Title: For Keeps: A Sam Moore
Mystery
Author: Aaron Paul Lazar
Publisher: Twilight Times Books
Genre: Paranormal Mystery
eBook: $4.99
ASIN: B008OXZLR2
Author’s website: lazarbooks.com
Author’s blog: aaronlazar.blogspot.com
Amazon
buy link
I
turned the last page of For Keeps by
Aaron Paul Lazar and sat with my mouth open repeating the word “wow” over and
over again. I was mentally exhausted
from the waves of emotion that I had just ridden for the past two days. I had traversed from intrigue to shock to
anger to grief and back again. I
actually had to take a few days after finishing the book before I started this
review because my heart and mind were racing so fast that I’m sure the review
would have just been a bunch of random babbling. I had to let myself settle down before
putting my thoughts to paper. Now that’s
a reaction to a book if I’ve ever heard one!
Sam Moore thought his life would be quiet after retiring from his
practice as a family doctor in East Goodland, New York and planned to fill his
time with gardening and spending quality time with his family, but after finding
himself caught up in two mysteries over the past year, it has been anything but
quiet. Now, a body has been found at the
Twin Sisters Inn, and the coroner wants Sam on the scene right away. Why him?
Lou knows that he’s retired, but for some reason she has asked
specifically for him. Arriving at the
inn, Sam’s past comes back to haunt him when he finds out that the murder victim
is a flame from long ago. Ginger Kennedy
was her name, and she lit up his world one Spring Break in Miami during his
senior year of medical school. Ginger
Kennedy was just a fling though before he met his future wife, and he has been a
happily married family man for many years now, so why would Ginger have showed
up in town and circled Sam’s number in the phone book? That’s what the police are beginning to
wonder too. What follows is a whirlwind
mystery where once again Sam’s brother, Billy, reaches out to him from the
beyond to guide Sam to the identity of the killer. All Sam has to do is take hold of the green
marble in his pocket when it grows hot and Billy whisks him into the past or
another location in the present to provide Sam with the clues he needs to solve
the mysterious deaths that begin to pile up.
But will Sam be too late this time?
Will Billy’s clues be able to save Sam from the ultimate
heartbreak?
I
met and fell in love with Sam Moore and his family in book one of this series,
Healey’s Cave, and now two books later I am more deeply attached to this family
than ever. Sam is honestly the most warm
and caring character that I have ever encountered in a book, and I am always
drawn to him like a bee to honey, and the relationships that he has with his
wife, Rachel, and his children and grandchildren, touch me to my very core. I feel like if I could somehow jump into the
story and walk into Sam’s home, he would welcome me with open arms. I know what you are thinking – he’s just a
made up character from a book – but Lazar is such an incredibly talented writer
that Sam has become as real to me as the people I encounter in my everyday
life. I feel like I know him
personally. I can feel his warmth and
love, and through Lazar’s almost photographic descriptive skills, I feel like I
have walked through the rooms of his home and visited his favourite haunts in
East Goodland. This is because Lazar
makes Sam very observant of the world and people around him, and we get to see
everything very clearly from his point of view.
Lazar describes everything in such detail and so convincingly that even
if you had no interest in gardening, for instance, you would probably want to
try it by the end of the book because you can actually feel the joy and
satisfaction that Sam gets from working outdoors. I also love the fact that in each successive
book in the series, Lazar provides us with more and more details of Sam’s past
from different angles (this time being the women in his past) which help us to
understand how his character has been shaped throughout his life.
What I will remember most about this book was how it affected my
emotions. When an author can bring me to
tears more than once in the course of a story, he has achieved the ultimate goal
in my mind, to make the reader connect to the characters on all levels, so that
it becomes almost personal. Never has
the climax of a book taken me so by surprise and made me so upset with an
author, but then with the true talent of a gifted writer Lazar redeemed himself
by taking an idea the average mind would not want to accept, that if written by
anyone else would probably just come across as silly, and breathed magic into it
in a way that made me believe unconditionally.
I was truly mesmerized by this book, and I can honestly say that I have
never been so blown away by the ending of a novel. I actually felt a painful wrench when I
turned the last page of the book as if I was being physically torn away from the
Moore family.
What is the secret to Lazar’s success? Besides his amazingly addictive storylines,
the one thing that always leaps out at me is his secret combination of a close
knit and loving family centred on Sam’s warm-hearted character set against a
good old-fashioned murder mystery which provides the perfect contrast between
good and evil.
When an author writes so many different series and churns out the
individual books with lightning speed, I often wonder if they are going to start
getting repetitive or boring, but not so with Aaron Paul Lazar. He always seems to have a bottomless well of
ideas from which to draw his stories,
and each one is fresh and new. Lazar, as
a writer, has perfected the ultimate recipe which appeals to all readers’
palates, whether mystery lovers or not.
I can honestly say that he has quickly risen to the top tier of my
favourite authors list, and I now anxiously await each new novel that he
writes.
***
More About the Author
Aaron Paul Lazar writes to soothe his soul. An award-winning,
bestselling Kindle author of three addictive mystery series, Aaron enjoys the
Genesee Valley countryside in upstate New York, where his characters embrace
life, play with their dogs and grandkids, grow sumptuous gardens, and chase bad
guys. Visit his website at http://www.lazarbooks.com and watch for his upcoming
Twilight Times Books releases. His other books are:
UPSTAGED
(coming 2012 author’s preferred edition, eBook and print)
DON’T LET THE WIND CATCH YOU (coming 2012)
FOR
KEEPS (JULY 2012, AUDIO BOOK coming 2012)
SANCTUARY (coming, 2013)
LAZAR'S BOOK ON WRITING:
AWARDS: WINNER 2011 EPIC Book Awards, BEST Paranormal * FINALIST 2011
FOREWORD BOOK AWARDS * WINNER 2011 Eric Hoffer BEST Book, COMMERCIAL FICTION *
2X FINALIST Global eBook Awards 2011 * Preditors & Editors Readers Choice
Award – 2nd place 2011* Winner of Carolyn Howard-Johnson’s 9th Annual Noble (Not
Nobel!) Prize for Literature 2011 * Finalist Allbooks Editor’s Choice Awards
2011 * Preditors&Editors Top 10 Finalist * Yolanda Renée's Top Ten Books
2008 * MYSHELF Top Ten Reads 2008 * Writer’s Digest Top 101 Website Award
2009-2012
WEBSITES/BLOGS:
http://www.lazarbooks.com
www.murderby4.blogspot.com
www.aaronlazar.blogspot.com
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