MARY KELIIKOA'S PAGE: The Misty Pines Mysteries series

KILLER TRACKS (A Misty Pines Mystery #3)
MARY KELIIKOA
Level Best Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$5.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A peaceful retreat. A maze of smoke and murder. Is their remote getaway about to become a death trap?

Sheriff Jax Turner is worried about going off-grid and leaving his young team of deputies behind. But while his getaway with his ex is meant to help them reconnect, Jax is distracted by signs of a break-in at their rented lookout.

After a string of unsettling events and an approaching wildfire turn their isolated retreat into a danger zone, he’s stunned to find a dead body with marks tying it to a killer he put away a decade ago.

Terrified his attempt at reconciliation has led them both into a fatal setup, Jax rushes back to his estranged wife before she joins the list of victims. But his dedication to serving and protecting could become an Achilles heel as other players join them among the darkening trees.

Can he fight his way out of the woods before the flames of revenge consume everything?

Killer Tracks is the tense third book in the Misty Pines Mystery Series. If you like tangled relationships, edge-of-your-seat suspense, and small town sheriff procedurals, then you’ll love Mary Keliikoa’s page-turning game of cat-and-mouse.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Tangled emotions, a History that beats any failure of your own relationships, and a stressful job as The Crime-Solver in a town as magnetic to crime as Midsomer or St Mary Mead...I am in my happy place. The stakes are very high, the people are familiar enough to be my real life neighbors, and the setting makes me pine away for a small-town life that, if I had it, would make me feel desperate and trapped.

Jax and Abby are still trying to fix what got broken by the awfulness of their shared world...he's an ex-Portland cop (bet they want him back now) and her FBI world...because they just can't quit each other. So while they're off in the patch-up place aka back of beyond, Rachel the deputy is trying her goddamnedest to solve an arson covering up a murder...when in flies her dad, delivering a crucial cold-case clue like a gangrenous carrier pigeon. (Me no likee daddums; he was also Jax's Portland force partner...my hackles will not stay down when he's around.)

Into Abby and Jax's doomed privacy wafts Hannah...wait, who? Exactly! Who's she, where'd she come from, and when's she leaving?

So a series'-worth of Jax pining unrequitedly after Abby, a murder case Rachel really wants to solve without some old man buttin' in (be it her old man or Jax's predecessor as chief), and a serial-killer cold case. Have I forgotten anything?

You'll want to read for yourselves, so I ain't tellin'.

*eville cackle*

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DEADLY TIDES (A Misty Pines Mystery #2)
MARY KELIIKOA
Level Best Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$16.95 paperback, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A missing surf legend. Waterlogged clues. Can he trust his gut instincts to end the wave of murder?

Sheriff Jax Turner is learning to live again. Holding tight to the hope of reconciling with his FBI agent ex-wife, the wary man is determined to keep his focus on his coastal Oregon community. And after a concerned brother requests a welfare check, Jax is troubled to find the absent surf shop owner's tracks lead to a pool of blood.

Now investigating a potential homicide, Turner chases a tip from his former spouse about a severed foot found on the beach. But when a torrent of leads links the victim to a politician's son, a jealous competitor, and a get-straight program for youth, the steadfast lawman fears layers of lies and secret agendas will keep him from stopping a vicious killer.

Can he unravel the fatal agenda before he's the next corpse to wash ashore?

If you like flawed heroes, gritty crimes, and dark twists and turns, then you'll love Deadly Tides, the chilling second book in Mary Keliikoa's Misty Pines Mystery Series.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Local surfer dies mysteriously; unconnected human foot washes up on local beach, handled by Jax's much pined-after ex-wife the FBI agent, who knows he can handle it so hands responsibility over; lying liars lie and abuse people...okay, it's Misty Pines. Good to be back.

Abby, the ex-wife and FBI agent, gets a third person PoV like Jax because we need to know things he couldn't and she feels reluctant to tell his simping-for-her self. It helped me keep details clear in my head. I can't help but wonder why her FBI partner Olek is so present...but I like Jax getting the eager young Rachel onto his deputeam. He's settling in to the job of being The Crime Solver for Misty Pines. He's not as unsure of himself. It begins to feel more like a set team is forming.

I confess I do not see Abby's side of their divorce. It doesn't matter much because, unless decades of series-mystery reading and recognizing the need for ma'at to be restored, they *will* get back together. In their profession of law enforcement, each is the other's ideal mate. This time apart will, I predict, pay dividends.

You will pay an attention tax. This book does not hold to a spanking pace as it privileges introspection and the unending process of grieving. Rather we're shown the emotional gyrations in Jax and, to a lesser extent, Abby, as they circle each other simply by virtue of sharing the most important trait of them all: Values.

I think this book would be so fraught as to be meaningless if one had not read book one, Hidden Pieces (q.v.). The cast, the pace, the fuller backstory, all help defray the attention cost of the story's inward focus. Not to be skipped, but don't start here.

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HIDDEN PIECES (A Misty Pines Mystery #1)
MARY KELIIKOA
Level Best Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
99¢ ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Sheriff Jax Turner is staring down the barrel of his broken past. On the brink of ending it all, he feels like a failure following his daughter's tragic passing and his subsequent divorce. But when a schoolgirl vanishes and her backpack is found in a sex offender's backseat, the weary lawman drags himself into action and vows to nail one last sociopath.

Shocked to discover the teen's aunt had lost her life in an abduction years prior, the devastating outcome that he's taken personally, Jax believes the killer has returned with a vengeance. But as the desperate cop frantically hunts down a mysterious relative in search of a suspect, the girl's time keeps ticking away...

Can the jaded sheriff take down the culprit in time to bring the young girl home alive?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: We meet Jax in extremis...the very worst thing possible to happen to a person has happened, the depressingly most-common fallout of that hideous disaster has occurred and he is (he thinks) ready for The End.

He is not.

He is summoned back to participation in life by the disappearance of Allison, a teenaged missing person with frantic parents. Jax can gird himself to be involved, as he badly wants to give someone else the ending he did not get. All set in the scenic, peacfully beautiful coastal-Oregon town of Misty Pines. As a small town, it is of course a place of unspoken stuff Everybody Knows (or think they know) but which Jax, formerly a Portland detective, isn't privy to. And doesn't know he doesn't know.

All of this feeds the man's deep, well-entrenched anxiety about his skills, about his past coming home to roost, about his misery being without his FBI agent ex-wife who abandoned him...After. It's real, it happens, people are not their best selves when crushed by terrible grief. It does occupy a good deal of his mental energy, though not simply as plot dressing. Trust Author Keliikoa. She has a plan.

Why I wasn't offering nosegays and wreaths of stars comes down to the ending. It is something you'll resonate with or you won't. I felt it introduced more complexity than was necessary, even for a series mystery. But...and this is crucial to know...it was not simply pulled outta nowhere and tacked on. As a first in series read, I'll pin my reservations to my mind's corkboard and see if my issues are used to good advantage in a later book.

Definitely a series I recommend you pursue with me!