Flamingo Road: A Mystery

This is my first encounter with Fia McKee. It will not be my last!!

Action and tension are established in the initial page and a half. Almost brutal immediacy is amplified by some of the best scene-setting I have ever read. You are there, given a sense of place and regional Baltimore economics without that interfering at all with situational development. It’s not only impressive writing but professionally exceptional.

The second chapter presents personal and professional conflict for Fia then, without pause, gives her distant familial problems to add to her burden. Other members of her department are limned clearly while the bureaucratic hostility of that organization is made explicit.

In just days, Fia is in Florida, and on the first day there a criminal horror against their beloved horses strikes her family. This is the same immediate immersion the author subjected us to when she began, and it’s equally effective.

I realized I was not going to be able to sleep until I finished with this emotional leg trap.

As the protagonist explores the Florida swamp and her own true calling, sensory impact and excellent continuity persist. Authorial knowledge of law enforcement and horses shines through and makes for entrancing, breathless reading.