Draw A Hard Line

Set in a Texas where “the bland, khaki shades of drought punished the landscape,” Jimerson’s second cowboy-inflected detective thriller finds Ranger-turned-independent-sleuth E.J. Kane facing off with a terrifying former adversary seeking an exit from prison: white supremacist gang leader and murderer, G..H. Burton, who is attempting to gin up evidence of his innocence-and punish those who convicted him. Kane must work with his ex wife, the hard nosed lawyer Rebecca Johnson, and law enforcement officials skeptical of their disgraced former colleague, to prove that Burton is guilty not only of the crimes with which he was charged but others ongoing right into the present. Burton seems to have inside help, possibly including a DA and a powerful politico.

Jimerson’s protagonist is a multi-faceted, decorated hero with a complicated past and his own personal and professional demons as he works to outsmart a cunning enemy. Dealing with the trauma of his son’s death and his daughter’s drug addiction, Kane is movingly divided between his professional obligations and the impossible hope of righting the wrongs in his personal life. Jimerson seamlessly incorporates gritty violence, bursts of action, and an unsettling feeling of not being sure who to trust with compelling glimpses of Kane’s home life and personal relationships. “Grown men building their lives on the simplistic moral codes of Don Quixote-style heroes,” Kane muses, at one point, contemplating the popularity of a Walker, Texas Hero. Jimerson, in contrast, digs deeper into the hard choices and human costs of heroism without slowing the pace or skimping on explosive twists.

The prose is crisp, sometimes biting, with sharp dialogue, strong local color, and a vivid feel for scrub, mud, trucks, and cottonmouths. But it’s Kane’s wit, intellect, and no-nonsense attitude that make him a cowboy detective readers will root for until the satisfying ending, that, for all the bullets and corruption, pulses with a hopeful spirit.

Takeaway: Fast-paced, character-rich thriller of Texas justice.

Comparable Titles: Jon Land’s Strong to the Bone, Craig Johnson’s Longmire series.

Diane Donovan Sr. Reviewer Midwest Book Review

Draw a Hard Line is a mystery that revolves around racism, an Aryan gang, a separated couple (detective E.J. Kane and his former prosecutor, ex-wife Rebecca Johnson), and issues of honor, survival, and recovery from drugs.

With so many threads of social inspection and intrigue coalescing here, it’s easy to think that Draw a Hard Line will forego the usual mystery questions with a focus on relationships and new discoveries. However, Micheal E. Jimerson embeds bigger-picture thinking into a novel manner that will satisfy both genre readers and those seeking a broader form of social and psychological insights from their mystery reading.

In pursuit of a truth he actually may not welcome, E.J. begins to confront his own actions and their consequences in a series of encounters that prove to be ongoing tests of his mettle and sense of self.

These elements blend nicely with intrigue and threads of humor to create a compelling saga about the changing world, one man’s sense of place and purpose in it, and the impact which his actions and these outside influences have on everything he holds dear.

Libraries and readers seeking vivid action, satisfying twists and turns, a moral and philosophical element of inspection, and engrossing personality clashes from their mysteries will find Draw a Hard Line hits the mark in all these areas, delivering an exceptional story that offers much food for thought.