Beneath A Broken Sky by Joshua Moehling (2026)
While I was totally riveted by the first book in this series, this one was a mixed bag for me. I'm still fascinated and invested in police officer Ben Packard, a gay man investigating crimes in the small backwoods town of Sandy Lake, Minnesota......not an easy place to be or an easy job to hold in such a tight knit provincial community. And author Joshua Moehling fully brings him to life as a character to care about.
I admired how this latest series entry has turned Sandy Lake into an especially terrible environment for Ben to exist in. A brutally hot summer, polluted with wildfire smoke, has settled on an already tornado ravaged Sandy Lake. Trees are down and houses, including Ben's, are either partially or totally torn apart. And in the midst of all this misery, a woman's been found stabbed to death, her body discovered by her horrified husband and two young sons.
Ben's on the case sure enough, but the storyline becomes overburdened with subplots and a truckload of generally sketched out, uninteresting characters who start to make you wonder why the book's spending so much time with them. These include a ragtag, itinerant crew of storm chasers, picking up quick cash by repairing damaged roofs, barns and clearing away fallen trees. You can sense, of course, that somewhere down the line, their stories must at some point intersect with Ben's murder case, but the book can try a reader's patience as it takes its own sweet time getting there. Yet another subplot eating up the pages is Ben's attempts to befriend and aid the irascible but deeply hurting sister of the man Ben loved and tragically lost.
There's more than enough drama going on here to fill up two books, but that weighs down and too often sidetracks the police procedural element. I really would have liked to see more of Ben's prickly, adversarial relationship with his boss who replaced him as the chief of police,. These finely tense moments, sorry to say, only get dished out in spoonfuls, which I thought of as a lost opportunity.
Ben Packard's a lead character to admire, feel for and root for but no one should expect this latest case to become a swift, compelling page turning mystery. Thoughtful, but not one to keep you glued to it through the night.
I admired how this latest series entry has turned Sandy Lake into an especially terrible environment for Ben to exist in. A brutally hot summer, polluted with wildfire smoke, has settled on an already tornado ravaged Sandy Lake. Trees are down and houses, including Ben's, are either partially or totally torn apart. And in the midst of all this misery, a woman's been found stabbed to death, her body discovered by her horrified husband and two young sons.
Ben's on the case sure enough, but the storyline becomes overburdened with subplots and a truckload of generally sketched out, uninteresting characters who start to make you wonder why the book's spending so much time with them. These include a ragtag, itinerant crew of storm chasers, picking up quick cash by repairing damaged roofs, barns and clearing away fallen trees. You can sense, of course, that somewhere down the line, their stories must at some point intersect with Ben's murder case, but the book can try a reader's patience as it takes its own sweet time getting there. Yet another subplot eating up the pages is Ben's attempts to befriend and aid the irascible but deeply hurting sister of the man Ben loved and tragically lost.
There's more than enough drama going on here to fill up two books, but that weighs down and too often sidetracks the police procedural element. I really would have liked to see more of Ben's prickly, adversarial relationship with his boss who replaced him as the chief of police,. These finely tense moments, sorry to say, only get dished out in spoonfuls, which I thought of as a lost opportunity.
Ben Packard's a lead character to admire, feel for and root for but no one should expect this latest case to become a swift, compelling page turning mystery. Thoughtful, but not one to keep you glued to it through the night.
3 stars (***).
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