Audiobook, Blog Tour, Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, Short Stories

Blog Tour & #Giveaway: The Last Line by Robert Dugoni @robertdugoni @BrilliancePub

Jonetta | Blue Mood Café


Delmo (Del) Castigliano leaves Madison, Wisconsin and heartbreak behind to start fresh as a homicide detective with the Seattle Police Department. He’s assigned to work his first case with veteran Moss Gunderson who immediately places him as the lead. As Del works the case, he gradually realizes he’s taken on much more than solving two murders.

I agreed to review this gem of a short story before I realized its connection to the author’s Tracy Crosswhite series, which I’m starting as a Goodreads group read in January. Del is a continuing character in that series but this is more like his own private prequel. Yes, it’s short but I got hooked about five minutes in and didn’t stop until I was finished. Now, I’m more than anxious to get started because it ended in such a way that I need more.

This was a delicious little bite and the author as narrator worked just fine. I can’t wait to see how this case impacted Del’s future self. As an appetizer, this went beyond preparing me for the main course.

Book Info

  • Release Date: October 21, 2021
  • Series: Tracy Crosswhite #8.5
  • Narrator: Robert Dugoni
  • Audio Length: 1 hour, 22 minutes
  • Publisher: Amazon Original Stories

 

Listen to a Sample!

 

Goodreads | Amazon

 


Giveaway!

$20 Amazon Gift Card & Digital Copy of THE LAST LINE by Robert Dugoni

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 



Excerpt

Del drove from the parking garage into a blustery and cold November morning—cold being relative. In Madison, anything above freezing was balmy for November, though Del was starting to understand what Seattleites meant when they said it wasn’t the temperature that chills you; it’s the dampness. He could feel the cold in his bones. A stiff wind rocked his metallic-blue Oldsmobile Cutlass.The wind had started blowing late the prior evening; branches of a tree scraping against Del’s bedroom window had kept him awake half the night.

He drove from Capitol Hill with the defroster on high and worked his way around the southern edge of Lake Union, noting marinas and water-based businesses. He pulled into a parking lot where Moss stood beside a black Buick LeSabre, sipping coffee and towering over a patrol officer. Moss was almost as big as Del, who stood six foot five and weighed 250 pounds.

Del pulled up the collar of his coat against the howling wind as he approached the two men. He recognized the green logo on Moss’s Starbucks coffee cup, the company name taken from Captain Ahab’s first mate on the Pequod, the whaling ship Moby Dick sent to the bottom of the ocean. The logo, a green siren, tempted sailors to jump overboard and drown. Neither was a good omen.

“Look what the cat dragged out. Did we wake you, Elmo?”

“Funny.” Del had heard iterations of Elmo since his teens, when the beloved puppet first appeared on Sesame Street. Moss introduced Del to Mike Nuccitelli, the patrol sergeant. “How’d you get here so quick?” Del asked Moss. He understood Moss lived in West Seattle, twenty minutes farther from the marina than Del’s apartment.

“I didn’t take time to do my hair.” Moss rubbed the bristles of a crew cut. “I’m like my name. You know. A rolling stone.”

Del knew. More than once, Moss had told him his parents bequeathed him the moniker because as a child he never remained still. Vic Fazzio had said it was more likely Moss gave himself the nickname. His Norwegian first name was Asbjorn.

“Halloway here?” Del asked.

“At this hour of the morning?” Moss scoffed. “Stayaway doesn’t come out this early on a cold morning unless he thinks the brass might show up and he can shine their badges with his nose.”

“What do we got?” Del asked.

“Two grown men. Looks like they drowned,” Nuccitelli said. “We’re waiting for the ME.”

“What more do we know about the victims; anything?” Del asked.

Nuccitelli raised the fur collar of his duty jacket against the wind. “Hispanic is my guess, though the bodies are pretty bloated and their skin the color of soot. I’m guessing roughly late twenties to early thirties, but again . . .”

“They didn’t have any ID?” Del asked.

“Not on them,” Nuccitelli said.

“That strike you as odd—they didn’t have ID?”

Nuccitelli smiled.“Not my job.That’s your job.”

“How far out is the ME?” Moss looked and sounded disinterested.

Nuccitelli checked his watch.“Should be here in ten.”

“We’ll take it from here.”

 


Q & A with Robert Dugoni

From books to movies to television, police procedurals are incredibly popular with audiences. What do you think is the appeal of these stories?

I think the appeal is readers and viewers have good guys to root for and bad guys to root against. Readers also like a good mystery. They like to see if they can solve the crime, determine the bad guy and figure out what he did and how he did it, just like the detectives. It keeps them engaged in and part of the story.

 

Do you recall the first detective story you ever read or perhaps you have a favorite? What was it about this type of story that made you want to write in the genre?

