Reviewed by Becca
TITLE: Past Sins
AUTHOR: Thomas Grant Bruso
PUBLISHER: JMS Books LLC
LENGTH: 110 pages
RELEASE DATE: August 10, 2019
BLURB:
Officer Jack Ballinger receives a phone call from the chief of police in the early morning hours regarding a dead body at an apartment building in a quiet neighborhood in the small upstate New York town of Black Falls. A female student lies in a pentagram outlined in her own blood, clutching a rosary. Ballinger and his former partner Officer Cory Ryan interview tenants in the building about the girl’s death, but are met with more questions than answers.
When another body is found in the same apartment building a few hours later, Jack knows something is wrong. As he ciphers through a patchwork of unexplainable clues, the investigation detours when Ryan disappears from the case and cannot be found.
With his future as an officer in question, will Ballinger be able to deal with the truth of these crimes once he discovers everything he thought he knew was a lie?
REVIEW:
Trigger warnings: deals with verbal and physical abuse from the past.
This book is a trip! Holy crap. My only complaint is the way it ended. I will say it’s more of an HFN than an HEA. To me, the way it ends feels like there could be another book instead of this being a single. But it was pretty good, I’ve got to say.
When Jack gets called at two in the morning to come to a murder scene, he has to kick his bed partner out. Once he thinks about it, he regrets the way he did it, but for now he’s got a murder on his hands and it’s gruesome. A girl from a sorority found inside a pentagram, a rosary glued to her hand. Blood all around. It’s pretty bad. As the crime scene people are doing their job, he and fellow cop, Ryan, go knocking on doors. And one lady is terrified. Over the next few days, he’s trying to find clues, deal with an ex that showed up almost a year later and for no good, trying to find Ryan, who seems to have disappeared and fix what he messed up with the guy from his bed. But it’s when he’s called to another murder scene that he sees something isn’t right. It’s the terrified lady from the same building, and it screams all wrong. Especially when the chief said it’s an accidental death. When he snoops around her apartment later, he finds more blood and knows it was staged. And now it’s time to dig deeper. And what he finds, shocks him. But he’s unsure how this is going to go down when he tries to arrest the guy and that’s got him nervous.
Jack seems like such a good guy. He’s just in a bad situation all the way around. Because of his past, things are hard for him with guys. Because of his job, it can be harder. When his ex starts sniffing around again, he’s in over his head because their relationship wasn’t good. It never comes right out and says but from the description of his ex, I’m guessing the ex had drugs involved and it just was a bad thing. I mean, hello, cop…And then the murders. Especially when he finds out who has done it, he feels like he’s in a no win situation. He was threatened and that looms in his mind. Of course, it would bother me too. It’s a hell of a lot he’s having to deal with. And I think of almost agree with him when he says maybe it’s time to quit. I mean geez.
But it’s his choice. And it’s a pretty good book. I recommend it.
RATING: 
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