A dead blow hammer leaves little to no mark on the surface it strikes. It’s not a shoer’s tool, but horseshoer Rainy Dale knows them and knows there are more questions than answers about how her new client became a widow. The old woman says there was hardly a bruise on her dead husband. Why was he driving his tractor so dangerously near the killer bull? How long did it take him to die after the machine rolled and pinned him? The whole town seems aware of the dead man’s wandering eye. Did the widow know?
It all happened just before Rainy came to town, about the time that her fiancé, Guy, volunteered with his buddy to help search for a young woman who went missing from Cowdry, Oregon. Rainy is supposed to be making wedding plans and friends, but she can’t help being drawn into the town’s old intrigues.
Once again, Rainy will have to dig deep and use all the tools in her box to both defend herself and the people she's just learning to love.
In Preston’s enjoyable sequel to 2018’s The Clincher, Rainy Dale, the intrepid horseshoer of Cowdry, Ore., takes on a new client, rancher Donna Chevigny, whose husband, Cameron, died the previous year in a tractor accident. Rainy welcomes the job as a chance to help someone hard-pressed to manage a cattle ranch all on her own. Everything changes, though, when Donna’s dog finds a glove with a human hand in it.
In Preston’s enjoyable sequel to 2018’s The Clincher, Rainy Dale, the intrepid horseshoer of Cowdry, Ore., takes on a new client, rancher Donna Chevigny, whose husband, Cameron, died the previous year in a tractor accident. Rainy welcomes the job as a chance to help someone hard-pressed to manage a cattle ranch all on her own. Everything changes, though, when Donna’s dog finds a glove with a human hand in it. The hand belongs to Arielle Blake, a young woman who went missing about the same time Cameron died. Are the two deaths related? Was Donna involved with either death? What about Arielle’s fiancé? Rainy becomes mired in clues, suspects, and questions, with no answers in sight. Rainy, a strong, down-home, likable sleuth, has just the right amount of attitude to give her some gumption. The horseshoeing jargon and details of the tools of the trade may be more than some readers care to know, but Preston delivers a steady ride right up to the satisfying ending. Hopefully, Rainy will be back soon.
Lisa Preston is surely the finest, and most sure-handed writer of equine-themed mysteries since the days of the blessed Dick Francis, and her protagonist, horse-shoer (yes, you read that right) Rainy Dale is a lively, appealing one-of-a-kind. Dead Blow is great fun to read, partly because of the clever, quirky, twisty plot, but even more so because of the frequent peeks into Rainy's clever, quirky, twisty mind. May the series long continue.
Lisa Preston puts her own sharp edge on this fast-moving contemporary western thriller. Her heroine, young Rainy Dale, is a female horse shoer, as strong and passionate of mind as she is strong of back. When accidents in her central Oregon paradise don't seem so accidental, and evil holds the whip hand as the bodies start piling up, Rainy proves that cold steel and hot iron are for deadlier deeds than shoeing horses.
Rainy Dale, a professional farrier and amateur sleuth in rural Oregon, again shows off her girl swagger and crime-solving smarts in the follow-up to The Clincher. Author Lisa Preston writes of horses, ranch life and small town cow-folk with a deep, easy familiarity. While the multiple-murder plot entertains with plenty of switchbacks and blind curves, Preston's offhanded, unusual writing voice is the real star. Heroine Rainy Dale's candor and unpretentious charm will leave her branded on readers' hearts for sequels to come.