Final Judgement (Lou Mason #5) by Joel Goodman

From Amazon:

A little bit of luck is better than a ton of gold. But when Avery Fish found a headless dead man wrapped in plastic in the trunk of his Cadillac, he needed more than a little luck. Much more. He needed Lou Mason.

Fish may be a con man but Mason has to prove he’s not a murderer. To save Fish, he teams up with a woman from his past, now an FBI agent with a hidden agenda of her own.

My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

Best way to describe this book is “forgettable”. In fact I finished it just over a week ago and had to read some reviews and summaries to remind myself what happened!

The author writes well. He has created a couple of good central characters that are interesting and likeable. However, in this book he then throws in a host of other characters and messes with the central characters so that you get a very superficial and confusing mix of people that are difficult to keep a handle on.

The reappearance of Kelly was a bit unexpected but her character has changed considerably and not in a good way. Can’t help but feel that he would have been better with a completely new character instead.

I also didn’t like how the author handled Lou’s relationship with Abby. I don’t know why I didn’t like it but I think it just didn’t feel believable. The way it played out didn’t really suit either of their personalities.

I kept at this book as it was good enough to keep going and I did want to see how it ended. I’ve seen others criticise the ending but it couldn’t really go any other way to be fair. Overall I’ve liked the Lou Mason character and the author’s style of writing. I think I’ll give some of his other series a go too.

Deadlocked (Lou Mason #4) by Joel Goodman.

From Goodreads:

Ryan Kowalczyk denied slaughtering a young couple even after his best friend turned against him, sending him to death row. When Lou Mason is hired to prove Ryan’s innocence, a killer does whatever it takes to stop Mason. The deeper Mason probes, the greater the danger – until the past and present collide in an explosion of deceit, corruption and murder.

My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

This starts off as a seemingly run of the mill legal/murder story in very much the same vein as the first three in the series and many other similar books. The story seems to struggle to get a focus and Lou’s life and case seems even more chaotic than normal.

Then, about halfway through the book BOOM! everything changes. The whole story is turned on its head with a sudden change of direction and really develops pace. Then just towards the end it takes one last twist that comes out of nowhere.

A very enjoyable book and one that I read the last half in about half the time of the first.