Year of Publication: 2020

Publisher: Severn House Publishers

ISBN: 9780727889829

Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Crime.

Strong Point: The plot is very fast paced and has good twists. However, the main character is perhaps my favourite part of the book.

Weak Point: I haven’t found any.

Books on Tour Rating: (3/5)

Goodreads Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (4.20/5)

REVIEW OF “LUCKY BONES"

Disinhibition. Autotopagnosia. Have you ever heard of those terms? I know disinhibition, of course. But I’ve never heard of the other one. However, it seems both are considered mental disorders and in the case of our protagonist, they are a kind of side effect of a big trauma he had suffered. Those are Sam Kelson’s problems. But those are not the only ones he has.

After “retiring” from Chicago Police, Kelson works as a private investigator. He is divorced and lives with his two cats, Payday and Painter’s Lane. He has a daughter, Sue Ellen, who is 11 years old.

Genevieve Bower also has “some problems”. At the beginning of the book, we only know about one: he cannot find her shoes, and she thinks it is her boyfriend who stole them. So, she wants to pay Kelson to find her shoes with the “excuse” that they are counterfeit of “Jimmy Choos” shoes and very valuable.

This is the beginning of a frenetic story which quickly escalates and which has other people involved: Kelson’s friends Marty LeCouer (a one-armed accountant who is very good with computers), Neto (his nephew, who is even better with computers than his uncle), DeMarcus Rodman (a gigantic man with a very good heart) and Doreen, a former escort who has some kind of relationship going on with Kelson.

In addition, we also learn in “Lucky Bones” about the Crane family, of course, although I prefer to forget about all the members of that family. If you read the book (which I encourage you to do) you will understand why.
THE CHARACTERS AND THE MANY TOPICS

The characters are, in my opinion, one of the best parts of the story. And there are a lot of them! They are very well developed (especially Kelson, of course) and even when some of them kill, fight, or similar, you find yourself surprisingly even liking them. Overall they are quite eccentric and intriguing which I definitely like in a thriller.

The character of Genevieve has lots of layers. She appears at the beginning of the novel as a “blond with big breasts” type but it turns out she is much more than that. Without making any spoilers, I can say that in the end, you really feel sorry for her.

The book talks about many and varied topics like money, corruption, sex, abuse, death, etc. So there is no way to get bored with the story. However, they are not just put there as separate pieces: they all fall into place like a puzzle.

KELSON’S MIND

It has been very interesting to read about someone who suffers from Disinhibition and Autotopagnosia. As I said at the beginning of the review, I did not know that they are mental disorders, but the fact that Kelson suffers from both has enriched the reading of “Lucky Bones”.

Both conditions make Kelson quite “rude” as the other characters endlessly point out. In a way, he is like a type of “Doctor House” where he says loud out everything that crosses his mind, whether it is socially accepted or not. Plus he cannot lie!

But, and this is the “funny” thing, we ALL have those thoughts; if we see a woman with a big bust we all think “Oh my God, she has giant breasts” but we are taught since we are kids not to say those things aloud, to keep them for ourselves. And we mostly do.

However, Kelson “can” say those things, because he suffers from disinhibition, and this makes everyone uncomfortable. And I have found myself laughing lots of times because of his comments. Does this make me a “rude” person? I don’t think so. Secretly we would all love to be like Kelson, right?

FINAL THOUGHTS ABOUT “LUCKY BONES"

I have enjoyed a lot reading “Lucky Bones”. It has good twists and the plot line is well written.

The fights and chases are not so long that it makes them boring and you are just waiting for them to finish, as it happens in other thrillers.

By the way, this is the second book about Sam Kelson written by Michael Wiley. The first one is called “Trouble in Mind”. So I may have to ask Santa to bring it home to me!

And yes, I may have found a new favourite private investigator! ;)

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Thanks to Severn House Publishers and NetGalley for providing me with a free digital copy of “Lucky Bones” in exchange for an honest review.

PI Sam Kelson might be the most unusual fictional PI I’ve ever read. A cop who had to retire for medical reasons after being shot in the head, his injuries left him with a type of brain damage called disinhibition, meaning he basically says whatever comes into his head. If he’s asked a question he can’t help but answer it, meaning the standard PI tactics of disinformation and secrets just don’t work for him.

