Lights Out: A Working Man's Mystery

Terry Saltz is back. He's still delivering pizza for Carol's pizza place in northeastern Ohio. His carpentry side business is thriving. He and Gruf are renovating Smitty's bar. Smitty is Gruf's dad. Carlo's has been sold. Once the new owners take over, Gruf and Terry are taking the staff and will be running Smitty's bar. At breakfast at Brewster's with the normal group one morning, Terry's ex Marylou walks in. She asks him to help her move. He refuses. That night while asleep, Terry hears gunshots in the trailer park. He and Danny run down the street to see what has happened. They find Marylou drunk, in a daze with a gun outside of a trailer without much on. The dead man is in the trailer. Terry knows Marylou isn't a killer. Soon it becomes evident that while she isn't a killer, the killer knows she survived. Can the gang hide her until they can figure out who the murderer is? Unfortunately Marylou can't remember a thing from that night! Can they piece together what happened that night without putting themselves or her in danger? Terry and his gang are back at it. They can't let Alan know they're investigating again. Matter of fact, Alan told Terry to butt out! That doesn't stop them. I love the characters this author has created and the way that she presents them. It makes them seem so alive. I'd love to work at Carlo's and have breakfast at Brewster's with them! I love this series. I recommend you read the first in this series, Cold Slice, first so that you get all the background on the characters. It really helps. I highly recommend this book and the whole series!

The plot is light but the characters are wonderful. You truly get to know Terry and his friends as you join them in their day and work. There's very good dialogue and light humor. It's heavy on profanity, but not inappropriate for the characters. I read the first in the series and will probably keep following Terry and the gang. This is a fun, quick read.

L.T. Fawkes has created a set of characters and locations that are so vivid that I could draw pictures of them all! The trailer, the bar, the pizza joint, the breakfast table... the friends hanging out together... they just come alive in these books. A medium-boiled mystery which is neither genteel nor gory, Lights Out lives up to the debut which hooked me on this series. Terry and friends continue to form a family and grow in their relationships while solving the murders around them. The characters evolve from book to book, and I can't wait to see what happens to them in Fawkes' next book! Nicely paced, excellent character development, interesting plot.

Terry Saltz is the protagonist, a carpenter who is also a pizza delivery guy for Carlo's Pizza. Every morning he and his friends have breakfast at Brewster's, and that is where Terry's (ex) wife, Marylou, tracks him down. She asks him to help her move, and he says 'no' emphatically.Gruf's dad Smitty is setting up the bar he owns for Gruf to take over, so he's hired Terry to make some improvements. In the midst of all of this, Terry and his roommate John hear gunshots down the street at some awful hour of the morning and find Marylou wasted (drugs and alcohol) with a shotgun in her hand. John, the cop, takes control. Terry and his friends know that Marylou didn't kill the man found in the empty trailer, so they work to find out the real story. Again, LT Fawkes has written a story I couldn't put down. It is an interesting read, different from most mysteries in that I find it fairly down to earth. There are a lot of day to day things that most people don't include in their stories, but I like that it adds some more to the characters. And I've become fairly attached to Gruf, Bump, and Terry. ok, maybe Danny, too, but not as much. I don't know too many read-alikes for these - they aren't bloody or gruesome, but there is swearing. A lot of new characters are introduced, and there is some (not a lot) romance.