Day: September 6, 2014
Review of ‘Mind Game’
If you’ve read and liked Bob Rueff’s End Game, you’ll like the sequel, Mind Game. Minneapolis cop Hank Hankensen is at it again, this time trying to nab a killer who leaves his victims at famous Minneapolis landmarks. Darcy Austin, a main character in the first book of the series, appears again – the perpetual damsel in distress it seems.
Tight dialogue and effusive descriptions mark Rueff’s work, but even more interesting for mystery fans, he takes the reader inside the killer’s mind. While not quite as exciting as the first – or maybe I was just jaded by the first one – it will still keep you up and turning pages.
I received a free copy for review, and loved it. Like the guys in the old PGA ad that ran some time ago on TV – this guy knows what he’s doing. A highly recommended read. I give it four stars – I’d like to have given it five, but since it’s a sequel, I don’t think it needed as much of the background information Rueff included. Of course, I stayed up late reading it, so there.
Review of ‘End Game’
When employees of an advertising agency start getting killed in strange and twisted ways, homicide detective Hank Hankensen finds himself chasing a mysterious killer with a macabre sense of the dramatic. Darcy Austin, an employee of the Williams/Bailey agency who found the first victim drowned in his soup, becomes a double target – the killer wants her dead, and Hankensen just wants her.
End Game by Bob Rueff is a titillating mystery that has a bit of everything. I received a free copy for review and was late getting to sleep because I couldn’t put it down. Rueff includes a lot of inside dope on ad agencies, and knows how to grab a reader by the nose and lead him or her along the byzantine paths he constructs.
The real and the fictitious are so well described it’s hard to know which is which – and, in the end, it doesn’t matter. Rueff must be a good marketer, because when you’re done with this book, you’re left wanting more.
This was my easiest five-star so far this year.
Charles Ray's Ramblings 