Started this book and became quickly engrossed in the story, dead person hit by truck, another person missing and some unusual activity with weather with the main character being a former LA cop who left in disgrace and was now working at a sheriff's office in the desert.
Then it took quite the turn and was no longer just a cop thriller. Initially I was thrown by this and was concerned that I wasn't going to enjoy it anymore however persevered and ended up being even more gripped than I had been previously.
Very good writing indeed and an excellent storyline.
Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the advanced copy for review purposes.

This was one weird story! I had never read anything from Lee Goldberg before but have seen several episodes of a few of his tv shows. I hope he has plans on writing a series around Beth McDade and/or Calico. Beth is just likeable and interesting enough to be a good MC and Calico is just weird and creepy enough to be a good setting for a series. What do I know though, I’m neither a writer nor a publisher. I’m just an avid reader who would read a sequel or second installment on either Beth McDade or Calico.

The story starts out in Feb2019 and the book summary pretty much introduces a few of the storylines. One being Beth’s banishment to the only CA law enforcement agency (Barstow Sheriff Dept) that would hire her after the scandal back at the LAPD over her affair with a subordinate. The other one being the disappearance of a well-known LA chef/influencer/podcaster, named Owen, last seen at the local gas station, at 2am a couple of nights ago, coming home from Vegas.

As an Angeleno, I can confirm that Barstow is nothing more than a pitstop on the Mohave Desert highway from LA to Vegas. It’s claim to fame being the famed Route 66 museum. It’s a town whose residents are pretty evenly split between a horde of tweakers, gangbangers, sex workers and the first responder personnel (police dept, sheriffs dept, EMT’s, and CHP) that covers the area. There’s also a Marine base there in Barstow, where even most of the first responders and service members who work in Barstow would rather commute from Victorville than live in Barstow.

Anyway, Beth’s former LAPD subordinate/lover, Trent, alerts Beth to the disappearance of Owen and asks for her help in finding him. At the same time, it’s revealed that the homeless man, as well as the clothes that he was wearing, were more than 100yrs old. Then Owen’s skeleton was found by a crew on a local construction site. It was determined that he had been dead for more than a 100yrs. Ok, that’s when the bizarre and creepy takes over. None of this is a spoiler since it takes place in the first 15-20% of the story. Without getting into any big spoiler alerts, I will say that this is a time-travel story, and a pretty good one in my opinion.

The story flips back between present-day and the past. Into the second half of the story, Beth discovers all the other disappearances that have occurred, on Feb 2nd, the same date that Owen disappeared (in 2019), going back nearly 100yrs. She’s certain that the Marine base is behind it and she’s determined to find out why and how it’s happening. The base is also onto her and her investigation. It’s at this point, that Beth meets with a conspiracy theorist that all the pieces fall into place for Beth.

It’s not much longer, in a scene right out of Fast and Furious, in downtown Glendale (where hubby and I live) no less, that Beth pulls a fast one (literally) on the boatload of law enforcement agencies chasing her. The end comes pretty quick after that with Beth finagling the deal of a lifetime from the military.

This was one that was hard to put down and a very late night finishing it because I simply could not go to sleep until I knew how it ended. Not sure if anyone else felt this, but did it seem like the ending was a lead-in to a sequel or a second installment? Please, please, please, Mr Goldberg, let there be more Beth McDade and Calico. PLEEEAAASSSEEE!!!!! I want to thank NetGalley and Severn House for sending me this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

#NetGalley #SevernHouse #Calico

Lee Goldberg is a very clever writer. Sneaky clever. Well into his ongoing Eve Ronin series, with entry #5 due next year, about a police detective who is a social media star, and having recently inaugurated his Sharpe & Walker series about California arson investigators, Goldberg ropes us in with a story starring another detective, Beth McDade, exiled from the LAPD to the desert outpost of Barstow.

But this time, Goldberg takes a sharp left turn from police procedural into time travel sci-fi, as we go back a century and a half, following a present-day LA chef teleported through a portal to a nearby silver rush 19th century mining camp. While Beth spends her time trying to figure out what's going on with all the crazy military conspiracies, our erstwhile chef Owen Slader tries to navigate the rough and tumble world of the frontier.

