She Treads Softly: Odyssey's End

Wednesday, November 8, 2023

Odyssey's End

Odyssey's End by Matt Coyle
11/14/23; 320 pages
Oceanview Publishing
Rick Cahill #10

Odyssey's End by Matt Coyle is the action-packed, very highly recommended tenth crime thriller featuring San Diego private investigator Rick Cahill.

Difficulties are multiplying for PI Rick Cahill. Between the constant threat his work places them under combined with the rages his CTE, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, can bring on, his wife Leah feels safer away from Rick. For their protection, Leah along with their daughter Krista, has moved back to her parent's home in Santa Barbara. Rick desperately misses them both so when he is offered $50,000, he accepts a job from his enemy Peter Stone. He plans to set the bulk of the money aside for Krista's future.

He is supposed to look for Stone's daughter, Angela Albright, because Stone needs a kidney transplant. However, the case immediately becomes more complicated and dangerous than Rick initially thought. Quickly the FBI is involved asking about an unknown player in the case, a man called Theodore Raskin. He calls friend and PI Moira in to assist him, too. Then the recently released Russian mobster Sergei Volkov is released from prison, placing Rick in an even more perilous situation.

All the novels in the Rick Cahill PI Crime Series are riveting, well-written thrillers with complicated, dangerous cases full of twists and surprises that are expertly brought to a conclusion by the end of the novel. Odyssey's End features an intricate, suspenseful case which places Rick right in the path of more danger and personal injuries. It is a great addition to the series.

I absolutely love this series and the character of Rick Cahill. Even though it is the tenth in the series, it can be read as a stand-alone novel after which you will want to check out the other novels in the series. It seems there are hints that this may be the last case for Rick. I hope not, but if it is I'm sure Matt Coyle will soon give us another series full of action and great, fully realized characters.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Oceanview Publishing.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.