A Taste of Blood And Ashes

When Nashville PI and horse whisperer Jared McKean is hired to investigate a suspicious barn fire, he finds evidence of soring, the practice of using painful shoeing or caustic chemicals to affect the gait of a Tennessee Walking Horse. But the owners, Zane and Carlin Underwood, are known anti-soring activists. Carlin's distress seems genuine, and Zane is confined to a wheelchair, paralyzed from the chest down during an attack by a frenzied stallion. Jared believes someone else is behind the arson.

Knowing the arsonist is almost certainly someone in community of those who breed and show Walking Horses, Jared and his new assistant, his half-sister Khanh, attend a local horse show in hopes of flushing out the culprit. There are suspects aplenty, including a groom on the run from a powerful cartel, a modern day robber baron, and a beautiful gold-digger whose dreams are filled with fire.

Secrets pile on top of secrets, and as Zane's memories of the events leading to his accident begin to return, the situation becomes deadly. Jared and Khanh find themselves in the crosshairs of a killer who will do anything to keep the past in the past.

A Taste of Blood And Ashes (Mystery)

By Jaden Terrell

ISBN #978-1579624354

Permanent Press www.permanentpress.com

Price $26.83 (Hardback)

296 Pages

Rating 5-Stars

After reading the first story in the Jared McKean series, I was anxious to finally get to read this fourth book. Jared and his half-sister, Khanh, a Vietnamese girl his father sired, are still together, and she brings some humor to an otherwise very dramatic story line.  Jared is investigating a suspicious fire for an insurance company that killed several Tennessee Walking Horses. The case quickly turns into a murder investigation when human bones are also found.

Anywhere there is money to be made you will also find big crime and gangsters behind much of the happenings. It doesn’t take long for Jared and Khanh to become targets in someone’s sights.

I am against all sports that use animals for man’s enjoyment, and this book was hard for me to read because of the cruelty in this regard. The scene of the barn burning and the horses screaming and dying in the flames almost forced me to quit reading. But the book and the writing are both well conceived and plotted, and the author never fails to create a good mystery. I can recommend it highly for the mystery fan, but be aware of horrific scenes that may haunt you like it did me.

Tom Johnson

Author of THE MAN IN THE BLACK FEDORA

River of Glass

River of Glass (Mystery)

By Jaden Terrell

ISBN #978-1579623609

The Permanent Press www.thepermanentpress.com

272 Pages

Price $29.00

Rating 5-Stars

“Will Keep The Reader Spellbound.”

Jared McKean is a former homicide detective with the Metro Nashville police department, now working as a private investigator out of a small office. When an Asian girl is discovered dead in a dumpster in the back alley of his office, he’s the first person they want to ask about it.  He’s not working on a case involving Asians and tells them that, but that changes within a few days when a maimed Vietnamese woman arrives at his doorstep saying she is his half-sister, and asks for help finding her missing daughter, Tuyet. Khan claims to be the daughter of McKean’s father, born when he served in the war.

The case involves flesh trafficking. Young Asian girls are kidnapped and held in a compound where rich customers can fulfill their sexual fantasies. If the girls do not behave, they are punished, and forced to live in horrible conditions. They are kept barefoot, and surrounding the compound is a sheet of broken glass, so they can’t escape. The dead girl in the dumpster has escaped with Tuyet’s help, and was trying to reach Jared McKean, whom she thought was Tuyet’s grandfather.  She was caught and killed before reaching him. McKean takes the case, though at first he’s hesitant about the Vietnamese connection to his dead father. Khan, with only one arm, and scars on her face from a land mine, will not leave his side during the investigation, and he comes to recognize her inner strength and courage to search for her daughter. They soon began to draw closer, but the case leads them into very dark places, and Jared must deal with the horror of the flesh trade while trying to uncover the whereabouts of Tuyet and other captives.

Even at close to 300 pages, this book was one of those rare novels that are fast-paced and moved so smoothly I read it in one sitting. The reader is pulled into the story from the first page, and the author keeps you spellbound to the last exciting page. I loved it. Highly recommended.

Tom Johnson

Detective Mystery Stories