This was a fun, twisty story by Lee Goldberg, different from other of his other books I've read.

Beth McDade is now a homicide detective at the San Bernardino Barstow Sheriff's Dept. after being fired from the LAPD. It's not where she wants to be by far and she drinks too much, sleeps around too much, and generally is just not too happy.

Then unusual happenings start with a strangely appearing man, a disappearing man, explosions at the two nearby military bases and Beth suddenly has a lot happening in her quiet backwater part of the desert and none of it makes sense.

I highly recommend this story if you want something fun with a side of sci fi.

I received this book from Net Galley through Severn House. My opinions are my own.

I am not sure about this book. I did finish it but it was not one I feel I can rave about. Beth McDade moved to Barstow from Los Angeles after having an affair with a colleague a rank below her at work. She is a homicide detective in the small town and things start to happen in the town of Calico which is a ghost town from an old mining area around the late 1800’s. Beth is sent to investigate an accident involving what is thought to be a homeless man and a RV. It is decided that the driver was not at fault and she then has to discover who the man is and why it was running into the road. At the time there is a explosion at a military base which the base refuses to confirm. Another case is a home invasion which is watched by the owner who has cameras rigged up in case of which an occurrence. Beth has many jobs and wonders if they are intertwined. Things do move at a pace but I did find the story a little strange in some ways and do not think I would not read it again in the future

I’m very sorry, but I didn’t really like this book. The major mystery was solved about 20% into the book. There was nothing else going on keeping my interest after that. The author wrote as if time travel was this newfangled idea that he just had, instead of a well trodden trope of fiction.

The part that I genuinely enjoyed was the description of life in the 1880s in a mining town. The character’s coming from the future was a nice reason for seeing it with the perspective of today. But even that was kind of reductive and simplistic.

Apologies and thanks to the publisher for providing a free advance copy.

After her dismissal from the LAPD, detective Beth McDade takes the only job she can find and it’s in Barstow, California. It’s a place where nothing much happens but it’s also a place for Beth to regroup and find her footing. But things get interesting when she investigates the death of a homeless man accidently killed by a motorhome driver, an inexplicable lightning storm, and an old skeleton discovered in a shallow grave in the desert.

Meanwhile, over one hundred years ago, a man arrived in nearby Calico, a mining town in the desert. Somehow, his fate and Beth’s investigations are linked in ways she never could imagine.

Calico is a story that’s told through two timelines. It’s a police procedural, with a time traveling element, and a good mystery to boot. There are lots of moving parts and, generally, they are handled well. The subtle humor is a nice touch and the characters are well-drawn, although sometimes not very realistic in their behavior or reactions. Mr Goldberg describes the area and the characters quite well and I found myself very willing to read “just one more chapter” before turning out the light.

This book is imaginative and the premise is unique and fresh. While dealing with two timelines, the story seemed to jump around a little more than necessary and there were times it was difficult to follow the thought process used to explain the time travel concepts. This was 3.5 stars for me but will bump it up to 4. NetGalley provided an advance copy.

This is an interesting book with a dual narrative – Beth, who is the disgraced and somewhat bitter detective who has found herself stranded in this blistering corner of the country; and said desperate stranger, who finds himself completely caught up in a place that he keeps hoping he’ll escape from. Books with such double plotlines can be a joy – so long as the reader is equally engaged in both aspects of the story. And increasingly as this one progressed, I found myself far more caught up in the story of the desperate stranger. This was when Goldberg’s writing really pinged off the page – particularly in the vivid evocation of the setting, which I found absolutely riveting. I also liked the stranger more than Beth, whose self-destructive tendency was rather off-putting.

The other issue that I found a bit graunching was that for quite a lot of the story, the reader is ahead of the investigating team led by Beth. While they are flailing around, trying to garner evidence and then coming to terms with an unbelievable outcome – we already know what happened to the stranger. So the narrative tension that often powers crime thrillers simply isn’t there. However, what had me turning the pages was my continuing fascination with the stranger’s story, which I absolutely loved and will stay with me for a long time.

