Just finished this book and was enthralled throughout the story! It’s so refreshing to read a detective novel with an extremely intelligent detective instead of the usual blunders. Schneider keeps you on your toes in trying to figure out whodunnit. Anyone looking for a great read should read The Darkest Game.

I am a great fan of the Getty Museum and novels set in LA so I was particularly pleased when Poisoned Pen Press sent me an ARC of Joseph Schneider's THE DARKEST GAME. Detective Tully Jarsdel (former PhD student/brainy and his partner Morales streetwise/dry wit) form a Holmes/Watson team that alternately educates and amuses. In behind-the-scene glimpses at the Getty, Schneider reveals inner secrets a hallowed museum, his look at police LA schedules provides a peek into blue wall politics and read on to learn things you didn't know about the Iranian Revolution. Schneider sets the end of the book on Catalina, and in doing so, provides a detailed history of that storied Island. The sum total is a multi-tiered totally satisfying slice of LA life. A best part? Discovering Jarsdel and Morales have a history. There are two earlier volumes that proceed THE DARKEST GAME! Can’t wait!Thanks PPP for a chance to discover this new crime solving team.WP Chicago

Book review: The Darkest Game by Joseph Schneider is an elusive ,searing mystery book.

This is third novel by the author about LAPD. I chose this book instantly unknowing about the previous editions. For me it was bit difficult to frame out the background but after reading half the book it was pretty much clear.

This is a story about LAPD detective Tully Jarsdel who left his academic and turned into a detective for a cause of changing the world and making it a better place to live in. He knows quite well that bad things happen everyday and the culprit are left free due to many reasons at times.

He is about to detect a case in which museum curator is found shot point and his home torn apart. He along with his colleague Morales inspect this case which involves lot of twists and turns , really elusive.

This leads them to Catalina Island where Jarsdel unwittingly finds himself embroiled in a widespread conspiracy and gets to know lots of secrets of LA's troubled past and with it, deadly consequences.

I was really hooked up till the end for this story . I really cherished the fast- paced mystery. I recommend this searing mystery book to all mystery lovers. Don't forget to place your order.

I am thankful to Netgalley and Poisoned Pen Press for giving me an opportunity to read this book in return of an honest review.
Happy Reading!

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This author can be counted on to write a thrilling crime story. The pacing is fast and descriptions are detailed; readers will find that their hearts will be racing as if they are on the Southern California crime scene with Detective Tully Jarsdel. One thing that I especially liked about this third book in the series was the added interest of the art scene and the inclusion of Catalina Island as part of the setting. If you like realistic and contemporary plots with gritty details, this book is for you. For an example, I really like Stephen King’s book BILLY SUMMERS. Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read THE DARKEST GAME

I had a hard time reading The Darkest Game. Parts of it seemed to drag a bit but there was enough going 0n to keep me intrigued. The humor aspect was fun.
The mystery of two horrible murders along with pirates and a buried treasure helped keep my interest.
Overall, I enjoyed reading The Darkest Game. I would encourage you to read the two previous books in the series though this can be read as a standalone.
Many thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and author for the opportunity to read this book for my honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this book Netgalley.. it kept my attention the whole time, it has a great storylines and I loved the characters. I would definitely recommend this book. !

The Darkest Game is third in a series featuring LAPD Detective Tully Jarsdel and his partner Oscar Morales. I have not read the first two books but I did not feel like it hampered my enjoyment or ability to follow this one. Tully Jarsdel is an intellectual, called the "Professor Detective" as he left academia to join the police academy (we do find out what prompted the move toward the end of the book). His partner tells Tully that he doesn't have good "people skills", but his high closure rate reflects his intellect and ability to put the pieces of a mystery together. In this story, Jarsdel and Morales are called to the scene of the brutal shooting of a museum curator. They soon learn that the man was not well liked, but who hated him enough to shoot him? Jarsdel identifies a strong suspect, but not before they are found dead themselves, leading the two detectives to Catalina Island to continue their investigation. I liked the characters and enjoyed the unique aspects of Tully's personality and heritage. The descriptions of the Huntington Museum and Catalina Island make me want to visit both. The pacing of the story was good, and the resolution to the mystery was sensible but not one I'd anticipated. For me, this was a great introduction to the series and I look forward to reading the first two books.

