Barbara Nickless

Barbara Nickless certainly knows how to write compelling thrillers with strong main characters. Former Marine and railway cop Sydney Rose Parnell suffers from PTSD. In Iraq, she served in Mortuary Affairs, the detail that prepared soldiers killed in action to be returned to their families in the U.S. In her own words, "We were the Marines the other Marines avoided. The pariahs, the bad-luck charms. The ones no one wanted to risk being near." Combine that with her other combat experiences and show more it's no wonder that she has PTSD. At least, now in her job as a railway cop, she has her former war dog, Clyde, at her side to help her out.

Ambush centers on the promise Sydney made to a young Iraqi boy and the lengths to which she will go to fulfill that promise. The narrow escapes she has from the killer known as Alpha show how determined he is to keep his secrets, but they also show that Sydney refuses to quit. Her guilt and the promise she made to the Iraqi boy, Malik, prove that nothing will stop her in her quest to ensure a good life for the boy-- even if it means getting to the bottom of why Alpha will go to any lengths to cover his tracks.

Sydney Parnell is a strong, nuanced character that readers can really sink their teeth into, and her investigations can really keep hearts racing. I know I'm looking forward to the next book in the series. show less

It's wonderful when you pick up a book with few expectations and then find yourself swept away by it so that you are reluctant to put it down until you reach the end. That's what happened to me with 'At First Light'.

I'd expected the book to be good because I had enjoyed 'Blood On The Tracks', the first book in Barbara Nickless' Sydney Rose Parnell series about an ex-soldier turned railroad cop and her service dog, but that was quite a dark and serious book with the mystery wrapped around the show more causes and effects of PTSD. 'At First Light' is also dark, it's about ritual killings after all, but it is, from the first page, a glorious cinematic entertainment that feels like a striking anime that uses strong lines and a dark palette to create an atmosphere that is one part threat, one part humour and two parts sheer escapism.

I was hooked after only a few chapters. I loved the wit and deliberately dramatic scene-setting. Then there's the puzzle of the posed dead body showing signs of a ritual killing and surrounded by what looked like Norse runes. What truly pulled me in was Dr Evan Wilding who has comic book graphic novel character written all over him. A British academic who has tenure at the University of Chicago where he lectures on semiotics, does falconry as a hobby, works with the Chicago police as a consulting forensic semiotician giving meaning to signs, intentional and unintentional, left behind by killers and who is also only fifty-three inches tall. The sight of him going toe-to-toe with an oversized narcissistic anti-intellectual Police Lieutenant made me smile.

The book wasn't all the Dr. Wilder show. The other main character is homicide detective Addie Bisset, a strong, independent woman who is feeling undervalued by the new Lieutenant who seems not to see policing as a suitable job for a woman. Addie drives a lot of the action in the book. She's also the reason for Evan Wilding's involvement, which gave the story a background hum of unrequited affection between the two.

I liked the way that Barbara Nicklass kept a nice balance between the puzzle and the personal. Solving the puzzle involved taking in large amounts of information about Norse mythology, different interpretations of Beowulf, the structure of Norse poetry and a detailed description of the how runes are translated yet all of this was managed in an engaging way that never dragged and was actually quite fun in a nerdy-but-cool kind of way. The personal part was fascinating. The characters were all a bit superhero larger than life but then that's what I like about superhero stories. Why be subtle when you can be graphically compelling?

But there was more to them than that. They became people who you started to care about and who you could see cared about each other. Barbara Nickless used this to create a slowly building sense of threat. Every time I saw something or someone that Dr Evan Wilding liked, I heard the echo of future loss, of grief waiting in the shadows and wonder whether they would survive until the end of the book.

I had great fun with this. I've already ordered the second book in the series 'Dark Of Night', which comes out later this year. show less

A well-plotted murder story that introduces a strong but guilt-ridden ex-army Railroad Cop and her service dog, tracking a killer who seems to be a Vet suffering from PTSD.

"Blood On The Tracks" is not the catch-the-killer kind of crime story that it may appear to be. The real mystery being unwrapped through the novel is the complex history and fractured but resilient character of Sydney Rose Parnell, the Railroad cop who gets dragged into the investigation of a murder, apparently committed show more by an ex-army vet turned rail rider.

Sydney is compelling. She's an ex-soldier who spent fourteen months in Mortuary Affairs in the US Army, scooping up human remains in Iraq. Now she's back home in Denver, working as railroad cop, together with a service dog that she brought back from the war and who is as damaged by it as Sydney is.

