Once again, Al Quinn’s wish to lead a quiet life as a retired sheriff’s department detective gets interrupted. This time, a female con artist has ripped off a charity drive his brother, Maury, and his sister-in-law, Bonnie, are heading. Sheriff Clayton also wants a favor. He asks Al to look into a report of a chupacabra, a mythological Texas beast that sucks the blood from goats. The tangled web … tangled web causes Al and his “starting-to-get-serious” partner, Fergie, to cross paths with two hardened killers who decide Al and Fergie need to die.
Their dance across the drought-stricken countryside threatens to finish Al and Fergie, along with the rest of his household, including the baby, Little Al, and their dog, Tanner.
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Book source ~ ARC. My review is voluntary and honest.
Al Quinn is a retired detective for the Sheriff’s Department, but somehow his old boss, Sheriff Clayton, keeps managing to pull him in when he needs a really good detective. He calls them “favors” but each time Al and his lady friend Fergie (retired detective of the Austin PD) have nearly been killed doing these little favors for Clayton. But this one seems relatively straight forward and harmless. He just needs to go talk to someone who says they saw a chupacabra, reassure them that the department will look into it, and go on his merry way. If you’ve read any of the other Al Quinn stories, you know this just isn’t going to be that simple. But first he needs to find a con-woman who stole the cancer fund money from the hospital charity drive that his brother Maury and sis-in-law Bonnie were running before their boss fires them for it. Retired, his ass.
I love Al and his merry band of misfits. When a new book comes out I can’t wait to see what Al is going to be investigating and how Fergie, Maury, Bonnie, and Tanner will help. Baby Al isn’t going to be much help in this one because, well, he’s no Baby Yoda. Ok, that reference will not work for anyone who isn’t watching The Mandalorian, but I don’t care. LOL
Al and Fergie have an impossible task of finding this fraudster woman. It’s like she’s disappeared off the face of the planet. But Al is stubborn and he likes a good puzzle, so away he and Fergie go trying to track down a ghost. I love the way one thing leads to another thing then another and suddenly there are guys trying to kill Al and Fergie. How the hell did that happen?! Like any good detective Al follows the trail and relies on his gut as well. Fergie has years of experience to contribute and she’s no wilting flower. There’s action, mystery, and awesome characters – I love this world!
Being from Texas helps, but not a prerequisite. Great character development.
And great scene setups. Could have been there watching.
This was a great book and can’t wait for another Russ Hall book!
I really enjoyed reading this book. The characters are delightfully quirky and the story moves along at a decent pace with only a few places that I thought were slow. There is a good amount of violence and even though the ending was somewhat predictable, there were a few twists I wasn’t expecting. The humor in the book is what one would expect from such unusual characters and it is not the focus of the book. I definitely recommend this book for someone looking for a good action adventure.
I have not read any of the previous books in the series but that wasn’t an issue for understanding what was happening.
I received a free copy of this book from AuthorsXP and I am voluntarily leaving my honest review.
I like mysteries and I like the “was once a cop” type of character. But to have two retired detectives, a male and a female, puts a really good spin on this story.
Al is obviously the main character. You can picture him just by Hall’s writing. A nice guy, a guy who’s kind of a loner, at least for a while. He’s smart, cunning, and definitely a guy with a sarcastic bent. Maybe the sarcastic part was my favorite because I could identify with him 🙂
There is plenty of action here and Hall writes it well; so descriptive that you can keep up with it; see and feel the movement and interaction as if in a movie scene. I did think things started out a little slowly. This is Book 5. It may be that there was more “catch-up” writing at the beginning which made it slow down a little for me.
However, I kept reading and don’t regret one moment of it. Basically it looks to me like Russ Hall should be writing Book 6.
“Making it Rain in Texas” is a fine, fine mystery with compelling, complex (and often odd but fascinating) characters, fast paced plot, plenty of local color, droll humor and excellent writing. The mysteries are well layered, and the twists made this a classic page-turner.
There’s a kind of Elmore Leonard vibe (and I mean that in the best of all ways) in the sense of the pacing, the sharp dialogue, and the well-drawn villains. While Russ Hall has his own distinct style, he writes his villains with same wry understanding, even sympathy, that always made Elmore Leonard’s books stand out. Too many modern mysteries treat the villains only as a plot ploy and not real characters, but Hall spins out some truly captivating villains. And Hall gives them such interesting names, such as Harley Ray Luther, also known as Ghost Cloud “because he used to flow through an area and there would be less money when he left…”
The story starts with the main characters, Al Quinn and his significant other, redhaired Fergie, both retired detectives, being pulled into an investigation of Cynthia Standerblum, an apparent scam artist suspected of making off with thousands of dollars of money raised for cancer patients at a local hospital. But Clayton, the sheriff, also asks Al to investigate a claimed chupacabra spotting. A chupacabra is, as described by one of the characters, “Sort of a hairless coyote that sucks blood from goats and livestock, right?” Mythical…or not.
Droll humor and the author’s skill with words throughout makes this such an excellent, fun read despite the serious dangers and mysteries involved. Here’s but one brief example: Fergie, after she eats a plate of fried cat fish, muses: “She started to hope they would do something in the afternoon to burn some energy, although it would be hard to top dragging a senator across a leaf-crackling woods floor under a hail of bullets.” Or a gypsy goat herder’s assessment of living in Texas: “No one told me it would be like living on a skillet.” Or Al’s assessment of a man wearing a three-piece tweed suit with an alpine hat: “How someone could wear an outfit like that on a day that could melt the eyelashes off a camel was beyond Al.”
I purchased this book on the day of its release and was only going to read a bit of it, but then I started reading, devouring it really, and before I knew what happened, it was well past midnight and I could not stop reading. This is that kind of book. Al and Fergie are wonderful, but all the characters are. This is a true gem of a book. Now that I’ve discovered the series, I will need to go back and get the prior books. Something to look forward too!