Mind Trap (Clay Wolfe/Port Essex 2) by Matt Cost-a review

Mind Trap (Clay Wolfe/Port Essex 2) by Matt Cost-a review

 

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ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date October 6, 2021.

“You say your daughter is missing?” Clay Wolfe asked. The man in front of him was slightly disheveled. Red eyes. Fear creased his features.

What is the End Game?

It was as close to ecstasy as the woman had ever been in her life. It was enlightenment. She was no longer Martha Abbott. She was a warrior of Marduk engaged in a war of purity.

What is going to happen on Leap Day?

“We have allowed sin to fill our homes, and it is our divine labor to cleanse that filth from our streets.” Marduk’s voice boomed through the cavernous temple.

Something evil is lurking in the streets of Port Essex. A missing girl. Violent attacks. It is up to Private Investigator Clay Wolfe, his partner Baylee Baker, and a colorful assortment of friends to get to the bottom of these odious occurrences before it is too late. Mind Trap is a thrilling ride set in a small Maine town with rich characters and shocking plot twists that will keep the reader rapt within the pages.

•••••••

REVIEW:MIND TRAP is the second instalment in Matt Cost’s contemporary, adult CLAY WOLFE/PORT ESSEX mystery, crime, suspense, thriller series focusing on former Boston homicide detective turned private investigator Clay Wolfe.

Told from several third person perspectives MIND TRAP follows PI Clay Wolfe as he is hired by a former resident of Port Essex Doug Abbott to locate his missing fifteen year old daughter Jenna, and by association his soon to be ex wife Martha but as Clay and his business partner Baylee Baker begin to follow the clues our hero discovers there is more to the story than anyone could have ever imagined. Several racial, homophobic, and misogynistic motivated attacks against the people of Port Essex reveal a hidden darkness that is about to spiral out of control, a darkness directly connected to Clay’s latest investigation, and the town of Port Essex.

The secondary and supporting characters include the return of Clay’s grandfather, former attorney Gene Wolfe; Clay’s assistant Baylee Baker; former Navy SEAL Weston ‘Westy’ Beck.; journalist Marie Cloutier and her fiancée Denise, Clay’s new receptionist Crystal Landry, real estate agent David Charles, bank VP Al Gorman, and bartender Darcy. The requisite evil has many faces.

MIND TRAP is a story of secrets and lies, power and control, vengeance and extremist ideology. The fast paced premise is twisty and intriguing; the characters are energetic, colorful and determined.

Click HERE for Sandy’s review of book one WOLFE TRAP

Copy supplied for review

Reviewed by Sandy

Follow: Goodreads / Website / Twitter / Facebook/

Over the years, Cost has owned a video store, a mystery bookstore, and a gym. He has also taught history and coached just about every sport imaginable.

Cost now lives in Brunswick, Maine, with his wife, Harper. There are four grown children: Brittany, Pearson, Miranda, and Ryan. A chocolate Lab and a basset hound round out the mix. He now spends his days at the computer, writing.

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Wolfe Trap (Clay Wolfe/Port Essex 1) by Matt Cost-a review

Wolfe Trap (Clay Wolfe/Port Essex 1) by Matt Cost-a review

 

Amazon.com / Amazon.ca / Amazon.uk / Amazon.au / B&N paper /

Don’t own a Kindle? Download the FREE Amazon Kindle App for your mobile device or pc

ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date June 23, 2021

What evil lurks in Port Essex, Maine?

Clay Wolfe is a former Boston homicide detective who has left the police department to return home to Maine to care for his elderly grandfather and open a private detective agency. Haunted by being orphaned at an early age, and jaded by the corruption of the big city, Clay is happy to hit pause and investigate minor crimes.

“I want you to find the person who sold the drugs that killed my grandbaby.”

When he is hired to find out who sold the drugs that killed a six-month-old baby girl, he has no idea of the evil that he is going to uncover in the underbelly of his hometown.

••••••

REVIEW: WOLFE TRAP is the first instalment in Matt Cost’s contemporary, adult CLAY WOLFE/PORT ESSEX mystery, crime, suspense, thriller series focusing on former Boston homicide detective turned private investigator Clay Wolfe.

Told from several third person perspectives WOLFE TRAP follows Port Essex PI Clay Wolfe as he is contracted by a third party to investigate the death, by heroin, of a six month old child but what Clay quickly discovers is that the small town of Port Essex, and Essex harbor are a major port for the distribution of heroin and illegal drugs. From lobster trappers, fisherman and the local PD, everyone is suspect including our story line hero. As Clay begins to uncover a trail of secret and lies, one by one, the suspects disappear or end up dead. What ensues is the search for the truth, and the potential fall out as those closest to Clay are targeted as his investigation hits too close to home.

