Tyler DiltsReseñas

A three/three and a half star book. But it gets an extra star for the wave of nostalgia I got reading about my home town.

I'll be grabbing the rest of them. They're cheaper than a trip home.

At the moment life is good for Detective Danny Beckett, then he is called to a suicide which he quickly determines is a murder. His life only gets worse when his car via a bomb explodes. Are both these cases linked, what could be the motive in either of them.
Took awhile for Beckett to catch on to some of the clues. I didn't really feel engaged in the story or the lives of the characters, which can happen quite a bit.
A NetGalley Book

Author Tyler Dilts crafts a story of compassion and humanity around a retired cop, forced to retire with a traumatic brain injury after being shot in the head, and his aging father, who suffers from early stage dementia. Their daily struggles to get through the day, with meals, medicines, doctor's appointments are disrupted when their tenant and friend Grace disappears, and we slowly learn how she came to live with them and why. She fits in with them, and her sudden absence is palpable. We see retired cop Ben begin to heal by working on the missing persons case, despite his formidable mental obstacles. The story is well done, and even minor characters, like the dog-walking neighbor, are meaningful and developed.

This is a solidly engaging but unexceptional police procedural. The writing is fluid and easy to understand but doesn't have much style. Two Long Beach, California police detectives, the male still grieving for his dead wife, and the female who is also a martial arts instructor, investigate the brutal murder of a teacher in her classroom after school. The investigation is a bit plodding, however, and at one point even ignores an obvious suspect. You know twists are coming, and they do. The ending is satisfying, but it is the growing relationship between the two detectives that is really the heart of the book. The author is much better at characterization than plotting. So despite my lukewarm review, I actually just clicked and bought the next in the series from Amazon (but the Kindle version was only 99 cents, and I had a credit...) I should mention that this is also one of those books where the author can't restrain from commenting on a lot of other books, songs, Starbucks, etc. There is a right way to blend these references in that can add realism to a story, but it is a bit awkward here.

I listened to the audio book, which was very well read by Alex Hyde-White.

I finished this novel in one sitting, as it was very a compelling read. That being said, I had figured out who the killer was, the minute he was introduced into the story, about chapter two or three. And this was primarily because of the way the killer acted in the killing scene. Still, a good read. I'm wondering how the next story in the series will go, since something happened to the lead character at the end of the novel.
Here is a great review that explains the novel better:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1020211745?book_show_action=true&from_...

3.5 stars, and recommended.

A teacher is murdered in her classroom and Long Beach homicide detective Danny Beckett is tasked with finding her killer. I picked this up because it's a local author and part of the story takes place in my neighborhood, which is interesting (even if Dilts has moved a few things - for whatever reason he had). It was better than I had expected from a first installment, so I'll continue the series, hoping that future installments' endings are a little more savvy than this one.½

It was't awful and the characters were intersting. It dragged for me and I guessed the doer in the first quarter of the book. I will not look for others by this author.

Mercy Dogs by Tyler Dilts

Choppy, fractured, broken, disconnected, fragmented…these were words I wrote down as I began reading Ben Shepard’s first person narrative of this story that gives insight into the lives of Ben, his father Peter and their tenant Grace. Ben’s story is revealed through thoughts, interactions, notebook entries and information he shares with Grace and others. This is a story of family, friendship, support, seeking, control, health issues, truth seeking, corrupt cops, murder and survival.

Here I have to say that having worked as an RN with patients in neurosurgical intensive care and later with people who survived with neurological damage and were trying to adjust while working to create a new way to live their lives, well, THIS book hit close to home. Ben’s experiences reminded me of people I knew well and the struggles some of them dealt with. I felt it was real and gritty and difficult as it also made me thankful to I have much easier issues to contend with in life.

Ben was a man that I admired more and more as I read. I realized that he might not be the man he once was but he was a good man more than willing to take on the challenge of caring for a father with dementia while also trying to find out what happened to his missing tenant. I was blown away and wrote W O W and thought it more than once as I continued reading.

This is a book that will linger with me. It reinforced that the moment we are in is the one that is truly important just as who we are right now has more weight than who we once were or who we may become.

I had to return to the beginning of the book to read the words that had such a huge impact…the ones that told the story of Mercy Dogs. Only near the end did I realize they were written by Ben’s father in a book he had researched and written after talking to WWI veterans.

There is no doubt much more I could say about this book but what I will say now is that I highly recommend it. This story hit home and it hit hard. Life is short – we should not waste it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for the ARC – This is my honest review.

5 Stars

WITH A BANG
Tyler Dilts’ latest installment in his current Long Beach Homicide series is fantastic.

Long Beach homicide detective Danny Beckett has had it rough, but things are starting to look up. That is until someone tries to kill him by blowing up his elderly Toyota Camry. The people around him, his fellow officers, his partner, and even his girlfriend do what they can to keep him safe from the mysterious people who have targeted him. And he hates it.

RECOMMENDED
For the rest of the review:
https://benjaminlclark.com/2016/11/02/book-review-come-twilight-by-tyler-dilts/

Excellent book. I came to really care about the main character. The author's description of chronic pain is spot on.