It's clear from the beginning that Sydney, who is literally haunted by her war dead and who has secrets to hide and grief and regret to live with is the centre of the story.
Barbra Nickless' writing is deft, letting the reader discover and guess rather than signposting meanings. We first see Sydney and her ex-army service dog out amongst the homeless she's supposed to roust but who she also feeds. Then we see her at the crime scene. Her approach is credible, pain-filled, more than a little off-centre in a PTSD kind of way and completely human. From that point on, I knew I wanted to understand who she is and how she came to be that way.

One of the things I like most about "Blood On The Tracks" was the realistic and empathetic way that it handles grief and mourning for the dead. Sydney talks about "the weight" of her dead. She carries them with her. Sees them at her breakfast table.
I like "weight" as a description.I'm a civilian. No PTSD for me. But that doesn't mean no weight. I don't see anyone but the living at my breakfast table. I don't get glimpses of the gone but I have no difficulty imagining that happening to me.

My dead are like potholes in my road, cavities in my teeth, absences that make themselves known from time to time and snag all of my attention.

In my experience, grief doesn't move through six neatly labelled stages and then stop. It comes in waves that drench you and then leave. Sometimes it's just a splash. Sometimes they roll you for a while, so you don't know which way is up and breathing becomes difficult.

The grief in "Blood On The Tracks" isn't a plot device or a way of accessorising a character, it's the central idea book and it's delivered with strong, clear, uncompromising writing that I admire.

I also enjoyed the skilful way Barbara Nickless drew upon a detailed knowledge of two worlds that are alien to me, the US Army and the US Railroad, and wove them into the story in ways that made it stronger, more distinctive and more credible without ever leaving me feel like I'd just been force-fed a stomach full of information.

The plot is twisty and sometimes surprising- It's larded with moments of high drama and violence and paced to provide continuous tension and still manages seamlessly to integrate a great deal of introspection and recollections of Sydney's time in Iraq.
I enjoyed the book a great deal and I'm looking forward to the rest of the series.

The only niggle that I have is the first chapter, which, if it had continued much longer, might have made me set the book aside. It's a framing chapter, setting up the murder around which the rest of the book will revolve and introducing the main suspect.

The suspect is interesting and the potential pathos is high but it was told from a distance, never really letting me inside the suspects head. It read more like the notes I might give an actor who wants to play this part. The text was a little heavy-handed, leaving me in no doubt about what I was supposed to feel but not actually making me feel it.

It wasn't a long chapter, so I moved on to the next, already wondering if this book would be another for my DNF pile and asking myself if I was becoming too picky or maybe I was just jaded.

Then I met Sydney Rose Parnel and I wanted to ask the author and the editor: "Why didn't you start here?".

I listened to the audiobook version of "Blood On The Tracks" and I recommend it to you. Click on the SoundCloud link below to hear a sample.
https://soundcloud.com/brilliance-audio/blood-on-the-tracks-by-barbara-nickless show less

Gone to Darkness by Barbara Nickless
Sydney Rose Parnell #4

Gripping, gritty, gruesome beginning to what proved to be an excellent story. I was hooked from page one and wanted the bad guy put away before I even read what he would eventually do. Evil stepped off the page and made me glad I would never have to interact with such a creature…at least I *hope* I won’t!

Sydney’s move from railway cop to homicide detective comes with a whole lot of having to prove herself. She is a rookie that show more everyone expects to fail or bail before her probation ends. Her mentor is a curmudgeonly sort that grew on me. Her boyfriend and his cousin were a delight – would love to hear more about Evan Wilding in future books. Clyde the K-9 partner is special and endearing and a force to be reckoned with. Sydney definitely holds her own and also uses her contacts with the railroad to solve the murder as the body was found in a refrigerated car on one of the trains that passed through town.

What I liked:
* Sydney: she seems like someone I would enjoy knowing. Her background in the military left her with an empathy with the dead and a connection stronger than most.
* Clyde: a K-9 with skills beyond those of his training
* Epigraphs that begin each chapter…interesting and well worth reading
* Bandoni: seasoned detective not easy to warm up to at first but a great character by the end of the story
* Cohen: seems to be a good book boyfriend to Sydney…and smart, too.
* Evan Wilding: a brilliant man in his field
* The police procedural parts
* The train information
* Learning about Pick-Up artists bent on seduction – learned some new terms, too
* Seeing into the minds of evil doers
* That the bad guys were caught in the end

What I didn’t like:
* The predators and what they did
* The women treated as less than human
* The creepiness…but I liked it, too
* Knowing I will have to wait awhile for the next book in the series.

Did I enjoy this book? Definitely
Would I read more int his series? Without a doubt!

Thank you to NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for the ARC – This is my honest review.

5 Stars show less