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Author Margaret Coel was here Monday for a guest post. Today, I'm reviewing the two books in her Catherine McLeod mystery series. (My apologies, these reviews are two days late.)







title: Blood Memory: A Catherine McLeod Mystery

author: Margaret Coel

published: 2008

genre: crime thriller/suspense

pages: 305

source: sent by publisher for review

first line: The August night was perfect.

rated: 3 out of 5 stars







About:

Blood Memory is the first in the Catherine McLeod mystery books by author Margaret Coel.
Catherine is an investigative reporter for a Denver newspaper called the Journal. On one of her nightly routine walks with her golden retriever Rex, Catherine notices she is being followed. Narrowly escaping a brush with death, Catherine becomes involved in a crime investigation and realizes she is being targeted by a hit man. Being an investigative reporter has gotten her plenty of enemies, but she cannot think of anyone who would want to kill her. The hit man himself sends her an email, but it is basically a threat. From page one, Catherine is caught in a cat and mouse chase.



Catherine's rich ex-husband, Lawrence, insists she stay at his secluded family ranch up in the Colorado mountains until they find the man who is after her. Catherine reluctantly agrees. Meanwhile Bustamante, the detective assigned to her case is on the search for her would be assassin.

Catherine realizes there is a connection between her attempted murder and a story involving the Arapaho and Cheyenne Indians.





My thoughts:

Blood Memory is a suspenseful story that had me drawn in. I liked Catherine from the start. She's a strong woman with a mind of her own. The cast of characters is interesting and I was easily taken in by the storyline.



The Arapaho and Cheyenne Indians are involved within the plot and as the story unfolds you get to see how this is all connected to Catherine. This part of the story was a bit boring for me however, especially towards the end. I felt myself not interested in it as much as in the chase between Catherine and her would be assassin.



I liked police detective Nick Bustamante. He's your classic strong hero/good guy trying to save lives. I wanted to see if something would develop between he and Catherine.


I wanted Catherine to kick her ex-husband Lawrence in the 'you know whats'. He's your basic slimy guy who thinks he can get away with anything because he thinks he's entitled.


I also liked that Catherine's Golden Retriever Rex is involved the story, it gave it all a more realistic feel.




Author Margaret Coel wraps the ending up well and gives the story closure.







The Colorado setting was great, author Margaret Coel really makes it a part of the story. I could easily imagine the beautiful mountains and sky as the backdrop to the story.

There were scatterings of gray sagebrush and clusters of old cottonwood tress along the banks of dry creeks. The air smelled of dust and sage and outdoors. The great wall of mountains curved in the distance.
p. 43

Although the Arapaho and Cheyenne Indian aspect of the story dragged a bit for me, I found Blood Memory to be a good start to a suspenseful series.














title: The Perfect Suspect: A Catherine McLeod Mystery

author: Margaret Coel

published: 2011

genre: crime thriller/suspense

pages: 293

source: sent by publisher for review

first line: She never meant to kill him.

rated: 4 out of 5 stars







About:


David Mathews is a candidate running for Governor in Colorado. Journalist Catherine McLeod has been covering his campaign for some time. There are rumors of Mathews infidelities and shady business deals, but nothing has been proven. He and his wife seem to be the perfect couple.



One night Mathews is home alone and opens his front door to find his ex mistress Detective Ryan Beckman there. She insists on coming into his home and tries to convince Mathews the two can work things out.

When he asks her to leave, she shoots him dead. As Ryan leaves the crime scene, another one of Mathews mistresses sees her from outside the house. An eye witness.



Journalist Catherine McLeod is sent to the crime scene the next day to get the scoop. Ironically enough, Detective Ryan Beckman is assigned to the case along with her partner, Martinez.

At this point, Mathews wife is the prime suspect, the murder weapon is even found at her home, planted there by none other than Ryan.



Catherine receives an anonymous phone call from the eye witness/mistress, saying that she saw Detective Ryan Beckman flee the crime scene. She won't give her name or identity, being that she thinks she'll be ridiculed and possibly hauled in for questioning, since she is a private escort. Catherine has a gut feeling that this person is telling the truth and does all she can to prove who the real killer is.





My thoughts:


The Perfect Suspect grabbed me in from the first line and didn't let me go until the final page.
I read this book in one sitting and was really swept into the storyline.



I liked to see that Catherine and Nick (Blood Memory) are together and that she is moving on with her life after what happened in book 1.



The storyline in this one was great and the author does a wonderful job at getting the reader inside the minds of these characters. Detective Ryan Beckman is ironically assigned to a murder case for a crime of passion that she herself commited. She is hell bent on framing Mathews wife. She is also being very careful of what information she divulges, since she's been inside Mathews homes and knows her way around. She is very careful while interviewing suspects and friends of Mathews, even coming across one of his interns who saw the two together and knew of the affair.

