Title: Deviations
Author: Mike Markel
Publisher: BooksForABuck.com
Buy Link: Buy Deviations Here!
Rating: 
You Want/Need To Read
Reviewed By: Nicole
Blurb:
Deviations is the second book in the Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery series. Former detective Karen Seagate is a divorced forty-two year old who is struggling to understand how her alcoholism is destroying her life. When the new chief of police gives her an opportunity to take a Fitness for Duty test and maybe get her job back, she takes it.
For reasons she doesn’t quite understand, she find herself back in the department in the small city of Rawlings, Montana, and reunited with her old partner, Ryan Miner, twenty-eight, a happily married LDS detective.
Deviations opens with the murder of Dolores Weston, a state senator who helped a pharmaceutical company from back East open a research facility in Rawlings. The case tests Seagate in ways she has never been tested before. She doesn’t know who to trust–not her new chief, not the FBI agent called in to assist, not even her own partner. Finally, she decides to go off the grid, knowing–perhaps even hoping–that doing so could cost her her life.
Review:
A summary of this novel is that the Senator Dolores Weston’s husband is murdered and they suspect that she had him murdered and used a person who was connected to the Montana Patriot Fund. She later on gets raped and murdered and they believe that is also the connection. Several persons of interest are introduced in this story. Professor Wilkins is murdered and he is the college gay community supporter despite not actually having come out as a gay person himself. Officer Seagate was raped while visiting the compound of the Montana Patriot Fund investigating the group itself and in connection with someone from that group being responsible for the murder and rape of Senator Weston. My thought was maybe the same person who raped Officer Seagate also raped Senator Weston and murdered her. Officer Seagate suspected Ricky because he raped her at the compound.
While all of this is going on her former partner and now current partner, Officer Miner is at the police station appearing to keep her out of the loop in the informational knowledge gambit.
Officer Seagate has Leonard Woosley and Ricky tell her his reasoning for the murder and rape of Senator Weston; as well as Professor Wilson. Then his accomplice Leonard also came to help Ricky “dispose” of her, Officer Seagate. FBI agent Friedman helps save Officer Seagate and Ricky gets shot in the process. But Leonard is the one fingered for the crime after having confessed to the murder of Senator Weston.
As the investigation goes on, it comes to light that Agent Friedman may have tried to frame one of the people for the murder. The question is why? What would his motive be for doing so? To keep from being implicated in something that he didn’t want to be involved in that resulted in the deaths of others. But in the end, the persons who got called on the crimes were the ones, who confessed, and the FBI also got the information they needed, and Officer Seagate remained on the police force.
Please note that this is book two in the series. Book one is available now and Book three is due out soon.
I gave this novel 3 ½ to 4 stars. Why the score range? Because I couldn’t just give it the lower score. I enjoyed the story. I could follow the mystery. I could follow the clues and go back to in the book itself where I needed to go to connect information found later on. The description was good, the intersecting storyline was good. My problem I guess came in with some of the use of the characters. Mostly who you read about in this story is Officer Seagate. So having not read the first novel I am only assuming that in the first novel it may have been both or just one of the characters that was focal to solving the case. I love the idea of a female protagonist solving the crime. I love the idea that she used her knowledge and her senses to solve the crime and was an intelligent person as well. But what I didn’t like was that I felt some of the other characters could have been better used as well. Do you read I feel that you may or may not agree with my assessment of the story? I have to say my favorite part is after the rape scene with Officer Seagate and how the actual crime reasoning is described to her. Is it normal for a person who committed a crime to get upset at your questioning his reasoning for the crime that he himself sees as a good thing to do? I am not sure about that but I believe you will enjoy the read.