WOLFE TRAP introduces the players and people of Port Essex Maine including Clay’s grandfather, former attorney Gene Wolfe; Clay’s assistant Baylee Baker; former Navy SEAL Weston ‘Westy’ Beck; PI/surveillance camera man Don;Crystal and Kelly Anne Landry; journalist Marie Cloutier; Clay’s friends with benefits, officer Donna Smith; billionaire Big Pharma CEO Niles Harrington and his daughter Charly, and their caretaker Scott McKenny. The requisite evil has many faces.

WOLFE TRAP is a story of betrayal and vengeance; drug smuggling and addiction; power, control, secrets and lies. The premise is engaging and intriguing; the characters are energetic and dynamic. Matt Cost pulls the reader into a character driven, detailed and spirited tale that could be ripped from the headlines of anywhere, any day.

Reviewed by Sandy

Copy supplied by Netgalley

Follow: Goodreads / Website / Twitter / Facebook/

Over the years, Cost has owned a video store, a mystery bookstore, and a gym. He has also taught history and coached just about every sport imaginable.

Cost now lives in Brunswick, Maine, with his wife, Harper. There are four grown children: Brittany, Pearson, Miranda, and Ryan. A chocolate Lab and a basset hound round out the mix. He now spends his days at the computer, writing.

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Mainely Money (Goff Langdon Mainely Mystery)by Matt Cost-a review

Mainely Money (Goff Langdon Mainely Mystery 3) by Matt Cost-a review

Amazon.com / Amazon.ca / Amazon.uk / Amazon.au / B&N paper /

Don’t own a Kindle? Download the FREE Amazon Kindle App for your mobile device or pc

ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date March 10, 2021

Langdon is a laid back, slacker detective, happy with his work, friends, and way of life in the town of Brunswick, Maine. To complement his income in Brunswick’s scarce private detective market, Langdon also owns and operates a mystery bookstore.

“I’m being blackmailed with intimate pictures of myself with someone who is not my husband,” Senator Mercer said to his back.
Then he is hired to investigate the blackmail of a US Senator.

“You heard the OPK struck again in Portland last night?”
Then he is hired to prove the innocence of an immigrant from Burundi framed for murder.

Langdon gulped and stepped back. He felt as if he was cheating on his wife, but his eyes wouldn’t mind their own business.
Then he is hired by the beautiful Delilah Friday to find her missing sister.

Russian gangsters. Spooks. Serial Killers. Powerful interest groups. Blackmailers. Langdon, with the help of his friends and family must piece together these disparate items and solve the case that is threatening his way of life. And then they take his daughter.

It is not just another day in Brunswick, Maine. Langdon has entered a world where money rules.

••••••

REVIEW:MAINELY MONEY is the third instalment in Matt Cost’s contemporary, adult GOFF LANGDON, MAINELY MYSTERY suspense series focusing on part time private investigator and book store owner Goff Langdon. MAINELY MONEY can be read as a stand alone without any difficulty. Any important information from the previous story lines is revealed where necessary. MAINELY MONEY advances the series approximately twenty years.

Told from third person perspective MAINELY MONEY picks up approximately twenty-two years after the events of book one MAINELY POWER, and an old adversary has returned. As a part time investigator, the now fifty-something Goff Langdon is often called upon to find the ‘dirt on cheating spouses’ but a request from US Senator Margaret Mercer’s husband Max to locate a possible blackmailer finds Goff running in circles. From a search for a serial rapist and murderer, a femme fatale’s missing sister to the Russian mob, and discrimination and accusations against a newcomer to America, Goff has his hands full until everything begins to spiral out of control. When Goff gets too close to the truth, a couple of rogue and former military spooks threaten everyone he loves, forcing Goff and his intrepid gang of wanna-be heroes to take matters into their own hands.

MAINELY MONEY is an intriguing story of mystery and suspense. The world building is colorful and richly detailed. The political ramifications of Goff’s investigation begin to take on a life of their own.

The return of several friends adds familiarity and cohesion to the current timeline: Bart the cop, Attorney 4 by Four, Jewell and Richam Jones, Goff’s daughter Missouri, his twin brothers Nick and Lord, and Goff’s new wife Chabal (whom we met in the previous story lines but she had yet to become Goff’s wife.)