Rumors swirled about the candidate-financial improprieties, shady business deals, extramarital affairs. She had never suceeded in running down any of them. They were like a dull throbbing in her head, elusive, maddening and persistent.

p.14

Catherine is on the prowl, trying to get as much information as she can, risking her life in the process.

There is plenty of suspense in this one, and I was really curious to see how it would all end. All in all, a great read and I do recommend this one to fans of this genre or for anyone looking to get swept up in a great thriller.






Overall, Blood Memory and The Perfect Suspect, are both suspenseful entertaining reads and I do recommend them. Although they are part of a series, they can be read as stand alone books.


Out of these two book, I enjoyed The Perfect Suspect more.







Special thanks to Kaitlyn over @ the Penguin Group for making this possible.

Today I'd like to give a warm welcome to Margaret Coel, author of Blood Memory & The Perfect Suspect. I will be reviewing both of these books tomorrow.






Onto the guest post...





I’m on my way to an author event in Denver where the hostess is known for asking authors what they are thinking as they write books. I can’t wait to hear what I’m going to say. What was I thinking when I was writing The Perfect Suspect? It’s easier to talk about what I was not thinking and what I am never thinking as I write.


I am not thinking about the words I type on the screen. Sometimes the words don’t make any sense. I don’t care. Sometimes I can’t wrest out of my brain the exact word to fit the situation, so I type a series of X’s and write on. I am not thinking about grammar, which was why, years ago, I had to learn how to turn off that doggoned computer function that corrects my grammar before I killed it. (I do write mystery novels.) I am not thinking about whether whatever I’m writing should be in another chapter. In short I am not cutting, editing and polishing to a shiny hue my first venture into a story. Which means I will have a one word answer to the question. What was I thinking about? Story.



From the moment I turn on the screen and type in Chapter One, I am lost in the story. All other thoughts are banished. The house could burn down around me. I’m not sure when I might notice. A blizzard could be raging outside, but if my story is set in the hot summer, I am mopping the sweat from my brow. Out my window may be a view of the rooftops of Boulder, but what I see are the wide open plains of the Wind River reservation in Wyoming when I’m writing a novel in my Wind River series. For The Perfect Suspect, all I saw were the streets, bungalows and neighborhoods of Denver as Catherine McLeod investigative reporter, chases down a killer.



Every novel is about story. Authors enter into the story in different ways.
I’ve heard authors compare writing to watching a play. The actors enter stage right, say and do something and make their exits, while the writer types away recording every move and word. For me, writing is a way of being right up there on the stage. I live the lives of all the characters simultaneously, laughing and crying when they do (oh, yes, I’ve shed a lot of tears over my keyboard), plotting revenge or forcing myself to do the right thing, making a general mess of my characters’ lives, then trying to extricate them (and myself) from the mess.
In The Perfect Suspect, I walked down Denver’s streets with Catherine McLeod, seeing what she saw, saying what she thought, and figuring out, as she did, how to find the person who had murdered the popular politician sure to be Colorado’s next governor. I’m scared to death, right along with Catherine, when she realizes she is now the one hunted by an increasingly psychotic killer. I’m madly in love with Detective Nick Bustamante, as is Catherine, and worried about the ups and downs of their relationship, as does she. An Arapaho, raised in a white family in Denver, Catherine is just beginning to get in touch with her own culture. I love the settled feeling that comes over her—and me—in the moments when she draws closer to the ancestors and to herself.




Non-writers think that writing is lonely work. After all, writers sit all day in front of a computer, no fellow office workers around, no one to shoot the bull with over the water cooler. Nothing could be further from the truth. Writers are never alone. We are surrounded all day by dozens of fascinating people, talking, acting up, doing all sorts of profoundly interesting things.

That’s because we are telling a story to ourselves, and story is the most critical piece of a novel. I have no patience for the so-called post-modern, minimalist, theme-driven novels—or whatever tag may be current in literary circles--because they have abandoned story. And story is what we live by, what connects us to other human beings and helps us to make sense of our own lives. All great novels tell great stories.


Only when The Perfect Suspect was safely tucked inside my computer did I allow myself to think about anything other than story. At that point, I could step out of the story, observe Catherine as she moved through the events, as if I were in the audience, and launch into the rewriting, editing, cutting, polishing and other feats of craftsmanship that, I hope, pushed Catherine’s story to stage front and center, in the spotlight where it belongs.

By Margaret Coel



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Special thanks to Margaret Coel for stopping by today. I just finished reading Blood Memory & The Perfect Suspect and will be reviewing them tomorrow. These were two great, suspenseful thrillers and I enjoyed reading a bit about Margaret's writing process.

I do agree she did, as Margaret puts it, 'pushed Catherine’s story to stage front and center, in the spotlight where it belongs'.











Special thanks to Kaitlyn over @ the Penguin Group for making this possible.