Angel Lost # 7 in the RBPD series



Angel Lost Blurbs:

As plans for her perfect wedding fill her mind, Officer Stacey Wilbur is sent out to trap a flasher, the new hire realizes Rocky Bluff P.D. is not the answer to his problems, Abel Navarro can’t concentrate on the job because of worry about his mother, Officer Gordon Butler has his usual upsets, the sudden appearance of an angel in the window of a furniture store captures everyone’s imagination and causes problems for RBPD, and then the worst possible happens—will Stacey and Doug’s wedding take place?

And here’s one from a fellow author that I love:

"A pervert threatens women joggers on the beach, a robber threatens wealthy homes on the bluff, and an angel watches over the townspeople from a downtown window.  F. M. Merediths' latest Rocky Bluff P. D. novel is a gentle human drama about loneliness and change, through which the reader is pulled, page after page, by an assortment of compelling criminal curiosities."

C. N. Nevets is an author of psychological suspense.

Reviews:


ANGEL LOST gives readers the feeling they're living inside a real law enforcement community. The story takes us into the experiences and thoughts of members of the Rocky Bluff Police Department, including primary characters, Officer Stacy Wilbur and Detective Doug Milligan. The suspense-filled novel opens as the wedding day for Stacy and Doug is rapidly approaching, and Stacy's head is full of wedding plans. But a beach flasher, a series of robberies, trouble with an obnoxious Rocky Bluff councilman, and the hint of even more serious danger approaching, intrudes. Marilyn Meredith has created a thrilling adventure that weaves together the lives and problems of several point-of-view officers, with Stacy and Doug in starring roles. "It seemed so real," and, "I couldn't put it down" certainly apply here.

Radine Trees Nehring
Author of the Carrie McCrite and Henry King "To Die For" mystery series.  

* * *
Angel Lost is the seventh in F. M. Meredith’s Rocky Bluff Police Department series, and fans of this series will be delighted to learn that it delivers everything we have come to expect in these books – characters that feel like neighbors and a handful and a half of subplots all neatly woven together. Detective Doug Milligan is set to marry Officer Stacey Wilbur. As their wedding day approaches he is unhappy about not getting to spend much time with her but even more unhappy about her assignment to jog the beach in hopes of catching a pervert who has been exposing himself to women.  Abel Navarro’s mother is showing signs of Alzheimer’s, the new transfer from the LAPD has a problem that won’t be solved merely by transferring to a small town, and a reflection on a plate glass window downtown is seen by some as a sign from God because it appears to be an angel. Others see it as just a quirky reflection. The Rocky Bluff PD sees it as a distraction because of the crowds that gather each night to see it. Just as these things seem to be coming to a head, a serial kidnapper and perhaps murderer who has been working his way south from Oregon shows up. Meredith wraps everything up in a most satisfactory fashion. These books are a sort of cross between The Waltons and Hill Street Blues, and I hope there are many more to come.
J. Mike Orenduff, author of The Pot Thief mysteries http://oaktreebooks.com/Shop%20OTP.htm#NoBells 

* * *

ANGEL LOST gives readers the feeling they're living inside a real law enforcement community. The story takes us into the experiences and thoughts of members of the Rocky Bluff Police Department, including primary characters, Officer Stacy Wilbur and Detective Doug Milligan. The suspense-filled novel opens as the wedding day for Stacy and Doug is rapidly approaching, and Stacy's head is full of wedding plans. But a beach flasher, a series of robberies, trouble with an obnoxious Rocky Bluff councilman, and the hint of even more serious danger approaching, intrudes. Marilyn Meredith has created a thrilling adventure that weaves together the lives and problems of several point-of-view officers, with Stacy and Doug in starring roles. "It seemed so real," and, "I couldn't put it down" certainly apply here.
Radine Trees Nehring
Author of the Carrie McCrite and Henry King "To Die For" mystery series.  

* * *
Angel Lost is the seventh in F. M. Meredith’s Rocky Bluff Police Department series, and fans of this series will be delighted to learn that it delivers everything we have come to expect in these books – characters that feel like neighbors and a handful and a half of subplots all neatly woven together. Detective Doug Milligan is set to marry Officer Stacey Wilbur. As their wedding day approaches he is unhappy about not getting to spend much time with her but even more unhappy about her assignment to jog the beach in hopes of catching a pervert who has been exposing himself to women.  Abel Navarro’s mother is showing signs of Alzheimer’s, the new transfer from the LAPD has a problem that won’t be solved merely by transferring to a small town, and a reflection on a plate glass window downtown is seen by some as a sign from God because it appears to be an angel. Others see it as just a quirky reflection. The Rocky Bluff PD sees it as a distraction because of the crowds that gather each night to see it. Just as these things seem to be coming to a head, a serial kidnapper and perhaps murderer who has been working his way south from Oregon shows up. Meredith wraps everything up in a most satisfactory fashion. These books are a sort of cross between The Waltons and Hill Street Blues, and I hope there are many more to come.
J. Mike Orenduff, author of The Pot Thief mysteries http://oaktreebooks.com/Shop%20OTP.htm#NoBells 

* * *


 Come to the shore, but don't expect to relax - not if the town is Rocky Bluff, California! F.M. Meredith takes us into the inner workings of the Rocky Bluff Police Department and the lives of its officers and their
 families in her upcoming release, "Angel Lost." And Rocky Bluff has its share of issues.