Well written police procedural featuring widower detective Danny Beckett in Long Beach, CA.

Ditts does an excellent job in this first person narrative of conveying the problems cops face. Beckett keeps his emotions and grief in check, using alcohol as a crutch, as he works on a serial killer case with his partner Jen Tenaka. The partner is well drawn with an interesting complexity as a martial arts expert. The dynamics in the partnership is wonderful.

Read on Kindle and listened on Audible through Immersion Reading.

Great read, and I have already started on the second book in the series.

The characters are well formed, the words well chosen, and it's very easy to feel like you're in the main character's head. I finished it in one day because I didn't want to stop reading.

It didn't hurt that I was a CSULB student ages ago and grew up near Long Beach, so the locales were all familiar. I felt like I was back home again.

My favorite part? It was a hard choice, but I fell madly in love with "He left no tone unsterned." Brilliant.

Not bad. More thoughts to come.

3/5

Eh, entertaining enough. Nothing critically great about it.

3/5

To be frank, I actually liked the first two books better...

3/5

More thoughts to come.

Long Beach Homicide Detective Danny Beckett has seen many horrible murders during his time on the Force, but this nights victim, a homeless man brutally murdered by teenagers, has broken through the barriers he uses to keep objective when working on these cases. This man’s murder isn’t just about who did it, because they have already arrested them; it’s about Danny finding out who the man was, and if there is anything they missed. Also it’s how Danny is handling the memories from his past that surface because of how the man was murdered.

I picked this book because I lived in Long Beach for a few years, and I wanted to see how the author described the places I knew. It was a bonus that Tyler Dilts is such a great writer. I read/listened to A Cold and Broken Hallelujah on kindles emersion reading program which has a professional reader bringing the words to life as I followed the highlighted words in my kindle. This is an awesome tool for anyone who has learning disabilities related to reading and spelling and I highly recommend it for anyone teaching reading. For me I found that my problem doing it this way was trying to find the time to sit down and read/listen; but every time I got back to the book it grabbed my attention. You can listen without reading along which I did for the last few chapters. I may go back and just read it because I like his writing style. Be warned this murder mystery has some violence, one sexual encounter, and some profanity. 4 stars

The prologue immediately grabbed my attention, and I thought I had a compelling read ahead of me. In some respects, I did find the story compelling. Unfortunately, the problem areas detracted from my enjoyment.

I like Beckett's character, and appreciate the unique aspects of his personality. He listens to NPR talk shows and offbeat music. This makes him interesting, different from the often stereotypical homicide detective. That being said, the constant references grew tiresome over time.

Aspects of Beckett's left-of-center personality are taken a little too far to be believable in a hardened cop. For instance, he never mentions the race of victims or suspects. In fact, none of the cops or the witnesses mention race. This is a glaring omission that simply doesn't ring true. Acknowledging the race of a suspect or victim is like acknowledging gender; it's standard observation.

The plot is interesting, though slow. We move along with a lot of repetitive introspection from Beckett, and meandering ventures off into his personal life, such as it is. Here, again, I have mixed feelings. I enjoyed the plot and have much respect for the way the author highlighted the struggle of our homeless population. But Beckett's sudden and absolute fixation on this one victim felt too overblown. I understood the connection Dilts attempted, but it all stretched just a little too far for me.

Toward the end, the pace picks up with the effort to fit all the pieces together. It feels rushed and not quite believable.

This book was a little like riding a child's see-saw - lots of ups and downs. In the end, I'm sitting midway, still not sure if reaching the highs was worth enduring the lows.

This book was written competently enough but it was so boring. The author seems to think random facts about characters will give them personality, like the main detective has chronic pain and his partner is looking for a house but it doesn't work. If this were a network TV show it would have been cancelled after three episodes.

Run-of-the-mill police procedural with stereotypical widower cop who has drinking problem and is paired with attractive female partner more skilled than he is in martial arts, smarts, and professional ability.

Perp pretty obvious at the moment he’s introduced. Author wants to make his book stand out on the basis of shocking brutality of how the victims were dispatched and the exotic weapon used. When it comes to inventive weaponry and shrouded culprits, "Clue" is a better game than this is an engaging read.

That said, the writing is solid and the dialog natural and easy. While I didn’t like the book, there’s nothing to complain about in the writing style.

On a good day, I'm not the best fan of the genre. Murder mysteries have to be truly exceptional for me not to find them just variations on a slim formula made “new” by brutishness and some exotic element.

Very good read! Solid plot, good writing... Same characters/setting as in his first book, A King of Infinite Space. I would highly recommend this book and author½

A pretty good police procedural by a new author. A high school teacher is brutally murdered and detectives Danny Beckett and Jen Tanaka must solve the crime. The story has many of the usual elements of the traditional police procedural including a troubled detective (Danny's wife was killed in a car accident and he has turned to the bottle), and a budding romance but I still found the book kept my interest and was a quick, easy, and fun read. While the story was pretty simple, there were not many plot twists, and the reader knew the guilty party before the police, the end was quite good and left the reader wanting more. It was definitely worth the read and I hope the author develops a series with these detectives.½