Thanks Netgalley for allowing me to read this book. I have read most of PJ Tracy books and enjoyed this one. Detective Maggie is feeling emotional after losing her brother and using her gun while on the job. She meets a co worker at a local hotel only to find a man dead in the pool. The more she digs, the more questions she has. This book kept me engrossed until the end.

Maggie is a homicide detective in Los Angeles. She goes to meet Remy, another homicide detective, at the Hotel Bel-Aire for a drink. They are walking around the hotel’s grounds when they discover a body in the Swan Pool. Maggie becomes the lead detective in the case. It involves a cult, the Russian mob, estranged families, child smuggling, many murders and a complex cast of characters that sometimes verges on the convoluted. Most of all, it is written graphically and very visually. The climax alone is worth the time a reader spends with the book. Thanks to Net Galley and Minotaur for an ARC for an honest review.

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.

I have more or less forgotten the first book in this series, although the main characters were vaguely familiar, so it stands pretty well on its own. This was well-plotted - the fact that everything tracked back to the Children of the Desert retreat centre worked to unify the book, rather than feeling like a series of unlikely coincidences. The ending promised redemption and a fresh start for some of the characters and justice for others.

Highly recommended.

There was plenty to like in Desolation Canyon: nearly unsolvable murders, Russian bad guys, wierd cult in the desert, good cops, and interesting relationships. I was pleased to see P.J. Tracy is an established writer with many books already on the shelves for me to try. This a good solid murder mystery.

I recived an advanced reader's copy from St Martin's Press/Minotaur Books through NetGalley. The opinions expressed are entirely my own.
#DesolationCanyon #NetGalley

Thrill ride with good guys you root for and bad guys you don't! Second in the series and keeps getting better. Was happy to see Sam return as part of the team and the Maggie/Remy dynamic adds a bit of heated fun, I can feel her blush! The author has a good one with this cast of characters and high action - can't wait for the next one!

Thank you Netgalley and St Martin's Press for this arc of Desolation Canyon. I loved The Monkeewrench books, so I really wanted to love this series. While the writing was as good as I expected, the characters were not interesting to me. I also though the story was good, but there were too many things going on. Maybe it's pandemic brain, but it just never really connected with me. I will still read the other books in the series because I loved the writing.

Tracy creates the perfect conflicted, troubled heroine in LAPD detective Margaret Nolan. Still suffering PTSD after she had to take down a suspect, mourning her sister’s death and mulling over a relationship in its death throes, Nolan is having a hard time holding it together. Maybe that’s why she agrees to have drinks with a colleague she’s attracted to, even though she knows it’s a bad idea. It’s at the hotel bar where she discovers the body of a local attorney in the hotels lake. While the death at first appears to have been an accident, Nolan soon uncovers that the deceased had lots of secrets and plenty of people who wanted him dead. I love Margaret Nolan, she’s my new favorite heroine, she’s real, she screws up and she pulls herself up by her own bootstraps

Thank you to both NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books for providing me an advance copy of P.J. Tracy’s latest novel, Desolation Canyon, in exchange for an honest review.

As I predicted in my review for the author’s previous novel, Deep Into The Dark, Ms. Tracy converted the standalone book into a series that is eponymously named after the main character, Detective Margaret Nolan.

Desolation Canyon is book two of the Detective Margaret Nolan series and features many of same the characters from book one. While readers can still enjoy book two without reading book one, I recommend reading the first since book two does not provide much of a backstory for any of the recurring characters.

Desolation Canyon received the infamous sophomore slump treatment. It was difficult not to compare it to book one, which is the better of two in this series. Book 2 is not being released until next year, so there is time for the publisher to correct some of the technical writing errors, such as frequent use of the same terms and clunky, overwritten sentences. Note to the editor: please apply uniform standard to character names. It is incredibly irritating to flip back and forth to remember whose last name belonged to which character. It is a crime novel; the names are not important.

Moving on, the plot itself was riveting. There is no question that book two has a strong plotline. However, the characters were not as clearly developed and instead of multiple subplots, there was only the main one that was half-heartedly scattered amongst the characters. There was no ruse and it was obvious that the characters and “subplots” would converge at the climax.

I cannot divulge too many details about the story since it will give some of the twists away, but the basic gist is this: you have a convict turned priest operating a healing retreat in the desert, a handful of cops attempting to solve an accountant’s murder, the byki (aka the Russian mafia), and a whole bunch of dysfunctional family issues.

Overall, if you normally like the author’s writing style and you intend to stick with the series, I would say read it. Desolation Canyon has a fairly entertaining plot, but do not expect it to live up to the first novel. Again, there is definitely some meat there, I just don’t think it was fully fleshed out yet.

P.J. Tracy,a new series is, IMO, a hit. Full of off-beat, interesting characters just like the Monkeewrench novels. Thumbs up!