Back Spin by Harlan Coben is another satisfying thriller featuring that sleuthing sports agent Myron Bolitar, and sees him unearthing secrets and scandal in the supposedly civilized world of professional golf.

The teen-aged son of a pair of prominent golfers is apparently abducted. The husband was on the verge of a comeback after losing the US Open several years ago under some questionable circumstances. Myron’s peculiar and dangerous best friend, known as Win, is strangely reluctant to lend. Not only Myron is finding out long buried secrets of the family, but he learns something of Win’s troubled past that could explain his unique emotional detachment from most people and strange, strict code of ethics. A kidnapping is always terrible and traumatic, but Myron is finding this situation more complicated than most.

This novel was first published in 1997.

Coben delivers a pretty solid suspense story with a healthy collection of red herrings. He does a pretty good job ratcheting up the tension with the questions concerning whether this kidnapping is some kind of hoax or something even darker than it seems.

Myron is a pretty interesting protagonist on the whole. He seems to be on a roller coaster relationship with a woman he cannot quite shake in spite of her history of flightiness. He is a sharp investigator even though that isn’t his profession. His ethics as a sports agent seem a little too perfect to be believable, but that’s kind of understandable. Myron is a flawed but reliable character. His friendship with Win is the winning ticket as far as holding a reader’s interest. Windsor Horne Lockwood III is one of those sidekick characters that could seem to overshadow the main hero at times since he is so complex and fun to follow.

There is a lot to like about Back Spin. It’s not exactly going to be the brightest star of the mystery genre, but it will be a solid, reliable distraction from the pressures of everyday life, which is something Coben is trusted to deliver consistently.

Next up on the eternal literary journey is an anthology that is published annually. I am going to see what works were selected by John Grisham for The Mysterious Bookshop’s The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2025. This is one of the many publications presented by series editor Otto Penzler.

A Stab in the Dark is a pretty engaging mystery from one of the considered masters of the genre, Lawrence Block. It features the unofficial private eye, Matthew Scudder and was first published in 1981.

Nine years previously, a serial killer with an icepick terrorized New York City and then disappeared. The police have made an arrest, but the father of one of the victims believes that he did not commit the brutal murder of his daughter. Charles London comes to Matthew Scudder to take another look into his daughter’s death to see if the truth is something more her falling victim to a maniac. Scudder is an ex-cop who sometimes works for a fee or a favor. He dusts off his investigative skills and starts examining facts that are almost a decade old. Of course, Scudder unearths some uncomfortable secrets from the neighborhood where Barbara Ettinger met her tragic end. One killer is in custody, however someone even more cunning may be waiting in the shadows to savagely protect their secrets from Scudder’s prying eyes.

It’s a pretty straight-forward, tightly written novel that is not very long. Scudder is a bit of a train wreck with his alcoholism and cynicism, but he is still a capable and interesting investigator. He does have scruples and is a little more civilized at times then Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, but he can handle himself in a fight if needed.

Block also creates a dubious set of suspects who are pretty compelling. The red herrings and clues are pretty well planned out as well.

I haven’t read a whole lot of Block’s works, so I am not sure where I would place this one in the rankings, but I did find that I enjoyed this one well enough to keep returning to the world of Matthew Scudder.

Block is a talented writer who keeps the story moving pretty well. Scudder gets a lot done between working his case along with some personal encounters in something that comes in under two hundred pages.

For those who like the old-fashioned, hard-boiled private eye novel where the protagonist is about as messy as those he meets, this one is a pretty good addition to the bookshelves.

I think more poor decisions and ultimately murder is called for when I return to the works of John Sandford. Deadline is the lucky winner for my next literary diversion.

Kiowa Trail is my first foray into the works of Louis L’Amour, and it turned out to be an enjoyable read. I do not usually read westerns, but I think I will work some of that genre into my reading queue.

The story is laid out in first person from the perspective of a cattle driver named Conn Dury. Dury works for a young widow named Kate Lundy, for whom he harbors a secret love. Kate has a younger brother named Tom who is a pleasant enough man with an eye for the ladies. when he crosses the street to speak to a woman who is the daughter of a local tycoon. When he would not heed the warning to stay on one side of a certain street, he paid for that decision with his life. Kate Lundy wants her brother’s death avenged, and she thinks that Conn Dury is a man who can help.

L’Amour is a talented writer, but his plot is a little muddled at times. It wasn’t so muddled, though, that I couldn’t find some enjoyment out of it. Who doesn’t like a good revenge story in the Old West?

Anyway, Dury is kind of an interesting protagonist in that he is a tough old cowboy who had been educated in England after he had been held captive by an Apache tribe for a few years. Anyway, he has an interesting background which makes a bit more sense in the book.

There are a few moments where L’Amour seems to lose track of some of his details such as time of day in the narration, however these lapses are pretty minor.

Overall, it was a good reading experiment to dip into this genre, and I will likely continue to revisit this genre as well as the numerous works left by the late Louis L’Amour.

Next up, Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope has to reexamine an old murder case where the woman convicted of the crime turns out to be innocent, which means that she still has a killer to find in Telling Tales by Ann Cleeves.