Blood on the Tracks by Barbara Nickless, a Mysterious Review.

Review: Sydney Rose a railroad crimes investigator, has been brought in with her K-9 partner Clyde by the Denver Special Crimes Unit to aid Detective Michael Cohen in examining the murder of a young woman, in Blood on the Tracks, the first mystery in this series by Barbara Nickless.

Elise Lasco, the niece of Nik Lasco, a woman with whom she lived as a child after her mother was sentenced to prison for murder, is found dead. Sydney Rose was called in because of her knowledge of symbols found on the walls in Elise’s home. These are the same code symbols found on the walls of the trains underground. In her job, she assisted Elise help homeless men and women to find shelters and other services to get them off the streets and away from the underground world of the rail riders who move from place to place via the railroad’s freight trains. Clues to this crime point to a hideously scarred Iraq War vet known as the Burned Man. Sydney Rose knows him. He is a Marine who served with her. She knows he would not kill an innocent woman, a woman he loved. Also, the woman loved the Burned Man. Elise understood him and wanted to marry him. Why would he kill her? And if he didn’t, who did?

The plot of this debut thriller twists and drifts between flashbacks to Sydney Rose’s time in Iraq to the present until it all comes together neatly at the end. There is quite a bit of violence with some pretty bad guys, including murdering skinheads and neo-Nazis . On the plus side Sydney Rose Parnell is an excellent female protagonist and her interactions with Clyde ring true. Indeed, the real star of this series may well end up being Sydney’s K-9 partner.

Special thanks to guest reviewer Betty of The Betz Review for contributing her review of Blood on the Tracks.

Acknowledgment: Thomas & Mercer provided a copy of Blood on the Tracks for this review.

Blood on the Tracks

A Sydney Rose Parnell Thriller by Barbara Nickless