The Lost Coast

Starred review from July 1, 2024
Father and son Kellerman collaborate on the fifth Clay Edison PI adventure. On Northern California's Lost Coast, the executor of a woman's estate needs help sorting out some curious monthly payments the deceased had been making. Having no luck with one private investigator, she asks Oakland ex-cop turned PI Clay Edison. Soon the original PI, Regina Klein, bawls him out in bleep-worthy terms for horning in on her case, but they form a temporary alliance to solve a complicated plot that's rife with peril. It looks like someone is running a real estate scam on an isolated location on the Lost Coast called Swann's Flat. A narrow and dangerous road twists and turns to the destination, and Clay sideswipes a teenage cyclist on a hairpin turn. The girl, Shasta, doesn't blame Clay for her minor injuries, and she becomes a key in a story that's peppered with vivid descriptions: Clay sees "the Pacific Coast baring its teeth. It was a crude, ax-hewn land, bunched like the front end of a head-on collision." And Regina is one of an abundance of well-drawn, entertaining characters: She has a gift for acting and easily switches from garbage-mouth to sweetness and light as the situation calls for. As a pretend married couple, they go to Swann's Flat and let a B.S. artist named Beau try to sell them property in this "private residential community": "Find your heart on the Lost Coast!" Clay checks in frequently with his real wife, Amy, who's at home with their two kids. He even consults with her on how much risk he should take; they are a loving family apparently devoid of flaws. Meanwhile, a one-hit-wonder novelist can't be found, and another young man is missing. Years earlier, Shasta's dad had fallen into oblivion off a cliff so high you couldn't hear the thump at the bottom. Maybe it was an accident or maybe not. And maybe Pop won't be the cliff's last victim. Crisp, witty dialogue zips this well-paced story along so that when violence happens, it comes as a shock. Kellerman fans will love this one.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

July 1, 2024
In the fifth Clay Edison novel, a seemingly straightforward case gets uncomfortably convoluted. It's been about a year since Clay left the police force as a deputy coroner. He's a private investigator now, enjoying the relative simplicity of the cases he works on. When a client presents him with what appears to be a typical case of land fraud, Clay doesn't anticipate any serious problems in the investigation. Turns out he's wrong--dead wrong. The Kellermans, father and son, have done a fine job with this series, introducing Clay Edison in 2017's Crime Scene as a principled, determined man who has an unerring sense of when the circumstances surrounding a death are suspicious. It was a smart move to take Clay out of the coroner's office, broadening the range of cases he might investigate and making sure the series doesn't devolve into increasingly improbable stories, like some other series have. Readers will thoroughly enjoy this novel, and should probably settle in for many more Clay Edison mysteries.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

July 12, 2024

In the father-son Kellerman team's follow-up to The Burning, Clay Edison is now a licensed private investigator, giving him more freedom to operate than he had as a coroner's investigator. When a former client refers Chris Villareal, who needs assistance with matters concerning his grandmother's estate, Clay thinks that it should be an easy case. Chris has found some strange financial transactions in her papers. It seems that she has purchased land in Swan's Flat, a remote rural area on California's Lost Coast. When Clay goes to investigate, he finds that even the trip over roads that are nearly nonexistent is perilous. Once there, he has to pay a small fortune for a ratty room in a rundown inn. The few locals are less than welcoming, spying on him, shooting at him, and vandalizing his car. His wife and family, anxious since there is no cellphone reception, want him to come home, but Clay continues investigating. He discovers a web of fraud and deception that goes back several generations and works hard to help Chris while staying alive. VERDICT The Kellermans excel at creating menacing environments and truly creepy characters, spinning a tale that will keep readers turning pages all night.--Barbara M. Bibel

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 12, 2024
In father/son duo Jonathan and Jesse Kellerman’s entertaining latest case for PI Clay Edison (after The Burning), the former coroner heads to rural California to unwind inconsistencies in a dead woman’s estate. A San Francisco man named Chris Villareal asks Clay for a meeting at his recently deceased grandmother’s home on the outskirts of the city. While going through the late woman’s papers, Chris has discovered a series of mysterious monthly payments that added up to more than $50,000, and he wants Clay to determine what the money was for. Clay’s search takes him to the tiny, heavily forested Northern Californian hamlet of Swann’s Flat—population 13—where it turns out Chris’s grandmother owned property. Once there, Clay is faced with hostile, gun-toting locals, and he stumbles into the case of a missing young man that’s being pursued by an unfriendly fellow PI. Eventually, everything connects in a smartly orchestrated conspiracy. The Kellermans skillfully connect the plot’s many dots without skimping on character development—Clay’s rapport with his wife, Amy, who worries about the dangers of his profession, rings especially true. Series fans and newcomers alike will enjoy themselves.