Title: Redirection
Series: Borealis: Without a Compass: Book Three
Author: Gregory Ashe
Publisher: Self-Published
Length: 333 Pages
Category: Mystery/Suspense
Rating: 5 Stars
At a Glance: I can’t possibly begin to guess at the method behind Gregory Ashe’s madness, but North McKinney stomped on my very last nerve in Redirection. So why all the stars when so much of what happened in this book felt like repeatedly taking an ice pick to the temple? That’s easy: the mystery is, unsurprisingly, outstanding.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: When it comes to your ex, nothing is ever easy.
The Borealis boys are settling into their new normal, or at least into their new digs. But when North’s soon-to-be (please-let-it-be-soon) ex-husband, Tucker, is arrested and charged with murder, everything goes sideways.
Hired by Tucker’s parents, North and Shaw begin looking for proof that Tucker is innocent, in spite of the evidence against him. When they find seemingly incriminating photos hidden in Tucker’s BMW, North is convinced that someone is trying to frame Tucker—and might get away with it.
But the cast of alternate suspects presents its own challenges: an estranged son, a betrayed wife, and North and Shaw’s close-knit circle of friends from college—men who had their own connections to the victim, and who had their own reasons for wanting him dead. A threatening email suggests that the motive, whatever it might be, lies buried in the past, in a relationship gone wrong. The question is, which one?
When Tucker is poisoned, North and Shaw realize that the killer isn’t finished. Clearing Tucker’s name won’t be enough; they must find the killer before someone else dies. And to do so, they will have to unearth truths from their own pasts.
Review: Anyone who’s read a single word of Gregory Ashe’s writing knows that extremes of conflict, both of the internal and external variety, is a signature characteristic of his work. His protagonists wouldn’t exist even partially formed without the deep-seated impulse to fight themselves, their pasts, their hurts, and their anger. Perhaps most significant, however, is that they will fight, tooth and nail, the one person they love above all others, which is counterintuitive, of course, by any stretch of the imagination, but that tendency towards throwing up defense mechanisms that feel a lot like self-sabotage runs the depth and breadth of their existence. The contradiction is that the pushing and testing and antagonism is little more than a test to see how much the person they love will push back, will tolerate, will keep on loving them through it all. The end result is that it sometimes makes Ashe’s characters difficult to like, but we only need to take the series’ subtitle into consideration—Without a Compass—to understand that both North and Shaw are winging it in every way, and often failing spectacularly.
With that as a preface, I’ll say this book tested my patience to its very limits. Specifically, North McKinney stomped on my very last nerve, and full-throated confession, I didn’t like him some of the time. But, I’m also willing to assimilate the imperfections in characters who populate a story without dismissing the book wholesale, because people can, in fact, behave like complete tools and make stupid choices and yet not be inherently bad or entirely unsympathetic; these things make them flawed and all-too human, which makes for a credible depiction of the things we sometimes do, consciously or unconsciously, to destroy our own happiness. Especially so if we feel we haven’t earned that happiness or, perhaps worse, don’t deserve it in the first place. Yet another hallmark of this author’s work is the extremes of damage resulting from defective and/or toxic parenting, which often drives his characters’ behaviors. North made it real hard on himself in Redirection. He unraveled in some fairly breathtaking ways, and because he’d rather deflect and cast aspersions and shuffle blame than deal with his trauma, he made me want to scream my frustration into the pixels-and-eInk void of my iPad screen, so kudos to Ashe for making me absolutely lose my damn mind over this book. I would never go so far as to say North is now irredeemable, he’s not. But at this point it might only be my unwavering trust in Ashe’s process that’s prodding and compelling me to see the absolute spectacle that is North and Shaw’s relationship all the way through to its fulfillment.
So why all the stars when so much of what happened in Redirection felt like repeatedly taking an ice pick to the temple? That’s easy: the mystery is, unsurprisingly, outstanding and centers around Tucker Laguerre, North’s someday-just sign the damn papers for gods’ sake-abusive-almost ex-husband, who has been accused of and arrested for murdering a man in a seedy motel room. But not just any man, one of the many men Tucker has been having sex with over the years, including while he was dating, engaged to, and married to North. It makes sense that Tucker would eventually rear his ugly head in a pronounced way in the series, thanks to all the unresolved trauma and anger North hasn’t even tried to process yet, so this is it, Tucker’s chance to show readers firsthand what a manipulative and cheating and abusive bastard he is. He does an excellent job of it too.
It’s Tucker’s dad who hires North and Shaw to investigate the case, though, believing his son is innocent of the crime he’s been accused of committing, which presses North’s psychological and emotional wellbeing to its limits. North feels a sense of obligation to take on this investigation because the Laguerres were always good to him. Yes, the crumbs of simple human kindness shown to him is what propels him into nearly destroying himself, which is a sad testament to how little decency North has been shown in his short lifetime. His own father gets to carry a good portion of the burden for that.
The wrench in the machinery that is this case is the new prosecutor, who isn’t as keen on making sure all the clues lead to the right killer as much as she’s interested in making sure Tucker fits the crime, but the deeper the Borealis boys dig, the more they unearth, and it seems the victim, Ric Slooves, was the sort of guy who some might say had it coming. Every single thing about this mystery is tautly suspenseful and tightly woven, with red herrings and false confessions and a family shredded to bits by Rik’s deceit and indiscretions thrown in to muck things up. North and Shaw are truly exceptional at this investigation business, better than they are at a functional relationship—even when North decided they needed to go back to being just friends ::pfft::—and there’s nothing much better than watching them banter about all manner of inanities as they throw the person they’re about to question off balance.
As more ugly secrets are uncovered about Rik, about Tucker, and about some of North and Shaw’s friends who get tied up in the investigation, everything continues to unravel between these guys on both a personal and professional front. It also wouldn’t be a case (or a Gregory Ashe book) if it didn’t come along with some grave bodily injury to them, which threatens both their lives from different sources, but with equal emotional impact. Hospital bed confessions are also a familiar scene in this author’s mysteries, and the ones offered here have shifted North and Shaw forward; though, previous experience dictates they’re still going to screw things up a few times before they find their equilibrium.
Redirection is a challenging read, to put it mildly, requiring more than a modicum of patience and a concerted effort at understanding why smart people sometimes do stupid things. There were more than a few times when I decided it’d be best for Shaw to just get back together with his ex, Jadon Reck, and keep North firmly in the friendzone. But alas, that wouldn’t be fair to Jadon; I like him way too much to watch him settle for being anyone’s default. So onward to see where Ashe is taking these characters next. If good ole “Uncle” Ronnie has anything to say about it, it’s going to be a nasty ride.
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