I liked the premise of this one but was a dnf for me I couldn’t engage with the characters and plot to slow.
Thanks for letting me review the book to Netgalley and the publisher

Not what I expected at all. I wasn't thrilled with the writing. being overly wordy. It seemed to drag things on. The first few chapters discussed six cases and a little background as they decided which cold case to take. There was one that was brought up in the sentencing faze about a couple who left their 8 month old outside to die in a stroller.

While I liked the main characters the author was too descriptive in their daily push/pull tendencies. I get that there should be some ying/yang and black and white but it took it to another level that made it hard to finish.

It could have been a lot better

Real Rating: 3.75* of five, rounded up because I'm still thinking about the story

There are a lot of things wrong with starting a series with Book Three. I am usually very twitchy about this topic. I would, after having read this book, have felt much better had I had the history between the two leads. As it was, in medias res with them as a bickering old couple (not in the sexual sense), I was able to enjoy the story for itself. I still wish I'd had their history to hand in my brain's filing system, though.

The mystery itself got announced in a fairly usual way: Someone not obviously murder-worthy is found in a trashed home...there's just enough off about the situation to make the Odd Badge-wearing Couple poke more into the dead guy...and thus a very thorough policing job, one that proceeds without undue haste, uncovers some very rotten doins in both past and present that merit a lot of trouble being heaped on people more accustomed to doing the heaping. And, to be sure, they try their goddamnedest to do that heaping again. Tully, having "disappointed" his professor parents by *shudder* becoming a cop in LAPD, isn't likely to let a little thing like Official Disapproval stand in his way of a successful solution. Morales? He's along for the ride, an always-complaining partner-in-crime (solving) with more to gain by staying with the insufferable Tully than moving on. Plus he's not exactly easygoing hisownself.

Tully's abandoned life of being another Professor Doctor Jarsdel has, it is to be noted, equipped him with far more information than the typical cop. It didn't give him his powers of observation, however, and those are the key characteristics that get Tully into enough hot water that he gets quite viciously attacked...twice...and, the second time, he's almost killed from it.

Not only do both he and Morales survive, the second attack...and the murder of their chief suspect...coalesce into a picture of the actual murderer and the real motive for the entire sad affair. It was very, very well-handled, I thoroughly enjoyed Tully's snobby references to things others do not catch or care about, and still thought, "why hasn't friendly fire taken this oh-so-superior guy out?" Because he may grate on the ordinary people around him, but he gets the job done where most of them are honest enough to admit that they might very well not have done.

If you liked watching <I>Endeavour</i> on the TV, or liked the Gervase Fen series or the Nero Wolfe series, these stories will likely scratch the itch well. He's not as arch as Fen or as august as Morse, but Jarsdel will definitely be well-placed on your radar.

I spent most of my life in Texas, but was born in California to a native Californian, a man from Venice Beach. We visited Catalina Island many times, and I've seen the Huntington Museum that forms part of this mystery...but the main thing to know about the settings is that they are there to evoke moods and emotions in the reader. Yes, you'll recognize the places if you've been there or live there, but essentially these aren't used to make it impossible to "get" the full extent of the mystery the way some London- or Paris-set stories are. Like having read the first two entries in the series, it would add something to know what's what, but it isn't in any way *crucial* for you to have done so.

This book was good! I enjoyed the plot and the characters. I hadn't read the previous books in this series but it was still good. I am going to go back and read the first 2 in the series. Great job!

A searing mystery from critically acclaimed author Joseph Schneider, The Darkest Game is a story about dread, greed, and anguish; how it spreads like rot, and how one detective struggles to keep it at bay. This is the 3rd book in this series and may be the best one yet. Dark, gritty and very well plotted. A compelling murder mystery that will keep you guessing until the end. Thank you NetGalley for the advanced readers copy for review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for giving me a copy of this eARC in exchange for my honest review!

Joseph Schneider has just come out with The Darkest Game, the third standalone entry in his LAPD Detective Tully Jarsdel Mystery series. Marcus Tullius “Tully” Jarsdel himself is a Los Angeles-based homicide detective who was once a history PhD candidate. His erudite and pensive personality makes him an easy target for mockery and dismissal, especially when it comes to his old-school partner Oscar Morales and the rest of their cop colleagues. Things are no different in The Darkest Game, which sees Jarsdel working with Morales to figure out who broke into the Laurel Canyon home of museum curator Dean Burken and fatally shot him, with the trail leading to suspects like Ellery Keating, a longtime museum board member with whom Burken worked, and a gang of criminals who fashion themselves as modern-day pirates.

