Thread of Fear

Thread of Fear is the fifth book in the Joe Tyler series by Jeff Shelby. I’ve written highly favorable reviews of the first four books in this now seven-book series, and Shelby’s effort in this book did not disappoint. This could be a stand-alone novel, but I would not start with this one. The character development through the first four novels is critical to appreciating the cast of characters about which he writes. And, if you’ve already gotten through the first four, just like me, I doubt that you’ll want to quit there. This is a fantastic crime series.

Just to spoil the plot regarding the first four books, Joe now has his daughter, Elizabeth, and pregnant ex-wife, Lauren, back in the Coronado house where Elizabeth had been kidnapped eight years before. While he was searching for Elizabeth, Joe developed an expertise in finding kids, and he was sometimes hired to find other runaways. Not always, but he was usually successful. But the search for Elizabeth also led him to deal with and get favors from some highly unscrupulous and dangerous guys like John Anchor. One of the cases he never solved was Aaron Dennison, and in this story, Dennison’s mother contacted Joe to help find her husband who had suddenly disappeared. In a guilt-invoking message and in the second sentence of the book, she said to Joe, “You weren’t able to find Aaron, Mr. Tyler.” As if Joe could forget. It was coincidental and critical that Aaron’s father had worked for John Anchor.

Over the course of the book, Joe and Elizabeth spend time together and get to know each other better. One of the things that Joe has not figured out is what sort of work he’s going to do now. He’s not welcome back at the Coronado Police Department and he no longer wants to hit the road to find lost persons. He wants to stay home with his wife and child. And then there’s that new pregnancy.

I’m impressed with Shelby, and when I get through his seven books about Joe Tyler, I’m going to dive into one of his other series of novels. He’s been a prolific writer. Shelby just might belong on my list of 10 go-to authors, but I don’t know who I could kick off the list to make room for him. I think my “island” of writers has to expand.

Thread of Innocence

Thread of Innocence is the fourth book in Jeff Shelby’s now seven-book series about Joe Tyler and the abduction of his eight-year-old daughter, Elizabeth. This is not a stand-alone book and I do no suggest you start with this one. But, this is an excellent story, so begin with Thread of Hope. Without saying too much, in the part of the saga revealed in this book, some of the details about the kidnapping have been solved, and the 16-year-old Elizabeth has come home, at least for a while. Shelby does an excellent job of reflecting the emotional impact of this event on Elizabeth and her parents, Joe and his now ex-wife Lauren. Joe’s search of answers leads him to get involved with some very unsavory characters. The conclusion of this story is very satisfying, and it sets up the continuation of the story. These books are quick and lightning-paced – the story is excellent and emotionally gripping, one which all of us hope never happens to us. I’ve already downloaded the fifth book, Thread of Fear.

Thread of Betrayal

In Thread of Betrayal, the third novel in the seven book Joe Tyler series, author Jeff Shelby picks up the chase for Elizabeth, Tyler’s daughter who was kidnapped eight years earlier when she was just eight years old. She was taken right out of Joe’s front yard in Coronado, a community in San Diego. Having finally found evidence that she is alive, Joe learned that Elizabeth just become a runaway teen who has fled from her “foster home” in Minneapolis and headed towards Denver. After having chased phantom leads about his daughter’s whereabouts for the last eight years which he never wanted to share with his ex-wife, Joe contacted his ex-wife Lauren who still lived in the home in Coronado where Elizabeth was taken. Lauren joined him in Minnesota and headed to Denver with him.

But, Joe became suspicious of his contacts in Coronado, the very contacts in the police department there who had seemed to be assisting him as he had searched for his daughter over the years, now thinking that someone there may have been instrumental in his daughter’s disappearance. This is the betrayal hinted at in the book’s title. Joe and Lauren found the boyfriend who drove Elizabeth (currently known by her foster name of Ellie Corzine) to Denver, but by then, she had a fight with her boyfriend and made him drop her off. Then they found the friend’s house where she had gone only to find that they had missed her by seconds as she borrowed enough money to get onto a plane for LA. It seems that Elizabeth was recovering some memories of her kidnapping that she was determined to follow back to California. When Joe she was on the plane as the doors to the jet way closed, he completely lost it when the ground crew would not let him board the plane or halt the plane from pulling away from the gate. One can’t go crazy in an airport without drawing a lot of attention, and Joe was arrested and put on a no-fly list. After having been so close, Joe and Lauren had lost Elizabeth once again.

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There was much more to the plot, but this story has a happy ending, sort of. Joe and Lauren do succeed in making direct contact with Elizabeth, but she was confused by her old memories, the lies she had been told by her “foster family,’ and these new strange people who were telling her that they were her parents. Then, there were new traumas that had occurred in the process of her running away. Still a minor, finally aware that she was a kidnap victim and that her “foster parents” had not really adopted her, Elizabeth got protection from the foster child system in California, and as the book ended, she was unsure of how she wanted to proceed with all this new information. As the book ended, she was willing to meet with Joe and Lauren, and the fourth book Thread of Innocence promises a possible rapprochement for the family.

