Customer Reviews

Racing the Devil

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E. Michael Terrell has developed quite the character in PI Jared McKean. He's gritty, yet soft. Complex, yet not complicated. Loaded with plenty of baggage, but he's not jaded. An author's ever present challenge is to "show not tell." Terrell shows us all of Jared's facets, creating not so much a character as a man you might expect to see walking on the street. Or, rather, that you'd hope to meet. He's not perfect. He's made mistakes. Some he regrets, some he's not proud of, but all of them he owns. He'll be the first to tell you he's got issues, but he'll also pitch in and help you solve yours in a heartbeat.

He's real, he's unapologetic, he's someone who (if you're a woman, or maybe even like his gay roommate --though Jared's completely straight) you'll find yourself falling a little in love with. He's surrounded by all types --an ex-wife he never wanted to lose to another man, a child with Down Syndrome, a gay friend (the roommate) who's got AIDS, people setting him up for a murder he didn't commit...

Oh yeah, there is a plot to this book. It's a good, twisting one (LOTS of twists with shocking surprises) and an ending that's satisfying. But it's been a week or so since I finished the book and what's remained most is Jared. He's left an imprint on my mind and heart. Terrell did an excellent job in creating a character study of a man who has a lot to be bitter about but grins and bears it with style. It's a refreshing change of pace from the standard kind of PI presented in most novels.

But this isn't to say she neglects the plot. She's created a doozie of one there too. It's just that Jared captivated me the most. He's one of the characters you enjoy spending time with. One who's born for a series and who you can't wait to get the next book so you can keep spending time with him. Because in the end, it is the plot you're working through...with this book you never realize it because it's more like you're spending time with a friend who's having problems and you're watching as they deal with them. It's a very refreshing experience. (I know I already used that word, but that's what this book is: something new in a very old and sometimes tired genre.)

PI Jared McKean is 30-something, ex-Nashville cop, divorced, one son with Down Syndrome, still carrying the torch for his ex-wife. We meet him on a hot June night when he's nursing a drink and his aching heart.

He picks up a woman named Heather for sex in a cheap motel, and wakes up a day and a half later to a newspaper story about the murder of a woman named Amy in his motel room. Heather is long gone. The cops are looking for him. There's a strange gun in his truck, and his keys are missing.

This gritty novel sets up the perfect nightmare. The cops have plenty of evidence -- his fingerprints, his semen, his voice on threatening phone calls - all of it in the wrong setting and some of it fake - but how to prove it?

The dead woman apparently led a perfect life in a semi-upscale neighborhood: wife of a successful businessman, mother of two young daughters, and faithful member of the Road to Glory Church of the Reclamation.

Jared relies on his belief that a murder victim is chosen for a reason, and begins a methodical investigation of who Amy was and why someone wanted her dead. His step-by-step journey leads him into the worlds of pedophilia, identity theft, women's lib, a teenage Goth gang, and horse breeding and training. There are more murders. He gets involved with a couple of truly despicable characters, and the ending is a shocker.

RACING THE DEVIL is well plotted and well written. The author has a gift for bringing characters to life on the page. Jared is likeable, even when he spends too much time mourning his failed marriage to the beautiful Maria. At times I wanted to slap him smartly, like Cher in "Moonstruck," and say, Get over it. But he's a stand-up guy, and he has a good support system.

His ex-wife still cares for him; her new husband tolerates him. His brother has problems of his own but when push comes to shove, he's there. His ex-partner at Metro Homicide unofficially gives him a little wiggle room while he tries to figure out why and how someone fitted him with a frame. For backup he calls on Billy Mean, an old friend, Viet Nam vet and ex-con, now running a shelter for homeless men, and always ready to knock heads together if need be.

In a book full of memorable characters, three will remain with me for a long time: Jared's young son, Paulie, who has Down Syndrome; his housemate, Jay, a gay man with full-blown AIDS; and Birdie, the chipper old woman who serves him lemonade while filling him in on the victim and the victim's family.

PAULIE. We get an indelible image of Paulie talking to Jared on the phone: "`Hi, Daddy. Mama crying.' The gravelly little voice made my heart twist. I could see him perched there, maybe on Maria's lap, his stubby fingers curled around the receiver, his slanted eyes crinkling. A little Buddha with Down Syndrome, happy to hear from me, worried about his mama."

JAY. He's a longtime friend, a kind soul who takes 20 or 30 pills a day and a variety of supplements to keep his weight up, shares his house with Jared and fusses over him: "It was a good trade. I got cheap room and board, a place to board my horses--a palomino quarter horse named Tex and a black Tennessee Walker called Crockett--and unlimited use of Jay's swimming pool. He got someone to take care of him. The boy friends came and went but I was family."

