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cyphomandraKaris Walsh, Mounting Danger and Mounting Evidence
These are books 1&2 in the Mounted Police/Tacoma Mounted Patrol series, about (surprisingly) a mounted police unit in Tacoma; my library has yet to buy the third. I must admit that I was wistfully hoping for Dick Francis with lesbian leads. Not quite, and the first is closer (and a better book) than the second.
In the first, Rachel is ostracised by her fellow officers after turning a fellow cop in for domestic abuse; she is then put in charge of the mounted police unit after their captain is murdered in mysterious circumstances. In order to get everyone to work together as a team, she asks Cal, a professional polo player from an elite family, to help. This hits a lot of my favourite things - getting a struggling team to pull together, outcasts who need to overcome (unfair) prejudice, horse neepery - I like both leads and the relationship between them really sparks.
In the second, the upright hardass lieutenant Abby Hargrove from the first book is obsessed with atoning for her family's three generations of dirty cops, when she falls for a wetlands microbiologist, Kira, whose daughter is competing at a country fair that the mounted unit are patrolling. Abby has secretly given her old horse to Kira's daughter to make up for her brother's neglect of Kira's domestic abuse case (as in, Kira doesn't know it was from Abby, the horse being rather difficult to conceal). The crime plot in this is both obvious and jerky, the relationship less convincing (Rachel and Cal show up and have a sex scene before the two leads manage it, which doesn't help) , Abby herself far less confident than expected from her earlier appearance (or her job), and there is not nearly enough horse stuff. I stalled on this quite a bit and it's why I have yet to pick up the third myself, although I will check out the other Walsh books that the library does have (including Set the Stage).
These are books 1&2 in the Mounted Police/Tacoma Mounted Patrol series, about (surprisingly) a mounted police unit in Tacoma; my library has yet to buy the third. I must admit that I was wistfully hoping for Dick Francis with lesbian leads. Not quite, and the first is closer (and a better book) than the second.
In the first, Rachel is ostracised by her fellow officers after turning a fellow cop in for domestic abuse; she is then put in charge of the mounted police unit after their captain is murdered in mysterious circumstances. In order to get everyone to work together as a team, she asks Cal, a professional polo player from an elite family, to help. This hits a lot of my favourite things - getting a struggling team to pull together, outcasts who need to overcome (unfair) prejudice, horse neepery - I like both leads and the relationship between them really sparks.
In the second, the upright hardass lieutenant Abby Hargrove from the first book is obsessed with atoning for her family's three generations of dirty cops, when she falls for a wetlands microbiologist, Kira, whose daughter is competing at a country fair that the mounted unit are patrolling. Abby has secretly given her old horse to Kira's daughter to make up for her brother's neglect of Kira's domestic abuse case (as in, Kira doesn't know it was from Abby, the horse being rather difficult to conceal). The crime plot in this is both obvious and jerky, the relationship less convincing (Rachel and Cal show up and have a sex scene before the two leads manage it, which doesn't help) , Abby herself far less confident than expected from her earlier appearance (or her job), and there is not nearly enough horse stuff. I stalled on this quite a bit and it's why I have yet to pick up the third myself, although I will check out the other Walsh books that the library does have (including Set the Stage).
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Date: 2018-09-22 03:34 am (UTC)Dick Francis with lesbian leads: I hadn't known how much I wanted this till you mentioned it. I'll definitely check out the first book.
Rachel and Cal show up and have a sex scene before the two leads manage it, which doesn't help
Hahaha.
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Date: 2018-09-22 11:05 am (UTC)ME TOO. I may go back to my original f/f idea and see if I could get it to work in Dick Francis style for a subsequent project, as one of the leads was definitely the right character type.
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Date: 2018-09-22 07:58 pm (UTC)