Story for the Week
Corinne and I always plan for the next series to binge watch. Our current show is Modern Family. We’re on season eight of eleven, and now I’m stuck waiting for two months until she comes home.
A month ago, Corinne started a semester abroad in Liverpool. Since she can’t stream the show there, I agreed to wait for her to come home to continue watching it. She did recently text me about a spoiler from season ten that she happened to see, so I told her she could spoil it for me too so we’d be on a level playing field. 😂
Now that I’m watching television by myself in the evenings, I find myself catching up on the shows I enjoy that Corinne doesn’t really care about. I finished the fifth season of Virgin River in a couple of days. I finished watching the final season of Blue Bloods, which actually ended back in December. I still have to catch up on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and NCIS. And I’ve been seeing a lot of TikTok video clips of ER, so I’ve been thinking about rewatching that.
I’ll also spend a lot more time reading. I’m ahead of my reading schedule thanks to two trans-Atlantic flights. It would be great to stay ahead of schedule for at least a little while. Plus, I enjoy watching television more with Corinne as a wind-down in the evenings. It’s not nearly as much fun without her. She texted recently that she misses watching television with me. (Back at ya, kid. 🤗)
While we were in Liverpool the week before Corinne started classes, we found ourselves watching marathons of Judge Judy. It was on, it was something we knew we would enjoy, and it wasn’t anything we had to concentrate on through the jetlag.
During the commercial breaks, the station aired previews of Cold Cases Reopened. We never got to watch any of them because we weren’t in the hotel when they were on, but Corinne made a comment during one of the commercials that cold cases are fascinating. I agree with her on that. Now that I think about it, maybe I’ll rewatch Cold Case while she’s away. 🤔
The book reviewed below dealt with a really cold case involving the main character’s brother. It’s the third in a series but a great stand-alone novel.
Book Review
⭐⭐⭐⭐
4 Stars for A Long Time Gone by Joshua Moehling
325 pages
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Publication Date: February 4, 2025
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press.
Publisher’s Description
It’s time to put the past to rest…
Ben Packard was just a boy when his older brother disappeared. Ben watched him walk out the back door of their grandparents’ house and into the cold night.
His brother was never seen again.
Decades later, Deputy Packard finds himself with too much time on his hands. A shooting has him on leave and under investigation, and all he can do is dwell on the past. For the first time in years, new information about his brother has surfaced that may lead them to the location of a body.
The midwinter ground is frozen solid. Worse, Packard is cut off from department resources. As he strikes out to finally uncover the truth behind his brother’s disappearance, he stumbles on a separate, suspicious death. A tenuous connection exists between the two cases, and as Packard starts to dig, he meets fierce resistance from friends and foes alike who want him to stand down.
The winter is long and cold. By the end of it, Packard will risk everything to catch a killer and reveal the shocking truth about his brother.
************
Main Characters:
- Ben Packard – Sandy Lake Sheriff’s Deputy, recently lost an election for Sheriff after being acting Sheriff and lead investigator, current Sheriff assigned him to courthouse security
- Howard Shepard – newly elected Sandy Lake Sheriff, former investigator who Ben had been ready to fire
- Jim Wolf – chair of the county board of commissioners who had led Howard’s campaign
- Jill Thielen – Sheriff’s Deputy, close friend and ally to Packard, still works as lead investigator
- Deputy Reynolds – newest deputy, being trained by Thielen, Packard borrows him for some of his investigation
- Ray Wiley – a lawyer with a small firm in Sandy Lake, played bridge with Louise Larsen who recently died from a fall down her stairs, Howard’s father-in-law
- Lisa Washington – Ray’s daughter and a public defender, her sister is married to Howard
A Long Time Gone is the third is a series of books featuring Ben Packard, a Deputy Sheriff in Sandy Lake, Minnesota. Packard recently lost a contentious election against Howard Shepard for Sandy Lake Sheriff. With no love lost between the two men, Shepard assigned Packard to courthouse security, quite the step down from the lead investigator and acting Sheriff he had been before the election.
The story starts during a court recess. Jim Wolf is involved in a case against Robert Clark, and Wolf stands to make a lot of money if he wins. As the recess comes to a close, Clark pulls a gun aimed at Wolf, and Packard is forced to shoot him. Since an officer-involved shooting has to go through an investigation, Packard is put on leave.
The author does a great job at making this a stand-alone novel, so I didn’t feel like I was missing much, even though I don’t have the entire back story between Packard and Shepard. Not gonna lie, I might go back and read the first two books because I enjoyed this one enough that I’m curious about the history.
What I do know is this: The former Sheriff passed away, which is how Packard came to be acting Sheriff. While acting Sheriff, Packard investigated a case of someone who abducted and killed several women, reminding him of the disappearance of his own brother 30 years before. He went looking for his brother’s case file, but it turned out to contain only some pictures, a handwritten letter from the former Sheriff, and a map indicating where his brother’s remains are said to be.
Since that he’s on leave with endless time on his hands, Packard decides to start looking into the disappearance of his brother. It’s winter, and the ground is frozen, so Packard figures he can ask some of the residents about one of the pictures to determine whether they can identify two teenagers pictured with his brother.
When Packard shares what he knows with his family, his mother decides to visit him, and they drive to together to Lake Redwing where Packard’s grandfather used to own a lake house. The hope is to find out who lived around the lake when his brother was alive, and his mother hopes to see Louise Larsen, who purchased their family home.
Upon their arrival in Lake Redwing, Louise’s front door is sealed with police tape, and they discover that she died from a fall down her basement stairs the previous summer. When Packard lets himself into the house, he’s suspicious of the determination that Louise’s death was accidental and starts poking around that case as well.
That’s the setup. What follows takes so many turns. The more information Packard uncovers, the more suspect everyone in this affluent town becomes. It gives the classic small-town vibe of everyone knows everyone and everything, but everyone has secrets they’re trying to hide. And the deeper Packard gets into those secrets, the more dangerous the situation becomes.
By the end, there have been disappearances, murders, fraud, theft, cover-ups, you name it. This story overflows with action, and Packard finds himself at the center of everything. The author does a great job with the characters too. Packard describes his mom by saying “Her spirituality was an ever-evolving casserole of new age, Wiccan, Native, Buddhist, feminist, sex-positive beliefs that only made sense to her.” She’s a bit over the top…ok, a lot over the top, and the sex-positivity goes a little too far for my tastes, but I feel like it rings true for her character.
We get a taste for the friendship between Thielen and Packard in their interactions. When she mentions having some recent stomach issues and Packard suggests maybe she’s pregnant, she comes back with “Maybe you’re an asshole who should get out of my office if you’re not here to do any actual work.” But Packard regularly goes for dinner with her and her husband. They’re friends outside of work and bust each other’s chops on a regular basis.
I won’t give away how the whole story line unfolds or resolves. It’s a bit complicated, and I don’t want to spoil it anyway. I enjoyed seeing how everything wraps up, and I’m hopeful that Packard will find his place back in investigation (and maybe behind the Sheriff’s desk) in future books.
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