I received this book for free from the library in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Source: the library
Morning Mist of Blood
by
Eric Wilder
detective mystery, paranormal fantasy in a paperback edition that was published by Gondwana Press on August 31, 2010 and has 242 pages.
Explore it on Goodreads or Amazon
A standalone novel that incorporates the paranormal and a private investigator mystery.
My Take
Buck is a young, unemployed cowboy down to his last $20 who’s had a few jobs and is looking for a loan for a new $40,000 truck (I reckon he could pawn that Rolex!) when he gets called out to help the local police death investigator when a dead body is discovered on Clayton O’Meara’s ranch. Luckily for Buck, Clayton wants to hire him on to investigate some cattle and oil rustling AND a commune who refuses to sell him some land.
Buck’s first step is to investigate a friend of Clayton’s, Roy Dunlap, who knows everything about both Clayton’s oil and cattle which leads to hooking up with an old friend, Trey Calderham, who works with the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation with inside knowledge of genetics and cattle.
His next step is to check out the pagan(!!) commune where he discovers they are more interested in Buck’s body — can you say ritualistic orgy, a hot tub with naked women, and multiple-partner sex?
The cattle-oil investigation culminates in a SWAT attack on the bad guys in their hideout. And, fortunately for Buck, his in-depth investigation of the all-female commune pays off.
Story-wise, it has some good ideas as Wilder has an active imagination. I particularly enjoyed the description of the pagan commune’s structure and its membership support. I suspect I would have enjoyed more of it if it had been written well; some of his sentences come off stiff and labored, i.e.,”Unusual for wintertime central Oklahoma, no wind was blowing.” And his characters are exaggerated into caricature.
I just wish he’d had an editor:
- What? The owner isn’t going to notice the herd’s tracks going through the fence?
- Why does the very poor, young Buck own a Rolex?
- One of the bad guys, Garth, gives Buck a map showing where the hidden gate is???
- Please the guy’s lived his whole life in Oklahoma, talks about how nasty the rain can make roads, and has no clue what rain will do to a dry arroyo?
- He’s familiar with ATVs (because he rode one…once). So, naturally, with all this knowledge and experience, he takes an ATV back up an arroyo just after a storm hits…
OK, I know it’s good to have a number of plotlines going on in one story and Wilder’s are so stiff (seriously, no pun intended). Some of them make more sense as a guy’s wet dreams than as a contribution to the main plotline. Then there’s the mystic connection when Esme, the commune’s spiritual leader, has him do the trance session where he meets her spiritual leader and bonds even more with Beauty, Esme’s wolf.
It seems as though he’s working to a list of bullet points: x number of plotlines, lots of vicarious sex preferably with multiple partners, pagan rituals, seriously-bad bad guys, chase scenes, undercover operations (up the wazoo), and don’t forget to show what a good ‘ol boy Buck is what with his unhappy childhood, the many women in his past, and how lucky and trusted he is now.
A typical set of paragraphs:
“Clayton grabbed her hand again. ‘After meeting you, nothing else I see will disappoint me. I am already enchanted.’”
“’Clayton, you are full of it,’ she said with a smile, wresting her hand away from his grasp and giving him a playful slap across the cheek.”
“Buck watched in amazement, thinking they might rip off each other’s clothes any minute and go at it on the floor. They refrained themselves, but both smiled as they left the office and walked upstairs.”
the Cover and Title
The cover suits the story: a creek with a stormy sky overlaid by a dual snake tattoo, although I really don’t see the title as fitting the story that well. It feels like two different stories.