BIRDIE. Jared chides her for being so trusting, opening the door for him even though he's a murder suspect: "`What if I'd really been a murderer? I could have forced my way inside and had my way with you before you had even had a chance to scream.'"

"She smiled a beatific smile. `I'm too old for you to have your way with, and I don't need a chance to scream.' She untucked her billowed blouse to reveal a little silver-plated, snub-nosed .38. `All I have to do is stay in close and pull the trigger.'"

This is a first-rate PI novel that opens with one of the best-constructed frame-ups I ever read -- positioning the hero, ex-cop Jared McKean, dead center for a first-degree murder charge -- and just gets better as it goes along. When even his former friends on the police force doubt his innocence, McKean finds himself in a three-hundred-sixty-degree nightmare, one that (even to a second-guessing reader like me) seems to have no way out. The setting is Nashville, but it's a real insider's Nashville, as far from Music Row as it's possible to get. Written in spare, note-perfect prose, with a knockout plot and characters who don't go away when you close the cover, this is a terrific book. I hope there's going to be a lot more of Jared McKean.

Racing the Devil is like a delicious dessert. You start out devouring it quickly, then struggle to make the book last because you don't want it to end. It's that good.

Terrell's protag, Jared McKean, isn't perfect. He makes mistakes. People take advantage of him. It seems no good turn goes unpunished, as they say. When he tries to help someone, he ends up framed for murder. You find yourself engulfed in the story, as if you are the one being accused. Jaden Terrell's writing reminded me immediately of Dashiell Hammett, or Raymond Chandler. It is beautifully written, frank and provocative. Her characters are fully formed. They will seem familiar to you, as if you known them well.

One of the best "first in a series" novels I have read in a long time. You will want to read the next story, and then the next.

Stacy Allen
Atlanta GA

A man walks into a bar. Observant ex-cop, he sees the stories behind the people there. Divorced and lonely, he sees the needy woman too. But soon he's bitten off more than he can chew. Charged with a murder that's got his fingerprints all over it, Jared McKean finds his world falling apart. Luckily he has some true and valiant friends who rally to defend him from the most unlikely places, sending him off on a race to clear his name.

Jaden Terrell's Racing the Devil is no cut-and-dried who-dun-it. Life doesn't stop just because disaster looms, and protagonist Jared McKean still has family, ex-family and friends with calls on his time. His son has Down's syndrome, his closest friend has AIDS, and his nephew's suddenly going off the rails. Jared's ex-wife battles bravely for those impossible happy-ever-afters while a sweet lonely housewife lies brutally dead.

Page-turning mystery and enthralling family drama combine to make Racing the Devil a perfect mix. Dark and light blend into the confusion of modern life with wholly believable characters, real-world dilemmas, and a captivating mix of ethical challenge and genuine human kindness. The result is a book that's seriously hard to put down with a protagonist the reader will be eager to meet again, wanting to know how he solves his life as well as his mysteries.

Disclosure: I received a Bound Galley of this novel from the publisher, the Permanent Press, in exchange for an honest review.

When private investigator Jared McKean wakes up from a one-night stand he's got one more problem than he went to bed with. Besides having a best friend with AIDS, being fired from the Nashville PD Homicide department and still being in love with his ex-wife he's now being framed for murder. Once he makes bail he has to track down the real murderer while the body count keeps rising and deal with his own family drama.

Racing the Devil is book one in the new Jared McKean series and it's a fairly good series start. The characters are real and I was pulled in from the opening scene. I was fully engaged in the story and loved the ending but some of the story line was a little bit forced as if Terrell meant to go in a different direction and changed his mind but not the details. Overall I recommend this one for anyone who loves a good suspense thriller and look forward to book two which will be out August 2012.

Jaden Terrell's excellent debut mystery novel RACING THE DEVIL provides freshness to the niche genre that is the noir male private eye, while still giving the readers of niche everything they look for. Characters with troubled pasts, women with ulterior motives, sudden violence, but unlike much of noir, the protagonist, Jared McKean is far from a loner and has rich and interesting relationships with is family, child, roommate, friends and even horses.

Racing the Devil starts with the novel's protagonist, Jared McKean, having an amorous encounter with a woman in a bar only to wake up two days later and discover he's been framed for the murder of a woman he doesn't know and it's a doozy, witnesses, fingerprints, DNA, etc..

If that wasn't bad enough, his personal life is maze of difficult relationships: his brother, who abandoned a promising dream career to raise Jared, is having issues with his Goth son; Jared's roommate has AIDs; a duplicitous local hotshot reporter who had once been Jared's girlfriend is all over the murder case; and the woman Jared loves is married to another man and she has custody of his beloved son Paul who has Down Syndrome. He also owns and loves horses, which plays nicely into the storyline. While Jared rushes to prove his innocence, his personal life is imploding.