If you're keeping score at home, that's mystery, science fiction, conspiracy thriller, and western all rolled into one. But as clever as that concept is, what makes it work is that Goldberg continues to be just a flat out excellent writer. I discovered him a few years ago and have read him a lot since then -- an even dozen of his own novels and a couple of collaborations with other authors. He may have chosen to work mainly in genre fiction, but he always bring far more literary flair than one would expect from genre writing.

With a new Eve Ronin and a second Sharpe & Walker already scheduled for 2024, I'm going to hope that the not altogether resolved story line of Calico means more genre mash-ups featuring Beth McDade are in our future (or past, as the case may be). Thanks to NetGalley, the author, and publisher for graciously providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review. And honestly, this is great stuff.

Calico by Lee Goldberg is amazing. The combination of genres is pure magic.

Will Beth find out what actually happened to Owen on February 2, 2019?

Beth McDade
Homicide Detective Beth McDade of the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department is called to investigate the death of a man hit by an RV near Yermo, California. Beth hasn't made many outstanding decisions in her lifetime, yet she is a magnificent detective, even if she is doing it in Barstow, California. The weather is hot and dry there. If you have ever been there, you know there isn't much to do. Most people use it as a pitstop between Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

Anyway, the man is a bit different from most. He wears strange clothes and is physically in terrible condition, even for a corpse. The investigation gets weirder when a man on his way home to Los Angeles disappears almost in the exact location. Oh, it gets better as a corpse is discovered by an excavation company working not far from the freaky spot that may be connected.

Beth is so real. She has issues that she is not dealing with, nor does it seem that she cares to either. Yet, she embraces her quirks and puts her best foot forward when it comes to her job. Beth is an exceptional investigator, and she has decided that she will figure out what happened to Owen and the man hit by the RV. Tenacious is a good description.

There was a saying about Barstow that Beth heard when she'd arrived from LA three years ago.
The interstate here only goes in one direction: away. Nobody wants to be in Barstow and those who do, you don't want to know.

Owen Slader
Owen is a YouTube Chef with a twelve year old daughter. Who drives into the past literally and figuratively. Once he realizes he is in the 1800s, he sets about making a life for himself that won't endanger his life in the future or that of his daughter. He basically takes all of the knowledge of time travel he has ever read about or seen in movies and applies it to his present predicament. I love it. Owen became a part of the time he was in but didn't forget who he was or the principles he stood for.

He also set his new family with a list of things to make them prosper in the future. Owen was a genius, or at least his wife was. They found love, happiness, and prosperity in the 1800s. All those history classes were worth it.

The Mix
Mr. Goldberg mixes many different genres into this story and does an excellent job doing it. There is the mystery, police procedural, some crime scene and coroner type of scenes, some science fiction, western, romance, a bit of a thriller with all the cloak and dagger stuff. I love it! The story is written from the point of view of Owen in the past and present, along with Beth, who investigates it and pulls all the clues together in the present. It's amazing. You can see he did a ton of research, but the characters are my favorite. I love them all: Wendy/Gwendolyn, the Judge, Tuttle, Chet, Bill, Chris Cartwright, Nicole, and Amanda. All of them are so realistic, even the mad pisser with the crooked finger.

The pop culture references are spot on for Mr. Goldberg, from Outer Limits to Star Trek, the Time Machine by HG Wells, Denny's, and Ben Cartwright.

Five Stars
My rating for Calico by Lee Goldberg is five stars. If you are looking for a book with a bit of everything with a fantastic story, I highly recommend this one. Please check out Calico. It brought the Barstow area of California into a new light.

I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Thank you for dropping by! I hope you enjoyed this review of Calico by Lee Goldberg.

Until the next time,
~Jen

If you would like to see other reviews like this one, check out Baroness Book Trove.

