Customer Reviews

Try Dying (Ty Buchanan Series, Book 1)

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Ty Buchanan's beloved fiancé has just died in a freak Hollywood style accident, instantly spinning his world off its axis. Maybe someday he'll recover. Maybe someday he'll make sense of his emotions and get on with his life without Jacquelyn. Only someday doesn't come, and Ty watches himself become a man he never dreamed he'd be. An attorney sworn to uphold the law, he's soon breaking it to find out the truth about Jacquelyn's death. Was it really accidental?

In the vein of Brandt Dodson's Colton Parker series, Try Dying is a no-nonsense crime novel with a legal bent rather than a private investigator or cop angle. Cinematic in feel due to Bell's expert use of snappy dialogue, there's also a nice peppering of movie references, no doubt coming straight from Bell's own love of classic films. Even Ty Buchanan is a namesake derived from characters in two movies, Tyler Durden in "Fight Club" (1999) and Tom Buchanan in "Buchanan Rides Alone" (1958).

In a recent interview Bell reveals: "I haven't been happy about some of the trends in contemporary, secular suspense. And I think the audience out there is getting tired of the gratuitous elements. I believe you can write page-turning suspense without that, like some of the great crime novels of the 40s and 50s. I wanted to offer that, because I see the need for it."

That's one of the great things about Try Dying. Life is painted in all its edgy glory, and the underbelly of LA is as much a character as Ty. Yet through it all Bell manages to show us this world without rolling us through the gutter. He's accomplished exactly what he set out to accomplish--to craft an action-laced thriller devoid of smut. Many an author has decided you can't portray life as it is without swearing, gore, and sex, but Jim proves you can. A very small quibble is I was a little confused a few times by the novel's extensive cast.

Even though Try Dying isn't Christian fiction per se, Jim freely portrays Biblical principles, such as forgiveness in a priest's heart even though he's paid a stiff price for a molestation he didn't commit. In some ways I found the Christian take-away value more poignant than you find in much of today's "Christian fiction". It's clear the priest and a basketball playing nun have a real relationship with Jesus, and they become Ty's confidants. Hopefully they'll be involved in the next Ty Buchanan novel, Try Darkness, and continue to shine light into Ty's world.

Truth is truth, and Bell makes sure to weave it through all of his books. Ty's journey is a harrowing one, filled with enough beatings, explosions, and bad guys to rival the best crime fiction has to offer, but morality isn't left in the dust. Try Dying is a dynamic start to a new series, filled with colorful characters and elaborate plots.

--Reviewed by C.J. Darlington for TitleTrakk

James Scott Bell's TRY DYING features young, hot-shot lawyer Ty Buchannon forced into a life or death struggle after his fiance tragically dies in a traffic accident. Or was it an accident? A gang-banger shoots his girlfriend then goes to a highway overpass where he kills himself. His dead body falls on an oncoming car, killing Ty's fiance. Or did it kill her? Maybe she was alive and then killed after the body fell into her car.

At his fiance's funeral, a homeless man confronts Ty to tell him his girlfiend might have been murdered. Then the homeless man knocks him out and robs him. Now Ty is obssessed with finding the truth. He starts out doing little things like contacting the police who investigated the accident and the attractive reporter who was on the scene. Ty begins to find answers and they lead him to Rudy Barocos, a self-help guru that specializes in showing former gangsters the straight and narrow. Ty is also working a high profile case of repressed memories and child abuse. Grief from his fiance's death has overwhelmed him and Ty is shocked at his own behavior and how far he will go to learn the truth.

This novel marks a departure for Bell, who has made a name for himself as a writer of legal inspirational thrillers. With TRY DYING, Bell has switched genres and publishers. Through Centerstreet publishing, he is writing a mainstream suspense novel that is gritty and supsensful but doesn't have all the bad language or extreme violence found in so many other novels today. This is not a Christian, or inspirational novel, but two of its supporting characters are a priest and a nun. You will find more spirituality in this novel than you will in most all other suspense novels. I applaud Bell for this new step in his career and can't wait for the next book in the series.

I enjoyed TRY DYING and believe Ty Buchannon is a great character with a lot of potential. This novel is told from a 1st person point of view, so the reader learns a lot about Ty and his view on the world. I found this novel to be missing strong secondary characters that are so common in other Bell novels. By writing fron Ty's POV, if he doesn't get close to a woman, then the readers don't either. This novel had a lot of potentially strong female characters, but none really stood out. Since this is a series, I see the potential for some strong relationships to develop in the next novel or two.

This is a great book to give to someone as a gift to interest them in Christian suspense fiction. I recommend it to all Bell fans as well.

"Try Dying" by James Scott Bell is a wonderful suspense novel. The author weaves a fascinating plot around an unconventional attorney whose fiancée was killed in a freak murder-suicide-traffic accident. While working on a trial involving alleged sexual abuse for his firm, Ty Buchanan learns from a stranger that his fiancée was actually murdered. The supporting cast of characters is very real and all have stories of their own. James Scott Bell weaves the plots of these stories (and more) together so beautifully, this book is nearly impossible to put down! What most impressed me about this novel is that even the tone of the narrative changed as the character experienced the events of the book. James Scott Bell has written a wonderful story!

I won't rehash the story line, as you probably already read that in the publishing reviews or other comments.

I enjoyed this book very much, and according to the book jacket, it's the start of a series featuring the character of Ty Buchanan. That's good news.