While this was at times a slightly frustrating read, nonetheless I powered through the book in two greedy gulps, completely caught up in the stranger’s plight and willing him to prevail in fairly awful conditions. Once I got to the end, there is an interesting Afterword explaining that Calico actually was a real place – and it’s clear that Goldberg got very involved in at least part of its story, which he tells with real passion and skill. So despite my caveats, I do thoroughly recommend this one – it’s not a faultless read, but it’s certainly a memorable one. While I obtained an arc of Calico from the publisher via Netgalley, the opinions I have expressed are unbiased and my own.
7/10

Calico, California is the site of Lee Greenberg's newest thriller, the tow also becomes one of the characters in the book when the missing persons mysteries start piling up. Beth McDade is a homicide detective in Barstow, just up the road on Rt 66 from Calico. She's sent to Calico to investigate a homicide but finds the clues are very far from usual. It seems that the desert around Calico has it's own secrets and is not about to share them with Beth. The two large Marine installations in and around Barstow are home to their own secrets that strangely resemble Beth's crime scenes. As the crimes grow in number....and strangeness....Beth must figure out exactly where her missing persons are going and where the unexplained clues are coming from.

this is an excellent genre crossing story. Lee Goldberg threw everything in the pot and came out with a heck of a plot. the ending implies another Beth McDade book is to come. I'd gladly read it just to see how she uses this new knowledge.

This was a twisty, romantic, time-traveling western-influenced detective novel with a healthy dose of shoot-em-up bang-bang action, starring a kick-ass female sex-addict. Personally, I loved the action. :)

I have read several books by this author and liked them a lot, especially his Monk novelizations. This one was just too weird. I think he was trying to combine genres, something I usually enjoy because I read a lot of genre fiction. But to me, this didn't feel like it worked.
Maybe it would have been better with a warning.
Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this

I enjoyed this book, but in places it felt like the author had added additional notes or levels of detail that weren’t necessary, and there was some repetition, all of which felt like it should have been removed by a solid edit. Parts of the storyline were a little implausible; Goldberg doesn’t hesitate to ignore facts, change them, or use contrived plot devices to conveniently dodge potential banana skins that could wrong-foot the storyline.
As a female reader, it was also very clear that a man was writing the sex scenes. Let’s just say that Goldberg’s perspective on relationships and intimacy has more than its fair share of masculine ‘tells’.
I had expected something more weighty and credible when I started, but it was still a nice read, if not quite what I was expecting, although it could have been significantly shorter.
If you’re looking for character growth, deep and meaningful emotion, or a tension-packed thriller, this isn’t the book for you, but it is an entertaining story of time travel in the old west.
Thank you to NetGalley and Severn House Publishing for the chance to read an arc.

Once in a while, you pick up a book, without really reading the blurb and it blows you away (in the best of ways.) This is one of those books.

The book follows the story of Beth McDade, a former LAPD Detective who now works in the Barstow area of the Mojave desert. She is shocked when an ex shows up looking for a missing person, and that leads her to a body found in a grave dug over a hundred years ago.

No matter which way you think this book will go, you will always be wrong. It is masterfully written, with twists and turns that lead you all over the place. A fun book to immerse yourself in, and I hope to see Beth McDade again in the future.

This well crafted book combining apparent deaths, a detective investigation and time travel is a fabulous read. For those who think that they don’t like science fiction, give this a read as it combines history with excellent detective skills. A great read, highly recommended.

An unnatural weather event, a vehicular death, a disappearance, and other strange phenomena out on the California desert leaves a world-weary police detective with more questions than answers. Is the kook on the local radio waves far off when he spouts about government conspiracies and aliens?

Once in a while, all it takes is a title to spark my interest and Calico was just such a book. I’ve always been fascinated by and visiting old west mining ghost towns including old Calico though it did get turned into a tourist stop. I didn’t realize until I started reading that it was not just a thriller set in the Mojave desert, but a sci-fi thriller. Even better.

Calico is told by two narrators in two different circumstances, but Detective Beth McDade has the larger storyline. This world-weary woman made a huge faux pas when working the LAPD so she took one of the few posts in California still open to her, San Bernardino Sheriff’s Dept and remained a detective. Beth is painted as a nuanced character who reminds me of those old western book heroes that are quiet, keep to themselves, but rough and capable when the going gets tough. I enjoyed seeing her fight her way clear of her personal purgatory after she screwed up in LA and how the case was the jump start she needed to get back in the game as the solid detective she was.

Lee Goldberg is a new to me author, but if the depth of background and description he gave to this region of the Mojave and the history of Calico not to mention his main characters is his usual, I really must take in his whole backlist. The rich history and culture of the area was another character in the story. It was all I could have wanted when I spotted the title and wanted to read a story set there.

