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Book Review of Short Straw (Ed Eagle, Bk 2)

Short Straw (Ed Eagle, Bk 2)
perryfran avatar reviewed on + 1215 more book reviews


This is the second book in the Ed Eagle series by Woods. I finished reading the first book, SANTA FE RULES, a few days ago and decided to follow it up with this one that I got online from the library. It pretty much is a continuation of the prior novel. Eagle has married the sister, Barbara, of the killer from the first book only to find out that she is also a killer and only out for Eagle's money. Ed finds out that Barbara, who is an authorized signer on his accounts, has pretty much wiped him out by transferring his funds to a bank in Mexico. He hires two private eyes to find her in Mexico and to coerce her into signing divorce papers. In the mean time, he draws the 'short straw' from a judge who assigns him as a public defender to Joe Big Bear who is accused of a triple murder. Big Bear finds out about a hit on Ed's life while he is in jail and later gets involved with the hit himself. The story goes on to the chase for Barbara in Mexico and how she seems to outsmart everyone involved while still trying to do away with Ed.

This was just an okay story to me. It seemed like a lot of the plot points from the first novel, SANTA FE RULES, were rehashed with the wife trying to do away with Ed to get his money and the triple murder with someone else possibly to blame. Most of the novel followed the two investigators trying to locate Barbara in Mexico with Ed playing a somewhat minor part in the story. I would only mildly recommend this one. I may read the next book in the series and hopefully it will be a stronger story.