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    Lives Laid Away
    Lives Laid Away
    Lives Laid Away
    Audiobook8 hours

    Lives Laid Away

    Written by Stephen Mack Jones

    Narrated by Luis Moreno

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Detroit ex-cop August Snow takes up vigilante justice when his beloved neighborhood of Mexicantown is caught in the crosshairs of a human trafficking scheme. When the body of an anonymous young Hispanic woman dressed as Queen Marie Antoinette is dredged from the Detroit River, the Detroit Police Department wants the case closed out fast. Wayne County Coroner Dr. Bobby Falconi gives the woman's photo to his old pal August Snow, insisting August show it around his native Mexicantown to see if anyone recognizes her. August's good friend Elena, a prominent advocate for undocumented immigrants, recognizes the woman immediately. Her story is one the authorities don't want getting around-and she's not the only young woman to have disappeared during an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid, only to turn up dead a few weeks later. Preyed upon by the law itself, the people of Mexicantown have no one to turn to. August Snow, ex-police detective, will not sit by and watch his neighbors suffer in silence. In a guns-blazing wild ride across Detroit, from its neo-Nazi biker hole-ups to its hip-hop recording studios, its swanky social clubs to its seedy nightclubs, August puts his own life on the line to protect the community he loves.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJan 8, 2019
    ISBN9781980027256
    Lives Laid Away

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    Reviews for Lives Laid Away

    4/5

    33 ratings5 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.---WHAT'S LIVES LAID AWAY ABOUT?While August Snow is considering how to help out his neighbors in the middle of an ICE crackdown/intimidation campaign, his friend from the coroner's office brings him a case he can't get out of his mind. A young, unidentified, Hispanic woman was tortured, raped, killed, and dumped while dressed as Marie Antoinette. The police can't get anywhere with the case and are ready to move on. Falconi can't do that. So he comes to August for help.Snow's not able to get the photos he's been shown out of his mind, either. So he starts looking into it—knowing the right people to ask, he's able to identify the woman within a day. This gets him looking in the right direction for answers—sadly, that direction is full of organized crime, disorganized crime, human trafficking, and corrupt government officials.August gets backup in both his brushes with ICE and the murder case from new and unexpected allies. There's a lot going on in Detroit (and in his own past) that August had been previously unaware of, and he's likely going to wish he'd stayed in the dark before all is said and done here.TOMÁSWe met Tomás Gutierrez, August's godfather, in the previous book and he provided some of the backup August required then. In this book, he's basically August's partner.He fills the fairly typical modern detective sidekick role (Hawk, Joe Pike, Bubba Rogowski, Nate Romanowski, Nick Petrie's Lewis, etc.)—a little meaner, a little less bound by conscience, a little more prone to violence, has a better personal weapons stash, and so on. The big twist here is that he's so much older than August. I don't know if we're told his age anywhere, but he's no spring chicken—He's his godfather, was good friends with his parents, he has a grandchild. And while his age is mentioned every now and then, he seems too spry to be really believable in this role.This might be because of the subjects of the book—his wife is being threatened, the dead woman was known to his wife, etc.—and in the next book, he won't be as involved in whatever is happening. If that's the case? I have no problem with it—but if he keeps acting as a partner, it's going to have to be addressed.I like the character of Tomás and how Jones has been using him so far, I just don't know if he's a viable long-term option.WHAT IS IT ABOUT PLACES LIKE THIS?Back in 2019, I posted about M. W. Craven's Black Summer , and discussed how Craven's description of a seedy pub made me feel like I was there. I had a flashback to that moment when Jones described the biker bar Taffy's on the Lake here. It was so crystal clear and detailed that I felt like I was there. I don't know if it's me, and the one or two nasty bars that I've been in have stuck with me so much that when Craven or Jones describes one that I'm taken there, or if they're just so good that I'd feel the same way without personal experience.I'm going to credit them with this, not just for the sake of my mental health. For example, in August Snow, Jones did a similar job with a small Mexican restaurant. In that case, his writing made me want to feel like I was there.He's so good at describing places in a way that brings in all of your senses (there are other examples I could cite, but this one paralleled so nicely with Black Summer), that without ever stepping foot in Detroit (or the state of Michigan) that I can really get a strong feel for the settings.SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT LIVES LAID AWAY?Is this as good as August Snow? I don't think so. But that says more about how good it was than about the quality of Lives Laid Away. This was intense and exciting. You're kept on the edge of your seat while being given things to think about.At the same time, while August Snow had enough action to satisfy any thriller reader, Jones stepped up the violence this time. I don't know if this is the direction of the series in general, or if something about these circumstances brought it out in August, but wow. I can think of Jack Reacher/Peter Ash novels that contain less violence and action—I wouldn't have expected that given the first novel. This is not a criticism, I'm just putting that out there for potential readers—it really worked for me (although I'm not sure I needed all the "enhanced interrogation" scenes).Along those lines, I'm not sure I really realized how ominous, "I gotta see a guy about a thing," could sound.This isn't just a novel about a vigilante ex-cop on a crusade—it is that, but it's more—it's also about a city dealing with contemporary pressures, contemporary issues, and a troubled (to be nice about) past. What is Detroit becoming? How is it treating the people who live there? How should it be? These questions loom large while August is trying to figure out who killed these women and why. Lives Laid Away is a solid, action-filled thriller with a social conscience and heart. This is not a combination that you see that much, but I wish we'd see more of.
    • 4/5
      Fast read, well written, violent
    • 4/5
      So close to a five star. Snow just feels a little too much like a superhuman and he makes a lot of bad choices that don't ever really catch up with him. That said, the pacing was great, and I appreciated getting more depth on some of the characters.
    • 3/5
      I really enjoyed Stephen Mack Jones' August Snow and looked forward to a new book. Snow won a wrongful dismissal suit against the Detroit Police Department and the City of Detroit, and he's used the $12 million settlement to renovate the houses of Mexicantown one at a time. He's bringing his neighborhood back to life, and I really like that. From Snow's voice to the book's secondary cast, from the information about Detroit to its tone of pragmatic hopefulness, the first book really had me looking forward to the next one. Unfortunately, I wasn't particularly happy with what I found.If your outlook on immigration-- both legal and illegal-- tends toward the conservative, you're not going to like this book. I had no problem with the book's more liberal viewpoints and having some of the people in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency be bad guys didn't bother me either. In the opening pages, Lives Laid Away was set up as Snow seeking justice for two murdered girls most law enforcement would consider throwaways. The Harry Bosch in me was rubbing my hands together in anticipation, but what followed was a disappointment.The entire book devolved into Rambo (Snow) and sidekick loading up with weapons and heading to one shootout after another. I've never been a fan of Sylvester Stallone or the My-Gun-Blows-Bigger-Holes-in-People-than-Yours-Does school of film and fiction, so reading rapidly became a chore. So... a bit of a sophomore slump that makes me wonder if I want to read a third book in the series.
    • 4/5
      This is the second book in the August Snow series and I do want to mention I have not read the first book yet. Luckily, I did not at any time feel like I was lost in not reading the previous title. This one was gritty and at times brutal, but had a heavy dose of humor with plenty of heart. A great set of characters, snappy dialog and I also enjoyed learning about the city of Detroit. Now I need to go back and read the first book while I wait for new ones!