While I haven’t read the first two books in the series, this didn’t stop me from being able to jump in and derive some pleasure from this noir-flavored police procedural. The element I enjoyed the most was Jarsdel’s intellectual design and the stark contrast it has with its hardboiled surroundings. This is demonstrated most prominently via his banter with Morales, whose gruff dialogue falls in line with our expectations of the detective stereotype and emphasizes the cultivated expanse of Jarsdel’s vocabulary and background. I also got drawn into Jarsdel’s relationship with Baba, one of his two dads. The guilt-ridden backstory that’s gradually unveiled for Baba adds an affecting note to their dynamic and to the motivations that drove Jarsdel to sign up for the police academy in the first place.

Don’t head into The Darkest Game and expect it to pull you into a straightforward murder case that moves as fast as a cheetah, though. The mystery lumbers along at a deliberate pace and tends to meander between multiple digressions into topics like the historical genocide of L.A.’s Indigenous population and the museum industry. This could become a turnoff for impatient readers. Unless you’re able to get the majority of the obscure trivia—such as the name-dropping of Phineas Gage—that Schneider spreads all across his novel, they might leave you unsatisfied as well. Funny, since that’s probably when you’d sympathize with the characters in the book who find the academic detective to be grating.

All in all, The Darkest Game is an unusually cerebral police procedural that, despite its wandering plot and slow pacing, has encouraged me to add its predecessors, One Day You’ll Burn and What Waits for You, to my TBR pile.

APD Hollywood Homicide detective Tully Jarsdel and his partner Oscar Morales catch the case of a murdered Huntington museum curator. The man is brutally murdered in his own home and clues lead them back to the Huntington and the possibility that someone there murdered him. This leads them to Catalina island, where the rich and famous play and another murder.
I enjoyed the banter between Tully and Morales. So many times I actually laughed out loud at something Morales said.
I have read other readers state that this was not the best in the series. If that is true, I can't wait to read the others. I am a fan of this duo and of Mr. Schneider for life now.
Thank you to Poisoned Pen Press and Netgalley for this free galley in exchange for my honest review.

Special Thanks to Poisoned Press and NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

I wanted to like this book. Maybe its my own fault, had I known it was a trilogy, this being the 3rd book, I think I would've had a better grip if I read the 2 previous ones. Therefore, I cannot give a great rating. It was also a little slow for me and when it became about lost treasures and pirates, I was just a goner. I hate to give a bad rating. I'm sure people who have read the two previous books might disagree, but for me I found myself skimming. I was thankful to get it early, but it just wasn't for me.

I had very high hopes for this book and simply struggled to get into the story. Tried quite a few times and was lost between the banter and how the story was progressing. It was not for me. I am sure it is for many others and I hope they give it a shot.

The idea that some people are untouchable is very topical and this book doesn’t shy away from the reality that sometimes bad deeds do indeed go unpunished. I loved the main character and will be reading the other books in the series to get more of the back story, although this book stands alone.

I remember that interminable ferry ride to and from Catalina Island. So it would not be my first choice to set a novel. But author Joseph Schneider makes the most of it and creates a fast plot peppered with interesting characters. I made fast work of the novel!
Thanks NetGalley for the ARC.

The below 3.5-star review was posted to Hillbilly Highways on 3/30 and to Amazon and Goodreads on 4/5:

Catalina (better known for its wine mixers than its murders) and The Huntington (a museum and botanical gardens) are hardly my setting of choice. I prefer mine rural and gritty. But The Darkest Game is in conversation with a long tradition of L.A. noir. Chinatown gets name-dropped more than once. Manning the case—first one murder, then more—are an odd-couple pair of Hollywood homicide detectives. Jarsdell is a history PHD-dropout and the son of two professors. Morales is much more the stereotypical cop. Both are sufferable pricks and play well off each other. The central mystery is a tad obvious, but the “why?” question is more interesting and harder for both the characters and reader to unravel, and the mystery around one element of one murder is carefully crafted. If you’re the sort of reader who revels in solving things before the characters, it will give you something to chew on. This is the third book in a series, I gather, but I found it an easy entry point.

Happy Pub Day to @Joseph! This is the third of his series, the detectives investigate the murder of a museum curator, traveling to Catalina Island, to help unravel the mystery. This is a deeply intelligent novel with distinctive characters. Tully Jarsdel isn’t your typical cop. There are a lot of twits and turns and you won’t be able to look away from this book!