Reviews of L.J.Sellers Wade Jackson Series [4-8]

So many book...so few reviews.
I have said it before, but I really enjoy reading books more than I enjoy reviewing them.
But in an effort to start and catch up, I figure I would review five at one time!

They are five of a six part series by an author that I really enjoy..even if I did not read the first...and is an author I really think should be more well known and more widely read than she is.
Yes, another series...but what can I say..it is a good one!
They are center around a Eugene, Oregon police detective, Wade Jackson, with reoccurring appearances by his co-workers, his daughter and ex-wife and his new girlfriend, who he met in the first book, Sex Club. Each contains a very good plot, just enough personal matters of Wade to be interesting and an interesting setting in the Pacific Northwest.

Secrets to Die For, second in the series, starts with the murder of social worker Raina Hughes. The last thing she had done was visit a young boy who was one of her clients and now his ex-con father looks like a good suspect in her death. But it soon become more complicated when her girl-friend, trying to keep the secret of her personal life, decides to keep a secret from the police...and soon disappears. Now it is up to Jackson to figure it out, maybe in time to save her life.


Thrilled to Death, next in the series, opens with a young mother disappearing from the parking lot of her psychiatrist. Since she was having issues with motherhood, at first police are not sure she did not just take off. But when a young socialite is found dead and some evidence ties them together, things get more complicated. Especially since the number one suspect has not left his house in over a year.

Next, we have Passions of the Dead. Police are called to investigate what appears to be a home invasion and the murder of the entire family, in a particularly horrible way. Well, almost all the family because the daughter, while attacked, survived, sadly with no memory of what happened or who attacked them. Of course, will her attacker believe that? And then she disappears...

The fifth book is Dying For Justice. Detective Lara Evans, newly working with Jackson, who she has quite the crush on, is given a routine case to investigate. There is a woman who has been in a coma for two years, an apparent suicide, who has come out of the coma and now claims she did not try to kill herself but instead that she was attacked. And when she says who she claims attacked her, Evans realizes she may be in way over her head. Meanwhile Jackson gets a plea from a man convicted of murder, now claiming he was coerced into a confession. But can Jackson put aside her own feelings to look at the facts objectively, especially since the man was convicted of killing Jackson's own parents.

And lately we have Sellers latest, Liars, Cheaters & Thieves (hate that cover..). Again Detective Jackson and all his friends are back and a great story is unfolding. First, a young veteran's throat is cut as he sits in his truck in a bar parking lot. Then the next day an elderly woman dies of a heart attack when she finds her bank account has been cleaned out and it seems a sham charity may tie the two deaths together. Like they say, follow the money..but can Jackson track down the killer before even more lives are ruined and more people die?

Even one of these books is very good, very well written with clever, smart plots and some very good, surprising endings. Sellers also gives us some quite likeable characters, including the excellent Wade Jackson. He is far from perfect and maybe a bit obsessed with his job, to the detriment of his loved ones, but is always a guy you would want on your side. Any one of the books can be easily read alone but it is nice to read them in order, if just to follow what is going on in Jackson's personal life, and the very natural progression we see from book to book. We see his very realistic dealings with his ex-wife, his girlfriend, his daughter, his brother, the death of his parents..you get the idea.
I also like that the books deal, to a degree, with some timely social issues but never in a pushy way.
Read one or read them all and I think you will be in for a great time.

One final point.
If you are an e-book reader, you can get some great deals on them at the moment on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. A couple are available for 99 cents, one for $1.99 and the rest for $2.99. For a few bucks you will be introduced to a very good author, a very good series and have hours and hours of reading pleasure ahead. What more can you want?

 

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