Review: THE BURNING EDGE, Rick Mofina

• Format - read as an e-book courtesy review copy from NetGalley
• Mass Market Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Mira; Original edition (December 20, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0778313018
• ISBN-13: 978-0778313014

Synopsis (Amazon)

Lisa Palmer has barely recovered from the sudden death of her husband when she is drawn into a new nightmare. On her way home from upstate New York, Lisa stops at a service center minutes before an armored car heist. Four men are executed before her eyes—one, an off-duty FBI agent she tried to help. Now Lisa is the FBI's secret witness and the key to finding the fugitive killers.
FBI agent Frank Morrow leads the investigation of the high-profile case. Hiding a very personal secret, Frank knows this assignment will be like no other he's ever faced…and it could be his last.
Pressured to land an exclusive, journalist Jack Gannon chases the elusive thread of an anonymous tipster. With every instinct telling Jack the story is within his grasp, he risks everything to reveal the chilling truth…before the cold-blooded killers can take the next step in their vengeful mission.

Marketing Copy supplied by publisher

A SINGLE MOTHER BECOMES AN EYEWITNESS TO MURDER
Lisa Palmer has barely recovered from the sudden death of her husband when she is drawn into a new nightmare. On her way home from upstate New York, Lisa stops at a service center minutes before an armored car heist. Four men are executed before her eyes—one, an off-duty FBI agent she tried to help. Now Lisa is the FBI’s secret witness and the key to finding the fugitive killers.

A HAUNTED FBI AGENT FEARS THIS CASE IS HIS LAST
FBI agent Frank Morrow leads the investigation of the high-profile case. Hiding a very personal secret, Frank knows this assignment will be like no other he’s ever faced…and it could be his last.

A RELENTLESS REPORTER MUST NAIL THE STORY BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE
Pressured to land an exclusive, journalist Jack Gannon chases the elusive thread of an anonymous tipster. With every instinct telling Jack the story is within his grasp, he risks everything to reveal the chilling truth…before the cold-blooded killers can take the next step in their vengeful mission.

My Take

I don't think I actually like Jack Gannon, the high profile journalist at the centre of Rick Mofina's books, but he certainly is determined and focussed in what he believes the purpose of a journalist is: to discover and publish the truth.
This has the effect of making him appear determined to use people. He has, to give him his due, already served a jail sentence for refusing to reveal his sources. But not everyone he approaches for information is happy with his technique.

“What I don’t get—” she stabbed her salad with her fork “—is why do you need to know? That’s part of a police investigation.” “He needs to know because he’s reporting on the heist,” Brad said. “I asked him, Brad.” “Journalists investigate, too,” Gannon said. “I’ve got a tip, a long-shot tip I’m working on
that may be connected to the case.” “What is it?” “It’s a bit vague right now, but it’s possible
someone with advance knowledge on the case contacted the WPA.” Anita put her fork down and turned to Gannon. “If that’s true, you should tell the FBI.” “I’m not a police informant. I’m a journalist and I investigate independently.” “Except when you need our help, like now.”

However, one thing I can say is that Rick Mofina builds a compelling story and the reader is constantly assessing its credibility.

In the author's note at the end of THE BURNING EDGE Rick Mofina says

The Burning Edge is loosely inspired by a true case, a commando-style armored car heist that I’d covered many years ago while working as a crime reporter.
Other aspects of the novel were drawn from real-life situations that I, or others I knew, have
experienced. But I won’t go into any of it here. It’s too personal.

My rating: 4.4

I've also reviewed all the earlier novels in the Jack Gannon series
4.5, VENGEANCE ROAD (2009) 
THE PANIC ZONE (2010)
4.2, IN DESPERATION (2011)

Author's website

Review: IN DESPERATION, Rick Mofina

• Publisher: Harlequin
• Imprint: MIRA Books
• Pub Date: 03/29/2011
• ISBN: 9780778329480
• Source: Review copy from publisher via NetGalley.com
• Note this is available to US readers for Kindle
• Check author's site

Publisher's blurb

A single mother answers a knock at her door and enters a nightmare…
Eleven-year-old Tilly Martin is dragged from her suburban bedroom. Her mother, Cora, pleads for mercy but the kidnappers are clear: if they don’t get their $5 million back in five days, Tilly dies. If anyone contacts police, Tilly dies.

 A reporter receives a heart-stopping email that rips open the past…
Journalist Jack Gannon’s estranged sister, Cora, disappeared without a trace decades ago. Now she is frantically reaching out to him for help. Cora tells him about the shameful mistakes she’s made—but she guards the one secret that may be keeping her daughter alive.

A Mexican priest hears a chilling confession…
A twenty-year-old assassin, haunted by the faces of the people he’s executed, seeks absolution as he sets out to commit his last murders as a hired killer.

Time is running out…
In the U.S. and Mexico, police and the press go flat out on Tilly’s case. But as Gannon digs deeper into his anguished sister’s past, the hours tick down on his niece’s life and he faces losing a fragment of his rediscovered family forever.

My take

IN DESPERATION is #3 in Mofina's Jack Gannon series. I have reviewed the earlier ones ( VENGEANCE ROAD and THE PANIC ZONE ) but IN DESPERATION didn't grab me right at the start in quite the same way, although the snatching of Tilly is a horrifying opening hook.

The novel builds pace by adding plot element after element. Tilly's mother Cora "in desperation" contacts her long-lost brother journalist Jack Gannon who happens to be in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, working on a story about drug cartels. As it turns out, the contacts that Jack has made for this story are of great advantage in tracking down those responsible for Tilly's abduction. The story moves several times between Juarez and Phoenix Arizona where Cora and Tilly live.

