Fabulous plot which I could not put down. Brilliant characters, and twists and turns. Highly recommend to other fans of this genre!!

Synopsis/blurb.....

Cherry blossom season is Washington, D.C.'s most beautiful time of the year. But as tourists flock to the city, this year's festivities are marred by the discovery of the naked body of a young woman floating in the Tidal Basin. Veteran homicide detective Brian (Brick) Kavanagh is assigned to the case. He's shocked when he learns the victim is connected to another homicide which makes the investigation very personal for him. Brick's efforts to solve the case are thwarted by departmental politics and a rush to judgment. Convinced that justice has not been served and the wrong person is in jail, Kavanagh risks all to relentlessly pursue the truth. Overlooked evidence ultimately leads to a devastating conclusion in a heartbreaking case.
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My take.......

Relentless was another book enjoyed via Audible. It starts out as a standard police procedural, with Washington detective, Brick Kavanagh along with his partner investigating the death of a young woman found in water. The victim's brother who was known to Brick also turns up the victim of another homicide. The direction the case seems to take, indicates it's in relation to a people smuggling ring and there's some overlap with a Hispanic gang. A man is arrested, confesses and is charged.

The book takes an interesting turn then, with Kavanagh, after a bust up with a fellow a-hole cop and a dressing down and suspension from his boss, turns in his gun and badge. Concerned that the man who confessed to the crime is getting railroaded, Kavanagh offers his investigative services gratis to the man's attractive female lawyer.

I quite liked the twisted tale that the author spun here, with a few different story strands and supporting characters helping the give the book some flesh on the bones...... a young pregnant girl with a wayward husband and fears for her future, an Irish bar owner trying to do the right thing, Brick's cop partner Ron and the Vietnamese defence lawyer.

I was convinced by Kavanagh's sense of right and wrong and his pursuit of justice. I like that he surrounded himself by friends who felt similarly. An outlook that judges people as individuals rather than bracketing them as minorities of different ethnicities is always a positive.

There's a decent setting, a reasonable pace, an interesting main character with some family back story and an exciting climax, though it's one that comes a bit out of left field.

More to like than dislike and I would be interested in seeing what the author does next with the main character in a future book. That's the benchmark of enjoyment from me - would I want to spend more time with the author's writing and Kavanagh? On this occasion, probably yes.

3.5 from 5

Relentless is a debut novel from author Shawn Wilson.

Read - (listened to) October, 2020
Published - 2019
Page count - 288 (7 hrs 39 mins)
Source - Audible purchase
Format - Audible

I did have a copy courtesy of Net Galley, which unfortunately didn't survive the death of the last laptop.

https://col2910.blogspot.com/2020/10/shawn-wilson-relentless-2019.html

this was a really good read, the characters were great and I really enjoyed reading this. It was a great mystery and a great novel.

Homicide Detective Brick Kavanagh and his partner, Detective Ron Hayes are assigned to investigate when a young woman is found floating in the Tidal Basin. Although no ID is found, Brick learns the victim was connected to another homicide. The case becomes very personal.

Ultimately a person of interest is arrested, but Brick is convinced that they have the wrong person. His attempts to find the real culprit is hampered by departmental policies and a rush to judgment by a senior officer not that interested in finding the truth and seems more worried about tourism.

The complex plot is intricately woven around many, and varied, characters. It was easy to get lost in trying to keep everyone straight in my mind. Add ICE, Park Police, several other detectives and the water is muddied. There are twists and turns that are interesting, I found the conclusion to be not-so-satisfying.

The author spent more than 30 years working for the U.S. Marshals Service, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. RELENTLESS is her first novel. Because of her background I expected a more credible story line. That being said, I hope to have the opportunity to read Book 2 in this series.

Many thanks to the author / Oceanview Publishing / Netgalley for the digital copy of this crime fiction/mystery. Read and reviewed voluntarily, opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.

Gritty and timely hard-boiled detective showcasing the ominous side of the nation’s capital.

Relentless features an angst-ridden protagonist, who is very well-developed .

With a thicket of subplots, Relentess held my attention, as Wilson took me on a roller coaster ride with steep climbs and twisting turns.

Analysis: All the tropes will be familiar to those of read police procedurals. Relentless was a solid, entertaining character-driven story if rather predictable. With a slow buildup, the story started and ended strongly, but the timeline was hazy. The characters were well-written, memorable, and distinctive.

Recommended for avid police procedural readers who enjoy following detectives along as they the hunt down for murderers.

I received this book through the Read Now program on "NetGalley".

This story begins with Brick and his partner being called to a murder scene at Tidal Basin in Washington D.C. The victim is unknown. Later, Brick has gone to his favorite bar when he learns that one of the workers has not shown up for the last few days. Eventually he and the nephew of the bar owner go to Jose's apartment to check on his status. Upon arriving at the scene, he discovers that Jose has been killed and his sister is missing. After checking the apartment, he sees a picture of Jose's sister and discovers that hers is the body found at the Tidal Basin. Another group of dectives respond to the scene and are responsible for handling Jose's case. Later in another suburb of D.C. another body is found that is similar. This leads to Brick thinking that it might be a serial killing.

