Corruption and secrets lead to a good read about a man trying to find himself again after the death of his wife. He pairs up with an FBI agent to uncover the villains who stole artifacts from the Mississippi Choctaw Nation. Well done.

This was an average read for me. It was a halfway decent book but the suspense just was not there. I did not feel concern for the characters during the major suspense part of the book. I honestly did not care if they made it out alive or not. I feel the author could have built this up more.

I received this book through NetGalley for review.

Fans of uncommon detective stories will find “Silent Approach” by author Bobby Cole to be a good choice. The main character is not your normal hero, and while he could be considered a detective, at the end of the day that word doesn’t quite fit his job description.

John Allen Harper has used his connections with the Mississippi Band of the Choctaw Indians to secure a job as an agent. He is tasked with recovering artifacts, most of which have been illegally excavated and then sold. While John Allen finds his new job exciting, there is an element of danger. At times he is dealing with people who are not only criminals, but dangerous men. As he well knows, the last man to hold his job disappeared and no one knows what happened.

Mr. Cole is usually sparing with his descriptions, and pages uncluttered with an excess of descriptions help to make this a fast read. A love element is introduced, but the author doesn’t allow it to overwhelm the story. The story moves at a steady pace, and picks up and races toward the climax. The dialogue flows naturally, and the plot is extremely believable (and the author’s notes at the end reveal that the tale is loosely based on some real-life facts). For those who wish to know, there are some vulgarities, but they are not used excessively.

During the last ten minutes of the book, I almost felt as if a different author had sat down at Mr. Cole’s typewriter. One sentence details an FBI agent introducing his partner to all the police officers as “…a distinguished agent for the FBI.” While the word distinguished may describe her, it is not reflective of the realism that flowed through the earlier pages of the novel. The melodramatic “With the courage that propels law-enforcement officers into the teeth of trouble…” also didn’t mesh with the earlier chapters, and some of the dialogue didn’t hold the same crispness and genuineness I had come to enjoy.

But no matter. This is a good book, and a few missteps at the end pale in the light of the many chapters that had proceeded them. If you like a good, well-told story with a mix of detective and thriller elements, you will enjoy this one. Four stars.