Years ago, I remember reading Michael Connelly’s The Poet. I don’t know if it was the first detective story I read, probably not, but it was visceral and stuck with me. I do recall reading All The President’s Men when I was in high school, and though Woodward and Bernstein were not detectives, per se, they very much functioned like detectives in that story—finding clues, trying to piece together those clues, and then solve the puzzle. In many ways, that’s what a good detective story is all about: solving a puzzle. I think that is one of the appeals to writers, as well as readers and viewers.

 

Del Castigliano, the police detective in your newest release The Last Line, has worked in narcotics, arson, sexual assaults, robbery, and now homicide. He has definitely seen the worst that humans have to offer. What keeps him sane and on the job?

For most police officers I’ve spoken with, they do the job knowing that they are keeping people safe—maybe people they know or even love. It’s a tough job and burnout can be a problem. Most detectives have to be mentally tough and can be frequently rotated to help minimize burn out. It’s one of the reasons detectives and uniformed officers, I believe, are underappreciated. It’s a tough job.

 

Throughout The Last Line, readers get to see Del at his worst—he faces loss, failure, insecurity, loneliness…yet we also respect him. He is honest, hardworking, and clever. How do you see him? If you were to sit down to have a beer with him, what would you talk about?

In The Last Line, I see Del as a guy trying to find his way after life has thrown him a curveball. If we sat down for a beer, I’d ask him if, looking back, he has any regrets, or if time has helped him put life in perspective and he realizes that what he went through as a young man actually helped him to get to a better place in his life.

 

The Last Line ends in a way that will have readers wanting more. Do you have any future plans for Del and the larger cast?

Very much so. Del is a central character in the Tracy Crosswhite series, and in Tracy #9, What She Found, the story of Del’s first case from The Last Line comes back to Tracy, who is now working a cold case and trying to figure out what happened 24 years ago.

 

For fans of your bestselling Tracy Crosswhite series, will they feel at home with Del as the lead protagonist? For readers who haven’t discovered Tracy yet, will they be able to dip right in?

Absolutely. The Last Line is a standalone story that predates Tracy arriving at Seattle PD. I’ve had so many readers ask me for more of Del and Faz! Writing The Last Line was an opportunity to dig into how they got started and what shaped them. I have a thought now about Tracy #10 being a cold case that Del and Faz investigated 25 years earlier and telling the story from both time periods leading up to Tracy solving the crime in the present.

 

What do you have coming up next?

The third book in the Charles Jenkins espionage series, The Silent Sisters, will be published, February 22, 2022, followed by Tracy #9, What She Found, which will be out August 23, 2022. Beyond that, readers can look for a new standalone legal thriller introducing criminal defense attorney Keera Duggan. I’m excited about that novel and working hard to get it finished soon.


About the Author


Robert Dugoni is the critically acclaimed New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Amazon Charts bestselling author of the Tracy Crosswhite series, which has sold more than seven million books worldwide. He is also the author of the bestselling Charles Jenkins series; the bestselling David Sloane series; the stand-alone novels The 7th Canon, Damage Control, The World Played Chess, and The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell, Suspense Magazine’s 2018 Book of the Year, for which Dugoni won an AudioFile Earphones Award for narration; and the nonfiction exposé The Cyanide Canary, a Washington Post best book of the year. He is the recipient of the Nancy Pearl Book Award for fiction and a three-time winner of the Friends of Mystery Spotted Owl Award for best novel set in the Pacific Northwest. He is a two-time finalist for the Thriller Awards and the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction, as well as a finalist for the Silver Falchion Award for mystery and the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Awards. His books are sold in more than twenty-five countries and have been translated into more than two dozen languages.

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(Thanks to Brilliance Audio for my complimentary copy. All opinions are my own.)

Published by Jonetta | Blue Mood Café

28 thoughts on “Blog Tour & #Giveaway: The Last Line by Robert Dugoni @robertdugoni @BrilliancePub”

  1. Pingback: 2021 Audiobook Challenge – Blue Mood Café

  2. It sounds like the first course from a tasting menu – just enough to get you excited for what comes next. I’ll have to keep my eye out for this upcoming series. Sounds like it has a lot of potential. Wonderful review!

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  4. If you have not read any Tracy Crosswhite books you are in for a treat, Jo. I really enjoy that series and will definitely grab this one to get some background on Del. Great review.

    Liked by 1 person

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  6. Dang, woman, this one’s even better than yesterday’s well, almost. Great interview and love that we get a sample to listen to as well. Read a couple of his books so I’m interested in this one too.

    Liked by 1 person

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  7. I enjoyed this too. I am up to date on both Tracy Crosswhite series and the Charles Jenkins series. I have loved all the books by this author. Now I’m even more excited about the next Tracy book!

    Anne – Books of My Heart

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