At last year’s SiouxperCon event, one of the tables in the Expo Hall/Artist’s Alley area featured a puzzle box, a riddle, and a challenge that anyone able to solve the riddle could win a free copy of one of the author’s books. Lacking the brain cycles and patience necessary to procure stuff via the free route, I took the easier path of supporting a local author and solving the problem by throwing money at it. This netted me an autographed copy of author Rollan Wengert’s murder mystery thriller Caveat Ties.
The book takes place in a generic riverfront town which was headed towards a slow decline and death until one man changed everything. All Caveat had to do was form an organized crime syndicate, set up a bunch of legitimate businesses, prop those businesses up with profits from his various criminal enterprises, and buy off anyone with enough authority to stop him. Piece of cake.
Arrayed against him is a motley force of the town’s last honest detective; an investigative reporter (and Caveat’s ex-girlfriend from high school); an alcoholic snitch; and the born again, ex-Green Beret owner of a local diner who has a rough and tumble history with Caveat that again goes back to high school. Oh, and their teenage kids. None of them are particularly effective in their opposition, at least until a new player enters the game: a masked vigilante, intent on taking down Caveat’s organization by any means necessary.
The story itself is told from the semi-omniscient first-person viewpoint of a single unreliable narrator. It’s an interesting hook that draws readers into a meta plot of just who is telling the story, and how does this person know everything that he does? The main plot follows the actions of both the opposition and Caveat, and runs at an action packed, page turning pace.
The biggest issue I had with the book was sentence and language construction. It’s hard to put my finger on exactly what the problem was, but a lot of the structure just felt off and structurally awkward. Not bad, but like the whole story needed a couple more proofreaders and another editing pass by a third-party editor. For example, here’s a couple sentences from the back of the book description: “Haunted by his raucous past with Caveat, Jamie Jefferson of JJ’s Diner seeks peace. And, Gus O’ Reilly, a beatnik snitch, helps out where he can’t. Their teenage offspring, Spencer, Jewel, JR, and Rachel witness their failures, birthing a youthful set of frustrations and fruitless cracks at the justice gig.”
I don’t want to turn this review into an English lesson, and I realize I have plenty of my own writing quirks, but something about that description rubs me the wrong way. It’s a problem that permeates the book and repeatedly tried to pull me out of the otherwise engaging story.
Awkward language elements aside, the story itself is pretty good. I note that the book is available on Kindle Unlimited, and for mystery fans, it’s worth a read. I hope that he’s at SiouxperCon this year as well, so that I can pick up some copies of the author’s other books.