Review - The Spoil of Beasts by Gregory Ashe

The sherif and two inmates of the county jail are dead, and one of the deputies is missing, along with an inmate. Police Chief John-Henry hires private investigators North and Shaw to help track down clues. The trail leads the pair to a mega church in the same town as the Cottonmouth Club. The clues and bodies continue to mount up as North, Shaw and their friends try to track down the killers and figure out how it all connects to the club.

Book three of the Iron on Iron series picks up the ongoing investigation into the criminal enterprise operating out of the Cottonmouth Club in rural Missouri. This time, the point of view shifts to private investigators North and Shaw. The pair also appeared in the previous stories, so you need to have read all the books in their published order before reading this installment.

When we met Shaw in the first book, The Face in the Water, he seemed like an empty-headed new age twink. A character inserted for comic relief more than anything. As we get to know him more in this story, we see that Shaw is in fact quite smart. The silly behavior doesn’t seem to be an act, but it is very disarming, even with his boyfriend North.

North is a hard man to like. He’s short-tempered and impetuous. His bull-in-a-china-shop approach gets the pair into a lot of trouble, but it does move the case along. For a man in his twenties, he’s quite the curmudgeon. North’s main saving grace is that he is very much in love with Shaw and would do anything to keep him safe.

“The Spoil of Beasts” is available from Smashwords or Amazon (commissionable link).