The only weakness would be is that some of the action, though realistic and character revealing, was not tied tightly into the storyline. The strongest part of the novel is the way Terrell weaves in Jared's murder case with his personal problems and tells the story in forward motion using only short, pertinent, and compelling back-flashes sparsely, and saving backstory for when you need to know it. Terrell also rarely relies on clichés and that makes her prose is richer and more engrossing.

Highly recommended for those who like mysteries and/or characters that have strong emotional connections to others.

(This review is based on an Advanced Review Copy provided by the publisher)

I was fortunate enough (an honored) to receive an ARC of "Racing the Devil" from author Jaden Terrell at the 2011 Southern Festival of Books. What a thrilling, gut-wrenching (not to mention heart-wrenching) story!

I stayed up late, reading well into the wee hours of the morning, because I absolutely had to know how it ended before I could close my eyes. Jared McKean is my favorite type of protagonist - one with very real flaws. Books that tend to stay with me have those kind of well-rounded characters that you want to hug, laugh with, cry with, and smack upside the head (he really needs to work on vetting his bedmates better!) - sometimes in the course of a single chapter. A bad decision borne of loneliness leads him to a seedy hotel room with a stranger, and later to being the number one suspect in a murder investigation. As an ex-cop, he's well aware of how bad it looks for him and we get to experience the other side of the investigative process right along with him.

His friend and family dynamics are equally fascinating and complex. His relationship with his son definitely struck a chord, as did the very complicated dynamic with his ex-wife and her new husband. Then there's his roommate, who suffers from AIDS and some very bad dating decisions of his own. McKean is determined to protect them all, even at the expense of himself. Jaden was able to conjure this flawed man who works with (and through) his flaws to do the right things for the wrong reasons, the wrong things for all the right reasons, and manages to save everyone but himself.

That's powerful writing.

Aside from the emotional dynamics and relationships between characters, there is enough action, mystery, and humor to satisfy any reader. Plus, I love the many facets of good old Nashvegas cleverly woven into the narrative - from the seedy underbelly of Dickerson Road vice to the 'burbs to the rural horse culture, it felt like home.

My personal favorite funny was one exchange between McKean and Ms. Birdie, the murder vic's feisty elderly neighbor and McKean's unlikely ally:

"Dancing is a sexually stimulating activity," I explained. "At least, that's what they told us Nazarenes."

"Son," she said, stifling a chuckle, "breathing is a sexually stimulating activity, if you're with the right person."

I lifted my glass in a toast. "Amen to that, Sister Birdie."

Freakin' hilarious, totally true, and a fabulous bit of dialogue!

I'm hooked on the series for sure!

Racing the Devil is the first of the Jared McKean mystery series written by Nashville native, Jaden Terrell. It is a top-notch PI novel that drops a former cop turned private investigator in to a nightmare that few would have the ability to escape from.

Jared McKean awakens to find himself framed for the murder of a young Christian housewife. The Police have his DNA, prints and eyewitness testimony to prove he was the
killer. Thing is, McKean isn't the type of man to go down without a fight.

Through a well-paced and wonderfully written story, we follow along as the DA's case
builds against him. Even old friends and family question his guilty while he picks at the few threads to unravel the elaborate framing job that has ended one life so far. Humor and action as well as well-placed steamy moments move the story along to an unexpected ending. All the clues and suspects are in place and only a mind as sharp as McKean can put the parts together for the reader to easily understand in one of those forehead slapping moments when the reader says, `Of course it was...'

The characters, especially McKean were well rounded and believable. The plot has enough twists to keep the reader's attention and the description of Nashville made you feel as if you were riding through the city. But almost as important to the read as the murder and frame-job, was McKean's family life with really brought a since of humanity to the nightmare he was embroiled within.

Ms. Terrell's first outing with Jared McKean is certainly a must read.

I've read hundreds of mystery and suspense novels over the past twenty-five years so it takes a lot to make me sit up and take notice. E. Michael Terrell's debut novel, Racing the Devil, made me do just that. I couldn't put it down. The whodunit is first rate, but it's the characters who steal the show. Terrell has created a memorable cast of characters that stays with you long after the story is over. Fictional PIs are a dime a dozen these days so it takes a lot to impress me. Jared McKean is, as his ex-wife says, "a hero waiting to happen." He's so flesh-and-blood you'd really like for him to step off the page, sit on in a lawnchair on the patio, and have a beer with you. He still loves his wife, dotes on his son, who has down syndrome, and goes to bat for his gay housemate when a guy fails to call him after a first date. He even takes time off from saving himself from prison to find his nephew and put his brother's family back together. Every major character is fully formed and you'll see Nashville in a light you've probably never seen the city in before. Pick up Racing The Devil, but only if you have time to read the whole thing, because you're not going to want to put it down. Here's to hoping it won't be long before the next Jared McKean novel hits the bookstores.