Review Tour + #Giveaway: No Known Address by Jo A Hiestand @GoddessFish

No Known Address

by Jo A Hiestand

GENRE: British mystery

BLURB:

The man seemed not to hear the continuous whine of the phone receiver lying on his lap. He sat upright, stiff-backed, in a wooden kitchen chair that, like the house, had seen better days. As he had also seen better days, he reminded himself, glancing at the calendar on the wall. A date circled in black ink smirked at him, the remaining days of the month X-ed out. As though he was counting down to something. But the dates were three years old.

The discrepancy didn’t bother him. He had never flipped over the rest of the months. They didn’t intrigue him; it didn’t upset him that he had stared at January for more than a thousand days. If he flipped over the page it would signal that the search needed to continue into another month. And possibly another. And another. The consequence was too terrible to comprehend.

Excerpt:

“There’s the problem of Luke’s guitar.”

“Something wrong with it, Michael?”

“On the contrary, Dena. It’s a very fine instrument. Twin to my own.” He glanced at his own guitar sprawled across two-thirds of the living room sofa. “Same make, same model. Dreadnought size. Perfect for folk or bluegrass music.”

“He goes up in your estimation as a musician, then.”

He opened his mouth to protest her suggestion that he played favorites with victims, but her laugh implied she was joking.

“So, what’s odd about the guitar, Michael? Don’t tell me there’s something stashed in it.”

“As I said, the instrument is fine. But don’t you think it’s strange that he would vanish around four-thirty, presumably on his way to sing that night, and not have his guitar with him?”

My Review:

This is the first of the A McLaren Mystery and the first book by Jo A Heistand that I have read. I don’t read many mystery novels although I use to love watching a good murder mystery on tv. You know like the old tv show Murder She Wrote. Yes now I loved that show way back when as they say.

I would have to say that Jo definitely knows the meaning of the word mystery. She will keep you on your toes the whole way through the novel making you guess over and over trying to figure out who do it. I was always trying to figure it out. I was like oh yeah he did it or no maybe she did. Then I would be like I don’t know maybe he did it. But I did have fun trying to figure out what happened to our missing person.

Michael McLaren is asked to find Gary Barber’s son Luke who went missing three years ago. McLaren finds that he has quite the list of suspects and a lot of road to travel to find out what happened to Luke. Luke was a very well-known and likeable person in the community. He stayed to himself. He loved playing tennis and his music. He helped his father out on the farm besides his music, tennis and the farm.

Luke pretty much stayed to himself and didn’t bother anyone. So who would have wanted to hurt Luke? What did they have against him? Or maybe it wasn’t Luke they had a beef with maybe it was his girlfriend or his father.

If you like reading a good mystery then you are going to love reading No Known Address it will grab you right from the beginning and won’t let go until you have read the last word. Who can pass up a good whodunit? 

AUTHOR BIO:

Books, Girl Scouts and music filled Jo A. Hiestand’s childhood.  She discovered the magic of words and the worlds they create: mysteries, English medieval history, the natural world.  She explored the joys of the outdoors through Girl Scout camping trips and summers as a canoeing instructor and camp counselor.  Brought up on classical, big band and baroque music, she was groomed as a concert pianist until forsaking the piano for the harpsichord.  She also plays a Martin guitar and has sung in a semi-professional folkgroup in the US and as a soloist in England.

This mixture formed the foundation for her writing.  A true Anglophile, Jo wanted to create a mystery series that featured a British police detective who left the Force over an injustice and now investigates cold cases on his own.  The result is the McLaren Mysteries, featuring ex-police detective Michael McLaren.

Jo’s insistence for accuracy -- from police methods and location layout to the general “feel” of the area -- has driven her innumerable times to Derbyshire.  These explorations and conferences with police friends provide the detail filling the books.

In 1999 Jo returned to Webster University to major in English.  She graduated in 2001 with a BA degree and departmental honors.

She has employed her love of writing, board games and music in other ways by co-inventing a mystery-solving game, P.I.R.A.T.E.S., which uses maps, graphics, song lyrics, and other clues to lead the players to the lost treasure.

Jo founded the Greater St. Louis Chapter of Sisters in Crime, serving as its first president. Besides her love of mysteries and early music, she also enjoys photography, reading, crewel embroidery, and her backyard wildlife.

Her cat, Tennyson, shares her St. Louis-area home.

LINKS:

Goodreads ~ Facebook ~ Website

Giveaway:

$40 Amazon/BN GC

 

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