I have been a fan of P.J. Tracy books for a while but this one was disappointing. Too many scenarios going in too many different directions and the set up was such a slow build that I almost lost interest. The connections between the various scenarios were just too coincidental to be believable. I liked the characters, although some of the dialogue was a little stilted. Not one I would strongly recommend but I will definitely be back for the next P.J. Tracy book based on past enjoyment.

*3.5 stars rounded up.

Book two in this new series by P.J. Tracey was quite an enjoyable read. The pacing seemed a little slow going at first as the author set up the many strands of the plot but then it really took off in action and excitement as she brought it all together. Although this is the Detective Margaret Nolan series, I was delighted to see the return of Sam Easton in this story, my favorite character from book one, Deep into the Dark. Quite a different way to write a police procedural with these other characters involved. Tracey makes great use of tangled plot threads, coincidences and gasp-inducing twists. Loved that! Kudos for the excellent cover art too.

I received an arc from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks for the introduction to this 'new to me' author.

LAPD Detective Margaret Nolan is struggling to move forward after the death of her brother in Afghanistan. Her mother is also having a hard time and Margaret is afraid her parent's relationship is falling apart. Margaret goes to the Hotel Bel-Air for cocktails with a colleague and while there they discover a body in the lake on the grounds of the hotel. Nolan soon finds herself investigating a cabal that might just destroy her and everyone she loves. This is the 2nd book in Tracy's new series and it got off to a slow start. It wasn't until the last third of the book that it finally took off. I actually liked the first book better than this one. Hopefully, the next book will hold my interest more or I will have to give up on this series. I loved the Monkeewrench series with it's humor which this one seems to be missing. Thanks to NetGalley and Minotaur Books for an ebook.

After LA detective Margaret Nolan stumbles across a dead body in the swan lake at the Hotel Bel-Air, she and her partner Al Crawford find themselves working to solve multiple murders that appear to be connected to a religious non-profit retreat center out in Death Valley. Coincidentally, Sam Easton, an Afghanistan vet working to overcome PTSD who was one of the main characters in the first book in this series, is drawn into a missing persons case that is also tied to the retreat center. Fast-paced and well written with a good plot and nuanced characters. Can't wait for book 3 in the series!

I absolutely love true crime! When I found out that this was a sequel in a series, I immediately read the first book. I found this book overall very enjoyable! However, there were some plot holes and character development lacking in order for me to truly enjoy it. The storyline was a pretty hard topic, but it was handled well. I do think that you NEED to read the first one to truly understand Maggie Nolan and the other main characters better. Overall, if you like true crime this will be a good quick read for you.

A good story with a lot of threads. I hadn't read the first book in this series, and I think it may have helped a little. A few of the characters had ties from a previous story that are mentioned but not explained. It's not necessary, but I think it would have helped. The book introduced a lot of characters and perspectives from the start. I found it a little hard to keep them straight. Once I got past the first few chapters, I started to follow along more and fit the pieces together. The story moved at a good pace and each chapter started piece it together even more. It came together with a good conclusion. There were some twists all the way to the end. The book was well written, and the characters felt real. I received an advance copy from NetGalley and am voluntarily leaving a review.

Desolation Canyon is the second in P. J. Tracy’s new Margaret Nolan series. Nolan meets with a colleague for drinks knowing it is unwise, but did she really deserve to find a body on their date? The body is of a local lawyer, a familiar name to the police because his son was famously kidnapped and never found. His death could have been natural causes, but that seems unlikely when they go to tell his ex-wife he is dead and find her gruesomely murdered.

Meanwhile, a young woman and her daughter are fleeing a place that is an expensive, popular, and respected spiritual retreat. That they discover a cave full of bodies on their way out seems almost incidental.

P. J. Tracy excels at weaving together several threads of story into a complex, but satisfying whole. She also has multiple people investigating different aspects of the mystery, not always in communication with each other. For this reason, the reader nearly always is ahead of the detectives. That is okay, though, because they get there in the end.

There was ample misdirection so that I was still surprised when all was revealed. That delights me as a reader.

Desolation Canyon will be released on January 18th. I received an e-galley from the publisher through NetGalley.