Matt Cost pulls the readers into a story of power and control; secrets, lies and manipulation; blackmail, rogue assassins, the powerful and political elite. The premise is investigative, intricate and detailed; the characters are energetic, lively and passionate. MAINELY MONEY is another welcome and captivating addition the Matt Cost’s GOFF LANGDON MAINELY MYSTERY series.

Reading Order and previous reviews
Mainely Power
Mainely Fear

Copy supplied for review

Reviewed by Sandy

Follow: Goodreads / Website / Twitter / Facebook/

Over the years, Cost has owned a video store, a mystery bookstore, and a gym. He has also taught history and coached just about every sport imaginable.

Cost now lives in Brunswick, Maine, with his wife, Harper. There are four grown children: Brittany, Pearson, Miranda, and Ryan. A chocolate Lab and a basset hound round out the mix. He now spends his days at the computer, writing.

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Mainely Fear ) by Matt Cost-Review & Guest Post

Mainely Fear (Goff Langdon Mainely Mystery 2) by Matt Cost-Review and Guest Post

Amazon.com / Amazon.ca / Amazon.uk / Amazon.au / B&N paper /

Don’t own a Kindle? Download the FREE Amazon Kindle App for your mobile device or pc

ABOUT THE BOOK:Release Date- December 4, 2020

“I want you to find out who is responsible for ruining his life and I want them to pay for it.”

This is the desire of Latricia Jones as she hires Goff Langdon to investigate her son’s arrest for burglary, vandalism, and possibly hate crimes.

Langdon is a laid back, slacker detective, happy with his work, friends, and way of life in the town of Brunswick, Maine. To complement his income in Brunswick’s scarce private detective market, Langdon also owns and operates a mystery bookstore named after his trusted companion, Coffee Dog.

He was on the fast track to success. And then something happened.

Jamal Jones is an eighteen-year-old rising star attending a post-grad prep school in central Maine to bring his grades up so he can play college basketball at the D1 level. Then he is arrested for crimes that his mother knows he committed, but not why. She’s sure someone has put him up to it, the behavior so unlike him as to be unthinkable, especially since Jamal was on the verge of beginning a better life. Latricia wants Langdon to track down those responsible for her son’s sudden turn from grace, and she wants them to pay.

••••••••

REVIEW:MAINELY FEAR is the second instalment in Matt Cost’s adult GOFF LANGDON MAINELY Mystery series focusing on thirty year old, part time private investigator and book store owner Goff Langdon. MAINELY FEAR can be read as a stand alone without any difficulty. Any important information from the previous story line is revealed where necessary. MAINELY FEAR advances the series approximately two years.

WARNING: Due to the nature of the story line content, there may be triggers for more sensitive readers.

Told from third person perspective MAINELY FEAR follows private investigator Goff Langdon when he is hired to look into the who, what and how a budding basketball star became involved in a series of violent home invasions following an ice storm that shut down the small town of Brunswick, Maine. Along with two other students connected to a prep-school for athletes struggling to get into a division one school, Jamal Jones finds himself facing imprisonment until his mother Latricia hires Goff Langdon to investigate but unbeknownst to Goff Langdon, he is about to step into a world of secrets and lies, discrimination, power and control. As Goff and his intrepid group of friends, amateur sleuths, and questionable members of law enforcement begin a investigation, someone takes aim at Goff Langdon, hitting way to close to home.

MAINELY FEAR is a powerful and gritty storyline with a cast of animated, quirky and spirited characters who place themselves in the direct line of fire for a friend whose investigative techniques are painfully amateur, helpless and misgiving. Not everyone will survive; lives are threatened, families are broken, and one vulnerable young man is pulled in too many directions, unprotected by the people in charge.

Click HERE for Sandy’s review of book one MAINELY POWER

Copy supplied for review

Reviewed by Sandy

The Germination of an IDEA

Where do plots come from? More specifically, where do mystery plots come from?

For me, the inspiration for a book comes from the everyday world around me. It could be a news story, a conversation, or an event, and is usually followed by a what if? My second Mainely Mystery novel, “Mainely Fear”, just released at the beginning of this month, was sparked by an ice storm.

In 1998, Maine was devastated by a brutal ice storm. It began quietly enough, an early January rainstorm, but quickly turned to ice and sleet for four days. It coated lines and branches in its icy grip, weighing them down until they snapped under the weight. It was estimated that more than 60% of the population of Maine lost power. And then the temperature dropped into the single digits. Generators sold out. People were freezing. In reality, the people of Maine, aided by the rest of the country, bonded together and got through this horrific event, even though most people didn’t get power back for weeks, some longer.

