Drawing Dead: A Jake Morgan Mystery

Geoff Cragg is a tenured instructor in the Faculty of Faculty of
Communication and Culture at the University of Calgary in Alberta.

Drawing Dead is Rick Gadziola’s third mystery featuring Jake Morgan
and the gritty Las Vegas gambling scene.

As the novel opens, the affable Jake (who is still fighting a gambling
addiction) is instructed to “spend a little time” with the beautiful
wife of a Japanese tycoon. At first resentful, Jake quickly warms to
what becomes an amorous encounter, sadly cut short when an unknown
assassin murders the woman while Jake hides under the sheets. Things
only get worse when Jake becomes attracted to a beautiful but deeply
troubled police officer named Laura, who it turns out has secrets of her
own.

There is no absence of action, but Drawing Dead is thin on
characterization. The different aspects of Laura’s character do not
cohere, and Gadziola fails to take the opportunity to deepen Jake’s
rather static portrayal after details of his troubled past as a Boston
policeman are revealed.

Drawing Dead is an entertaining read, but a definite comedown from its
predecessors.