I will be vague about the sci-fi element and the narrative line of the second main character because it is a wonderful surprise to readers to see it unfold as Beth conducts her investigation. The reader gets a bigger picture and works it out before Beth, but it still had some great twists and surprises.

In summation, my impulse grab of Calico paid off and I thought this a fabulous read from start to finish that I can highly recommend to other sci-fi thriller lovers.

This is a quite extraordinary book. Even when I've had to take a break from reading it I haven't been able to stop thinking about it.
A high octane thriller that manages to straddle genres including crime, mystery, police procedural, historical and science fiction. The pace is fast and furious but the author has still maintained excellent character development and there are many profoundly poignant moments in the plot.
From the very beginning there is a real sense of mystery and intrigue that is carefully manipulated into a crisis of extraordinary scope and individual pain.
I highly recommend this book and I will certainly be reading more novels by Lee Goldberg.

Calico was an unexpected, enjoyable treat. It begins with a hardboiled woman ex-LAPD detective, stuck in a desert station near Barstow. A routine traffic fatality is anything but that. There is a strange weather disturbance, a home invasion, a tight-mouthed military man and a grizzly bear spotted where none has been seen in almost 100 years. The fatality becomes even more mysterious when the victim’s clothes seem to be from the 1800s. What is going on here? Detective Beth needs to solve the mystery by suspending reason and embracing the weird. Or maybe reasoning is different and the weird really isn’t that weird. Goldberg slowly morphs this tale into a genre-twisting read going back to an old mining town and then back again and again. There is wit and heart, adventure, and peril. A great read to keep you up all night! Highly recommended – and a great cover. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing this title.

Truly mind-bending time travel in this well written novel. Jumping from the 1882 mining town of Calico in the desert near Las Vegas to current Barstow, California, modern day detective Beth McDade comes across conflicting information regarding bodies found in the Mojave. Fast paced and well characterized, recommended reading.

“There was a saying about Barstow that Beth heard when she’d arrived from LA three years ago. The interstate here only goes in one direction: away. Nobody wants to be in Barstow and those who do, you don’t want to know.”

My thanks to Severn House for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘Calico’ by Lee Goldberg.

Previous to this I have only read Goldberg’s collaborations with Janet Evanovich though knew that he had written many books.

From a quick look at the premise I thought this would be a straightforward police drama in which disgraced ex-LAPD detective, Beth McDade, is adjusting to her new life as a homicide detective with the Barstow Sheriff’s Department. I expected a murder or two though the plot quickly took a turn into X-Files territory.

At 02:00 on 2nd February 2019 a disoriented man stumbles into the road wailing, apparently terrified by the dinosaur sculptures at the rear of Peggy Sue’s jukebox-shaped diner. He is hit and killed by a motor home, whose driver had been briefly distracted by a lightning storm and the sound of an explosion at the nearby military base. The victim appears to be a transient as he is dressed in tattered, filthy clothing. He has no ID though there are a few old coins in his pockets.

Not long after Beth McDale is called out to a construction site where an old skeleton had been unearthed when ground was broken on a new project. The bones and casket appear to be over a hundred years old yet when a titanium elbow implant and two dental implants are found the investigation becomes stranger. The serial numbers come back to an Owen Slader, who has only recently been reported missing. The last pings on his phone and GPS were at 02:00 on February 2nd, 2019 quite close to where the man was run over.

Beth is determined to uncover the truth and as she does each discovery seems more shocking including uncovering a number of bizarre incidents that took place on the 2nd of February in other years. She also becomes aware that there are shadowy figures seeking to halt her investigation.

Meanwhile, in February 1882 a stranger walks out of the desert into the struggling mining town of Calico. When asked his name he says ‘Ben Cartwright’. Separated from everything he knows, he hopes that he can find a second chance in this strange old world. 

The narrative moves between these two timelines, creating a work of speculative fiction that reminded me of the novels of the late Michael Crichton. As a reader of science fiction I had no difficulties with the SF themes in ‘Calico’ and felt that they were well integrated.

I enjoyed the scattered references that included the mysterious skeleton being nicknamed by Beth as ‘Marty McFly’ or the mentions in the 1880s by Ben Cartwright of aspects of 20th-century pop culture. This was especially ironic given that at first he recalled the plot of Ray Bradbury’s ‘A Sound of Thunder’ and checks the soles of his shoes to make sure that he hasn’t stepped on any butterflies.

