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Westobou Gold (Moccasin Hollow Mystery – 2) by Hawk MacKinney

The Indian Queen would risk torture and worse to keep her secrets from these barbarians in suits of metal and their search for cities of gold. They never found the gold. Empires rose; empires fell, the centuries passed. Legend became fireside myths, but no treasure was ever found. Yet, among the grey-green drapes of wisteria and wild jasmine along the misty shrouded lowlands of bayous and marshes of the Westo River, the folktales persisted. In the lazed creep of a near-tropical dawn lit the pungent Turkish coffee permeated Moccasin Hollow. Beyond the kitchen door Lucky, Craige Ingram’s German shepherd gnawed a favorite bone. Looted burial mounds seemed a world away until plundered mounds on Moccasin Hollow land brings amateur archaeologist PI Craige Ingram into the cross-hairs of kidnapping. Stealthy hideaways are concealed in old colonial brick-lined river grottoes beneath the big house of Ardochy plantation. Sex-tape underage blackmail and thrill killings on federal land spur a medical examiner’s preliminary postmortem to more than a hired cleaner’s quickie cover-up passed off as drug deals gone sour. Greed tangles a witch’s pigswill of illicit affairs and murder-to-hide-murder. Shady investigators and shadier politics stir an unexpected concoction that threatens the lives of those at Moccasin Hollow in a spiteful plot against ex-SEAL Craige Ingram and the woman he loves.

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Author’s Bio

Internationally acclaimed author and public speaker, Hawk MacKinney began writing mysteries for his school newspapers. He served in the US Navy Reserve for over 20 years, and was a tenured faculty member at several state medical facilities, teaching postgraduate courses in both the United States and Jerusalem, Israel. Since retiring Hawk has authored several novels that have received national and international recognition. Moccasin Trace, a historical novel, was nominated for the prestigious Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction and the Writers Notes Book Award. The Cairns of Sainctuarie, his science fiction series, includes The Bleikovat Event and The Missing Planets, with a third book in the works. Hawk’s latest project focuses on The Moccasin Hollow Mystery Series. Book 1 in the series, Hidden Chamber of Death, was released early 2016.

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My Review

5 Stars

An Indian Queen is determined to hide her gold from the men in suits of metal. She is willing to die to keep the location safe. In present day Moccasin Hollow some people have been discovered murdered. Ex-Seal Craige Ingram is asked to look into the deaths. But he is going to find more than he bargained for.

Craige is going up against corrupt police officer that abuses the privilege of the badge, an underage sex-tape blackmail scheme, and Indian artifacts that are being stolen and sold on the black market. It’s going to be a rough, violent ride following this mystery to the end.

This is a wonderful and violent journey through history and the back woods. Purvis is a mean bastard and has no qualms about stopping those that get in his way. I loved Graige, he was a great, strong character and has his work cut out for him to untangle this mess.

You will be kept guessing until the end but everything wraps up nicely. I was worried about reading this book since I have not read the first one in this series but that didn’t make a difference. This could be read as a standalone book and there is enough review of Hidden Chamber of Death to keep you up to date without bogging down the story.

If you are looking for a great mystery, I recommend you check out this book. I’ll be purchasing Hidden Chamber of Death to catch up on what I missed in the first book and will be watching for future books in this series.

I received Westobou Gold from iRead Book Tours for free. This has in no way influenced my opinion of this book.

Guest Post from Hawk MacKinney

Hawk MacKinney is an internationally acclaimed author and public speaker. A retired U.S. Navy officer, Hawk was on the postdoctoral faculties in the states and England, as well as the Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem.

Hawk writes across several genres that includes another mystery/thriller series—The Craige Ingram Mystery Series, and his science fiction series, The Cairns of Sainctuarie: Volume 1 – The Bleikovat Event, and Volume 2 – The Missing Planets. His historical romance, Moccasin Trace, was nominated for the prestigious Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction and the Writers Notes Book Award, and is the prequel tale of the family bloodlines of his retired Navy SEAL/part-time private investigator protagonist, Craige Ingram, in the Moccasin Hollow Mystery Series.

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The greed-driven double-double-crosses in Westobou Gold takes Craige Ingram from his South Carolina ancestral home of Moccasin Hollow to the underbelly of dirty backrooms and violence against loved ones with “fiction” often more fact than whimsy. The psychotic lives among us. Treacherous beasts, making their own reality/rules, leaving one with a sense of being naked prey, blending with John/Jane Doe-on-the-street, sometimes as close as the head on the pillow next to us. The twists in the tales within Westobou Gold, Book 2 of the Moccasin Hollow Mystery Series, is the night-horse haints-and-specters of fear-come-into-daylight, and sucks the reader into the unexpected.

As a “Southron,” I write from the heart. My characters have a part of me in each of them. Mark Twain said, “Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.”

Hawk lives along the deceptively lazy river of the Westos.