I live in LA and can assure you Bell has a real feel for describing his settings; he captures his locales beautifully. The main character, Ty, is likeable, witty, human, and three dimensional. Somewhat reminiscent of Jack Swytek in the series by James Grippando

There's a lot of room for the character to grow with the series, now that he's solved the mystery of his fiancee's death in this novel.

Bell also draws his secondary characters well; they're distinct, memorable, and believable, and I hope we continue to see them in future works.

The story moves along crisply and clearly.

I can recommend this book for a quick, fun read. It doesn't have the depth of some of Connelly's best, but then it's another genre altogether.

I enjoyed it. Four stars.

Los Angeles attorney Ty Buchanan prepares for a defamation of character defense in which he claims the plaintiff has NO LEGAL GROUNDS to sue his client. However, as he prepares for the case, he suddenly is hammered with a tragedy, the death of his fiancée Jacqueline Dwyer. What makes her demise even more difficult to cope with is the randomness of the event that killed her. Spousal killer Ernesto Bonilla committed suicide on an overpass and plunged off it landing on Jacqueline's passing vehicle, killing her.

At her funeral an unkempt out of place male demands Ty give him money in exchange for the truth behind Dwyer's death; the stranger insists she lived after the Bonilla dive. Perhaps looking for a different explanation, Ty needs to know the truth; but when he tells the cops, they assume he is a grieving person who has been conned. Although he understands he could harm his rising career, Ty investigates finding a conspiracy of the powerful concealing something, but what and how it ties to Jacqueline remains elusive.

Though there is a solid legal thriller subplot, TRY DYING is more an investigative tale as Ty works Los Angeles seeking whether his late fiancée was murdered by someone else after the Bonilla incident. The story line is action-packed, but in every sense of the word is owned by the mourning young lawyer who cannot understand how this could happen and recognizes he may be reaching for a less random incident even if it is homicide. Fans will appreciate Ty's efforts to learn the truth at the cost of his career.

Harriet Klausner

Snap, crackle and pop. These are the sounds of James Scott Bell's latest novel, Try Dying. Tightly written prose wrapped around a to-die-for plot that has the reader turning pages faster than a race horse heading for the finish line. And never ever figure you know where the story is headed. The drama has more twists and turns than a roller coaster ride.

Bell's characacters jump off the pages with depth, humor and humanness--an attorney drawn to investigate a freak death like a moth drawn to a flame, a cloistered nun with a mean jump shot, and a priest who has learned to forgive from the heart. These characters come alive as the story unfolds in this fast-paced legal thriller.

It opens with a freak accident. A man falls from an overpass and slams into traffic below, killing school teacher Jacqueline Dwyer, protagonist Ty Buchanan's fiancée. The accident rips Buchanan from his comfortable world of civil litigation and dumps him onto the mean streets of Los Angeles as he searches for answers that may not exist. Buchanan's survival is brought into question as he sinks deeper and deeper into this black whole of mystery, murder and betrayal. The question becomes whether he will find the answer before death finds him. "I should have been more deferential, if I wanted to keep all my teeth. But there was river of ice in me all of a sudden. Like I'd used up all my fear." Buchanan pulls the reader across this precarious divide separating love and hate, and eventually life and death, where knowing the answer become more important than life itself.

It is James Scott Bell at his best.

Gritty. That was my first thought when I finished reading this book. The other was, wow this could totally be made into a movie. It reminded me very much of the movie Collateral starring Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx. The way the setting was described along with the action sequences and just the mood in general made me feel like I was in a slow moving but suspenseful film noir. There's a lot of mystery and suspense in this book that keeps you guessing til the end. Things that appear to be unconnected somehow have a thread that ties everything together. I love all the characters in this novel especially the non traditional priest and the basketball playing nun. Really can't wait to read more about them. This is a book you could pass on to anybody who is a fan of the genre and they would not be disappointed. I would compare this book to be on par with John Grisham just without sex or cursing. Like I've said before it has been proven that you can write an excellent story without having to resort to filler material. There were several places in the story where I could see another author just throwing in a sex scene or placing a few f-bombs to add space. But the story does not need it at all. Instead what you get is action filled drama, several intense scenes of violence and a story that keeps you reading from page one. This book shows that Christian fiction is not just clean romance novels. I'm really looking forward to the next book in the series. Top notch writing, Mr. Bell, top notch.

James Scott Bell has used his legal background and his mastery of the craft of fiction to produce a novel that is comparable to those of Raymond Chandler. Attorney Ty Buchanan suffers the loss of his fiance, finds that her death was no accident, and is swept up into a maelstrom of mayhem that leaves the reader anxious to turn the pages. The last thirty pages have to be read at one sitting, even if it's after midnight.
I understand that the next Ty Buchanan book is already in the works. I can hardly wait.

I thoroughly enjoyed Try Dying. Interesting characters, conflict upon conflict, fast-paced but well-detailed writing. The lead character stays interesting throughout, and there's a satisfying resolution of the story problem. There is not a boring page in the book. There is also a compelling atmosphere: down and dirty L.A. can be felt and heard. Yet Bell communicates this atmosphere without dragging the reader through the trash, if you will; that is, the book is free of profanity and graphic sex; I'd feel good about my daughters reading it. I have already ordered the next two books in the series.

What a terric new series from great storyspinner James Scott Bell.
The reviews before mine state everything I could possibly say, however, I just wanted to give thoughts/kudos' if you will for this new genre from Mr. Bell...wow...I truly read it in one day...he has the ability to roll from one chapter to the other, and taking the reader along with him. A GREAT read...highly recommended