Hired to look for a crate of stolen knockoff Jimmy Choo shoes, things soon turn sticky when the culprit turns up dead. Kelson turns to friends for help, but they’ve got their own problems… and soon he discovers everything’s tied together and some very powerful people are getting very angry.

Kelson’s a genuinely intriguing character in fiction, although I suspect in real life he’d be intensely frustrating to know. There’s something of a band of misfits gathered around him, from gigantic ‘muscle man’ DeMarcus Rodman, one-armed hacker Marty, Rodman’s nurse girlfriend Cindi and sex worker with a heart of gold Doreen. While they were fascinating characters in their own right, I think the story lost something with Kelson constantly turning to them for help, as well as going back to his police contacts all the time. And while his ‘bag of cats’ brain might well be a realistic portrayal of the thought processes of someone with his condition, it got repetitive after a while and I found myself losing interest every time Kelson got sidetracked from his actual case by, for example, strange dreams about his cats. It’s possible to portray neurodiverse characters without making them appear incomprehensible, and I think the author fell down on that a few times.

Overall this was pretty good; it’s nice to see a disabled neurodiverse protagonist in a story and the mystery was complex enough to hold my interest, but I think there were a few too many sidetracks and too much focus on the ‘gang’ rather than on Kelson. I’ll give it four stars.

Former Chicago cop turned PI Sam Kelson suffers from disinhibition after being shot in the head in the line of duty and now cannot lie or keep quiet. He reluctantly takes on a new client named Genevieve Bower who hires him to find her ex-boyfriend (DJ Jeremy Oliver) who has allegedly stolen her collection of Jimmy Choos shoes.

Kelson quickly finds the missing Oliver shot dead at his house but is surprised when the corpse disappears before homicide cop Dan Peters can arrive at the scene. Genevieve is acting strangely, turning up at Kelson's locked office and giving him a different story. Kelson is convinced there is more to the case than a bunch of stolen fake shoes.

Meanwhile, Kelson also needs to help his unusual friends, Marty Le Couer and DeMarcus Rodman, protect Marty's nephew Nate from a nasty client. G&G Private Equity wants Nate to transfer money illegally for them. When Nate does so at a public library computer, an explosion occurs and several people are seriously injured or killed. The FBI suspect Nate is responsible but Kelson and his friends are determined to clear Nate.

Marty is the common link between the two cases since he also briefly dated Genevieve and recommended Kelson to her.

This was a darkly humourous PI story with a quirky set of characters and plenty of non-stop violence.

I received an eARC from Netgalley and Severn House with no requirements for a review. I voluntarily read this book and provided this review.

Synopsis/blurb....

A case of stolen shoes leads maverick Chicago PI Sam Kelson into something far darker and deeper in the second of this hardhitting crime noir series.

"My boyfriend's been stealing my Jimmy Choos." Genevieve Bower has hired private investigator Sam Kelson to recover her stolen shoes from her soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend. The problem is that no one's seen Genevieve's boyfriend for the past two weeks.

Events take a disturbing twist when, in his search for the shoes, Kelson comes across a body, shot in the head. A clear-cut case of suicide - or is it? Has Kelson's client been wholly honest with him? What is this case really about?

At the same time, an explosion rips through one of the city's public libraries, leaving a friend's nephew critically injured. Could there be a connection? If there is, Kelson's determined to find it. But Kelson's not like other investigators. Taking a bullet in the brain during his former career as a Chicago cop, he suffers from disinhibition: he cannot keep silent or tell lies when questioned - and his involuntary outspokenness is about to lead him into dangerous waters . . .
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My take.....

The second in author Michael Wiley's Sam Kelson series, following on from Trouble in Mind which I enjoyed recently, and I liked this one about the same.

An oddball PI with an unhelpful affliction gets sucked into a case involving missing shoes which rapidly escalates...... a dead body which disappears, after which a bomb kills his friend's nephew, then morphs into a battle with a rich, powerful, dysfunctional and deeply perverted family of investors-cum-shysters-cum-money launderers. Kelson's investigation obviously has a crossover, with the police looking into things as well.

Busy, plenty going on, danger, death, sex, an investigation and more, but one which was a bit tiresome after a while. I kind of get frustrated with the PI investigation where the client is evasive or lies or only telling half truths, not so much as a means of the author keeping the reader on his toes and guessing, but from the reluctance of the PI to tell the client to fuck off and do one, as opposed to sucking it up, getting played for a fool and continuing with the investigation. Maybe my idiot tolerance threshold is lower than the average dick?

