Reed Ferguson Mysteries: Books 1–3

Laugh out loud funny without sparing the thrills chills and mayhem. I speed read the series because I felt I knew the characters and if I didn’t meet them at the B52, their local watering hole, I’d miss some of the action, fun and intrigue between them. Really missed a days dose of Dewey and friends. There are bad guys but not perverts or sadists. Dewey and his team carry on in great style.. of Sam Spade etc. Read these it will lower your blood pressure…

The books in this series are fun to read and full of action. The characters are funny and loveable. I would read more books by this author especially with these characters.

In keeping with my belief that it’s better to read a good book twice than a bad book once, Reed Ferguson is one of the detectives I turn when the angst of other literary detectives’ lives becomes excessive and I need a break. Reed is real compared to those characters, as are his friends. He’s smart, but he’s young and sometimes he does stupid things. And when he does–and even when he doesn’t–he prays his mother won’t call at the right time. I know this is real because his behavior reminds me so much of my sons and their friends at that age.

This is no way means that the plots of the mysteries are thin or the villains softies. Quite the contrary. The mysteries are carefully crafted with none of loose ends or incongruent events that attempt to make sense of lesser written ones. There’s no shortage of evil and creepy villains and action,either.

So if you’re like I am and will read just about anything that claims to be a mystery and periodically need something to refresh your literary palate after sampling a stinker, I strongly recommend this series.

The characters are well drawn. Film noir theme carried well.

The Renee Pawlish, Reed Ferguson Trilogy (plus one short story)
Three books (and a short story) about an aspiring private investigator, located in Denver, Colorado, where a PI can be anybody without certification or license. Reed is financially independent, so he can survive without his investigating business paying for his consumption from the two basic food groups of pizza and hamburger/hotdog. He is assisted by a computer geek/master hacker/genius sidekick with whom he has an ongoing relationship from high school. He also relies for help, from time-to-time, on two brothers, his neighbors, whom he affectionately calls goofballs, de facto, two dunces, border-line retards.
Ferguson is a cinema noir aficionado, his ultimate hero being Bogart, he refers to as Bogie. In every tight situation (usually, his own causing) he asks himself the question, WWBD (what would Bogie do)? So, far, so good. We like serials in detective, thriller, suspense books, if not only for but mostly, the protagonist and the cadre of recurring characters. In contrast, although Ford F-150s, Boing 737s, and templates of resumes are a welcome platform because their efficiency of production, the same doesn’t hold for whodunit serials.
Yet, this is what Ms. Pawlish does in her three books. Reed, sitting in his splendid isolation in his office, encounters a prospective client out of the blue, with an incredibly strange case. The protagonist accepts the assignment. The first step, the computer geek’s help. Next, some initial field investigation. Followed by some screwups of his own doing, where it is difficult to decide whether Reed is a schlemiel, a schlimazel or bouncing in between these two extremes. Consequently, Reed is beaten up or suffers severe bodily harm, after which with a stroke of a seasoned PI, he deducts the only possible solution to the case. With the help of his friends, and sometimes a nurse who doesn’t want to get romantically involved with Ferguson because of his high-risk profession (like race car drivers, test pilots, and firefighters do not have girlfriends, or perhaps, some women are married to one of these). Nevertheless, Reed still has high hopes that one day he will have a roll in the hay with Willie (for Wilhelmina), possibly, repeatedly.
After the first book, I could predict, almost to the page, when and how will Ferguson screw up, suffer a serious beating, thrown off a speeding truck, or suffer cruel physical punishment, how he will recover, and who will save the day for him.
Ms. Renee also promotes herself that her writing is witty, something I look for in this class of books. In fact, I have a distaste for all the books in the genre which are not in the humorous style. If Pawlish thinks that the annoying, repeated phone calls of his mother, a de facto nagging yenta (you don’t have the be Jewish to enjoy a kosher pickle, and a gentile woman can be a yenta) and the naivete, border-line stupidity of the goofballs amount to humor, she missed the point with me. But hey, this is just me and people laugh at slapstick comedy.
I give the trilogy three starts, instead of two because I read all three books and the shorty to the end, without getting off the bus, and it’s great credit to Pawlish’s prose.

I like the main character, Reed Ferguson with his love detective movie classics, as well as his sidekick Cal. Willie is certainly a woman to be reckoned with. The two goof brothers make for funny side stories. Overall the stories are fun, interesting, original, and don’t rely on cheap effects to keep the reader turning the pages.

Entertaining and easy to read with enjoyable characters.

It’s been awhile since I read the?. But enjoyed the suspense the characters. Truly entertaining. Would recommend these stories.

The Reed Ferguson series is a perfectly balanced mix of: original and believable characters, humor, some romance, twisty plots, danger and mystery. Dialogue is used well and enhances the characters and the stories. If you enjoy watching Columbo and/or Sherlock, you’ll enjoy these novels.

This was a fun series of books to read. They aren’t high on the intelligent reading list but were just an easy read, one of those books that takes you away from your daily grind and makes you laugh now and then. There was a little too much repetition of certain aspects of the main character’s life but that meant you could just read one book and still know who’s who and what’s what. I really grew to like this guy!