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#pedometergeek, book blog, book review, Church of Spilled Blood, Colt Maverick, Jack Salvo, Jesse Mills, mystery, novel, novels, pedometer geek, review, suspense, thriller
The latest novel that this pedometer geek reader read was Church of Spilled Blood by Jesse Miles. This story as well as his other novel, Dead Drop, was given to me by the author himself. This is the extended review of the e-book.
Church of Spilled Blood
By Jesse Miles
Published by Amazon Digital Publishing, 2016
ASIN: B01LA51Z96
Jesse Mills’ Church of Spilled Blood features Jackson Salvo, an intelligent, snarky, and clever philosophy instructor who supplements his pay by working as a private investigator.
As the story opens, Jack is hired to play bodyguard to several Russian ballerinas and their students, squiring them to and from practice. When one of the students, Galina, is abducted, and Jack is zapped with a stun gun so that he cannot catch her captors, he goes on the hunt to find her before she is hurt and possibly killed.
In the process he loses this job, but that doesn’t deter him at all. When Galina is released two blocks from his office, Salvo knows something doesn’t add up, and he is in a race to figure out just what is going on before the FBI agent does.
Furthermore, one of the ballerinas, Yelena, is a complication that leads to his going to St. Petersburg, Russia when she is kidnapped.
Jack Salvo is a law unto himself as he skirts the law throughout his investigation of Galina’s abduction. Throwing so much cash around to get people to talk seemed a bit out of line considering his somewhat precarious financial situation (that is, his college classes didn’t pay the bills and he had been fired), but that is just a nit-picky thing on my part. Despite repeated warnings from officials, he still manages to put the puzzle together.
Except for a smirk or two, there were very few What-the-tuck trends noticed. Formatting of the e-book had some issues like words run together and blank spaces where lines did not wrap correctly. There were some missing punctuation marks, but none of these were so egregious as to be off putting to anyone.
There are some twists throughout the story that are surprising, making this a fun read overall. This reader loved the fact that Salvo taught philosophy at the community college and even used his knowledge in solving the mystery. The ending was a bit abrupt though, but despite this, this reader is looking forward to reading more by Mills. Jack Salvo with his cleverness and quick thinking reminded this reader of the main characters created by Gregory McDonald (Fletch) and Cary Ashby (Colt Maverick).
A couple quotes I found interesting:
Phony bastards who feign laughter in their voices are one of my least favorite segments of humanity. (20%)
“Three years ago, the lead pharmacist was on the receiving end of a disciplinary action by the California Board of Pharmacy. They inspected her inventory and found shortages of controlled substances. The drugs included Oxycontin.” (47%)
As a pharmacist myself, I really liked this quote because Jesse Mills got this right: that a pharmacist would get caught quickly and be hauled up in front of the state board for loss of controlled substances. While I hate to think there are unscrupulous pharmacists, I know that there are some and the Board of Pharmacy (in each state) acts to oversee pharmacists and protect the public. I once read a book in which the doctor and pharmacist were doing the same thing and yet it was brushed over by that author, so score a point for Mr. Miles! (Exiting soapbox mode…)
This mystery was read in a Kindle format as that is the only format for the novel.
Thank you Jesse Miles for the two novels; it was appreciated and I am sorry it took so long to read this one. I look forward to reading Dead Drop in the near future.