Blue Heron Marsh: a Webb Sawyer Mystery
by Douglas Quinn
Published by iUniverse
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Reviewed by Julie Failla Earhart
Author Douglas Quinn introduces readers to a reluctant PI in the first Webb Sawyer mystery, Blue Heron Marsh.
Webb has recently been released from a psychiatric hospital and has returned to North Carolina’s Blue Heron Marsh to fish, listen to music, and his enjoy peace and solitude. He’s a vet of one of the Persian Gulf wars and barely escaped a life sentence for killing a terrorist. The terrorist led the gang rape of a woman he was in love with and forced her to watch while the gang murdered her father and brother. Everyone who meets Webb applauds his actions, but nonetheless, he lost his Army career.
Webb enjoys fishing and the company of a bar-owner named Nan. On a visit to the bar, the girl behind the counter, Nehi, asks Webb to help a friend who has a friend who has been charged with murder. Webb wants no part of doing any more investigating work. He wants peace and quiet. Nehi tells her friend, Amanda how to get in touch with Webb as he doesn’t have a phone of any sorts or a computer. Amanda won’t take no for an answer, and before Webb knows what’s happened, he’s up to his eyeballs in women trouble.
Blue Heron Marsh gets off to a rather slow beginning as Quinn loves details. Sometime the details get in the way. Who cares what the characters have to eat for each meal? Still after about page forty-five the story picks up and moves along. It’s not a thriller or even a page-turner, but Quinn has crafted the story to fit Webb’s lifestyle–easy-going and meandering–quite a feat in and of itself.
Since I’m landlocked in Missouri, it was fun to read about North Carolina’s Outer Banks and learn about the kind of fish that inhabit the waters.
Armchair Interviews says: Worth the read.
Author’s Web site: http://www.DouglasQuinn.com