Team Ups are Hot
I’ve always enjoyed it when characters from two different series team up. This seems to be something we see most often on TV, but I enjoy it when authors do it as well. And Lee Goldberg, a TV writer turned full time novelist, does it wonderfully in Ashes Never Lie.
Officially, this is the second book he’s written featuring Los Angeles Sheriff’s arson investigators Walter Sharpe and Andrew Walker. We first met them when they were partnered up and got caught up in a wild fire. Literally. That was a year ago their time, and they’ve mostly learned how to work well together.
This book finds them investigating when a home in a new housing development mysterious catches fire just before the new owners are set to move in. The fire department is quick to call it faulty wiring, but Sharpe, the more experienced of the two, thinks it is something more.
Before they can fully investigate that case, they are called to a house fire with a corpse in the bedroom. However, Sharpe’s findings there just bring more questions for the pair of them as well as homicide detectives Eve Ronin and Duncan Pavone. Can the four of them figure out what is going on?
If you haven’t yet me Eve, she is the main character of her own series. Duncan is her partner, and features prominently in those books as well. Anyone else from that series pretty much just has a cameo here. Since I’ve read those books as well, I enjoyed getting to see the characters, but if you just pick up this book, you’ll get enough background to follow the characters just fine. It was fun seeing them, and I liked how naturally these characters all worked together.
Since this is the second book with Sharpe and Walker, it was nice to get to know them a little better. Unlike the first book, this one is told just from Walker’s third person point of view. But it was nice to see his respect and frustration with his partner and get to know Sharpe a bit better from that point of view. The only other character from the first book who had any real page time was Walker’s wife, and I appreciated the development we got for her.
I’m not quite sure why, but it took me a bit longer than usual to get fully invested in this book. Probably because I couldn’t quite see how either storyline was going to be used to fill a full novel. I knew I shouldn’t worry about it, and I was right. There are enough twists and surprises to make the book entertaining. Yes, it does get a little over the top at times, but if you have read Lee’s books before, that really shouldn’t come as a surprise to you. It works in the context of the book, and it is fun.
Since these aren’t my typical cozies, there is a bit more language and crude humor than I would normally read. Fortunately, they are kept to a minimum here.
But speaking of humor, there are some wonderful jokes along the way. These mostly come from the characters teasing each other, which I greatly enjoyed.
In the end, Ashes Never Lie is another fun mystery from Lee Goldberg. Once you get into the story, you won’t want to put it down.
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