"Hard Cache" by Charles B. Neff (Suspense)--Giveaway

It’s all here in this story:  love, decency and old, bone-crunching evil.  Neff weaves them all together brilliantly in a memorable page-turner.” –Roger Wilkins (Pulitzer Prize Winner) (quote from the back cover)

Hard Cache by Charles B. Neff is a short romantic thriller involving a murder, the Russian mob, the Black Market and four men who fought together in the Russian-Afghan war but whose lives are still intertwined years later.  One of the things that makes this book stand out from other suspense mysteries is the cross cultural facet of the book. 

Mangus Torval, a former Swedish detective, discovers a dead body while fishing alone while visiting Washington.  The investigation leads to an exciting confrontation in the mountains at a cabin where Greg Takarchuk and Mangus realize their love for the women in their lives, Olga and Mariela and secrets all come to light. 

There are a lot of different characters that I had a bit of trouble keeping straight so found myself often referring to the list of characters at the beginning of the book.  This was very helpful.  The story itself was a bit complicated to me but I liked the suspense during the confrontation at the cabin.  The killer of Dmitri, the antique store owner and Greg’s father, was revealed fairly early on but I never did understand exactly why the murder was committed. 

I didn’t think the ending was very believable—can you really expect seven people (two of which were women, one Pastor, one ex-journalist, one a police officer, an FBI agent and a former detective) to all agree to a fabricated story to cover up what really happened at the cabin?  With short chapters and an interesting story line, Hard Cache is a quick read. 

(We received a free copy of Hard Cache by Charles B. Neff to review so will gave it away in a drawing on Sat., November 20 limited to the U.S.  The winner was Carol in Texas who said "You had me at the Russian mob! I love suspense mysteries. If there are a lot of characters, I make a list that includes some note about the character to help me remember.")

Have you read this one? What did you think of it?