The other detective team along with ICE make an arrest and one of the individuals confesses to the killing of Jose and his sister. There is always a celebration after a case is finalized and this was no different. The only thing happening here is that Brick took offense at comments made from one of the detectives on the other team. The next day his Lt. told him to take leave and Brick resigned instead.

Brick was not convinced that the individual who confessed was the guilty party and working with that individual's lawyer continued to follow up on the case. The confessor winds up committing suicide and Brick later puts the pieces together who the real killer is. He winds up in the hospital after being attacked and he feels that it is important to get to Lyn's apartment so he leaves the hospital with his former partner Ron. When they get there, a hostage situation exist.

To find out who the killer was and what the result of the hostage situation is, then you must read this book.

I found this book to be only an okay read. Some mystery but not a lot of page-turning suspense. I did not find the main character very likable which took away from my enjoyment. But mainly the ending was much too flat and abrupt.

Good story line, easy reading and some strong characters. Looking forward to more from Shawn Wilson.
Thanks for the ARC

A solid entry to a new hard-boiled detective series set in Washington, D.C. I live near D.C. and the setting details were spot on. There was good character development of the main detective Brick Kavanaugh and the plot was pretty solid. I look forward to more books in this series.
Thanks to NetGalley, Oceanview Publishing and the author Shawn Wilson for a digital review copy. This book was published January 7, 2020

The blooming cherry blossoms in DC are a prime tourist draw. Now DC doesn't have the best reputation when it comes to crime and the last thing that DC suits want is a body floating in the Tidal Basin; that body of water at the Jefferson Memorial that is surrounded by the cherry blossom trees. Brian (Brick) Kavanagh is a 10yr veteran of DC homicide. He and his less-than-a-year-Detective Ron Hayes draw the case. The young female victim appears to be Hispanic, but that's about all. Not much to go on.

Brick (an old nickname for his red hair to go with his Irish heritage) lives in a NW DC studio condo and frequents local haunts for meals and drink. Especially Boland's, a local Irish pub. A recent immigrant from Guatemala works the kitchen. Good kid. Works hard. Trying to find his way in the USA. He fails to show for a couple shifts so Brick and one of the bar owners go to Jose's apartment only to find him beaten to death. The death is called in and the crime scene unit arrives. Brick sticks around even though it's not his case. In looking the crime scene over, Brick notices a photo on the fridge and is stunned to see that Jose is pictured with his Tidal Basin victim. She was Jose's sister.

The investigation plods along slowly for various reasons. Brick's boss wants to made a splash with his superiors and orders up a task force of Metro DC police, ICE, FBI, and anyone else that'll improve his own visibility. No one is really happy about that, but what do you do? Within a couple days, ICE rounds up a guy named Garcia who actually confesses to the murders during his arraignment.

A bunch of subplots creep in, like Ron's wife is expecting twins, the other owner of Boland's wants to accompany the bodies back to Guatemala, Brick and the detectives assigned to Jose's murder don't play well together, not to mention the various lawyers that inhabit places like the DC court system, federal attorneys, and the public defender assigned to Garcia.

This is a pretty standard police procedural. While it's routine, I found it to be well written and realistic to what I imagine such investigations to be. Turns out that this is the debut novel of Shawn Wilson, just released in December 2019. She spent a career working in various areas of federal law enforcement in DC so her local geography is spot on. I wouldn't say that this is a top shelf debut, but I kind of liked it and if she continues with a series about Brick Kavanagh, I'd be interested. Solid if unspectacular. I sure wasn't sorry for the time invested to read this one. Give it a chance. You just might like this.

A mystery I could not put down. After a young women's body is found in the river, the police detective becomes personally involved when a second body is found. Office politics cause him to resign the force and team up with a defense attorney . the plot has so many twists and turns it is hard to keep- up.. Love the story and all the surprises.

This is a murder/mystery novel, which is also something of a whodunnit.

The main character, with the colourful.nickname Brick, is called upon to examine and investigate a floater in the nearby docks. The floater appears to be the body of a young girl. The mystery deepens when her boyfriend is traced, for he too has been murdered - this time in his flat. Yet he was known in life to have been an upstanding young citizen with everything to live for: whatever could have been the motive for this couple's death?

Brick must look deeper into his own community and circle of friends and acquaintances within the community to find out. Yet his biggest obstacles appear to among his own superiors and halfway through the novel, he is fired and must homprivate to get answers. Once a cop, always a cop.

I did not see the killer coming, other than that there was some bitterness. Possibly, their character could have been developed a little more, to make it that much more of a reveal. Revelation. It is of course, entirely possible that the writer did not intend to.be the next Christie.

Definitely a worthy edition to this genre, with an interesting new sleuth in Brick Kavanagh.

Brian "Brick" Kavanaugh is a DC police detective who's already dealing with an ambitious boss and a dead woman found floating in the Reflecting Pool when he stumbles onto another dead body. This one's personal, but the case is being handled by 2 fellow homicide detectives he's not so fond of. As the story unfolds, the cases connect, the boss stays a pain in the butt, Brick goes rogue, and the search for the killer is on.

