Category: Book Reviews

Kirkus Reviews — The Angel Wore Black, written by C. Mack Lewis

Kirkus Reviews — The Angel Wore Black, written by C. Mack Lewis

“An engaging detective series finale with a superbly animated cast.” —Kirkus Reviews

Full Review:

THE ANGEL WORE BLACK

BY C. MACK LEWIS ‧ RELEASE DATE: JUNE 6, 2021

An Arizona private eye with a sordid past deals with missing persons and vicious homicides in this last installment of a trilogy.

It seems private investigator Jack Fox’s bed-hopping days are behind him. He’s trying to be a good father to 18-year-old college student Enid, the result of a one-night stand, and baby Katherine. Enid struggles with anger management and trauma from an ordeal in which she was forced to kill in self-defense. She’s on constant, almost paranoid guard, though her unease over Katherine’s mother, Eve Hargrove, makes sense. It hasn’t been that long since Eve escaped from prison, where she had been serving two life sentences for murder. Meanwhile, Jack takes a case for his ex-wife, a dominatrix who’s genuinely worried about her suspiciously absent “best Sub.” This has an unexpected connection to an unsolved murder from a couple of years ago—a homicide that crops up in other detectives’ investigations as well. As these cases clash, there’s a good chance Eve is involved. But whoever it is, someone more than willing to kill has cast Jack, his daughters, and others in a twisted, lethal game. Lewis, as in the earlier series volumes, loads her tale with grim melodrama, which takes precedence over the detective story. Mystery is fleeting; private eyes’ investigations take them either to people who adamantly withhold information or right to a killer’s door. Characters, nevertheless, practically burst with personality; they’re eccentric, flawed, and endlessly intriguing. And though the narrative is dark and sometimes brutally violent, it also flaunts a surprising amount of humor. Jack’s rival, gumshoe Dana Goode, is particularly memorable. She hilariously bickers with her office manager and takes fanatical glee in upsetting Jack. After a bleak but entertainingly over-the-top final act, the novel offers a solid series ending. Still, any of these characters could ignite a worthy spinoff.An engaging detective series finale with a superbly animated cast.

Get your free preview of The Angel Wore Black today!

Newest Review of Gunning For Angels on the blog ‘Promoting Crime Fiction by Lizzie Hayes.’

Newest Review of Gunning For Angels on the blog ‘Promoting Crime Fiction by Lizzie Hayes.’

Promoting Crime Fiction by Lizzie Hayes

Sending out a huge ‘Thank You’ to Lizzie Hayes and Dot Marshall-Gent for reviewing my novel!

 

‘Gunning for Angels’ by C Mack Lewis

Published by Cathleen A McCarthy,
29 July 2014.
ISBN: 978-0990610809
Gunning for Angels opens with Enid Iglowski, a sixteen year old wild-child, making her escape from Florida, a  school, and her alcoholic mother.  Enid embarks on the journey having recently discovered that her biological father, Jack Fox, is a private detective who lives in Phoenix.  Two years shy of forty, Fox has a trail of broken relationships and one-night-stands behind him, plays the tough-guy, detests children and has no idea that he is a parent.  When Enid tracks him down they both, understandably, feel confused and vulnerable, a response that they quickly mask with aggressive-defensive behaviours.

Meanwhile, ageing Police Detective Bud Orlean and his son Chip also become locked in a domestic battle when Chip announces that he has quit medical school to become a writer. 

In the midst of these parent/child feuds, the discovery of human bones in the Arizona desert leads Bud to revisit a cold case that opens up a Pandora’s box of intrigue and deception.  The detectives and their wayward offspring are entangled in a deadly quest for the truth during which their professional and private lives become blurred.
This is a hard-hitting, sometimes explicitly graphic and highly entertaining detective novel.  Descriptions of murder, betrayal, complex familial relationships and child exploitation are tempered with humour as Enid’s unpredictable, often outrageous, teenage behaviour confounds those around her.  Melodramatic tantrums and reunions abound as the mystery unfolds and the detectives are thwarted as much by their personal proclivities as the scheming villains they are pursuing. 
——
Reviewer: Dorothy Marshall Gent

 

dot

Dot Marshall-Gent – worked in the emergency services for twenty years first as a police officer, then as a paramedic and finally as a fire control officer before graduating from King’s College, London as a teacher of English in her mid-forties.  She completed a M.A. in Special and Inclusive Education at the Institute of Education, London and now teaches part-time and writes mainly about educational issues.  Dot sings jazz and country music and plays guitar, banjo and piano as well as being addicted to reading mystery and crime fiction.

 

About Me

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From an early age I have been a lover of crime fiction. Discovering like minded people at my first crime conference at St Hilda’s Oxford in 1997, I was delighted when asked to join a new group for the promotion of female crime writers. In 1998 I took over the running of the group, which I did for the next thirteen years. During that time I organised countless events promoting crime writers and in particular new writers. But apart from the sheer joy of reading, ‘I actually love books, not just the writing, the plot or the characters, but the sheer joy of holding a book has never abated for me. The greatest gift of my life has been the ability to read’.

 

Thank you again to Lizzie and Dot for promoting authors of crime fiction! 

Promoting Crime Fiction by Lizzie Hayes