Finding Family

Walk A Crooked Mile
Catherine Dain

Reviewed by Vicky Stowers
Owner-Operator

Listening Time: 6 hours
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Retail: $35
Genre: Mystery
Plot: This is Dain’s third book featuring private investigator Freddie O’Neal. This time O’Neal is approached by a most unusual client – her mother. She wants Freddie to find a missing man – Freddie’s own father. In her search Freddie runs into Sam, her father’s old friend, at a camel race meeting. She also bumps into the reluctant Charlie Hanrahan, who seems to know something about her missing father but is dead before he can tell her. Freddie will finally find her father, but in a place she never expected.
Main characters: O’Neal is a beer-drinking, gambling pilot, who is also a tall blonde. She lives alone with her two cats in Reno, Nev. Her father, Danny, simply walked out of the lives of his wife and daughter when Freddie was just 12. Hanrahan appears to know something, but is a wary of talking to her. He finally agrees to tell what he knows, only to be killed on his way to meet her. It is her father’s friend who quickly becomes her friend and ally.
What’s best (or not)? Freddie is in danger from the moment her investigation begins, and the suspense never lets up.
Would you recommend? Yes. I loved this book.
Narrator’s style: Stephanie Brush reads all the Freddie O’Neal books and she does a fantastic job.
How would you rate the book? A+


Leslie
Omar Tyree

To her Haitian immigrant father, Leslie Beaudet is a queen who deserves more than broken dreams and poverty. To her Black Indian mother, she is a source of pride and strength, a reason for carrying on. To her sister, Leslie is the only person who cares enough to share her woes. To her brother, she is the victim he failed to protect. She is a determined, resourceful student at an historically black college in New Orleans, and when a series of murders hits the city, the finger of suspicion points in Leslie’s direction.

Slowly her friends and relatives realize they’ve never really known Leslie, a complicated young woman terrified of failure, struggling with painful family secrets, praying for the security that has eluded everyone around her. And craving the power to change her fate, a power that was hidden from her until now