Deadly Connections

Well, y’all, this was quite a ridiculous read. One or more of this author’s friends/beta readers/ editors ought to be ashamed of themselves for greenlighting this project.<br /><br /> Never have I ever read such a derivative, awkwardly written and poorly plotted excuse for a police procedural.<br /><br /> Rife with shallow characters, editing gaffs and tropes and cliches that are as careworn as they are irritating, Rene Pawlish’s Deadly Connections tops the list of some of the worst police procedurals I’ve ever read.<br /><br /> The book is dry, moves painfully slow and is almost completely devoid of tension. <br /><br /> There are huge, sticky piles of telling where showing would be more appropriate. Add to that the strings of random and insignificant details (do we really need to know how Sarah gets dressed and/or eats her Wendy’s?) and you’ve got what probably amounts to 50 pages of padding. Apparently, no one told the author how to build scenes or craft natural transitions.<br /> <br /><br />To continue, I spent so much time cringing in vicarious embarrassment at all of the awkward dialogue and continuity errors that I could hardly concentrate on what was supposed to be happening.<br /><br /> LOL! Characters made references to other characters they knew, only to have Sarah introduce them by first and last name within a matter of seconds!<br /><br /> Example: one of the mothers Sarah questions advises her that she hasn’t told her child about a neighbor’s apparent suicide. They take seats seconds later and Sarah is introducing this person to this mother by first and last name! LOL!<br /><br />Even worse than that were all of the obvious statements (I asked him again because I thought he was lying). And of course, no one needs to be told that being spotted while surveilling a suspect is a bad thing.<br /><br /> Oh, and remember what I said about random and insignificant details? Well, the details you might, correction, should expect, particularly from a freshman installment of a series, are conspicuously absent. There aren’t physical descriptions of the protagonist or the world in which she moves. We don’t know her build or stature (these things are critical to helping readers understand the package the protagonist presents in the field as a cop) or whether or not she elects to exude or eschew traditional femininity. These details can contribute to readers’ expectations. For example, what is the difference between the kind-faced petite blonde who rocks heels and sundresses on the job and to the muscular brunette standing at six feet and rocking a serious face, jeans, boots and a scoop neck T shirt?<br /> And what is Denver like? We’re told this is Denver but there is no feel for the rhythm or topography of the town. We’re told nothing about what the communities comprising this city are like. What distinguishes this setting from Anywhere USA? <br /><br /> As for the protagonist herself, at times I found myself wishing we were dealing with J. D. Robb’s Eve Dallas, someone who wouldn’t let suspects get away with stonewalling and outright lying. Sarah knows the person is lying but doesn’t push, doesn’t probe and has zero experience in extracting truth. She is kind and accommodating to murder suspects and manages to validate many of the biggest reasons people scoff at women on the force.<br /><br /> As for the tropes and cliches, we’ve got butthurt, highhanded and overprotective male colleagues, parental love interests and “I’m a woman in a time-consuming field who is wracked with guilt over not being there for my man and family” wangst. Top all that off with the requisite and very, very typical and yawn-worthy “dark past” and you’ve got little more than a pastiche of female cop protagonists trying and failing to compete.<br /><br /> And yeah, it’s very, very hard to find a well-written, female-led police procedural that doesn’t remind readers that womanhood and physical/sexual/emotional vulnerability are mutually inclusive concepts. That said, even the better written ones that reiterate this "universal truth" make some attempt at originality.<br /><br /> Ultimately, this was very poorly done, and I strongly encourage skipping this one in favor of something, anything else. Two stars.