Lee Goldberg has experience as a screenwriter and I found it quite a visual novel and could easily imagine it being adapted for the large or small screen.

I felt that Goldberg made good use of his Mojave desert settings in both time periods, drawing on his readers’ senses to create an immersive experience. Calico does exist and is an official ‘ghost town’ that has been built on the ruins of the original mining town. Barstow and the surrounding areas also exist, including Peggy Sue’s 1950s themed diner. I felt that by utilising real world locations Goldberg grounded his plot allowing for its more extraordinary aspects to feel more organic.

Overall, I enjoyed ‘Calico’ very much. While I am not a great fan of western novels, it was quite entertaining. There does seem scope for a sequel featuring further investigations for Beth McDade.

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Detective Beth McDade left LAPD under a cloud, ending up in the Barstow station of the San Berardino County Sheriff’s Office. Much of the county is uninhabited desert, and the crimes she deals with involve gangs or drugs. Then two bodies show up near the Calico Ghost Town, and her job gets much more interesting. On the surface, one death is accidental, the other natural. One is the loser in a human-RV race, the other is the skeleton of a long-buried miner. Below the surface, each body has some puzzling, almost impossible aspects that sends McDade down a twisty and dangerous rabbit hole.
Lee Goldberg has written in a wide variety of genres, from the coziest of cozies to the gritty and raunchy. Calico is a genre all its own, combining a standard police procedural, a historical western, X-Files style government skullduggery, and time travel a la Back to the Future and H.G. Wells. It all adds up to one rollicking good yarn.

Calico by Lee Goldberg is part western, part sci-fi, and part mystery.

First, let me thank NetGalley, the publisher Severn House, and of course the author, for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.


My Synopsis:    (No major reveals, but if concerned, skip to My Opinions)
Beth McDade used to be an LAPD detective, but fell from grace.

She now is a detective in Barstow, California, a rough city in the Mojave desert.  Basically, it was the only place Beth could go if she wanted to continue in police work.

On February 2, 2019, Owen Slader and his vehicle disappear, and Beth starts looking for him.

On February 2, 1882, a man arrives in the mining town of Calico,  and makes a new life for himself.   Beth discovers his bones in a shallow grave in 2019.  His body has some strange inconsistencies for a body over 100 years old.

On February 2 2019,  Beth starts investigating the death of a man who ran out of the desert and directly into the path of a motor home.  The driver of the RV had been startled by the loud electrical storm.  It was definitely an accident.  However, the body of the dead man has some strange inconsistencies for someone that just died.

The two bodies lead Beth and the coroner (Amanda Selby)  in a direction Beth never thought she'd take.....and people want to her stop looking.


My Opinions:
First, I don't generally read historical novels, time-travel novels, westerns, or conspiracy thrillers.  This was all four....and it was one of the most epic and compelling novels I have read in a long time.

The dual time-lines were handled really well.

I absolutely loved the characters.  Neither Beth nor Amanda refused to give up on solving the mystery.  Ben and Wendy were an amazing couple  who had to over-come so much to make sure their descendants survived. The people they encountered were so interesting, that it "almost" made 1882 bearable.  I like how the author provided a few obnoxious characters to make things realistic (Bill Knox and for some reason Brittany Cartwright come to mind).

The writing and plot was really good, and I absolutely LOVED the last line of the book.  I thought it was hilarious!

That being said....it was a long book and it occasionally dragged.  Even though I was enjoying most of it, I thought I'd never get through it. Seems contradictory, but...

Anyway, overall, it was better than I expected (and a lot deeper than his Monk series).

We all have heard of the Mojave desert in California which is the setting for these Lee Goldberg detective thriller. Imagine being a detective there. Not too much to do there you'd think but then you'd be wrong. When Beth McDade, an ex LPD detective, finds herself with a busy shift involving a vagrant run over by a motor home and a skeleton, later dated to the 1870's, dug up on a building site she is on to something extraordinary. It gradually emerges their fates are intertwined and we are taken on a time-travel journey with a fascinating outcome.
Certainly original, certainly gripping and just a little disturbing this is a novel to challenge conventional thinking authored with real style by Lee Goldberg.