BLOOD SWEEP (A Posadas County Mystery) by Steven F. Havill



A Review of the Audiobook

Published by Books in Motion in 2015
Read by Beth Richmond
Duration: 11 hours, 40 minutes
Unabridged
This is my eleventh Posadas County mystery. I have been with Bill Gastner when he was on patrol, when he was being lowered into a mine to find a kidnapper, when he was fighting a man in a little plane and through a whole lot of extra-spicy burritos.

Sadly, Bill is a minor character in this book. I understand why - when the series started out he was already old for a sheriff. Now, he's retired and really can't go out and fight bad guys so much.

Estelle Reyes-Guzman and Bob Torres carry the load in this book. I enjoyed the Torres story line, but found the Reyes-Guzman story line to be poorly paced and exceptionally wordy (never a problem with Torres since he famously says as little as possible). The Reyes-Guzman story line features a former resident of a Mexican border town that has spent most of his adult life in prison. This character speaks English like a Shakespearean actor, using tons of fancy words like "beseech" in everyday conversation. No one uses "beseech" in everyday conversation, especially not people who speak English as their second language and must have learned it in a Mexican prison. The whole plot revolves around this character and he is simply not believable as he is presented. Plus, he talks waaay tooo much.

So, this ties my lowest score for a Posadas County mystery. Thank goodness, most of them are much better than this one. I will be visiting Posadas County again.

Beth Richmond read Blood Sweep and did a solid job with most of the characters. Two of her Spanish-speaking characters sounded so much alike that it was difficult to follow who was speaking when they spoke to one another.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Blood Sweep by Steven F. Havill.

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