Desolation Canyon at St. Martin’s Press } Macmillan
P. J. Tracy author site
Ice Cold Heart reviewed

LAPD Detective Margaret (Maggie or Mags) Nolan has experienced plenty of loss in her life - her brother in war in Afghanistan, her best friend to cancer, and the killing of a criminal in the line of duty. Sam Easton has also seen his share of loss, having served in Afghanistan where he was severely wounded and disfigured. In an attempt to escape her doldrums, Maggie decides to take a risk, having cocktails with another cop. They are at the bar at the famous Hotel Bel-Air when a body is discovered just below the surface of Swan Lake on the property. The victim was an attorney, and when his wife is also found dead, Nolan becomes involved in the case. But all is not what it appears. Their investigation leads them to Death Valley and a mysterious organization. Sam is a friend who will help her to find out what is really going on as deaths mount and mystery grows.

This is the second book in the Detective Nolan series. I pretty much had the same feeling about the first book in the series - it took too long to get going and at times I was really lost trying to understand the book’s characters and their relationship to one another. That being said, the last 30% of the book was fast-paced and more in line with what I had expected. P. J. Tracy is a pseudonym for a mother/daughter writing team, and their initial Monkeewrench novels made for enjoyable reading. When Mom passed away, her daughter kept the pen name and is now writing this second series. My thanks to Minotaur Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review the ARC of this book.

This book had so much going for it. Really interesting characters with strong back stories, interesting locale, intricate plot, strong survival skills, touches of humor. So much going for it but it just never jelled to become a great book. A good book, that had the possibility of being better. There was an awful lot going on which at times became distracting and unnecessary. It would have helped if there was more discussion connecting the personality dots. I read the first in the series and knew the characters but thought they deserved more. I wonder what my reaction would be if I was new to the series.

There was an interesting sentence which described my frustration with this book: “This routine of avoidance was beginning to aggravate her.” It often seemed as if Tracy couldn’t hold the thought and make it work. There were also descriptions and phrases that just seemed so out of place and off-putting. A good police procedural, an interesting set of crimes and criminals, and a lot of sub-plots to parse.

Thank you St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books for a copy

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an e ARC of this book.
This is the second in a new series but reads fine as a standalone. Complex characters involved in complex relationships. Murders galore that eventually are solved. Lots of room left for further development but not so much as to create a cliffhanger.

Very good book. This is th e first time author for me. There were slot of twists and turns in this book. Great story

This book is even better than the first one! Maggie Nolan is recovering from having shot someone. Sam Easton is still working on his PTSD from Afghanistan, and while running in the desert meets Mike, the cashier in the store at the Furnace Creek Service Station near the Children of the Desert organization. Mike is a little strange, and is watching out for aliens. Lenny, the owner of the store is driving Marielle and Serena to his boat in the harbor at LA, and Maggie's mother is planning to go to a retreat at the Children of the Desert to try to get over her depression after the death of her son, Max, who died in Afghanistan. Detective Remy, a friend of Maggie, has hired PI Malachai Dubnik to try to find his long lost sister, Charlotte, and Mike at the Furnace Creek Service Station recognizes her picture as one of the people from Children of the Desert. Father Paul is running the Children of the Desert organization - to the outside a religious retreat, but really a Russian Mafia organization, including reverse money laundering (and Father Paul is not the real Catholic priest he pretends to be).

The first few chapters are introducing the characters. After that we get to see how they interact and the plot thickens! Maggie goes to a fancy hotel for a drink with Remy, and they find a body in the swan lake. Maggie and her partner, Al Crawford get the case. They soon find out the man was a lawyer for a Russian company which is mixed up with Children of the Desert, and he also lost his adopted son as a child. When Marielle and Serena are taken from Lenny's boat, everyone becomes involved in the search, including Father Paul although he isn't trying to save them! Soon there's a few more dead bodies, and the story get extremely exciting.

I received an ARC "NetGalley" Read Now program and I am voluntarily leaving an honest review.

This story begins slowly, but it gets a lot more interesting after a short while. It has Margaret feeling down with her mother still grieving for her son. Maggie has made arrangements to meet up with another detective for a drink. While they are at that location, they discover a body in the Swan Pond. At the same time that this is going on, Lennie has picked up to people that were escaping a cult. Eventually Maggie's case and the people Lennie has helped will became a part of the same case.

The detective that Maggie was meeting to have a drink with, has hired a private detective searching for a missing person. In addition to the body discovered at the Swan Pond, the person's ex-wife was also discovered murdered. These murders will all be associated with the cult. As the investigation continues, Death Valley desert will play a role.