I loved this gritty mystery that takes you to the seedy underground of LA and has so many twists and turns it keeps you on the edge of you seat . He is a master at plot and bringin the real SoCal to life for his readers.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for letting me review this book

This was such a refreshing read. Successfully marrying a crime thriller with sci-fi and time travel is no easy feat and Lee Goldberg carries it off wonderfully. Loved the period detail in the historical sections and thoroughly enjoyed the twists and turns and many surprises of the plot.

Wow! Calico is a fun, exciting read! This book is serious, thrilling, absurd, comedic, amusing, crass at times, and has some bizarre, unexplainable things happening. It's like a police procedural meets the Twilight Zone with some comedy thrown in too. It was a pleasant surprise that kept me reading late into the night. The characters are interesting and well-developed, and we get to see different sides of them. There's plenty of adventure, thrills, mystery and conflict between the good and bad guys. This was my first Lee Goldberg book, and I'm looking forward to reading more. Thank you to NetGalley and Severn House for the eARC.

Author: Lee Goldberg
Publisher: Severn House
Genre: Mystery Thriller, Time Travel
Pub Date: November 7, 2023
My Rating: 4 Stars!
Pages: 415

I have read several author, Lee Goldberg novels.
I enjoyed the Eve Ronin series. However, I totally loved and read the entire Fox and O’Hare series that he coauthored with Janet Evanovich.
I went into this story knowing NOTHING about it but knew I like this author!


Story takes place in Calico a mining town near Barstow, California, which is in the Mojave Desert not far from the Arizona border.
Living in Southern California my family has traveled through the desert many times. Yep! We stopped in Barstow for food; gas and the restroom ~ there have been signs for miles reminding us how close we are to that McDonald’s!
When our daughters were young we also had to stop at the restaurant that has the dinosaurs.

In 1882 Calico was fast growing railroad hub for silver mining operations. . Now Calico is a small abandoned ghost town- a tourist attraction,

Story is told dual time times Present Day and in 1882.
Present day feature Detective Beth McDade with the Barstow sheriff’s office.
She was a detective for the Los Angeles Police Department until she lost her badge for acting inappropriately (aka having sex with a junior officer).
Beth is called to investigate an accident where an old man was killed by a motor home. He is wearing clothes manufactured in the 1880s; and has old coins in his pocket.
Additionally there is a chef named Owen Slader who was driving back to LA from Las Vegas who seemed to have vanished in the same area where the old man was hit.
Shortly after this situation, a construction crew comes across a buried coffin with bones that are over a hundred years old. - However the coroner is a bit confused as the bones have a titanium radial head in the elbow and two dental implants. Yet the coroner’s investigation states that it appears to be the skeleton is Owen Slider, Yep the man who disappeared just a few days ago.

Beth is involved in both cases
Awww it appears this story is
 policing procedural
 with a time travel twist.=
 Great Read!!
This story kept me curious and was a fast read.

I have a few authors that I totally love not only because of their stories with twists and turns but also their wit and humor.
Harlan Coben is at the top of my list
Now ~ Lee Goldberg is high on my list as well!

Oh I have to mentioned this. . ..

I wasn’t a big fan of Beth’s extracurricular activity but this made me laugh ~
Beth’s favorite watering hole is a local bar called “Pour Decisions”.
Perfect for her as she continues to make poor decisions about having sex with ~whomever!

Want to thank NetGalley and Severn House for this early eGalley.
Publishing Release Date scheduled for November 7, 2023.

I am fascinated by Lee Goldberg's recent output. 7 novels published between 2020 and 2023, with another two planned for 2024. And it's not just the quantity that's astounding but also the quality. Goldberg's wheelhouse is crime thrillers, which he does brilliantly, but Calico is a whole other beast. After creating a dual timeline race-against-time heist thriller with his first Sharpe and Walker book, Malibu Burning, Goldberg takes on a new genre fusion challenge, expertly melding modern police procedural with science fiction. I was reminded of my favorite book from 2019 (Blake Crouch's Recursion) and of the second sequel to my all-time favorite movie, which was no doubt an inspiration to this book (and was referenced a few times by the characters within). There's nothing Lee Goldberg can't do, and there's no novel of his I won't read.

