I am not familiar with this series and I think it might have been better received if I had some background. I was confused from the very first page as I didn’t know or care about any of the characters. I will recommend this title to fans of the series, but I did not care for it or finish it.

The River View by Jamie Harrison which takes place in Blue Deer, Montana, just may have too many characters to clearly keep track of. Jules, a former law enforcement officer and now a private detective and archaeologist is a new father and working on building a house in the valley with his partner, Caroline, who has just had a baby. There is certainly a fair number of suicides and murders. My favorite line is "What kind of idiot killed himself out of spite?" Indeed. Perhaps the most entertaining part of the book is the clever and amusing names of the townspeople and settings, including the town of Marvel and another former town called Doris, a policewoman called Sadie, Jules' father, Ansel, Celeste, the dog, Cavendish Cluster, Suzette Whipple, and others. Add to this group three Russians who roam the countryside on various motorized vehicles wreaking havoc, and there probably are not any other characters to be efficiently added to the group.

I did enjoy the humorous descriptions and some of the dark characters, but I doubt I would read another book by this author simply because it seemed rather confusing, both in plot and character.