… required me to throw him into a corner turnbuckle, leap on his face, grab the top ropes on either side, and bounce up and down on his smug mug while he appeared to “suffocate”.
Jed is wearing “an old pair of black, Speedo-style shorts from my WWE days”.
Hearing “a blood-curdling scream” unconnected with any spectator’s opinion of the Bronco Buster, Jed swiftly pins his opponent and heads to the lumberjack contestant area where he sees a new friend in the loggersports pit:
The axe embedded in the sunken dead man’s head had been thrown or swung with such force it nearly split the back of the lumberjack’s skull in two, no small feat. The long hatchet’s handle breached the surface of the water.
His sabbatical from private investigating is over and I took a reader’s breath from the action.
The murder takes place at the Colossal Cloverdale Rodeo and Country Fair in a southeastern suburb of Greater Vancouver.
Jed and Declan, his rough-edged former IRA cousin, had met the deceased, Jasper Adams, over multiple pints of beer at the Fair saloon the previous night. Jasper, a mountain of a man, had recounted the joys of “competitive wood chopping” and the “love from the Axe Cats” (loggersports groupies).
Declan may be the most unique sidekick in crime fiction. I am confident there is not a sidekick who is more outrageous, profane, lewd, insulting, entertaining, eloquent and cringey. He had to be inspired by someone. What surprises me is that he survived The Troubles in Northern Ireland. He would have provoked fellow IRA, the Loyalists and the English army equally.
Jed is grieving his lost love, Rya Shepard. She is still furious with him over his last case.
Jasper is equally sad over a broken relationship with Kelly Lewis. To the mutual surprise of Declan and myself it turns out Jasper was gay.
Out of all the possible undercover roles in the world I would not have foreseen Jed becoming a rodeo clown to question Kelly. How he performed in the rodeo ring had me smiling.
Hammerhead and Declan roam the grounds of the Fair in their investigation of Jasper’s death with Declan consuming and crushing cans of Harp and other brands of lager.
The great characters keep coming. The comely Georgiana “Annie” June Tibbs and her father run the rodeo events. There are immediate sparks between Hammerhead and Annie.
Annie is amused by Declan’s deep and abiding fear of peacocks. He cannot stand the “creepy tail feathers”.
She is also a talented rodeo competitor with impressive roping skills.
Prominent Vancouver bookmaker Sykes returns to the series managing the Agri-Zone, an area of “critter attractions”. He walks about in a three piece white suit with a dachshund and a goat on leashes. (One of his ventures involves goat yoga.)
A Doukhobor inspirational speaker, Jim “Kooty” Kootnekof, with profound empathy realizes Hammerhead has a troubled soul.
The action scenes are amazing including wrestling in a terrarium filled with snakes, a rodeo girl who can rope and hogtie in an instant and a breathtaking ride on an ostrich.
Bronco Buster inspired me to write this review, an email to A.J. and a reflection on a poetic tee shirt.
The whole book proceeds at a frantic pace with murder, investigation and resolution taking less than a day. It took me longer to read the book than it took for Hammerhead to solve the murder.
(This post and the two additional posts about the book I will be putting up over the next week will be part of a blog tour A.J. has organized for Bronco Buster. Please see his instagram, Facebook, Twitter and website for more participants in the tour.)
****
The rodeo is a really interesting backdrop for the story, Bill. And all of the characters sound very interesting. They strike me as distinctive, perhaps even eccentric, but not so quirky as to be unbelievable, and I respect that. The mystery, too, sounds interesting. I'll be looking forward to your other posts on the book.
ReplyDeleteMargot: Thanks for the comment. Even the small characters are big characters. Lots of energy flowing through the book.
Delete