I liked the Chicago setting, I liked the reappearance of characters which featured in the first book - namely Kelson (obvs), his daughter and ex-wife, his friends - (names escapes me) and the police detectives. Kelson's disinhibition continues to provide scope for some lighter comedic moments.

Overall, more to like than take issue with. I think I'd have to give serious thought to whether I would be bothered reading a new book with Kelson, but I do want to continue reading Michael Wiley, but his earlier books for now.

3.5 from 5

Read - July, 2020
Published - 2020
Page count - 259
Source - Net Galley courtesy of Severn House
Format - ePUB read on laptop

https://col2910.blogspot.com/2020/08/michael-wiley-lucky-bones-2020.html

Sam can not tell a lie. That's a side affect of a shooting when he was a Chicago police officer. Now, though, he's a private detective who finds himself investigating, of all things, the theft of a lot of shoes. Expensive shoes (if they were legit) but shoes nonetheless. Genevieve, who hires him, thinks her boyfriend stole them so Sam goes looking for him, finds him dead and calls the police, but when the cops arrive, the body is missing. At the same time, he finds himself involved with a bombing at a library. How do these link up? Or do they? Read this less for the mystery (which is, btw, quite good) than for the characters. Sam's unique in the pantheon of damaged detectives because of his disinhibition but he's also got a wild group of friends, an entertaining relationship with his daughter, and, wait for it...kittens. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. I enjoyed this and while I missed the first one (no problem with this as a standalone), I hope to read more in the series.

An excellent story, gripping and entertaining, with a great cast of characters.
I loved the fast paced plot and the solid mystery that kept me guessing.
It's the first book I read by this author and won't surely be the last.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

This is the second in this series and, although the main story is self contained, to get the best from the main character, especially in terms of his strange affliction, I would recommend you read Trouble In Mind first.
So, Sam Kelson is visited in his office by Genevieve whose ex has stolen her shoes. She wants them back and he is holding out for money. Well, he was until he went on the missing list. Kelson investigates and finds a body. Looks like suicide. He calls the police but by the time they get there, the body is gone. Meanwhile some of Kelson's friends have got themselves in a bit of a spot and then one is badly injured whilst using a library computer to, well, move some money. And then it all gets a bit strange and interconnected and dangerous, and not about shoes at all. With Kelson's disinhibition - outspoken and unable to lie - everything nearly degenerates into a bit of a farce.. well it would if there weren't lives on the line.. It's serious, deadly serious, quite literally.
I do love Kelson as a character. Mainly cos he loves his kittens who feature periodically throughout the book. Also cos of his relationship with his daughter and the cruel ask dad game she keeps making him play. He also has a bunch of cool and, shall we call them, interesting friends who keep getting him into and out of trouble. And the trouble he finds himself in here is so convoluted it had me spinning around chasing my tail throughout my time with the book. But, it all came good at the end and left me on the whole satisfied and also hankering for the next one.
My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

Very enjoyable to read hard-boiled P.I. novel with a pretty good gimmick. I hope we see more of Sam Kelson.

Sam Kelson is working as a PI since he left the Chicago PD after being shot in the head on a takedown gone wrong. Now he suffers from disinhibition; he cannot lie and when asked a question, he says everything he knows about the question. He is hired by a woman to find a case of stolen shoes, a crate of fake Jimmy Choos. But the crate holds another secret, a thumb drive that someone is willing to kill for. Then an explosion takes down a public library, where the nephew of a friend of Sam's is working, killing two people and severely injuring the nephew. How are these cases related? Or are they? Sam can make connections like no one else, but he also has to tell everyone everything. This is the second in a new series and Sam is an intriguing hero.

I absolutely loved the first book in the Sam Kelson series, so I had high expectations for this book. A bit of trepidation, too: the first book was funny and off-beat, with a hard core crime for the talkative PI to solve. Could the second book like up to my expectations?

Not quite, but pretty darned close.

CHARACTERS

The characters are fabulous. Wiley has a knack of creating quirky, endearing characters who are easy to root for, even when they’re running afoul of the law.

We were introduced to some of Sam Kelson’s buddies in Trouble in Mind, and here, we see even more of them. There’s one-armed Marty, always running slightly outside the law, and DeMarcus Rodman, who could snap a person in two with his little finger. Rodman’s girlfriend Cindi, a nurse, turns out to be a badass herself.

