SOME AMAZON BOOK REVIEWS
*****
Editorial Reviews Review - 5.0 out of 5 stars - Sin and sand
By CA reviews on August 6, 2014
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
A COMMON EVIL is the 6th and final novel in his Bailey Crane mystery series and takes us to a seaside resort along Mexico's Sea of Cortez. Bailey is a retired Arizona cop who, with his wife Wendy, has settled into the condo resort in Mexico and is now the homeowner's association head honcho. But along with sun and luxe, the Cranes also find danger and duplicity.
The cornerstone of the story is a scenario in which the largest cartel in Mexico, with a jefe who is not too objectionable, promises to clean up the violence and strike a deal with the Mexican government. Part of the clean-up action (read: getting rid of his rivals in order to run a drug monopoly with Mexico City's approval) spills over onto Bailey's turf. There's a shootout on the resort property, Wendy is kidnapped because of a letter Bailey wrote protesting the dubious dealings of an American in with the cartels, and Bailey's survival instincts surge to the fore, although not always with the results he intends.
This isn't the usual whodunit but a look at Mexico's drug war through an expatriate's eye. The charm of the novel--and the series--is driven by Bailey's unmissable musings on life and love. His voice is a gutsier, spicier, and more raw version of Alexander McCall Smith's point of view in the latter's Isabel Dalhousie series but his subject matter is both more intense and immediate. Recommended.
*****
By CA reviews on August 6, 2014
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
A COMMON EVIL is the 6th and final novel in his Bailey Crane mystery series and takes us to a seaside resort along Mexico's Sea of Cortez. Bailey is a retired Arizona cop who, with his wife Wendy, has settled into the condo resort in Mexico and is now the homeowner's association head honcho. But along with sun and luxe, the Cranes also find danger and duplicity.
The cornerstone of the story is a scenario in which the largest cartel in Mexico, with a jefe who is not too objectionable, promises to clean up the violence and strike a deal with the Mexican government. Part of the clean-up action (read: getting rid of his rivals in order to run a drug monopoly with Mexico City's approval) spills over onto Bailey's turf. There's a shootout on the resort property, Wendy is kidnapped because of a letter Bailey wrote protesting the dubious dealings of an American in with the cartels, and Bailey's survival instincts surge to the fore, although not always with the results he intends.
This isn't the usual whodunit but a look at Mexico's drug war through an expatriate's eye. The charm of the novel--and the series--is driven by Bailey's unmissable musings on life and love. His voice is a gutsier, spicier, and more raw version of Alexander McCall Smith's point of view in the latter's Isabel Dalhousie series but his subject matter is both more intense and immediate. Recommended.
*****
5.0 out of 5 stars
Compelling and Disturbing
By Diogenes on November 21, 2012
Format: Paperback
Billy Ray Chitwood's novel `Mama's Madness' is a real find.
While many Indie authors follow well-trodden paths of `popular genres', Chitwood's work cuts its own route through the underclass wilderness of modern America. Based on real-life events - but fictionalised in the telling - Chitwood's story is by turns compelling and disturbing.
The central character, Tamatha Preen, is a monster for our time. Inhabiting her own self-centred and embittered world she inflicts psychological and physical damage on her daughters while keeping her sons cowed by alternating violence with affection.
Chitwood has an authentic voice articulating the world of the grifter and petty criminal hovering at the margins of society. The writing is gritty, laying bare the animal beneath the thin veneer of civilisation. Child abuse, theft, deception and murder all feature in an heady cocktail of corrupted morality - yet these topics are handled without sensationalism, and at times the novel has an almost journalistic feel to it.
This is a brave book, swimming against the tide of literary popcorn, and it deserves a wide readership.
By Diogenes on March 21, 2018
*****
