Divorce, Duplicity, Drugs, & Death in a Dinky Town (Rigged thriller REVIEW)

Your first love… do you ever forget that? Those crazy rushes of hormone-enhanced feelings, hours spent daydreaming, and riding that constant high, while the first flush of infatuation (or “love”, as we all call it at the time) lasts? 

No, those memories stay with you, most of us would agree, and it’s that notion which is at the heart, if you will, of author D.P. Lyle’s latest thriller, Rigged.

But let me start by getting the big problem I have with this out of the way. The “first love”, in Rigged, took place between a pair of 12-year-olds… and ended right after the 6th grade, when the girl’s parents moved. (Okay, you’re thinking, so it was puppy love. What’s the problem?)

I wouldn’t have a problem, if the author didn’t make such a monumentally-big deal of it, with one of his main characters—the humorously-nicknamed “Pancake”—going on (and on) about how “in love” they were, and how much he’s thought about her in the intervening twenty-plus years… despite never once bothering to pick up the phone and call, or making any effort to drive thirty miles (which is all the further her parents moved) to see her?!? (Maybe, if the character was extremely shy, and still lived in his mother’s basement, and… but no, Pancake is otherwise portrayed as well-adjusted and charming, so… it’s a problem.)

Aside from that nit-picky issue, though, what do we have here? A regular line-up, in an ongoing series (although this is a new author and series to me), comprised of studly ex-baseball-player-cum-bar/restaurant owner, Jake Longly; his girlfriend, the luscious Nicole, who works for a private investigator—Ray Longly, Jake’s dad; along with the aforementioned Pancake, an ex-footballer-cum-p.i. Oh, and the Gulf Coast—around the Alabama-Florida line—which, if you know much about how different things can be in different areas of the U.S., definitely warrants a mention.

Anyway, Ray and Pancake agree to do some background work for a lawyer involving—oh, hey, Pancake’s long-lost “first love”, one Emily Patterson, who has filed for divorce from her husband, Sean. 

After Emily fails to show up at the meeting Pancake has set with her in tiny Fairhope (where she’s been living, lo, these many years—since right after the sixth grade, you’ll recall), he heads out to her farmhouse, only to find the front door open and her car still there. He knows something isn’t right… and finds out how very not-right, the following day, when her body—along with that of a man she’d been seeing since separating from Sean—is found in a neighbor’s field, shot point-blank, execution style. 

With the divorce now moot, there’s nothing for the team to do, though… until Emily’s younger brother, a Marine serving in the Middle East, hires them to investigate why this horrible thing happened to his sister. So, back to Fairhope they go.

What they find, though, doesn’t add up to much; Emily and Sean’s pending divorce was seemingly amicable (with each having since moved on to new relationships), and neither was into anything illegal or dangerous—certainly nothing the team can dig up, to call for a mob-style execution. 

But, as anyone who’s ever lived in a small town knows, things are rarely as they appear on the surface… and nearly everyone has some skeletons  buried somewhere.

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It’s clear the author has a good feel for his characters… and assumes the reader does, too. (I actually like that approach—there’s not a ton of backstory or repetition, which is how an every-book-rehash feels if you’re a previous reader.) And, I found them more-or-less likable enough: Jake is cocky—the stereotypical smart-ass with a chip on his shoulder, who gets by on his charm and a keen instinct; Nicole is smart, sexy, and basically perfect (though every mention of how this gorgeous woman who turns heads wherever she goes doesn’t wear ANY makeup because “she doesn’t need to” elicited eye rolls from me, as only a male author is apt to buy into that); Ray, a retired Special Services kind of figure, who’s canny, connected, a little distant, and more than a little mysterious; and Pancake, who—for me, at least—was the star, with his combination of humor, smarts, likability, and strength. 

And, the mystery itself—the murder of Emily and her boyfriend, and everything that comes after—is well-plotted, with ample surprises along the way to keep me turning the pages.

If you enjoy small-town tales of suspense set along the Gulf Coast, you could do worse than Rigged.

~GlamKitty