Finding a series you love can be an exercise in patience. When you find it early on, it may be years before you finish it.
Finding a series you love that’s already finished, however? I think that’s what reading will be like in Heaven. You can go from one book directly into another without skipping a beat. I found that out with Patricia Bradley’s “Logan Point” series, and was fortunate to be able to devour them all in a row. My patience has been tested since I got into her “Memphis Cold Case” series! They’re too good to have to wait!
Another author of whom I was aware but hadn’t read is Dan Walsh. Most of his books are compared to Nicholas Sparks, which is why I hadn’t read him, but when I saw he had a suspense series, I decided to take a chance, and I’m glad I did.
Here’s the blurb for When Night Comes, book one in Dan Walsh’s “Jack Turner Suspense Series.”
Jack Turner comes back to Culpepper to give a series of lectures for his old history professor. Within days, he starts having bizarre experiences at night. Like he’s traveling back in time, experiencing the epic events in his lectures firsthand. He has no control over these experiences and can’t make them stop.
Joe Boyd thought he’d left big city crime back in Pittsburgh when he took a detective job in Culpepper, Georgia, a sleepy southern college town. His peaceful life ends when two students turn up dead in two weeks. The coroner is saying natural causes, but something doesn’t add up.
Rachel Cook, a teaching assistant at Culpepper, can’t believe Jack is back in her life again. She’s had a crush on him since she was fourteen, but Jack never knew. He instantly seems attracted to her, but she can tell…something is deeply troubling him.
Watching all this from a distance is Nigel Avery. He’s certain this experiment’s about to unravel. It’ll be his job to tie up all the loose ends when it does.
Who can resist an old mystery that seems to be coming true all over again? Jack Turner is a great character. The relationship between Jack and Detective Boyd is a great one to watch, and Rachel is adorable, and smart.
If you love southern mysteries, this one will certainly satisfy. He writes the historical pieces in such a way that it almost feels like a time-slip novel, with the characters from the past coming off the page as authentically as the present-day characters.
The second book in the series, Remembering Dresden, pulls in the horrors of the Allied bombing of Dresden in February of 1945. This was an incident that I knew little about, but the way Walsh tied that in with his present-day story was masterful, and made me read more about it.
Unintended Consequences, book three in the series, takes Jack on a trip through his own family’s past, when his grandmother shares the story of how she and his grandfather, for whom Jack was named, met in early World War II England when the elder Jack was a pilot and she was a shopgirl. War intelligence, battle, and intrigue has been part of his family for generations.
In book four, Perilous Treasure, Jack and Detective Boyd decide to pursue a new hobby – metal detecting. Who knew that it would lead to murder, mayhem, and Nazi treasure?
I highly recommend this series, and liked it so much that I read the entire series this summer. I hope Mr. Walsh writes more suspense. His characters are serious enough, funny enough, and the historical aspects detailed enough to keep me reading far later into the night than I should.
As for Dan Walsh’s other books, the ones compared to Nicholas Sparks? I may just have to give those a read, too . . .
Have a great READING weekend!
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