Genevieve turns out to be a complicated woman. Without telling spoilers, I’ll simply say that I felt sympathy for her, though I didn’t always understand her actions.

And Sam, dear Sam. Always running his mouth, always inappropriate in conversation, always telling the truth–at least the truth as he sees it. After all, a bullet through the head changes one’s perspective on reality.

In a genre with lots of the strong, silent type who lie and keep secrets buried six feet under, Sam Kelson’s open, talkative nature is a welcome change. The man talks to anyone and anything, including his kittens and blank walls. But he never seems absurd. Wiley makes certain that Sam is a fully-developed character, not simply a 2-dimensional character based on this unique mental impairment.

PLOT

The plot starts off with Jimmy Choos shoes but takes a dark turn. Soon Sam is investigating a dead body, an explosion that leaves multiple people dead and injured, and financial fraud perpetuated by some powerful people. He’s a pest to the police force of course, and despite being a former cop, they don’t want his “help”. After all, what could a brain damaged, blabbering private investigator do that they can’t?

As it turns out, lots of things.

Wiley has plenty of surprises in store. Some things seemed predictable to me, but Wiley managed to twist them in such a way that they seemed unexpected. But even when I was able to accurately predict what might happen, it didn’t make the story any less enjoyable or the turn of events less dramatic. There were many things, though, that I didn’t expect!

CONCERNS

One thing that made the first book so memorable was that the crime was personal for Sam. Yes, a lot of PIs/investigator types in crime fiction solve personal crimes: family members, close friends, etc. But Trouble in Mind featured a crime that left Sam with a bullet hole through his head, which in turn led to his divorce, job loss, inability to control emotions, or lie. In other words, this crime literally changed who he was. You really can’t get much more personal than that. It was this immediacy of the crime’s impact that helped strengthen the story.

Here, though, the crime is still personal. But it’s different type of personal: a friend and his nephew need help. This is more in line with what I’ve read in other crime/mystery novels. It doesn’t have that same immediacy that the bullet-through-the-head did. That’s not bad, only different. I didn’t feel the same level of got-to-read-this-book that I did with the first one. (I still felt it! Just not at the same intensity.)

This investigation also seemed to feature the group’s efforts to solve the crime more than Sam’s individual efforts. Given the situation, that was inevitable. But I’d like to see Sam doing more on his own in future books.

Overall, this was a terrific novel. It does contain some adult situations, but Wiley treats them with respect and never goes into detail. I recommend this to anyone who loves noir and crime novels. 4 1/2 stars, rounded up to 5

Thanks to Severn House and Netgalley for a copy of Lucky Bones in exchange for an honest review.
Note: this will appear on my personal blog on July 27, 2020.

Sam Kelson is not your typical private detective. An on the job "incident" (he was shot in the head) left him with a type of brain damage called disinhibition - Kelson is incapable of keeping secrets or telling lies. He also has an unfortunate habit of making inappropriate comments, is often unable to shut up and, no surprise, has a tendency to irritate people.

It has often seemed that one of the standard requirements of the P.I., at least in fiction, is the ability to not only tell a lie but to do it with great conviction. Since Kelson has lost that ability he has to rely on his wits, instincts, and luck. None of which are working at full capacity these days. That leaves a lot of room for an author to play. Michael Wiley does an admirable job of injecting humor into the story without making it either slap-stick or cloying. Serious but not stern.

The plot gets a bit confused but that actually works to its advantage since Kelson himself isn't always sure of what he's doing or why... Or what... Or... Wait. What? No, it's actually not like that at all except on the rare occasion when it is and then it all works really, really well.

Lucky Bones is the second book in an ongoing series. I loved the first book Trouble in Mind. I am less impressed with Lucky Bones. The focus of the series has shifted to more of a group endeavour rather than Kelson as an individual character and seems to be on the verge of becoming one of those band of misfit crime fighters kind of things. I think it blunts some of the built-in fun of the Sam Kelson character and tends to make for a more standard by-the-numbers story.

There's still a good deal of plot twists and whatnot but Lucky Bones doesn't stand out all that well as something different or out of the ordinary. And it should because the character of Sam Kelson is so unique that he could well be one of the great ones if he doesn't get lost in a crowd.

This book contains strong language and adult situations.

***Thanks to NetGalley, Severn House Publishers, and author Michael Wiley for providing me with a free digital copy of this title in exchange for an honest review.