Customer Reviews

Border Prey (Rachel Porter Mysteries)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In BORDER PREY, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Special Agent Rachel Porter has been booted from her post in Miami to the ever scenic El Paso/New Mexico border with Mexico. Here in the desert Southwest, she takes on the illegal monkey trade, lecherous ranchers, mad scientists, and vultures. Dealing with smuggling and the misuse of monkeys is bad enough, but the stakes are raised when her only informant is murdered. However, Rachel is no shrinking violet; she and her in-your-face attitude will get the job done, one way or another.

Like Speart's previous novels (GATOR AIDE, TORTOISE SOUP, and BIRD BRAINED), one of the book's biggest strengths is its original, colorful characters! Rachel herself is smart and determined, in addition to possessing a wonderfully dry wit. The supporting characters, from Rachel's tracking mentor Sonny Harris to the lecherous rancher Frederick Ulysses Krabbs (a.k.a. F.U. Krabbs) to the mysterious Dan Kitrell along with numerous other characters, add regional flavor and a richness to the book. And, Rachel is not immune to romance, but Jake Santou hasn't come back into her life just yet.

Perhaps the book's biggest strength is its humor, not unlike that of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series. The humor comes from both Rachel's dry wit and the Lucy/Desi type physical comedy situations that she gets herself into. This colorful, zany, mystery is about serious topics (murder, animal smuggling, and research), but will make most readers chuckle if not laugh-out-loud. This is a very entertaining read!

This is the 4th installment in the Rachel Porter Series and it's not a disappointment. After the first few pages of the first book, Gator Aide, it's evident that Rachel Porter is not one to mess with. She is a great sleuth and truly has a heart...don't mess with her animals or her friends! In Porder Prey, Jessica Speart clues the reader in on the underworld of primate smuggling and manages to throw in real facts and information without sounding like a Biology 101 lecture. You can be confident you are really learning something and know that Speart is not just making things up. Her background as a freelance journalist covering wildlife issues is her badge of credit. Along with mysteries that keep you thinking and guessing, Speart keeps you entertained with extraordinary descriptions of the scenery and the animals. Her writing style is smooth and you can feel the desert heat without even consciously thinking about it. In addition, Speart gives plenty of detail and attention to the cast of characters that surround Rachel Porter. They may not be the people you run into everyday, but they are interesting and you know that they are out there somewhere! All in all, Jessica Speart is an excellent author who has given us a great mystery series with all those added twists and turns that keep you turning the pages. And, Rachel Porter is a US Fish and Wildlife Agent on a mission!

Border Prey is a book that really reads like an action- adventure thriller movie:- full to bursting with sensory imagery and personal asides from the hard-edged but soft-hearted fish and wildlife agent, Rachel Porter, who recounts the story in ultra-first-person narrative. The action is super-charged with suspense, danger, and genuine outrage at the environmental atrocities that we all know go on, but don't really stop to think about until we read a book like this. I found it near impossible to put it down once I got into the thick of it.

It's always hard to put yourself in someone else's skin, and Rachel's can be a little abrasive at first. She has clearly been jaded by more than a few confrontations with the slimy underbelly of human nature (see books 1, 2, and 3 of the series)and her outlook has become a little, shall we say, prickly....until you get to know her better. Then, when you least expect it, Porter shows her vulnerability; lapsing into musings of lost love and self doubt while breathlessly watching the death-defying aerial mating of bald eagles, or stifling child-like exuberance while watching a coyote being released from a trap, or waxing maternal gazing the eyes of a trained chimp.And then of course, she's so damned true to her cause, and so in love with nature and animals you can't help but soften to her, then sweat bullets with her, even choke up with tears along with her, and, of course, root for her and her cause. It's really fun!

I do hope, (and I'm sure that Speart intends us to)we see through the broad, often comical strokes that the colorful characters are drawn with, and become aware that many of these scenarios are frighteningly for real.

Border Prey combines all the best of reading. You are well entertained with the characters (Rachel is wisecracking and fun, yet human and interesting) while a great mystery unfolds, keeping you reading, to the end;and yet underlying is a message of truth we all should be aware of. Jessica Speart has it all as she takes you step by step, through the mystery and life of her character Rachel Porter, rogue Fish and Wildlife Agent. Dangers, clues and surprises, on every page, you cant anticipate the next move and yet its fun and very entertaining and in the end when you think about you have learned something very real. A great read and a great book, I look forward to the next, I am hooked.

while I did finish the book, I must agree that the last 25 or so pages could have made more sense. To compare her in even the merest way to Evanovich is to compare water with champagne. The author is silly, silly, silly. I don't think I'll pursue her other books.

I love this series by Jessica Speart. Mixes mystery with a little humor. The character, Rachel Porter is likeable and interesting.

Agent Rachel Porter is the US Fish and Wildlife Service's answer to National Park Ranger Anna Pigeon. While Anna defends the environment from the "bad guys," Rachel puts her life on the line to protect endangered species. In "Border Prey," it's helpless primates who are threatened by the greedy and ruthless. Rachel is a protagonist with "attitude," giving as good as she gets with humor and heart on every page. As usual, author Speart has surrounded Agent Porter with an off-beat cast of characters to spice up the plot and also adds a slam-bang climax. If you like the writing of Janet Evanovich, Sue Grafton, and Katy Munger, you'll love Jessica Speart's books. While "Border Prey" stands on it's own, you might also want to read the author's earlier works--"Gator Aide," "Bird-Brained," and "Tortoise Soup"--to quadruple your mystery pleasure.

Agent Rachel Porter is the US Fish and Wildlife Service's answer to National Park Ranger Anna Pigeon. While Anna defends the environment from the "bad guys," Rachel puts her life on the line to protect endangered species. In "Border Prey," it's helpless primates who are threatened by the greedy and ruthless. Rachel is a protagonist with "attitude," giving as good as she gets with humor and heart on every page. As usual, author Speart has surrounded Agent Porter with an off-beat cast of characters to spice up the plot and also adds a slam-bang climax. If you like the writing of Janet Evanovich, Sue Grafton, and Katy Munger, you'll love Jessica Speart's books. While "Border Prey" stands on it's own, you might also want to read the author's earlier works--"Gator Aide," "Bird-Brained," and "Tortoise Soup"--to quadruple your mystery pleasure.

Exiled to the Mexican border, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Agent Porter finds a snitch dead in the desert with a cell phone rammed down his throat. And from there on, the action never seems to stop, taking the reader from the Happy Hunting Ranch, where for a hefty price high rollers can shoot exotic creatures of choice, to the Flying A ranch owned by an environmental trust where there are some strange goings-on with a mad Scissorhands scientist. Speart tells us there are 1,000 private hunting ranches in the state of Texas alone, populated by "a Noah's ark of creatures" that are sold at auction from overpopulated zoos or that are imported illegally. Would-be big-game hunters pay from $3,000 to $40,000 for the privilege of killing an exotic animal, such as an American bison or an African bongo. Killing exotic animals is a cash crop that rakes in $100 million a year in Texas. This is the fourth Rachel Porter book by Jessica Speart, and it's real page-turner.

This was an interesting mystery, for two reasons. It does focus on the important problem of primate smuggling, but it was also interesting because the author chose, as a setting for this book, an area which she obviously dislikes very much. Most regional mysteries, such as those of Tony Hillerman, Dana Stabenow, and Nevada Barr, will leave the reader with a greater knowledge and appreciation of the people and the land of a certain region of the world. In this book, however, both the people and the land are hot, cruel, and dirty. Trust me, living along "La Frontera" is really not that bad...