CHURCH OF SPILLED BLOOD – Jesse Miles

Jack Salvo is a part-time philosophy teacher at a community college in Los Angeles and a part-time private investigator. When he signs up to work as bodyguard for the Russian Ballet who’ve come to Los Angeles, he figures he’s in for some pretty easy work and the bonus is that he’ll get to hang around some beautiful women – and get paid for it. But when one of those women is kidnapped on his watch, he takes it personally. Salvo ducks the FBI and dodges bullets in order to take on the Russian mafia, risking his life repeatedly to return one woman – a woman he happened to have been developing a relationship with.

His search brings him to Russia where he’s arranged for a swap – the woman for a set of valuable diamonds. The swap is to take place in a town that is most noted for The Church of Our Savior Built on Spilled Blood. And ‘spilled blood’ is precisely what happens when the swap goes wrong.

I really enjoyed author Jesse Miles’ writing style. The book was smooth and I bought in to the characters right away – which is essential to buying in to the story (which I also did).

The book had a classic PI/Thriller feel about it. Tough but smart American PI and Russian ballet dancers kidnapped. This could have come straight from the 1970’s crime fiction section! In fact the book made me think about Robert B. Parker’s Spenser series – in a very good way.

This is just a good PI Crime Thriller and I really liked the character of Jake Salvo . I will happily read more of these stories.

Looking for a good book? Church of Spilled Blood by Jesse Miles is a throwback to the classic tough-but-intelligent Private Investigators (like Spenser) and a thrilling read.