Broken Heartland
A Mad Dog and Englishman Mystery
J. M. Hayes
Poisoned Pen Press (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1-59058-452-X (159058452X)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59058-452-1 (9781590584521)
Publication Date: November 2007
List Price: $24.95
Synopsis (from
the publisher): Sleepy Benteen County, Kansas, turns frantic on
election day.
Sheriff English, better known as Englishman, faces his toughest
re-election challenge yet. The radical religious right is out to unseat
him, their candidate an Iraq war hero. And Englishman’s only
available deputy isn’t winning him votes, not after ramming a
school bus carrying a local teen choir during a pre-dawn chase.The
occupants of the vehicle being pursued seem involved with involuntary
organ donors and secret surgeries. Englishman’s brother, Mad Dog,
a born-again Cheyenne, rushes back from a quest to the Black Hills.
Instead of a vision, he had a premonition that the sheriff is in
serious danger. Finding his farm vandalized and a cruel political
billboard in his front yard, Mad Dog complicates the sheriff’s
life by investigating the hate crime himself. The sheriff’s
daughters, attending separate colleges, wake with similar premonitions,
then cut classes and hurry home to keep their father safe. The sheriff
sees them as the ones in need of protection as his day grows
progressively wilder. A student smuggles a gun into the school and
begins shooting and taking hostages. Then there’s the private
army that’s seized a nearby farm and holds citizens against their
will. And, when he finds some spare time, Englishman needs to clear up
one little thing about his deputy’s accident. Benteen County
doesn’t have a teen choir.
It’s enough to make a sheriff wonder why he wants to serve another term.
Review: The fourth mystery in the Mad Dog and Englishman series by J. M. Hayes, Broken Heartland, takes place during the course of just one frenzied day in Benteen County.
Just before dawn, an automobile accident involving a police car and a
school bus filled with children who have (supposedly) been rehearsing
for the local church choir at a church camp takes place. It’s
also election day, so the area is crowded with pollsters and voters who
are questioning the sheriff’s secretary about anything and
everything, so much so that she has a hard time answering the telephone
and keeping the office available for important calls ... like
information on the collision of a police car and school bus.
There’s a fifteen year old boy on a rampage with his
father’s gun. He has already killed his parents and is now
killing fellow students. There’s a mad doctor, with hired gunmen,
in town to bring in healthy people for transplants in order to keep an
aging televangelist alive. Sheriff English’s daughters, both
named Heather and his brother, Mad Dog, have premonitions that
Englishman’s life is in danger. Mad Dog drives in from the Black
Hills, and both girls leave their respective colleges and drive home,
too. With all the unruliness and confusion going on that eventful day,
it’s difficult to say just who needed whom.
Hayes does a marvelous job in keeping these various plotlines from
spinning out of control. The pace of the book is about as rapid as the
stories are frantic and it is thrilling to be a part of it, if only as
a reader. The real mystery here is how the author, in the end, brings
everything together so well.
Broken Heartland is action, more action, and a bit of a mystery with just a suggestion of a love story. It is highly recommended.
Special thanks to guest reviewer Betty of The Betz Review for contributing her review of Broken Heartland and to Poisoned Pen Press for providing an ARC of the book for this review.
Review Copyright © 2007 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved.
Mysteries in this series ...
Mad Dog and Englishman
Poisoned Pen Press (Hardcover), February 2001
ISBN-10: 1-89020-849-3 (1890208493)
Prairie Gothic
Poisoned Pen Press (Hardcover), January 2003
ISBN-10: 1-59058-050-8 (1590580508)
Plains Crazy
Poisoned Pen Press (Hardcover), October 2004
ISBN-10: 1-59058-132-6 (1590581326)
Broken Heartland
Poisoned Pen Press (Hardcover), November 2007
ISBN-10: 1-59058-452-X (159058452X)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59058-452-1 (9781590584521)
Omnimystery keywords for Broken Heartland ...
Location(s) referenced: Kansas.