The Night Watchman by Mark Mynheir


Pretty good thriller

Published in 2009 by Multnomah.

I feel silly, but it wasn't until I was 85% done with The Night Watchman that I actually read the entire description on the back of this book. In my defense, it is rather wordy....

Anyway, it was not until that point that I realized that this was actually a "Christian" cop book. That doesn't bother me since I'm a Christian. But, my experiences with Christian fiction have been mostly negative. A lot of it is clumsy, to say the least.

So, I guess this is a long way to say that this one was not clumsy. Instead, it was different. It is a "Christian" detective story in which the main character is not Christian. Not even searching. Not even close. He carries a big gun and he uses it lots of times. He lies. He cheats. Praying bothers him. He suspects that church-going people are weak and does not believe that God can change a person's life.
Mary Mynheir
So, on to the book. The main character is Ray Quinn, a homicide detective that has been forced to retire due to injury. He walks very slowly with a cane. Now, he's the night watchman at a condo building. He becomes convinced that a murder-suicide at the building is really a double murder and the story gets going.

The book was enjoyable. Ray is an interesting character and the give-and-take with his night watchman colleague Crevis is often humorous. The fact that he cannot beat up everyone or use the resources of the police/legal system makes him interesting - he has to improvise and think more. The mystery is realistic although I thought it wrapped up a little too neatly.

  The author is a police officer who has worked homicide, narcotics, the SWAT team and just about everything else.

 This is the first in a new series of mysteries centered around Ray Quinn. I'll be keeping my eye out for more.

Read my review of the second book in the series here: The Corruptible: A Ray Quinn Mystery.

 I rate this book 4 stars out of 5.

 This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Night Watchman by Mark Mynheir.

 Reviewed on June 3, 2009.

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