The Olive Horseshoe by Ben F. Small, a Mysterious Review.

Review: A billionaire seeks answers in the brutal murder of his father in The Olive Horseshoe, an uneven and at times perplexing (and not in a good way) international thriller by Ben F. Small.

Denton Wright returns from a trip to Maine to find his Manhattan home trashed. But there's worse news: during his absence, his father had been murdered in Spain, his body mutilated and bearing the mark of a drug cartel. The Spanish authorities have no suspects and seem unwilling to devote much effort to finding the people responsible. In New York the police believe Denton's break-in was simply that, nothing more. But Denton thinks the two events are related. When he receives a phone call from the daughter of the man killed alongside his father, he meets her and together they decide to do what the police on two continents aren't doing: bring those responsible for their fathers' deaths to justice, regardless of cost.

As a reader, it's interesting to imagine how the plot of The Olive Horseshoe might have unfolded had Denton not been a billionaire with the unlimited financial resources to pursue his quest but instead an average New Yorker facing a personal crisis. It would have started with the compelling opening pages in Spain and ended with the rather predictable conclusion in New York, but there would have been no need for the intervening trans-continental and trans-Atlantic trips on chartered jets, stays at 5-star resorts in Morocco and Spain, and, more importantly, the pointless deaths of several characters. That's the real problem here: the foundation upon which Denton decides to do everything he does is weak, practically non-existent, and the reader knows it.

That being said, The Olive Horseshoe moves along at a brisk pace and the secondary characters bring what little story there is alive in a way the four main characters do not. There is the occasional plot point that captures the reader's imagination but inexplicably isn't fully developed. What could have been, should have been, an intriguing and complex thriller set in exotic locales instead turns into little more than an overly long and largely disappointing travelogue.

Acknowledgment: Night Shadows Press provided a trade paperback edition of The Olive Horseshoe for this review.

Location(s) referenced in The Olive Horseshoe: New York City, Napa Valley, Spain, Morocco