This is the second in the re-issued, Peter Bragg series. I received this copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest reveiw.

When I first started reading it, I was not sure if it was as good as the first one, but once I got into, I could not wait to finish it. These books are your old school Private Eye, who is hired to solve a seemingly simple situation (in this case a missing person) but it turns out to be just the tip of the iceberg.

Bragg is hired by TV personality, Janet Lind to find her missing brother, Jerry, who works for North Coast Insurance Investigators. As he begins to investigate the claim that Jerry was working on it starts to converge with another claim from the same company. Bragg follows the leads and ends up helping with a search and rescue of a boy and his father whose plane has crashed. It turns out that they are trying to find out about a missing relative. The Detective they are looking for has been investigating the same crime, or at least it started out that way. Once again Bragg is beaten up, almost killed and meets a girl. Of course he solves the crime, finds out about the missing person and takes down bad guys. I did not figure out who done it, which makes it a great read for me. Bragg is a likable and believable character with real flaws and talents. I am really enjoying this series and recommend it to anyone who loves that mystery, detective, noire genre. Looking for the next one. ( )

Read my review of the first book in the Peter Bragg series, The Dead Never Forget, here: https://www.librarything.com/work/15950264/reviews/117927871.

I have mixed feelings about series. On the one hand, I enjoy seeing characters develop over time and through new situations; in the hands of a good author, a series gives the reader a whole new world to explore, inhabited by people whose eccentricities and foibles grow increasingly familiar. On the other hand, I am neurotic about reading a series in order, from first to last, which can become a problem if earlier books in the series are difficult to find or, conversely, if the author keeps adding new books. I follow a ridiculous number of series (677!) on FictFact.com; putting aside the question of how many books I can actually read before I keel over, I certainly can't finish a series which continues to grow as I read.

Jack Lynch's Peter Bragg series is the perfect series for a reader like me. Lynch died in 2008, so there will never be more than the manageable number of eight books. All of the books have been, or will soon be, reissued by Brash Books in readily available, reasonably priced Kindle editions. Most importantly, however, each book in the series appears able to stand on its own; while Bragg already feels like an old friend after only two books, I could have read The Missing and the Dead before The Dead Never Forget without losing anything. Lynch does not allude to any of the events in the previous book; instead, he gives the reader a brand-new, deliciously convoluted mystery involving a retired hit man, a painting stolen from an art museum, the reappearance of money taken in a payroll heist, not one but two philandering insurance investigators, a plane crash, an obsessed police detective, . . . Well, you get the picture. Lynch's successful juggling of such disparate elements kept me turning the pages at breakneck speed, and I figured out the killer's identity only pages before Bragg did.

Highly recommended. Now you'll have to excuse me; I'm off to follow Bragg on a bodyguard gig in Pieces of Death.

I received a free copy of The Missing and the Dead through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Great detective / mystery story if a little dated( i.e there are no mobile phones and people use public phones instead.) i liked how it opened from the murderer's point of view, which the reader could then use to help decipher who he actually was. FYI : as soon as the murderer was introduced incognito, I recognized him. This could be from reading lots of similar novels, OR that the introduction was spot on to the characters mannerisms. Liked the main detective Bragg, although some of his notions are a trifle sexist but making him flawed made him more believable. Good read for those wishing to escape life into your classic private eye tale, set in the backwoods of USA. NetGalley Review ( )