Robert J. Ray

Glitzy, tense, fast-moving, and a private investigator I won't forget. Matt Murdock's a lump of coal amid southern California glitter, a sod house among the palaces, an old Plymouth, albeit very well kept, among the Porsches. He's an ex-Army cop who knows how to use his weapon. If you've just offed a beautiful young starry-eyed Hollywood hopeful, you don't want him in your neighborhood. His creator, Robert J. Ray, is a writer's writer, one who can turn a sentence with the best. I will now show more read every Matt Murdock mystery I can lay my hands on. show less

Murdock Tackles Taos is an any-time summer read, a murder mystery fueled with action: a missing woman and a corpse, good guys and bad guys, love and sex, all flavored with evil I will not reveal. Also, Murdock Tackles Taos examines privilege and the extremes that mega-wealth can afford. When you can buy anything or anyone you want, what more is there? What games do humans play when the thrill is gone? When human life loses all meaning or value?

Through it all, Murdock makes me smile. He’s show more not a suave, sophisticated James Bond. He’s not a disheveled, bumbling Colombo either. He’s real. He’s kind. He’s somebody to share a good adventure with. Helene Steinbeck, retired town marshal turned successful author, is Murdock’s new sidekick and lover. She makes me just a tiny bit jealous.

Robert Ray’s novel tossed me back and forth between the feel of a summer read and a study in human nature – either way Murdock Tackles Taos is a read you won’t want to miss. show less

This novel is so bad that I hardly know how to express it. Nothing in the information I received for the review suggested that it is unfinished or unedited work, but it isn’t even a decent first draft. Characters appear from nowhere with no introduction, no antecedents, and not the slightest hint about their motivation. To call them cardboard characters would be higher praise than they deserve. Their thoughts are vacuous, their dialog is stilted, and the plot is contrived. If I hadn’t show more agreed to review it for Library Thing, I wouldn’t have finished the first chapter. By the 70% point on my Kindle I completely lost patience with it. show less

This book was an early reviewer copy that I had received quite awhile ago. I had tried to read it then, but I just couldn't get into it, so put it aside. I decided to persevere and read the book so that I have a review on file for the publisher. I didn't like the book at all. It is far too graphic for my taste, and it seems like the author has tried to cram a whole bunch of different kinds of depraved behaviour into one book. We have kidnapping, white slavery, murder and many other unsavoury show more things going on in this book. Some I don't even care to mention in a review because it pushes the book past entertainment into something totally macabre. This is supposedly book 6 in the Matt Murdock series, but I don't think reading any of the earlier books before this one would have made the book more enjoyable for me. If you don't like your mysteries graphic, frenetic and with a totally off-the-wall villain, give this book a pass. show less