Romance and other things

Trouble comes to Mosely, Montana, from the outside world. When the residents of Mosely are left on their own, they can make things work. Sure, there’s always been a militia operating up in the hills, but they were small-scale—just survivalists doing their thing—until organizers came in from out of state. Now Jericho Crewe and the rest of the sheriff’s department are facing down a heavily armed band of fanatics, and the feds are busy elsewhere.

The odds are hopeless, but Jericho swore an oath to serve and protect the citizens of Mosely. He won’t walk away from that, even if Wade Granger’s begging him to run away somewhere and finally be together the way they always should have been.

But this time, it’s Jericho who refuses to leave Mosely, even if staying kills him.

BEWARE OF SPOILERS.

Review:

Dear Kate Sherwood,

After reading part three of this series my expectations to read a satisfactory (to me) ending were quite low.

We catch up with our friends in small town of Mosely when Jericho is asking Kayla whether she indeed invited more feds in the town.

Alas, she did. Apparently there are rumors that survivalists/local militia/ rednecks increased their activity and Kayla feels that she may have need more help from the feds.

“Is there any possibility it’s a practical joke?” Jericho Crewe asked. “Or just a rumor, maybe?”

Unfortunately, Sheriff Kayla Morgan shook her head. “ I was the one who called them,” she said, leaning back in her battered leather desk chair.

“You called the feds.” Jericho waited a few seconds for the words to make sense, then gave up. “We have feds in tow worrying about the border, feds in town still cleaning up the biker mess, feds in town investigating your dad, feds in town trying to catch Wade – and you woke up one morning, looked around, asked yourself, “What does this town need more of?” and the answer you came up with was “feds.” Honestly?”

 The events start moving pretty fast very soon after that. Some militia folks decided that it was a good idea to ambush federal agents and people die on both sides and Jericho and other sheriff department people even managed to arrest some militia folks. Now small town of Mosley has one more investigation going – who sent the militia people into town.

But this was just the beginning, because apparently militia folks have much bigger plans to wreak havoc in Mosely and citizens of Mosely will have to rise defending their town.

Let’s stop right there. You would ask me why the citizens of Mosely will have to rise defending their town. Isn’t there a pretty big presence of the federal agents in their town *already*? And isn’t the presence of the federal agents from the several agencies only increasing after what militia folks did in the beginning of this book? Well, yes, yes they are were, but of course in order for Jericho to show off how heroic he could be and how he actually can remember that he is supposed to protect and serve people of Mosely ( surely that does not include being in bed with the mobster? Oh never mind. I do remember trying to convince myself that the story is a modern western in disguise when I was reading the previous part), federal agents have to leave the town temporarily, threat of militia coming down from the hills notwithstanding.

And leave town they do and come back after everything was pretty much over. I obviously do not want to spoil anybody that much, so I will let it to the readers to decide whether this story development made sense. The narrative definitely gives a reason why feds had to leave, but to me honestly it was not nearly convincing enough, but opinions may differ of course.

You would probably want to know how was Jericho and Wade’s relationship progressing. Oh they are openly together at the beginning of the story and the problems they face are mostly about them and their jobs.  Considering that Jericho still works for the police department and Wade is a local mobster it was not surprising to me.

I want to be very clear about one thing though – if I was not convinced before that Jericho and Wade love each other, I had no doubts whatsoever after I finished this story. Their love was deep and powerful and they were the most important people in each other’s life. I just wish I could *like* either of them more.

Jericho is still as incapable of self – reflection as he was before. Because yes, you are corrupt man – sleeping with the mobster albeit small scale mobster makes you that. Deciding that certain suspect in your investigation should be killed makes you that, protecting another suspect in another murder, especially if you pretty much know that the person did it makes you that.

But hey, that was a nice conversation Jericho and Wade did about what counts is that they did not kill *innocent people”. Never mind that Wade admits to lying and taking advantage of innocent people, never mind that he as good as admits that he supplied guns to militia people in the course of his totally honest employment as self- made local mobster. I guess as long as he had no idea that militia people will come with their plan to start revolution; he cannot be held responsible and him deciding to stay and fight to help innocent citizens of Mosely is all that matters now.

So, yes and they lived happily ever after. At least they quit their jobs thank goodness, but doing so at the end of the book really does not make me like them any better – they did enough damage already if you ask me, despite narrative wanting me to praise their heroics.

Grade: C-