Sometimes the best part about a book is that it gives you an excuse to purge the sequels unread.
It's amateur hour at the OK Corral and the sleuths are not exactly Sherlock clones.
The prologue opens 2 years earlier when the h is attacked in the H's family's barn by the H's brother. The H's brother meets the end of a pitchfork and the "eh?"s begin. The way the h was holding the pitchfork, the fact that brother grabbed her hair, his apparently being dead (she checked his PULSE man!), she was 2 weeks pregnant...
She runs because the father of these fine gentlemen (insert eye roll here) is a senator and therefore too powerful for a peon like her to fight, even if it was self defense.
2 years later, H tracks her down (and I have all sorts of questions here, like, if you were in hiding, why did you keep the child rather than say, faking your death and having it sent to its dad?). And then we begin the sleuthing. It takes them 'til the end of the book to grasp that someone has issues with dear old dad, but it doesn't make sense. No, really. It doesn't.
First off, during this book, H/h were shot at, and neither had their cell phone with them. So the time period is recent enough that most people have them. That being the case, why did the h call the barn 2 years previous and have (she thought) the H's brother call him. Why did she not have her boyfriend's cell phone no.?
Second off, it's said later that brother got up, cursing after she left, and was skewered in the throat by the *other* blond chick in town. Come again? He had no pulse.
Third, speaking of which, that ring on the chain. If the brother ripped it from the other chick's neck when he raped her earlier that day, how is it that he was wearing it long enough for the entire family to have joked about it (and it sounded like it was a regular thing), and to have a photo of him wearing it?
Fourth, how is it that these ranchers never noticed someone spying on them? And the persons were apparently close enough to actually hear conversations from time to time.
Fifth, why is it the puppet went after the H's father rather than the partner with whom his wife was having an affair? SHE was at fault for the accident that killed her, but she wouldn't have been out if she hadn't been returning from a visit with said partner.
Why is it the sheriff didn't do his job rather than taking everything at face value? it's a small town (actually, it reads more like a blot in the landscape than a town), it's not like he has anything better to do.
Why is it the narrative is peppered liberally with idiotic hick sayings when the characters' speech isn't?
Why is it the spelling of the judge's last name changes in the third book?
Why should I read the second and third books when it took me 10 days to read book one?
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