Ambush (Sydney Rose Parnell Book 3) --Barbara Nickless

Fiction / Thriller

356 pages / 2579 KB

5 Stars

I absolutely love the Sydney Rose stories. I've already pre-ordered Book #4. So, maybe my review is some biased? Proceed at will.

Sydney is believable. She doesn't think of everything, though she doesn't miss much, and when she does, it's a whopper. She's a Marine (a veteran of Afghanistan), she's a railroad cop, she has the dog her dead Marine boyfriend had, Clyde, who is also a highly trained K9 Cop. She has PTSD, and she has a (living) boyfriend who is a homicide detective.

She also has something that an unknown someone wants, in the worst way, and that someone is willing to kill for it. Unfortunately, Sydney doesn't have a clue what she has. Or where to look. But she'd better figure it out before her boyfriend who has been kidnapped by the someone is killed. She'd also better figure out where he is.

She's lost too many friends, family actually, for Marines are family. They may not always like each other, but they are family. And Sydney takes it as a personal affront when they are killed.

Ms Nickless has written another fast-paced book. Not so much a railroad story as the earlier ones, but nonetheless, one I couldn't put down until I got to the end. I think one who had not read books 1. Blood on the Tracks or 2. Dead Stop will find enough back story in this one to read as a stand alone, but having read the first two, and being familiar with the characters, I'm not one hundred per cent positive.

My biggest complaint is with Ms Nickless and it's one I've mentioned before: She writes slower than I read.

Dead Stop (Sydney Rose Parnell Series Book 2) –by Barbara Nickless

Fiction / Thriller

400 pages / 2575 KB

5 Stars

Bad news first: Book 3 isn't out, yet.

Although I think one can read this as a stand-alone book, by starting with Blood on the Tracks, the first in the series, one will get a much better, and deeper understanding of who Sydney Rose Parnell and Clyde are.

If you want a well-researched and excellently crafted book, this is the one for you. I found myself laughing in a couple of places, and crying in a couple of places, and there was one sequence where I had to read with my eyes closed! Do you have any idea how difficult that is?

Sydney, our heroine, is damaged. She is an "ex" Marine, with her tours in the Mortuary Services in Iraq. Yeah, you'd be damaged, too. Clyde, her faithful K9 companion, is also an "ex" Marine and Iraq war veteran. He's not quite as damaged as she is.

I'm not sure if this book is a little darker than Blood on the Tracks, or if it's because I forced myself to read it more slowly, instead of inhaling it in one sitting, therefore getting more of the story. It is very intense, gritty. And oh-so-hard to put down.

Sydney is still collecting and living with her ghosts, is in therapy at the VA, and finds herself embroiled in another murder on her tracks, and a race against time to find the murderer and save a missing child. There is murder and mayhem, though it's germane to the story, not gratuitous. In fact, much is left to your own imagination.

We get more of Sydney's thoughts from her journal entries, many of which appear as epigraphs to each chapter. She is dealing with her PTSD, but it costs her.

Personally, I love having a heroine that I can actually believe in. She isn't perfect. She isn't the Ice Woman. She's a veteran with issues she must learn to live with, and she is learning. If you, or someone you know, have PTSD, this might be a helpful book. Yes, it may bring up flashbacks, but you may learn a bit from how Sydney handles hers. And, if you are a vet, thank you for your service.

The ending of this book leaves it wide open for Book 3. Which will not be available soon enough to suit me. I think it highly unfair that even though I took my time reading this book, it still takes her longer to write one than for me to read it.

Blood on the Tracks (Sydney Rose Parnell Series) --Barbara Nickless

Fiction / Thriller

384 pages

5 Stars

I so seldom read thrillers, and yet lately, I've read a couple, and I wonder why I haven't read them in so long. I believe Nickless has brought me back to the fold.

Let me begin with the Bad News first, and get it out of the way, Book 2 will not be released until next year (2017)—but it is pre-ordered. I can't give her more than 5 Stars. I tried hitting the 5-star button twice, but it didn't work.

There is nothing usual about our heroine, Sydney Rose Parnell.  She enlisted in the Marines and was deployed to Iraq where she worked in Mortuary Services. She suffers with PTSD, she has lost, and lost big time. And now, when we meet her, she is a railroad cop in Denver.

If Nickless wasn't in the military, she certainly did her research. I found Sydney Rose believable to the point of tears on more than one occasion. 

I quit reading thrillers years ago because so many of them were filled with female victims, a lot of gratuitous sex and violence, and too much detail on how the body became a body. Sydney Rose gets called into a homicide case because there are a lot of hobo signs at the murder scene and she knows a lot of hobos. It turns out she knows the victim. We get a bit of description, but most is in our imaginations. The alleged killer is also an Iraqi vet also suffering with PTSD, and for various reasons, Sydney doesn't believe he did it and sets out to find the truth. It's really nice to have a flawed female cop solve the crime.

But she solves it at great cost. She must face some ghosts, she will be injured, she will not just waltz in, solve the crime, and waltz out unscathed. Sydney Rose is, above all, human. And she has family which she will do anything to protect.

This is a gritty story, very well told, but being forewarned is also being forearmed—the language is pretty gritty at times, especially in some of the dialog. Lots of f-bombs, and similar words. If those bother you, don't read the book. This is a who-done-it book of the best kind, but there are sub plots and stories, and more twists than a new rope.

Nickless uses epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter—mostly excerpts from Sydney Rose's journals and an interview published in the local paper. They are a fascinating way to get to know her better, without a lot of flashbacks.

There is violence in this book, and a bit of sex, but none of it is gratuitous. I would not hesitate to recommend this book to those who like a good mystery, but more important, I think I would recommend it to anyone with PTSD. It might be a good book to show them how others live with it, to let them know they are not alone.