No Second Chances

Starred review from October 27, 2014
At the start of Stacey’s extremely readable third Daniel Whelan mystery (after 2012’s No Holds Barred), the ex-cop agrees to help martial artist Joey Suzuki, a colleague from his days on the dog squad, to whom he owes a favor. Joey fears that someone is stalking his fiancée, Tamiko. Along with his trained police dog, Taz, Daniel moves into the cottage Joey and Tamiko share in a village outside Bristol in England’s West Country. One of Daniel’s duties is to drive Tamiko in a horse van to shows where she looks after a wealthy woman’s horses. On the surface, everything is serene, until the intrusion of Tamiko’s sister, Hana, pursued by her abusive partner, Jafari. Then a fatal hit-and-run reveals that a homicidal psychopath is lurking in the neighborhood. Daniel and Taz work as a perfect team in pursuit of the killer, and their warm relationship helps make this a feel-good book despite the mayhem.

June 1, 2016
Former police-dog handler Daniel Whelan has his hands full in his fifth adventure. Now working as a delivery driver for a feed dealer, Daniel arrives at the home of Lorna Myers and finds her confronting some thugs who are looking for her husband. Daniel and his faithful German shepherd, Taz, intervene, but it seems that Lorna's husband has vanished. When her daughter, Zoe, asks Daniel for help with her own problem involving her boyfriend, who is part of the insular Irish travelers, Daniel agrees and soon finds that the Myers family has major trouble. Daniel and Taz find connections between the disappeared husband and Zoe's boyfriend situation but quickly find themselves in grave danger. Some readers may wonder why Daniel lets bratty teenager Zoe manipulate him, but it's really Taz who provides most of the appeal here, along with the well-rendered British countryside. Followers of the robust pet-mystery subgenre should add Stacey's series to their TBR lists.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

May 16, 2016
British author Stacey’s solid fourth Daniel Whelan mystery (after 2014’s Tell No Lies) finds the former British policeman delivering animal feed around the Devon town of Tavistock, accompanied by his retired police dog, Taz. When Daniel interrupts two men menacing one of his customers, Lorna Myers, he and Taz drive them off. Daniel learns from Lorna that the villains were seeking her husband, whom she has not heard from in some time. The next day, Lorna’s 15-year-old daughter, Zoe, contacts Daniel because she’s concerned by the disappearance of her boyfriend, Shane Brennan, and the money that Zoe raised as part of an ill-conceived plan for the two to be together. Daniel accompanies the headstrong Zoe on her search for Shane, who’s a member of an ethnic group known as the Travellers (whom many British people disdain), while continuing to provide support for Lorna. As the tension and suspense gradually build, Stacey takes a somewhat circuitous route to the satisfactory resolution of both disappearances.

May 1, 2016
Missing husbands and boyfriends are the order of the day for ex-cop Daniel Whelan (Nothing But Lies, 2014, etc.). When he makes a delivery to Abbots Farm, Daniel, who's driven for Tavistock Farm Supplies ever since leaving the Bristol CID, finds owner Lorna Myers distraught. Two thugs are looking for Harvey, the husband she thought was overseas on business for his longtime company, Giradelle Santini. Daniel does such a good job comforting Lorna that the next day he gets a call from her daughter, Zoe, who wants his help locating her boyfriend, Shane Brennan. Zoe pawned two of her grandmother's rings to help Shawn buy a racing mare, and now he's disappeared, horse and all. Finding Shane won't be easy. His people are Travellers, a close-knit community who don't share secrets easily with "country" folk. Shane's uncle, dog breeder Billy Driscoll, may know where he is, but Driscoll isn't any more forthcoming about the boy's whereabouts than he is about the condition of the greyhounds on his farm. Daniel's German shepherd, Taz, isn't the only one who smells a rat, but figuring out just what's going on at in the Travellers' encampment will take its toll on both man and beast. Stacey's latest takes off at a trot rather than a gallop but covers the ground just the same.

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