Review - Richard Roach - Scattered Leaves

Scattered Leaves
by: Richard E. Roach

Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: Crystal Dreams Publishing (September 1, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1591461464
ISBN-13: 978-1591461463
Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches

Scattered Leaves is a story of drama, suspense, thrills, twists and revenge. After coming home from a business trip, Ben McCord finds his cherished and beloved wife dead - raped and brutally murdered. With the assumption that the police will never find his wife's killer, Ben sets out on a harrowing journey of his own, to track down the killer and avenge his wife's death. While following clues and feeling as though he is closing in on the monsters who committed this crime, his path crosses with a young and beautiful Doctor, who has had her own nightmare experience with the group of monsters who have no regard for human life - especially that of a woman.

Together, Ben and PJ continue to track down the killers before it is too late and their own lives come to an end.

Scattered Leaves is a continuous tale of suspense that will leave the reader flying from page to page, just to see what happens next. When I began reading, I felt a layer of Harlan Coben's talents in the style of Mr. Roach's writing. Especially in the way he is able to envelope the reader within the pages, the suspense, constant action and the layout of Mr. Roach's writing and chapter style, is reminiscent of Mr. Coben's writing.

Although greatly enjoying Scattered Leaves, I did have a bit of a problem with the easiblity that the Docter, PJ, had with flirting and "falling in love" with Ben, after such a horrendous trauma that she endured. This aspect seemed a bit unrealistic, however on the side of "entertainment" this is a very good story, plot and includes enjoyable and well written characters. The scenes are very vivid and a bit on the graphic side, though not overly so, which would turn a reader off by any means.

Scattered Leaves is a great story for anyone who is a lover of mystery and suspense. I greatly enjoyed both it and Mr. Roach's writing.

*overall rating 4/5

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About Scattered Leaves:

When Ben McCord comes home from a business trip to find his young wife raped and murdered, he starts out on a journey of death and destruction. Clues lead him to a dark world of drugs and violence in action that spans Texas, Colorado, and the Mexican border. McCord hooks up with a beautiful doctor, who was also victimized by members of the same drug cartel, and together they track down the killers, surviving bloody confrontations, and ending with a suspenseful climax in the Big Thicket of Texas.

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Excerpt:

I found her on the floor near my side of the bed, nude, lying in a pool of inky-black, coagulated blood. She was dead. Cold dead. A long time dead. The words seemed foreign.

She had worried about her twenty-ninth birthday, which was coming up soon; she had been concerned that being nearly thirty might be getting old. She had been fretful about too many things: not having rugs beside the bed, the poor people at church, when would the roof start leaking. All those worries had taken wing when her heart had stopped
beating and her blood ceased to flow.

I could not share with her the final pain of her last moments on this earth. She would forever be twenty-eight.

The smell of death permeated the bedroom air.

She had never been a big person, but in death she seemed shrunken. A glob of caked blood held a dozen strands of her silky, blonde hair and was stuck to her temple. The swollen, black tongue protruded from her mouth. She looked at the world from behind eyelids that were almost closed.

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About Richard Roach:

Suspense/Mystery author Richard Roach was born in 1931 in Galveston, Texas. Short stories of his have been published in Man’s Story 2, Happy 2007, Vol. 20 and Bibliophilos 2006, Vol. 42. His first novel, Scattered Leaves, hit the book stores on September 1, ’08, and his second novel, Scattered Money, will be published in 2009.

You can visit his website at http://www.richarderoach.com/.

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