Called this a day at 34% so gave it a fair crack. It's written in quite a peculiar way and it just gave me the hump in the end.<br />She gave us 2 policemen called Spats and Flatts which annoyed me for starters. But these strange passages or lines....'"You don't know of anyone who would want to hurt him ?"<br />"He's....was, just a little boy." The words came out in a stutter. "Now ?" she said after a long pause.' I mean, what was that final line all about ??? Again with, "He works as a photographer, both with a small company in Wheat Ridge that contracts with a lot of the schools in the Metro area." AND ?? Then Sarah left to attend the scene of another dead body and upon her return her partner at the police station says, "You're serious ? When you left here, I didn't believe it." Why not ? That was a nonsensical thing to say as why would she make it up ??<br />She also did that thing where she wrote as they spoke, "If this hadn't of happened" then we were told twice in a couple of pages that Terrell heard a car backfire and then that there were photos on a fridge.<br />Quite strangely too is she didn't refer to Sarah's chap till we were 25% in.......and then just as some sort of afterthought. Then in a murder investigation Sarah kept asking if people had noticed if either parent had a drinking problem apropos of nothing !!<br />I got to a passage where the second dead body had been found and the police were going to visit a girl who'd been a witness in the first body's investigation and the mother said to the police, "I heard that Ivan killed himself but Bev doesn't know." There was no reason she should or why she would care-she didn't know him !! It was pretty bonkers and just aggravated me, I'm afraid.<br />There weren't many mistakes, just a misplaced comma I spotted which was good going but the baffling parts just wore me down.

A boring police procedural<br /><br />I enjoyed several of the author's earlier books featuring detective Reed Ferguson. But this one attempts to feature a different protagonist---a female cop named Sarah Spillman. The book is a disaster. Pawlish assumes that we have read all her earlier books and are already familiar with the new lead character, who had a secondary role in the Ferguson stories. So there is no characterization of Spillman until we are well into the book. We don't even learn her name until the middle of the first chapter (which is really the second chapter because there is a prologue), and then we only get her surname. So the first few chapters are very confusing until the author gets into the groove. But then we just have a routine police procedural about a good detective. This is not a thriller or mystery, and there are no rogue cops, no humor, no twists and no surprise ending. We don't get to meet the perpetrator until just before the big reveal---so perhaps that could be called a "surprise ending".<br /><br /> To add to the confusion at the beginning of the book, the writing was really sloppy. For example, one whole paragraph (shown below) contained a multitude of unidentified pronouns that made it difficult to figure out who was doing what to whom:<br /><br />He shook his head. “Nothing so far. We’re getting pictures and video.” He shrugged. He’s about thirty, but looks ten years younger. He’s good at his job, though, and he’d alert me if he found anything significant.<br /><br />Though I enjoyed Pawlish's earlier books, I hated this one. And I don't think I'll be buying any more.

This book marks a new series for Renee Pawlish featuring Sarah Spillman, the Denver police detective in the Reed Ferguson series. It's nice to get to know this character better and find out a bit more about her personal life as well as professional. <br /><br />What an intriguing début. An eight year-old boy is missing, but there's no ransom demand. Is either of the parents, who are divorced, involved? Tragically, the child's body is discovered in a dumpster a few days later. There are a few more possibilities added to the suspect list. Spillman works the case through to a surprising conclusion. <br /><br />Pawlish handles a couple of sensitive issues extremely well. I greatly admire her as an author who can deal with topics in a manner that presents a gripping mystery and sticks to the story. There is no graphic violence, sex or bad language, but this is definitely not a fluffy romance tied up with cookies and puppies and a slight puzzle thrown in. I realize there is a segment of readers who enjoy that type of reading, and I'm not criticizing that, but "cozy mystery" is too broad for a category that does not throw in blatant sex and a foul mouth to represent a strong woman detective. Spillman comes across as a good detective on her own merits, who doesn't have to belittle her colleagues to hold her own. She is intelligent and stays focused on the case at hand, but she's also very real with hints at issues from her past that will hopefully be revealed in coming books so the reader will know and understand her better.<br /><br />I am excited about this new series as I am already a fan of the other two mystery series, especially Dewey Webb. I look forward to more books featuring Sarah Spillman and highly recommend this one. I just wish Ms. Pawlish could write as fast as I can read.

