Review: Evil All Along by Gregory Ashe

Title: Evil All Along

Series: The Last Picks: Book Eight

Author: Gregory Ashe

Length: 255 Pages

Category: Cozy Mystery

Rating: 4 Stars

At a Glance: Keme’s story hurts like a blunt instrument to the solar plexus, which makes the way it ends all the more wonderful. The Last Picks may not have it all together, but together they have it all.

Reviewed By: Lisa

Blurb: They say love makes fools of us all. It certainly makes idiots out of some of us.

It’s Dash’s second Halloween in Hastings Rock, and this year, he’s determined to have a normal spooky season—he’s going to hang out with his friends, hand out lots of candy, and seize every available opportunity for snuggles with a certain deputy.

Fate, though, has other things in store.

When Dash’s friend Keme is arrested for murder, Dash assumes it’s a misunderstanding—after all, this is Keme we’re talking about. But it turns out, not everyone in Hastings Rock trusts Keme. Or likes him. In fact, plenty of people are downright afraid of him, and for them, the arrest confirms what they’ve always suspected: that Keme is a seriously bad apple. And when Keme’s clothes turn up not far from the scene of the crime, covered in the victim’s blood, it’s the final piece of proof for the court of public opinion.

It’ll be up to Dash to prove Keme’s innocence.

But the real killer might have something to say about that.

Review: As soon as I heard Evil All Along was going to be Keme’s story, I prepared myself for a long, merciless, emotional whoopin’. It didn’t help. All the hints have been there that Keme’s had a hard go of his short life, and here it is: Proof.

Keme’s story hurts like a blunt instrument to the solar plexus, which makes the way it ends all the more wonderful. It’s what happens in between that gives readers the opportunity to see him, not through telling but through showing. Keme doesn’t talk much. He acts. He reacts And it’s those actions and reactions that allow us to absorb his fear, his vulnerability, and his rage at a world that never saw fit to be gentle with him.

Being accused of murder shows how much Keme’s new family, his found family, the Last Picks, love him and will do whatever it takes to make him feel safe and wanted. The challenge is for him to let them do it. Mix all that in with a heaping helping of heartbreak, and Keme is on the fast track to a breakdown. Or a breakthrough. Maybe both. It’s definitely both.

Obviously, this wouldn’t be a Dash and the gang book without some amateur sleuthing to make life just that little more dangerous for Dash. He’s so good at being nosy, though. He’s also good at attracting the kind of killers who wouldn’t mind doing away with him permanently in order to save themselves. Bobby Mai, extraordinary boyfriend and good cop, is going to earn all his gray hairs eventually. I do love how they’re both learning how to communicate. It’s all about speaking each other’s emotional language, really.

The Last Picks may not have it all together, but together they have it all.