Watch Your Back by Clair M. Poulson

 Gage Tipton is police detective working on murder case. His girl friend is the legal secretary of the lawyer defending the accused.  They try to keep work and personal lives separate, but then the chief witness in the case disappears, and Gage gets threatening calls urging him to stop his investigation. Then his girl friend disappears tand Gage begins to fear that the lawyer she works for is more deeply involved with the crime than anyone suspects.The hunt for his girlfriend leads to Las Vegas, where Gage teams up with a local atorney on the case. Can Gage work at the clues, and his conflicting feelings about the two women in his life, before more people get killed? 

When I have taught writing classes to kids and teens, I teach that the elements of a story are plot, character, setting, and style. Some stories are better than others in each of the categories, but each needs to be good enough in one area so that people ignor the faults of the other areas.  I have read several Clair Poulson stories and it seems like he is actually pretty good at plot, but not that great in any of the other areas. His characters are likeable, but not very dimentional.  His settings are fine, (and a little bit fun for me since many of his stories are set in my home state and all feature people from my religous faith.) But his style is...well..., it isn't that great. It is almost charmingly bad. Once you just accept the fact that he never really learned the the "show, don't tell," rule, or how to write natural sounding dialog, then his books are pretty entertaining. They are almost folksy and I will probably read more of them on days I am waiting for something else I have on hold. (272 p. 2019)