Lone Star Book Blog Tour: Deadly Business by Anita Dickason (Review and Giveaway)

Pages: 324 pages

Publication Date: July 4, 2021

Genre: Suspense / Thriller / Crime Thriller

Following a tactical raid at an Oklahoma farm, a phone call sends U.S. Deputy Marshal Piper McKay rushing back to the East Texas cattle ranch where she grew up. Her grandmother, Jennie Layton, is near death from a crushed skull. When local authorities claim the cause of the injury was an accident, Piper isn’t convinced.

Who wants Jennie dead and why? Is the reason connected to a dubious contract Piper finds in Jennie’s desk? Piper realizes her grandmother isn’t the only one in danger when she barely escapes a deadly attack. Thrust into the middle of a high-stakes, high-risk shell game, Piper’s become the target. The case takes a bizarre turn when Piper unknowingly crosses paths with a Special Ranger. If he can’t derail her investigation, it could cost him his life.

With millions of dollars on the line, nothing will stop a ring of cold-blooded killers, including the murders of a U.S. Marshal and a Special Ranger.

“You want a refill on the coffee?”

Deadly Business by Anita Dickason is a Texas-sized thriller that will astound you with its dead-on plot and brilliant characterization. When Deputy US Marshal Piper McKay rushes to Texas after hearing her grandmother Jen was brutally attacked on her own ranch, she lands feet first in a viper’s nest of forgery, fraud, and murder. As Jen fights for her life, Piper battles the villains and does everything she can to uncover the truth and save her family’s ranch from being ‘stolen’ right out from under them. Cattle is big business in Texas, and some people will go to great lengths to cash in on such a lucrative pursuit, even if they have to break the law and a few heads to do it.

Anita Dickason knows how to fashion a novel that will keep you wanting more, even as you are plowing through the chapters, because the characters practically jump off the page. Piper may be up against a ruthless fraudster and his murderous henchmen, but she is no shrinking violet. As a US Marshal, Piper has the skills and an equally skilled team behind her to root out the scoundrels behind her grandmother’s attack, who also stole her prize bull and other cattle and who are now poised to take the entire ranch. What Piper doesn’t know is that Special Ranger Cade Tanner is working undercover as Ron Pollard to blow the lid off all this cattle rustling. Romance is not the order of the day in Deadly Business, but there is a slight attraction in the air when Piper and Cade are in the same place. Watching this odd relationship play out is quite entertaining. Toward the end, you can catch a glimpse of another sweet relationship brewing.

The pace is fast, the writing is polished, and the characters are always on the move, with plenty of action and intrigue for the reader to chew on and figure out. With dramatic irony afoot, the reader pretty much knows what’s going on before Piper and her team figure things out, but that insider information makes you appreciate even more the way Piper faces the trickery and deadly business head on, without flinching and without backing down even one step. She is one fabulous fighter you will no doubt love from the first page to the last.

If you are ready for a quick read with plenty of Texas-sized fearlessness and mettle slugging it out with a steaming pile of evil and corruption, then dive into Deadly Business and appreciate first hand this spirited cast of characters and dynamic plot.

Enter the giveaway below on or before July 30, 2021, for a chance to win some fabulous prizes!

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I received a free copy of this book from Lone Star Book Blog Tours in exchange for my honest review.

Award-winning Author Anita Dickason is a twenty-two veteran of the Dallas Police Department. She served as a patrol officer, undercover narcotics detective, advanced accident investigator, tactical officer, and first female sniper on the Dallas SWAT team.

Anita writes about what she knows, cops and crime. Her police background provides an unending source of inspiration for her plots and characters. Many incidents and characters portrayed in her books are based on personal experience. For her, the characters are the fun part of writing as she never knows where they will take her. There is always something out of the ordinary in her stories.

In Anita’s debut novel, Sentinels of the Night, she created an elite FBI Unit, the Trackers. Since then, she has added three more Tracker crime thrillers, Going Gone!, A u 7 9, and Operation Navajo. The novels are not a series and can be read in any order.

As a Texas author, many of Anita’s books are based in Texas, or there is a link to Texas. When she stepped outside of the Tracker novels and wrote, Not Dead, she selected Meridian, a small community in central Texas for the location.