Book Review: Measured Deception (Nick Blaine Mystery, #1) by Richard E. Kalk & T.A. Pryor

Measured Deception: A Nick Blaine Mystery by Richard E. Kalk
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Good, traditional-style police procedural to kick off this new mystery series.

Measured Deception is the first book in the Nick Blaine Mystery series by the writing team of Richard E. Kalk and T.A. Pryor, and it is a very good new police procedural-style murder mystery investigation set in 1984 Los Angeles. Sergeant Detective Nice Blaine and his partner, Detective John Phillips, investigate the shooting death of Ainsley Brown, a young gay man, which occurred as he and his roommate parked their car in front of their apartment building. While there were several people on the scene, no one, including the surviving roommate, could give the detectives definitive details of what happened or where or how the murderer fled. However, many of the young man’s friends and family members implicated Ainsley’s self-proclaimed godfather, Rodney Williams, the man who was paying Ainsley’s way through beauty school, as his killer. The accusations and conflicting reports of Rodney’s relationship with Ainsley and the discovery that he is the beneficiary of multiple life insurance policies taken out on the young man’s life raise the detectives’ suspicions, as does his long history of contacts with local law enforcement. But without a shred of concrete evidence that Rodney is behind the murder, all they can do is continue to search for clues.

Sergeant Detective Nick Blaine is an interesting character who is totally focused on his cases but willing to discuss his illustrious career with a reporter who needs a human-interest story. Having lost his wife and only child in a traffic accident a couple of years earlier, he’s at the age where he should be winding down. However, his gut is telling him something is off with this case, and he’s not ready to hang up his shield.

Detective John Phillips is Blaine’s able and capable partner with his own family drama. Estranged from his much-loved and looked-up-to older brother, Stephen, the investigation into the Ainsley Brown murder exposes his parents’ struggles with their eldest son’s sexual orientation and lifestyle choices.

The plot follows the traditional path of an old-school police procedural, with the detectives working every angle in person out in the community. It was an interesting realization that while 1984 doesn’t seem that long ago, it’s actually 40 years, and a lot of technological advances in everyday life have been made, let alone law enforcement, that we take for granted today: no cellphones, no personal computers even. If you wanted to talk to a suspect, you had to catch them at their house or workplace, even for a phone call. Answering machines weren’t even that common. However, dogged persistence and attention to every clue finally pay off for the two detectives, but the resolution doesn’t happen before additional tragedy strikes.

With an interesting and intrepid pair of detectives, reminiscent of Sergeant Joe Friday and Detective Bill Gannon of Dragnet fame, and an engaging style of storytelling, I recommend MEASURED DECEPTION to mystery readers, especially those who enjoy the police procedural sub-genre.

I voluntarily reviewed this after receiving an Advanced Review Copy from Reedsy Discovery.


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