Wednesday, March 29, 2023

Pay Dirt Road by Samantha Jayne Allen

 
First Line: At night we rode up to the old railroad tracks on the west side of town, turned the headlights off, and waited for the dead to appear.
 
When a fellow waitress goes missing, no one seems to care but young Annie McIntyre, college graduate and reluctant returnee to Garnett, Texas. Her concern leads her to join her grandfather's private investigation firm. Annie may lack direction, but she certainly doesn't lack ambition, and it shows as her search for clues leads her to honky-tonks, oil fields, and mile after mile of country roads.
 
The longer she investigates, the more she begins to identify with the missing woman, and this forces Annie to confront incidents in her own past that she's tried to bury. 

~

Samantha Jayne Allen's debut mystery, Pay Dirt Road, drags readers right into small-town Texas. In fact, the setting was the part of the book I enjoyed the most. Unfortunately, I had problems with the rest of it. 
 
When the bad guy is obvious (as in this book), I need something more than the setting to keep me fully engaged, and I just didn't find it here. I'll be honest and say that my reaction is almost completely subjective. Too many of the characters in Pay Dirt Road seemed to think that having a good time meant going out, getting drunk, and doing something stupid. That behavior has never ever floated my boat-- not even when I lived in a town smaller than Garnett with even fewer choices of "fun things to do." So... you can see why my attention would wane.

But I did finish the book because the writer does have talent. I'll just have to apologize and regretfully decline Annie McIntyre's next invitation to come investigate a crime with her.

Pay Dirt Road by Samantha Jayne Allen
ASIN: B09JXZWKKP
Recorded Books, LLC © 2022
Audiobook. 8 hours, 46 minutes.
 
Private Investigator, #1 Annie McIntyre mystery
Rating: C
Source: Purchased from Audible.

10 comments:

  1. You saved me a search and read. Thanks.

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  2. I like a good setting, too, Cathy, but I'm with you. If there isn't anything else to really draw me into a book, I find it hard to read. And, yes, there's a lot more to life than going out and getting drunk and doing stupid things. Yeah...I'll wait on this one.

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    Replies
    1. I don't blame you-- but then, you already knew that!

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  3. I enjoyed this one more than you did. I listened to the audio though, so maybe that made a difference. It was predictable though.

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    1. I listened to the audiobook, too, so it didn't make a difference.

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  4. I liked this one enough to want to read the sequel...mostly because I'm hoping for more interactions between Annie and her grandfather, which I did enjoy.

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    Replies
    1. It seems to me that the sequel will be coming out fairly soon.

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  5. Well, that helps to simplify my want-to-read list by one title ....

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