Dust Up by Jon McGoran / Reviewed by G. Robert Frazier
Killer Nashville Book of the Day
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Jon McGoran
Dust Up by Jon McGoran
Reviewed by G. Robert Frazier
Detective Doyle Carrick is a magnet for trouble. The hero of Jon McGoran’s latest novel, Dust Up (Forge Books), Carrick is at home with his girlfriend when a complete stranger appears frantically pounding on his front door, only to be shot down in cold blood.
Homicide Detective Mike Warren embraces the easy way out by wanting to peg the crime on the victim’s wife, Miriam Hartwell, whom Carrick saw driving away from the scene. Fortunately for readers, the truth is a lot more complicated, as is often the case with Carrick’s adventures.
Carrick is urged to back off the investigation and let Warren handle things, but it’s not that simple. Miriam seeks him out again and fills him in on a biotech cover up of a tainted food program in Haiti. As Carrick has some prior experience in corporate investigations—namely in McGoran’s previous books Drift and Deadout—the Hartwells specifically sought him out to help blow the whistle on their employer, Energene.
Before Miriam can fully relate her tale, however, Carrick and Miriam come under fire from unknown assailants. Forced to work side by side with Energene, who convince Carrick’s bosses that Miriam is guilty of espionage, Carrick tracks Miriam back to Haiti where his investigation plunges them into an international conspiracy of deceit, greed, and corruption.
McGoran keeps the action moving at a frantic pace in a series of tautly written chapters that will have you turning the pages long into the night. Along the way, he never loses sight of Carrick’s down-to-earth wit and intelligence, qualities that make him eminently relatable to readers.
An advocate for responsible food growth and sustainability, McGoran uses his twenty years of experience in the field to relate a complicated plot in an easy to understand action fable.
G. Robert Frazier reads and writes in La Vergne, Tenn. Follow him on Twitter @grfrazier23 or visit his Adventures in Writing blog at https://grfrazier.wordpress.com.
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