Night Tremors by Matt Coyle is Book 2 in A Rick Cahill Novel Series.
If you're a lover of "noir" mystery featuring the old-fashioned but relatively young washed-up cop with issues and enough heartache to stretch through several lifetimes, you'll enjoy the Rick Cahill series. If I had to compare Matt Coyle's writing to one of my favorite contemporaries in the genre, it would be that of James Scott Bell. Coyle writes with a similar touch of melancholy and cynicism coupled with his own brand of wit and humor in those un-funny situations characters like Rick Cahill always seem to find themselves navigating.
This story begins with Cahill on the job filming a couple in flagrante delicto. He was hired by a private investigator who used to be Rick's late father's partner on the police force. Cahill's had his fill of catching cheating spouses in action and needs a break or a different kind of assignment even though he's discovered, much to his distaste, he's incredibly good at what he's doing.
When he's allowed to take some time off, he grudgingly hooks up with a defense attorney (Buckley) who wants his services to get a new trial for a life-imprisoned young man convicted several years before of brutally slaughtering his parents and little sister with a 9-iron golf club.
Turns out the young man's grandparents don't believe he did it and hired Buckley to help them get the kid a new trial. Buckley's all in, but Rick wants to meet the young man at the prison first.
With a sudden new witness who seems shaky but willing, Cahill takes it all on making his private investigator boss very unhappy and not afraid to share his disgust with Rick.
As Rick tries to put all the developing pieces of a contorted puzzle together, roadblocks and confusion keep interfering to slow him down and take him out.
Night Tremors is the work of a true noir writer where the end of the story is a mere conclusion without any alleviation from the melancholy and an added burden with the promise of more grief to follow.
Father, you're the Author of Life and the giver of gifts and talents. Thank you for those who write and use the talent you've given them. May each one know from whom it comes. Please bless Matt and may he write the stories you have just for him to tell. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.