One of the best books I've read in some time!
I was a little dubious when I realised this book involved time travel as sci-fi is not a genre for me, but if you can allow it, you realise that the plot is so well thought out and written that you cannot stop reading.
The book starts with the story of Beth McDade, a disgraced detective exiled to the desert town of Calico where she stumbles on a mystery so unimaginable, she has trouble believing it herself, but the evidence all points in only one direction, so Beth follows the leads to unravel the wonderous story of how Owen Slader came to be.
Beth as a character is incredibly likeable, she's imperfect, likes a drink and one night stands but nothing will stop her getting to the truth of an investigation and the reader roots for her as she has been so wronged by her superiors. I really hope there's another book for Beth.

Calico by Lee Goldberg

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I got an early copy of this thanks to NetGalley!

I’ve been looking for a book like this for so long honestly I love thrillers that blend into other genres- especially sci fi! I find that they seem to work really well together and Calico this this brilliantly!

I felt the setting was really unique and I’ve not really read any books that do time travel in a similar vain to this. It really gets you thinking throughout and I think it will stick with me for a long time.

The book was well-written to keep you on the edge of your set and you don’t want to put it down without unravelling more! The chapters are quite short too which helped me fit the book in a lot so I finished it over a few days!

This is my first Lee Goldberg book and I’m so glad I took the plunge! It was a great page-turning read with a dash of time travel thrown in, this would make a great film/ mini series

Thanks to NetGalley I have read my first Lee Goldberg book. This is certainly not something I would have usually wanted to read or something I would be interested in but something in the description caught my attention. I am so glad it did as once started it was very difficult to put down. This is most definitely a five star read.

Calico by Lee Goldberg is a delightful surprise. Not at all what I expected - it was even better! A great genre mashup of suspense, mystery, and historical (Western) fiction with a touch of other things that you'll discover as you go. The book blurb for Calico is kind of vague so I decided to read just one chapter to get an idea of what it was all about. Then I decided to read just one more and, long story short, once I got going I ended up reading the whole thing in one sitting - I couldn't put it down.

The storyline goes seamlessly back and forth between modern times and the 1880s. I'm going to tread very lightly here for fear of spoilers...

2019: Detective Beth McDade is a hot mess who has been exiled to a small desert community in the middle of nowhere. When she gets called in to investigate an old coffin found buried at a construction site she finds herself with more questions than answers. It seems to be somehow connected to the recent death of a homeless man who was killed when he inexplicably ran in front of an RV on the highway.

1882: Calico, a ghost town tourist attraction in Beth's time, is a lively mining community that's still growing when a mystery man comes to town and shakes things up; quickly making himself indispensable to several of the town's more prominent citizens.

What does one thing have to do with the other? That's where it all gets very tricky and mysterious.

Goldberg has a knack for writing flawed, fully dimensional characters that come to life on the page. He also writes the kind of strong, compelling female characters that even a grumpy old, hard-boiled detective fan like myself can appreciate (If you're not familiar with his Eve Ronin series, you're missing out). One of my favorite aspects of this novel was the way that every day life in the 1880s gets depicted without all the romantic and nostalgic notions usually associated with those "simpler times". It was hard living -- but author Goldberg still manages to infuse the story with a good deal of humor.

BOTTOM LINE: A great page-turning mystery with a jaw-dropping twist at the end.

Very enjoyable mystery novel - well worth a look.

In many ways, this novel is a bit of nonsense but highly enjoyable nonsense at that. Beth is a detective investigating the circumstances in which a man is run over out on a Californian desert road and the disappearance of another man in the same area at the same time. Without giving too much away, these events are connected and her investigation uncovers some interesting and disturbing facts. There's a lot to enjoy in the book, including the characters and the original plot. I have not read any other books by Lee Goldberg but my curiosity has been piqued. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

A detective, a fall from grace, Beth McDade has a chance for a new start. A skeleton, crimes from the past resurface and offer a chance to redeem her fortunes resolve her own past. Guilt and secrets, a century old mystery in a dead end mining town and a series of disturbing clues lead Beth to a revelation that could change everything. A great thriller with strong plot and characters.