Ultimately I didn't like Relentless. The first-time author seemed more focused on which Starbucks her characters frequented and which Metro lines Brick took to get around town than on plot development. I also found I didn't care about her main characters, and that's a problem for any novel.

This book almost talked me to death. I thought the writing was labored, Brick's interior dialogue is unlikely, and that the scenario, which to me seemed like an ordinary murder, did not warrant all the hoopla and a task force.

Not a book I would recommend if you have others to try instead.

Parts of this book are good and parts not so much. The story had promised, but wasn't totally realized as the book proceeded. It is unusual to have good guys who drink and smoke and use a bar as HQ, but that is OK.

I wanted to really like the police detective, but he was a bit one dimensional, especially when he was dealing with the attorney.

The wrap up was a bit of a disappointment, both in terms of it being a bit cliched and the how and why didn't seem to make sense to me.
I think there is possibilities here with more time and experience by the author.

I went back and forth with this book. Sometimes I really liked it and sometimes I didn't. It started out as a by the numbers procedural. And then it got more interesting with the connections between the characters. As we got to the middle, it flipped and I was hoping it would make a big change. I don't feel that the author took real advantage of the twist that could have offered. The ending seemed to be rushed and didn't follow the evidence of the story so far. I was hoping that the threads would be brought together better. I do hope that there are more books with Brick and we get to understand him better, so I'd read for the development of the characters.

This debut novel by Shawn Wilson features homicide detective Brick Kavanagh who has been in the business for quite a while. He is called to the scene of the body of a young woman floating in the tidal basin of Washington as the cherry blossoms bloom. While he and his partner puzzle out who killed her, Brick learns that a young immigrant named Jose who works part-time at a bar that Brick frequents has turn't up for several days. He decides to help his friend the bar owner by trying to locate Jose. He and his partner go to Jose's apartment and find that Jose has been nastily killed. They find out that the young woman whose murder they are investigating is Jose's sister. But another team is assigned Jose's homicide. They rapidly conclude that it is gang-related. But Brick has his doubts because a colleague in another jurisdiction has informed of another young woman found floating. There is a striking resemblance to Maria, Jose's sister. Brick and his partner begin to suspect a serial killer is at work. But this clashes with the gangland theory of the other team which is favoured by their supervisor. To complicate matters a young Hispanic is brought in for Jose's murder and during his preliminary hearing he pleads guilty. Brick approaches his gorgeous female Hispanic attorney. As they realize that the suspect has pleaded guilty to protect his family from threats, the suspect is murdered in custody, ostensibly a suicide.
Meanwhile a serial predator has access to all the crime reports and evidence. Can he be stopped before he wreaks more damage?

I recommend this novel to those who like police procedurals.

This is a well written and entertaining story with great characters. Unfortunately, the plot isn't much, and thus the progress is very slow.

Brick and Ron catch a new case when the body of a young woman is found floating in the Tidal Basin. The style of writing makes for easy reading. The book includes great personal interactions that contribute to the entertainment value. The characters are unique and different, and they are developed in depth. The investigation leads to a murderer, but not after serious issues, which include Brick quitting his job. The descriptions match well with my knowledge of DC, and should be educational for those who have never visited. The plot is a little hokey, and the ending includes an element of sadness. I would call this good entertainment.

When homicide detective Brian “Brick” Kavanagh is assigned to the case of a young woman found floating in the Tidal Pool in Washington, D.C., the last thing he expects is a second murder to suddenly create an immediate and personal tie between himself and the victim. Hamstrung by a senior officer more interested in optics than actually solving crimes, Brick isn’t about to let this one slip through the cracks.

The premise was interesting, and with victims from Guatemala and ICE agents getting involved, timely. I liked the relationship between Brick and his homicide partner, Ron, and there was a minor romance involved too with Lily Nguyen, a defence attorney. I didn’t see the solution coming at all, and looking back, it’s because there weren’t any clues planted, something which is a bit of a problem in a murder mystery. The reader likes to either solve the mystery ahead of the protagonist, which gives us something of a smug feeling when we’re ‘smarter’ than they are, or to be surprised BUT be able to look back and spot the clues we SHOULD have put together to solve it. There were no clues, and we barely got any real insight into the killer’s psyche, also something a reader likes to get in this genre.

While grammar, language and punctuation were generally good, I did spot a few changes of tense which read awkwardly… for example “When budget time rolls around maybe this would be the year for upgrades”. ‘Rolled’ would be the correct tense in this instance. These were for the most part fairly minor and I could ignore them, but I couldn’t ignore the fact that the story just didn’t grab me and, at the end, just completely fizzled out. Relentless definitely doesn’t describe Kavanagh. He literally stumbled onto the answer, mostly because the murderer inexplicably decided to hang around with him. Comparison’s to Harry Bosch are definitely premature; maybe the author can do more with this character later in the series, but I doubt I’ll be reading any more. I couldn’t bring myself to care. Two stars.