Deadly Catch: A Mac McClellan Mystery

Lackluster development wastes a promising setting in the first thriller from Helms, author of the military memoir The Proud Bastards. A tough 24-year Marine veteran, currently unemployed, Mac McClellan has stopped in the Florida panhandle to do some fishing. Unfortunately, hooking the rotting body of a murdered teenaged heiress, Madison “Maddie” Lynn Harper, lands him in a web of family intrigue and big-time marijuana smuggling. Mac warily accepts an offer from Sheriff Bo Pickron, Maddie’s uncle, to become an undercover investigator, further entangling himself in the case. Helms has a gift for local color and action sequences, as shown in Mac’s trek into a snake-infested state park to locate a pot plantation, but the complicated plot gets bogged down in cumbersome exposition. The novel is intended to be the first in a series; hopefully Mac will either become more nimble or stay retired. Agent: Fred Tribuzzo, Rudy Agency. (Nov.)