What’s the significance of February 2nd 2019? There was a lightning storm, an explosion on the nearby military base, a man is hit by an RV and dies at the scene and lastly a man named Owen Slader disappears on his way back to LA from Las Vegas.
The man hit by the RV is wearing clothing common in the 1800’s and has many afflictions that would also point towards the 1800’s but he has be dead a very short time, no one knows who he is.
A detective arrives from LA, looking for missing person Owen Slader, much to the annoyance of Beth McDade, who left LA under a dark cloud and can now only find work in the back of beyond. When Owens body turns up in a coffin from the 1800’s Beth begins to suspect a link but she just can’t believe her own evidence as it’s too crazy.

I was expecting a murder mystery where an old cold case has links to a current day case, a bit like the ITV drama Unforgotten (I think that’s what it’s called) I got the mystery part right but and the fact that book is set in both 1880’s and 2019.
To begin with I was a little disappointed that this book was lining up for a sci-fy but I persevered as the story wasn’t bad, I am so glad I did. I ended up really enjoying this book, it was well written and full of twists and turns. I found myself connecting with the characters and looking forward to finding out what happens next. A great story about learning to live and enjoy the hand you’re dealt even when in the beginning it seems as if all is lost.

I would recommend Calico to anyone who enjoys a book written in 2 time zones as this one really worked.

Thank you NetGalley for the advanced reading copy.

Beth McDade left the LAPD in disgrace. Now she is working as a detective for the Sheriff's Department in Barstow, California, drinking too much and picking up random first responders for one-night stands.

February 2, 2019, changes things. There was a lightning storm and explosion on the nearby military base. A man runs in from of an RV and is killed. And a man named Owen Slader disappears on his way back to LA from Las Vegas.

Beth's initial case deals with the man, nicknamed Motor Home Man, who ran out in front of the RV. Not only can he not be identified, he is dressed in clothing out of the 1800s and has diseases also common at that time. The coroner confirms these things which don't really help Beth with the case. She checks with people in the area to see if anyone can identify him. She also visits the recreation of the town of Calico which was a mining town from the 1880s to see if he came from there.

The guy who was involved in the reason Beth left LA in disgrace comes to her about the missing Owen Slader. And when his body is found buried in an old coffin from the 1800s at a construction site, his death becomes her case too. But there are strange things about his body. He was fully skeletonized after only being missing for a few days and tests indicate that he died at least 100 years earlier which adds to the mystery.

And the local military are quick to cover things up and unusually reticent to share information about what went on the night of February 2. While Beth is dealing with the impossible notion that time travel is involved in these strange occurrences, Owen is making a new life for himself in the 1880s where the chef has some knowledge of what the future will bring and is determined to do nothing that would prevent the birth of his daughter whom he was rushing home to see when swept back in time.

This was an engaging story. I'm not usually a fan of time travel stories but this one worked for me. I liked the action as Beth tries to keep herself and the evidence she has located out of the hands of the military. The car chases were exciting.

Such an impressive read. I whizzed through this thriller over a weekend. Adore the premise (and LOVED Wendy and Ben). Time travel, desert police investigations, a snappy then and now narrative - this one ticked every box for me? The lead detective Beth is completely brilliant and i can honestly see her on the big screen. Adore her camaraderie with pathologist (and pregnant) Amanda. Cancel everything for Calico it's honestly worth your time.

"Calico" was not what I was expecting, which was a detective investigating 2 cases, one a cold case, at the same time. Instead it is something much more complex which stretches the imagination. Beth is a wonderful strong character and a good detective and friend. She is working in an inhospitable desert community between LA and Las Vegas, due to a work-related issue in LA (which wouldn't have been a problem if she had been a man). In fact, there are a number of strong female characters in this book in addition to Beth, including Wendy and Amanda,

The reader will need to suspend belief but the story is well written and researched.

Thanks to Net Galley and the publishers for the opportunity to review this book.