Deadly Connections (Detective Sarah Spillman Mystery Series Book 1), my forty-first read from author Renee Pawlish and the first in the Detective Sarah Spillman Mystery Series. Detective Spillman finally gets her due in her first full-length police procedural book. I read it in just a few hours. Great characters, great storyline, a must-read! Yeah, it is that good! I'm a character reader, I get into the characters, their story, who/what they are, why they do the things they do. I received an advance reader copy of this book from the author, Pawlish absolutely crushes this one. Move over Reed Ferguson Sarah Spillman has hit the big time. A Renee Pawlish book is like a visit with an old friend. I was given a Kindle copy of this book &amp; am voluntarily reading &amp; reviewing it. I look forward to the next book in this series when it's published. (RIP Marley January 20, 2014 - July 24, 2018).

<strong>Ok, but slow reading</strong><br /><br />I live the Reed Ferguson series and have read every one of them. I enjoyed Sarah Spillman as a character in them. But this one was rather dry and slow.

<strong>A unique story of kidnapping, murder and suicide with an intriguing twist at the end.</strong><br /><br />Pawlish creates mystery and interest from the get go by having us see what is happening through the victim's eyes only. Then she keeps presenting different ways the deadly deeds could have been done and potential evil doers. For this genre it is well done and keeps you turning pages.

Nicely written detective novel involving a female detective and a missing boy who turns up dead in a dumpster. The book hints at something Detective Spillman did in her past to cover up for her sister, something that could end her career, but that secret stays a secret in this first of a series.<br />I've enjoyed two other series by Renee Pawlish, Reed Ferguson and Dewey Webb. This one looks promising, too.

<strong>Not bad, but....</strong><br /><br />This is the first book that Pawlish has slated for her protagonist "Sarah Spillman," but after reading but through I'm not so sure it will enjoy the extended success of her Dewey Webb series. Written in the first person, it took about a third of the book to figure out that the protagonist was a woman! Never mind that the novel says it's a "Detective Sarah Skillman Mystery," there was nothing early on to indicate her sex. To be fair, that first third was devoted to the plot: a boys has been kidnapped, is killed when trying to escape and his body is found, and Silverman investigates. Then another body is found - a single adult male - who appears to be a suicide and has connections to the boy.<br /><br />Perhaps I'm used to too many other authors' who have written female detectives who always seem to remark on how they get treated differently as women on a police force, but Sarah seems to lack what I consider a woman's point of view. For most of the book, the narrator could have been a man of a woman from the tone. As a matter of fact, it took reading the two chapter preview of the next book to realize that was missing. It was as if a switch had been thrown and a light came on! Sarah was a woman in a relationship, with a family and a past and issues beyond finding out who done it.<br /><br />As for the mystery - Pawlish set out to write a good one and there she succeeded. Lots of parts and pieces to the puzzle, and all of Sarah's fellow cops have pieced together a narrative that doesn't quite fit after a second boy disappears. The reader knows they don't know as Pawlish drops in vignettes written from the Miller's point of view. The fellow cops don't really stand out as individuals with distinct personalities, but one would think that's coming in future books.<br /><br />I actually think this deserves another half star and I'm not sure how to be the software to give a half star. It's a solid story, and I guess the protagonist isn't one that appeals to my penchant for kick-butt heroes. At least not from what I've seen in the first of a series.

Detective Sarah Spillman has been one of my favorite characters - although not a major one - in Renée Pawlish's very popular Reed Ferguson series. I was delighted to see that Spillman was getting her own story told. This story begins with the body of a young boy being found in a dumpster. He had been missing for several days. When a man who lived near the dumpster where the body was found apparently committed suicide, Sarah found that he was loosely connected to the boy. WHen another young boy is abducted from the same neighborhood, Spillman is really under pressure to solve this case before they find another body. With all her books, Pawlish gives you many twists and turns and really keeps the reader guessing. You don't have to read the Reed Ferguson series first, but I suggest you do check it out. She also makes her characters flawed and totally believable. I recommend this book and this author very highly