The Cues

by J Michael McGee

[Kevin Cannon]

Pat Riordan’s colleague Joe dies unexpectedly in hospital following a fall. He is approached by Kate, the grieving widow, at the funeral to look into the death as she feels it is suspicious due to a letter she found among his belongings.

Pat is a university lecturer who was supposed to help Joe and another colleague Phil set up a new syllabus which would involve getting students to investigate missing person cold cases.

As Pat, Phil & former homicide detective Mike Finn put their heads together to look at old cases they start to make connections or ‘cues’ which propel them into a decades old conspiracy of murder and misdirection. Could Joe have stumbled on a deadly secret?

What I loved about this mystery was the way the author made the characters, both main and minor, full of personality and easily identifiable. So many books make the mistake of having too many two dimensional additional headcount with very similar names and traits making them difficult to differentiate.

What also stands out is the author’s ability to bring to the table his knowledge of his previous experience both as a teacher and within the criminal justice system to give the plot and the characters a realistic edge.

The plot is nicely merged with the character’s personal lives although everything that happens eventually ties into the case at some point.

If anything, a few extra red herrings could be thrown in to put the reader off the scent and the use of a more subtle flag for key points to put off the moment when the reader pieces the clues, or should that be cues, together just ahead of Pat himself.

The story starts off really strong and finishes with a flourish but slows down a bit in the middle due mainly to a fair amount of superfluous debate and discussion around the connections and clues.

Pat Riordan is a nicely developed character which probably comes from having two outings already in ‘Bricked’ and ‘The Slip Swing’

So, to sum up - great characters, a decent plot and a good ending which could possibly be improved with dropping a few thousand words in the middle to keep the story fresh and flowing.