Book Review and GIVEAWAY: Bone Canyon, by Lee Goldberg {ends 1/7}

Guest review by: Becki Bayley

The city of Calabasas had a split personality disorder. If you entered the city from the east end of Calabasas Road, the main thoroughfare, you went through Old Town, where the frontier storefronts and hitching posts presented Calabasas as part of California’s Wild West. But if you entered from the other end, you went past the Commons, an idealized re-creation of an old rural village in the hills of Tuscany.

Until tonight, Eve thought the Commons was supposed to be a faux French village, perhaps because the property was dotted with four eighteenth-century statues, each representing a season, that were imported from a château in southern France. But as she was telling Daniel about the Commons, she was firmly corrected by the waiter serving them their entrees at Toscanova, the center’s Italian restaurant. Either way, the two radically different visions the city had of itself made no sense to her.

“It’s like dealing with an irrational person,” she said to Daniel. “They should choose to be one or the other, a western town or a Tuscan village. I don’t care which, just be consistent. It makes me anxious.”

“But you live here anyway.”

This is the author’s second book featuring Eve Ronin, the youngest homicide detective on the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Her career path isn’t the same as the other detectives, and that doesn’t make her a lot of friends with the department.

Official synopsis:

A catastrophic wildfire scorches the Santa Monica Mountains, exposing the charred remains of a woman who disappeared years ago. The investigation is assigned to Eve Ronin, the youngest homicide detective in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, a position that forces her to prove herself again and again. This time, though, she has much more to prove.

Bones don’t lie, and these have a horrific story to tell. Eve tirelessly digs into the past, unearthing dark secrets that reveal nothing about the case is as it seems. With almost no one she can trust, her relentless pursuit of justice for the forgotten dead could put Eve’s own life in peril.

Eve Ronin has to prove herself again and again. While being a detective so close to Hollywood, there are too many people who think her headline cases are reaching for fame, instead of doing her job and solving homicide cases. Producers and writers showing up trying to talk Eve into her own tv series or movie are an annoyance and distraction to Eve—she wants to be a good detective and solve the murders of those with no one else to defend them.

The police procedurals featuring Detective Eve Ronin are a fun read. In addition to the interesting characters at the Lost Hills station, the details of the investigation are also researched and realistic. This book showed the facts that can be learned about identifying a victim just from burned old bones. While it was believable and compelling to read, there were articles shared that showed the info was accurate.

Overall, I’d give this book 4 out of 5 stars. There’s something to be said for a book that is not only entertaining, but also teaches the reader about something they probably don’t know much about before. I’d recommend this and the earlier Eve Ronin story for those who enjoy police procedurals and murder mysteries.

{click here to pre-order; it will be available on 1/5/21}

Becki Bayley can also be found at SweetlyBSquared.com.

GIVEAWAY:

One of my lucky readers will win a copy of Bone Canyon!

Enter via the widget below. Giveaway will end on Thursday, January 7th, at 11:59pm EST, and winner will be notified the next day via email, and have 24 hours to respond, or an alternate winner will be chosen.

U.S. residents only, please.

Good luck!

Bone Canyon, by Lee Goldberg