled as she tried to maneuver her Ford Explorer around it again. “Pull the hell over!” She pressed on the gas, was nearly even with it and could read the MX 240 model on the side, then it trundled left again and she slammed on the brakes to avoid being run off the road. “Sonofabitch!”

Wisely, the two cars behind her drifted back. The tractor surged forward, weaving and now straddling the center line. She matched its speed. Forty miles an hour.
“Really? Tractors go that fast?” She almost called for backup. Should call, she told herself. But Piper was proud and stubborn. How would it look if a decorated Army veteran couldn’t stop a drunk on a farm tractor? Her deputies would not respect a sheriff who could not manage a traffic stop. She used the PA again. “Pull over! Pull over now!”

A beer can sailed away into the ditch. The hand that threw it raised the middle finger again.

“I left the 101st for this,” she hissed. Piper was a skilled driver, able to operate armored personnel carriers, combat support vehicles, light armored vehicles, and an assortment of heavy trucks. This Ford was easy, and she could use it—if she absolutely had to—to force the tractor off the road. But there wasn’t much shoulder, and she worried the tractor would flip into the ditch and seriously injure, or possibly kill, the drunken driver. She slammed her hand against the steering wheel and looked at the speedometer. The tractor had slowed back to thirty. Then twenty.

“Now ten,” she encouraged. “Ten.”

You'll have to read the book to see what happens next, and be sure to check Jean's blog for more excerpts!

Purchase the Book: Amazon


Review:

This is was such a fun book, I found myself laughing a whole lot through it, as Piper continues (this is book 2 in the series) to try to find her way though the job of a rural sheriff, where she is the second to youngest person in the department, and no prior civilian experience. To make matters worse, her dad was the previous Sheriff, so she has to deal with comparisons and his butting in, even when she doesn't want him to. Add in a mysterious theft, discovery of old bones, and a possible boyfriend, and Piper has more than enough on her plate. Rabe does a really good job in keeping the action going, so you might find yourself reading late into the night, and not wanting to stop reading until the end! The personality conflicts between her chief deputy, her father, and her staff, are all very honest and realistic, and that helps to really immerse the reader into the story. I can't wait for the next installment and I;ll be reading book 1 as soon as I get some free time! If you;re looking for a fresh voice in police procedurals, check out this series!


About the Author

jean rabe
Jean Rabe is the author of thirty-eight novels, more short stories than she cares to count, and has edited magazines and anthologies. She’s new the mystery field, as her earlier works were in fantasy and science fiction. The first book in the Piper Blackwell series, The Dead of Winter, was released in 2016. Jean attends game conventions, works as a mentor for graduate-level writing students, and tosses tennis balls for her dogs in her spare time. She makes sure she has spare time for three or four toss sessions a day. You can find her website at www.jeanrabe.com.
For more info on Jean and her books, check out her following pages: TwitterFacebookBlogGoodreadsNewsletter, and her

 Reading Addiction Blog Tours

Comments