As the story builds so does the tension, mainly around whether the police will find Tilly in time.

It is a novel that relies on coincidences but it is not on its own in that.

My rating: 4.2

Review: VENGEANCE ROAD, Rick Mofina

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 316 KB
• Print Length: 496 pages
• Publisher: Mira (September 1, 2009)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B002HJ1XLW
• Source: I bought it.

Blurb from author's website:
The International Thriller Writers (ITW) named Vengeance Road a finalist for a 2010 THRILLER AWARD in the category of Best Paperback Original and The Private Eye Writers of America named it a finalist for a 2010 SHAMUS Award for Best Paperback Original.
The murder of a broken-hearted woman and and the chilling disappearance of her friend raise questions about their ties to a respected detective and lead to one journalist’s obsession to find the truth!
The body of Bernice Hogan, a troubled young ex-nursing student with a tragic past, is found in a shallow grave near a forest creek.
Jolene Peller, a single mom struggling to build a new life with her little boy, vanishes the night she tried to find Bernice. Hero cop, Karl Styebeck is beloved by his community but privately police are uneasy with the answers he gives to protect the life — and the lie — he’s lived.
The case haunts Jack Gannon a gritty, blue-collar reporter whose sister run away from their family years ago. Gannon risks more than his job to pursue the story behind Styebeck's dark secret, his link to the women, and the mysterious big rig roaming America's loneliest highways on its descent into eternal darkness.

My take:
This is actually #1 in Rick Mofina's Jack Gannon series. I have already reviewed #2 THE PANIC ZONE.
Jack Gannon, a reporter on the Buffalo Sentinel feels he has reached a sort of impasse in his life, and is living in a rut that he must break free from.

Wheeling out, with Springsteen in his head, Gannon questioned where he was going with his life. He was thirty-four, single and had spent the last ten years at the Buffalo Sentinel. He looked out at the city, his city. And there was no escaping it. Ever since he was a kid, all he wanted to be was a reporter, a reporter in New York City. And it almost happened a while back after he broke a huge story behind a jetliner’s crash into Lake Erie. It earned him a Pulitzer nomination and job offers in Manhattan. But he didn’t win the prize and the offers evaporated.

There's something about Rick Mofina's style that draws the reader in. It is deceptively simple, and gives Mofina the ability to build tension. By the last 20% of the book (in Kindle terms) you are positively racing to get to the end.

I found my stance on the "guilty or not?" status of the decorated detective who is the focus of Gannon's investigation constantly shifting, as Gannon revealed more. As in THE PANIC ZONE there is the feeling of a race against time, that is, if Gannon doesn't get a move on, more lives will be lost. When Gannon refuses to reveal his sources for his initial disclosure for the Buffalo Sentinel he loses his job at the paper, and continues as an independent whom everybody treats as a pariah. But he doggedly continues his investigation, just ahead of the pack, and in the long run, putting his own life on the line.

At the very end the author comments in crafting this story, I have taken great fictional liberties with geography, police jurisdiction, procedure and other aspects. Earlier he talks about how parts of the story are loosely based on an old story that occurred nearly half a century before.

VENGEANCE ROAD is certainly worth a read, and I'm looking forward to reading #3, In Desperation, sometime. I have a review copy on my Kindle.

My rating: 4.5

Rick Mofina's website where you can read excerpts and find out more about the author.

I am counting VENGEANCE ROAD in the e-book challenge and the Canadian Book Challenge

Review: THE PANIC ZONE, Rick Mofina

July 1, 2010
Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Mira 416 pages
ISBN-10: 0778327949
ISBN-13: 978-0778327943
I read this on my Kindle as an ebook ARC made available by the publishers Harlequin (Mira) through NetGalley.

Gretchen Sutsoff is convinced the world is running out of time. The current rate of population growth is simply unsustainable and will result in the exhaustion of food and water sooner than later. She has also developed a pathological loathing of crowds. She believes science can provide the immediate answer to the problem: the use of synthetic biological agents that will result in population reduction through DNA manipulation.

THE PANIC ZONE is a race against time - for Gretchen to implement her plan, for Emma Lane to find her son Tyler snatched from the car crash that killed her husband, and for investigative journalist Jack Gannon to discover why two colleagues had to die in Rio de Janiero.

The reader is a bystander who sees these threads racing to a collision point. Tight plotting and a constant focus on the possible connections between the threads help build the tension.

The author Rick Mofina says that in crafting THE PANIC ZONE he was inspired in part by the public record and accounts of people subjected to experimentation without their consent. He asks readers to bear in mind "that THE PANIC ZONE is ... a work of fiction drawn in my imagination after reaching into the darkest corners of historical fact". He apologises for any "implausibility in my made-up tale", and while the threads of the main story do at times strain the bounds of credibility (I had a couple of time sequence problems), at the same time THE PANIC ZONE makes engrossing reading.

I particularly liked Mofina's final words to the reader:
Which brings me to you, the reader; the most critical part of the entire enterprise.
Thank you very much for your time, for without you a book remains an untold tale.

My rating. 4.8

Rick Mofina's website

Rick Mofina is a Canadian author whose first book was published in 2000. Look for

• If Angels Fall (2000)
• Cold Fear (2001)
• Blood of Others (2002)
• No Way Back (2003)
• Be Mine (2004)
• The Dying Hour (2005)
• Every Fear (2006
• A Perfect Grave (2007)
• Six Seconds (2009)
• Vengeance Road (2009)
• The Panic Zone (2010)