Thread of Suspicion

Thread of Suspicion is the second of a six-book series by the rather prolific crime writer, Jeff Shelby. The first book, Thread of Fear, was a well-written story that had a cliff-hanging ending (see my review). I was already invested in Shelby’s characters, so of course I jumped right into this book which did not leave me disappointed, except for another ending that led me to the third book. Joe Tyler was a cop in Coronado, an island that is just a bridge away from San Diego. His 8-year-old daughter had been kidnapped right out of his front yard. He no longer could work as a cop and his marriage came undone as he spent the next eight years searching for his lost Elizabeth. At the end of the first book, as he solved other cases of missing children, he got his first credible evidence that his daughter was alive and living in Minneapolis.

As Joe tried to learn his way around the world of runaway teens in Minneapolis, he encountered Isabel Balzone, a woman who had dedicated herself to helping these teens. She didn’t ask anything of them and just provided them with food, blankets, and other things they needed to survive on the streets. Joe and Isabel were able to help each other, but Joe did not even have his daughter’s current name and address, only an outdated picture of Elizabeth with a friend, a picture that had been taken in Minneapolis. Then he found the friend, and then he figured out a name for Elizabeth (Ellie Corzine), and then her home address. But by the time he got to her home, she had just had a row with her “foster parents” and she had runaway only three days earlier. So the chase was on once again.

Certain of the reality of the chase for Elizabeth this time, unlike so many of the phantom chases he had been on for the last eight years, Joe called his ex-wife Lauren to come to Minneapolis to help. She still lived in Coronado in the house where the kidnapping had occurred.

Joe still needed more info, and in order to get it, he agreed to help find the missing son of a dying mob boss, a son who wanted nothing to do with his father. Shelby did a great job intertwining these plots (and more) along with stories of other missing kids. By the end of the book, Joe had begun to suspect that somebody at the Coronado Police Department, people who he had always leaned on for the last eight years to get strands of information about possible sightings of Elizabeth, might have actually been involved in her disappearance. He had never gotten along with Lt. Bazer who had eventually forced Joe out of the department, but what about Mike Lorenzo, Joe’s former mentor who had always seemed to be nearly as desperate to locate Elizabeth (Ellie) as Joe was.

The cliff-hanging ending to this story had multiple unfinished story lines, and I’m not quitting here – I already have the next book, Thread of Betrayal.

Thread of Hope

Jeff Shelby is another one of those prolific best-selling authors who has never been reviewed in this blog. He has written multiple series of crime/mystery novels. I stumbled into this very good book while I was on a trip in Southern Baja and found myself reading about my hometown area in and around San Diego.

Joe Tyler is the protagonist in this five-novel series, the first being Thread of Hope. This book opens as Joe is returning to his home for the first time in seven years. He grew up and went to high school in Coronado, an idyllic island community near downtown San Diego which is dominated by a military base. It used to be that mostly military families lived there, but it has evolved into a community of the very wealthy and it is a highly desirable place to live.

Joe is coming back because his best lifetime friend is in trouble. He has been accused of beating and raping an 18-year-old high school girl, Meredith Jordan, and then he was attacked and beaten by unknown assailants. Chuck Winslow lies in a hospital bed, unconscious, and it is not clear that he will survive this assault. Although Joe has been out of contact for eight years, he is very sure Chuck could not have done the things of which he is accused. As the story progresses we learn that Joe has fled the island in pursuit of his own daughter, Elizabeth, who had been kidnapped at the age of eight, right out of his front yard when he had taken his eyes off her for only a couple minutes. She disappeared without a trace. Joe had been working as a cop in Coronado, his dream job. He had been happy in his marriage and in love with his circumstances, and then his life was torn apart.

Over the course of the book, the reader learns that Joe left his job and spent a couple years doing nothing but searching for his daughter, but those years of grief were also spent in substance abuse. That was when his marriage came undone. As he emerged from his fearful depression and hopelessness, he realized that even if he had not been able to find Elizabeth, he had learned a lot about how to find people. He specialized in tracking down teenagers who disappeared from home, and he was damn good at it, having helped numerous families to reunite. It was only Chuck that could have pulled Joe back to Coronado where his painful memories were most vivid. With his police contacts in San Diego and with his own detective skills, he launched into figuring out what happened to Chuck.

At the outset of this book, I was not convinced it would be a good read. At first, it seemed a bit formulaic – just another crime story. But, it turns out that Shelby has written a story about a very compelling character in Joe Tyler. Joe’s struggle with his own losses was not melodramatic – it felt quite real. Shelby introduced a surrounding cast of characters that beautifully supported his story, and I knew I was hooked when I immediately downloaded the second book in this series, Thread of Suspicion. As suggested by the title of this first Joe Tyler book, there is some hope that Elizabeth might be alive, and as the first book ends, Joe gets a new clue that he has to follow. We at menreadingbooks.com have another excellent author with a large body of work to enjoy and write about.