Read this book a good long time ago and unsure why my review wasn’t sent sooner. I’ve re-read a bit to familiarise myself and I now recall mainly thinking it pulled no punches with some very graphic violence. Not for me although the plot was involved and fairly interesting.

13 Under the Wire by Gil Reavill
Review by Dawn Thomas

241 Pages
Publisher: Random House Group – Alibi
Release Date: May 24, 2016

Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Crime, Police Procedural

Layla Remington is a police officer in southern California. There are riots in the streets after a white officer shoots a Hispanic man. Layla sees an officer running down an alley and she goes after him. Next thing she knows, shots are fired and she is involved in a shooting. The story then jumps ten years into the past.

Simon Loushane is given an injection of high quality heroine and is pushed off a roof. His death is written off as a suicide. His father asks Layla to look into Simon’s death. Her investigation takes her to Tijuana and the place where he died.

The story bounces from the investigation in the past to the interrogation in the present. Layla Remington proves to be a great investigator and connects dots others cannot or will not see. If you like Lindsay Boxer by James Patterson or Jane Rizzoli by Tess Gerritsen, you will enjoy this book. A last note, there is a brutal abuse but the author does not go into details. He states what happens and moves on.

I'm going to be vague about plot and story since I don't want to spoil it. "13 Under the Wire", the author's third novel, presents us a flawed protagonist who is pulled into the middle of a war. Members of a prominent family, with whom Police Cadet Layla Remington is a friend, are dying and her challenge is to find out why. Layla Remington is a cadet at the Los Angeles Police Academy and is only twenty-two. Youth is not necessarily a flaw, but her propensity to party too much and participate in sexual escapades, makes me doubt her fitness to be a policeman. Additionally, because of poor personal decisions, she manages to get into improbable situations where her survival borders on the unbelievable.


The violence is graphic with nothing left to the imagination. Scenes move between Northern Mexico, the hills around LA where the wealthy reside, and a summer camp in Wisconsin. The writing is crisp and descriptive. The story is readable and interesting, but I didn't have a difficult time putting it down and returning to it. Because of the backstory interspersed throughout that gave two competing timelines, I never felt the protagonist was in real danger. Readers interested in thrillers, in which you wonder who'll be killed or brutalized next, should enjoy this book.

Excellence achieved! I love this genre. Girl Reavill has a skill set that puts him at the top of my list, she keeps me turning pages with characters that I love to love and love to hate.

Thank you for the opportunity to read 13 Under the Wire for a fair review.

Just not one for me at the moment, sorry. I tried restarting it several times but have now decided to abandon it. A good job not everyone has the same tastes, I'm sure it will appeal to others, just not me.