I took the germination of this idea and asked, ‘what if people took advantage of this situation instead of lent a helping hand’? What a perfect time for abuse. What a perfect time to rob houses. People without power, without alarm systems, went to hotels, friends, relatives, leaving their homes behind like unlocked treasure troves to be plucked for profit. Of course, that idea grows as any child does, stumbling along and changing directions, until it reaches adulthood and is presented to the world in the form of a book.

Many things shape a book as it matures, but none so important as emotion. Things such as power, fear, and money. Passion carries a novel forward, driven by sex. This is the underlying current that pulses within every story, galvanizing the action forward. Passion, emotion, and sex change the course of the story, and the end result, is rarely the same as the inspiration that germinated the original idea.

The first in the series, “Mainely Power”, was kindled by a story on a local nuclear power plant, leading to the question, ‘what if a nuclear power plant was sabotaged’? The third Mainely Mystery, “Mainely Money”, coming out in March was based upon the blackmailing of a U.S. senator.

In my upcoming Clay Wolfe mystery series, the ideas came from the news story of a woman rubbing heroin on her babies gums to keep the teething child from crying, the mind trap that cults set, and genetic engineering of humans.

I also write historical novels and claim that history is the greatest story ever told. Events of the past are filled with fantastic stories just waiting to be told in the right way. Ideas float around past us all the time, each and every day, and it is up to writers to recognize their promise, reel them in, and nurture them to life on the pages.

It is less what the story is, and more how you tell the story, that matters.

~~Matt Cost~~

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Mainely Power (Goff Langdon Mainely Mystery) by Matt Cost-review

Mainely Power (Goff Langdon Mainely Mystery) by Matt Cost-a review

Amazon.com / Amazon.ca / Amazon.uk / Amazon.au /

Don’t own a Kindle? Download the FREE Amazon Kindle App for your mobile device or pc

ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date September 18, 2020

Was Harold Dumphy killed to cover up something at the nuclear power plant he was the head of security at?

This is what the widow asks Goff Langdon, private detective, to find out.

Langdon is a laid back, slacker detective, happy with his work, friends, and way of life in the town of Brunswick, Maine. To compliment his income in small town Maine’s scarce private detective market, Langdon also owns and operates a mystery bookstore named after his trusted companion, Coffee Dog.

Does Langdon stand a chance against corrupt cops, crooked politicians, greedy millionaires, radical environmentalists, and a deadly assassin named Shakespeare?

With the help of Bart, the bear of a cop, Jimmy 4 by Four the hippie lawyer, the immigrants Jewell and Richam, and his desire and employee, Chabal—he sets out to do just that. And then he is framed for not one, but two murders, and events become very complicated.

Follow Langdon and his band of friends as they attempt to untangle the web of intrigue and return Brunswick to ‘the way life should be’

••••••

REVIEW: MAINELY POWER is the first instalment in Matt Cost’s contemporary, adult, Goff Langdon Mainely Mystery  series focusing on part time private detective and mystery bookstore owner Goff Langdon, and the town of Brunswick, Maine.

Told from third person perspective MAINELY POWER follows twenty-eight year old part time private detective and mystery bookstore owner Goff Langdon in the aftermath of the murder of Harold Dumphy, the head of security at DownEast Power- the local nuclear power plant in Brunswick, Maine. Hired by Harold’s widow to uncover the truth about her husband’s supposed suicide, Goff Langdon will find himself a suspect in a series of murders as he and his group of intrepid investigators (Bart the cop, attorney 4 by Four, college student Peppermint Patti, Jewell and Richam, Chabal, Goff’s twin brothers Nick and Lord, and canine companion Coffee Dog) continue to step on some proverbial but powerful toes. Not all is well in the small town of Brunswick, Maine, and Goff is about to discover that corruption leads all the way to the top.

MAINELY POWER is a story of mystery, suspense, murder and mayhem; secrets, lies, and control; infidelity, clandestine affairs, blackmail and a hired assassin named Lawrence Shakespeare. Matt Cost pulls the reader into an animated and imaginative tale of corruption and power. MAINELY POWER starts slowly but quickly picks up as Goff Langdon assembles his team of wanna-be sleuths and private detectives.

copy supplied for review

Reviewed by Sandy

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