Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Mystery Book Review: Broken Heartland by J. M. Hayes

Mysterious ReviewsMysterious Reviews, mysteries reviewed by the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books, has written a review of Broken Heartland by J. M. Hayes. For our blog readers, we are printing it first here in advance of its publication on our website.Broken Heartland by J. M. Hayes

Broken Heartland by J. M. Hayes
A Mad Dog and Englishman Mystery

Poisoned Pen Press (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1-59058-452-X (159058452X)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59058-452-1 (9781590584521)
Publication Date: November 2007
List Price: $24.95

Synopsis (from the publisher): Sleepy Benteen County, , turns frantic on election day.

Sheriff English, better known as Englishman, faces his toughest re-election challenge yet. The radical religious right is out to unseat him, their candidate an Iraq war hero. And Englishman’s only available deputy isn’t winning him votes, not after ramming a school bus carrying a local teen choir during a pre-dawn chase.The occupants of the vehicle being pursued seem involved with involuntary organ donors and secret surgeries. Englishman’s brother, Mad Dog, a born-again Cheyenne, rushes back from a quest to the Black Hills. Instead of a vision, he had a premonition that the sheriff is in serious danger. Finding his farm vandalized and a cruel political billboard in his front yard, Mad Dog complicates the sheriff’s life by investigating the hate crime himself. The sheriff’s daughters, attending separate colleges, wake with similar premonitions, then cut classes and hurry home to keep their father safe. The sheriff sees them as the ones in need of protection as his day grows progressively wilder. A student smuggles a gun into the school and begins shooting and taking hostages. Then there’s the private army that’s seized a nearby farm and holds citizens against their will. And, when he finds some spare time, Englishman needs to clear up one little thing about his deputy’s accident. Benteen County doesn’t have a teen choir.

Review: The fourth mystery in the Mad Dog and Englishman series by J. M. Hayes, Broken Heartland, takes place during the course of just one frenzied day in Benteen County.

Just before dawn, an automobile accident involving a police car and a school bus filled with children who have (supposedly) been rehearsing for the local church choir at a church camp takes place. It’s also election day, so the area is crowded with pollsters and voters who are questioning the sheriff’s secretary about anything and everything, so much so that she has a hard time answering the telephone and keeping the office available for important calls ... like information on the collision of a police car and school bus. There’s a fifteen year old boy on a rampage with his father’s gun. He has already killed his parents and is now killing fellow students. There’s a mad doctor, with hired gunmen, in town to bring in healthy people for transplants in order to keep an aging televangelist alive. Sheriff English’s daughters, both named Heather and his brother, Mad Dog, have premonitions that Englishman’s life is in danger. Mad Dog drives in from the Black Hills, and both girls leave their respective colleges and drive home, too. With all the unruliness and confusion going on that eventful day, it’s difficult to say just who needed whom.

Hayes does a marvelous job in keeping these various plotlines from spinning out of control. The pace of the book is about as rapid as the stories are frantic and it is thrilling to be a part of it, if only as a reader. The real mystery here is how the author, in the end, brings everything together so well.

Broken Heartland is action, more action, and a bit of a mystery with just a suggestion of a love story. It is highly recommended.

Special thanks to guest reviewer Betty of for contributing her review of Broken Heartland and to Poisoned Pen Press for providing an ARC of the book for this review.

Review Copyright © 2007 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved.

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