To discover how they are all related, who the detective was searching for and what the ultimate aaim of the cult was, then you neeed to read this book.

Paranoia and Grief Play Big Roles

Many characters are packed into this unpredictable mystery. We first meet Margaret Nolan who carries the guilt-ridden from a line-of-duty shooting. More interesting is Margaret’s mother who loses her beloved son who died in combat. She secludes herself in isolation, closed out her daughter, Margaret, and cannot bring herself to look at the physical mementoes of her son. Her grieving brings her to a spiritual retreat which is led by Father Paul. He is a bit of a stereotype, the bad leader who demands and receives sex and obedience from women.

He hires a killer to find her, after she fled, and the mystery continues with other characters in debilitating emotional pain. Tracy is brilliant connecting her characters’ capacity for pain and paranoia. The novel is striking and her ability to develop a crime novel with twists is superb.

The only weakness I found is the author’s abrupt introductions of new characters when I wanted to continue with the existing one.

My gratitude to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for this digital pre-published book. All opinions expressed are my own.

Three seemingly unrelated plots bring Detective Margaret Nolan and Sam Easton together in Desolation Canyon, a complicated thriller by P.J. Tracy.

Margaret is worried about her mother who refuses to speak about her son who was killed in Afghanistan. Sam and his friend Lenny are trying to help a young woman and her daughter who are fleeing an abusive situation. Detective Remy Beaudreau is searching for his sister Charlotte who disappeared eight years ago. These three story lines weave together throughout the mystery until a shocking, surprising conclusion. The Russian mob, sex trafficking, kidnapping, cults and murder add to the mix.

Although this is the second in a series, it reads like a standalone. The Nolan/Easton series is excellent with complex plotting and characters who leap off the pages, for instance Lenny and the occasionally charismatic Father Paul. This is a must read! 5 stars.


Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press and P.J. Tracy for this ARC.

Being the second book in the series, I would recommend reading the first book before picking this one up. Something I did not do. While it can be read as a stand alone, I think there would be a much bigger connection with the main characters if I’d read book one first. I started this one on audio and quickly switched to reading. The narrator read the story quite fast (which by itself is not necessarily a bad thing) with no inflection, making it hard to get into the story. Once I started reading, it flowed much better, although with seemingly different storylines, it still felt a bit disjointed for a bit. When things started to weave together, the story became much more interesting, it just took a bit too long getting there!

My favorite aspect of this series is the character development. They are complex and you can't help but become invested in them. There are some very intriguing cases in this one with a large cast of new characters. At first, while things are building, its hard to keep track but it's worth sticking with it. There are several surprising twists. I'm looking forward to the next book.

Desolation Canyon by P. J. Tracy is the second mystery novel regarding Detective Margaret Nolan. The Nolan family recently lost a family member. To cope, Margaret's mother decides to visit a desert retreat. Only the desert retreat isn't what it seems.

A missing person case is blown wide open after eight years, a woman and a child are found on the run in the desert, there are bodies with eyes gorged out pilled up in an old mine, and allegations of aliens. That's not all that's going on.

A team must execute a rescue mission and a few people as they untangle a mess of former KGB.

I enjoyed this read even though I haven't read the first book in the series. It doesn't read like a three-book series, which involves tons of fluffy writing. I could see this as a ten-plus series, like those Jack Reacher books.

It isn't too heavy on mystery or thrillers. The story is pretty straightforward; however, it's still a good read.

This is the second in the Detective Margaret Nolan series. In the first, the Sam Easton, a wounded veteran suffering from PTSD, was introduced and I thought he was the most developed character in the book. In this one, we see more of Nolan, although Easton remains a central force in the book as well.

There are a number of story threads that eventually all conveniently come together . It is a fast read, with chapters that move along at a nice pace. I felt that there were some questions left on answered. Although the second in the series, it works well as a standalone. I look forward to the next one!

A riveting story that will keep you glued to the pages as you try to keep track of all the action. Maggie, Remy and Max are once again drawn into a case that begins separately but quickly interweaves into a hot mess. The author is masterful at creating characters that are unique and unforgettable. The scenes in the dessert are vivid and clear. The reader races against the clock with the detectives as they too try to solve the case and figure how the story will end for everyone.