Take Officer Stacey Wilbur. She's a single mom, raising a young son. If that wasn't enough of a challenge, she's also a one-cop vice squad and a new challenge has come her way. There's a serial flasher stalking the beach and she goes undercover to catch him. Oh, yes, she's also trying to plan her wedding at the same time. Talk about multitasking!

Then there's Doug Milligan, Stacy's fiancé and superior on the force. He's not thrilled about her undercover assignment, but understands that it goes with the job. He just wants a chance to spend some time with her, but that seems to be hard to come by.

There are other members of the force and their various issues. The repercussions of an in-the-line-of-duty shooting haunt a newcomer to the force, even as he misses the big city action he left behind. Another faces a mother slipping into dementia. There's the department nerd, currently Doug's roommate but not for long.

An angel has appeared in the window of a Rocky Bluff store, drawing attention from all over the state. A chain of robberies is targeting the well-to-do homes of Rocky Bluff. Can the department let Stacey and Doug have time off for a wedding with so much going on? Will Stacey be there for the wedding, or will her case cost her life?

"Angel Lost" represents the seventh book in the Rocky Bluff PD series, and Meredith does an outstanding job of showing the family stresses inherent in police work, even in a small town. Woven among the interactions you'll find a taut suspense story, a touching family saga, a police procedural and a love story. This book packs quite a wallop. Although part of a series, "Angel" doesn't suffer if you've missed the earlier books.
* * *

Set on the Southern California coast near Santa Barbara, this police procedural is not about what cops do on the job but what the job does to cops (quoting veteran crime writer Robert Crais’s description of his own novels). As Meredith says in her blog, Marilyn’s Musings, “Though I write about a police department and crime, my books border on being cozies as the focus is as much on the families of the police officers as it is on them.”

In quick succession we meet the major characters. To Officer Stacey Wilbur, her assignment sounds like a routine case of a pervert exposing himself to women jogging on the beach. She readily agrees to act as a decoy, with Vaughn Aragon, a recent transfer from LAPD, as a backup. Stacey’s fiancé, Detective Doug Milligan, has misgivings about her involvement. He tells her, “Something can always go wrong.”

We meet Abel, who worries that his mother is slipping into Alzheimer’s disease. That worry causes him to ignore a bulletin about women disappearing up and down the West Coast. Then there’s Felix, a black officer who suffers emotional problems stemming from mistakenly shooting an unarmed suspect. He’s in an interracial marriage, his wife is pregnant, and he has a bad gut instinct about Vaughn Aragon.

Ryan Strickland, the PD’s public relations officer, loves his wife’s cooking almost as much as he loves her. He busies himself preparing a TV announcement about the pervert on the beach. As for Aragon, he’s an outsider—hoping to belong, looking for some action, trying to feel at home in the small Rocky Bluff police department, living with a past that gives him nightmares.

On what begins as another boring night, things begin to pop. Felix, Ryan and Aragon end up downtown where a crowd gathers before a furniture store to marvel at the apparition of an angel in the store window. Abel’s mother disappears and the town turns out to look for her. The pervert on the beach is caught red-handed, so to speak, and his identity is both surprising and funny.

Just as things start to settle down a bit, Stacey disappears while running on the beach, plunging the entire police department into a nightmare.

Meredith builds her story slowly and carefully, leading to a denouement that had me hanging on every word. She wraps it all up in fine style, including revelation of Aragon’s dark secret and the fate of the angel in the window.

Reviewed by Pat Browning, author of Absinthe of Malice

* * *

Reviewed by Patricia Reid
The small town of Rocky Bluff in Ventura County is abuzz with excitement. An angel is sighted in the window of a downtown store. Residents gather to view the angel and give their opinion as to the reason the angel has appeared. Most agree that it is a miracle but no one knows how the angel happened to appear.

There’s also a lot of excitement regarding the forthcoming marriage of Officer Stacey Wilbur and Detective Doug Milligan of the Rocky Bluff Police Department. The wedding has been planned down to the smallest detail with Stacey’s family and friends all pitching in to make Stacey’s wedding a day to remember.
Abel Navarro, Stacey and Doug’s fellow worker, has a lot on his mind. Abel’s mother is beginning to show signs of Alzheimer’s. The new addition to the Rocky Bluff Police Department, Vaughn Aragon, a transfer from Los Angeles, is having a second thoughts about requesting the transfer to Rocky Bluff. Vaughn is haunted by a shooting that happened in Los Angeles but is not comfortable enough to share his experience with his fellow officers. 

However, there is more going on than the angel miracle and the personal happenings of the officers in the close net community. The department has received several complaints about an early morning jogger who is flashing women on the beach. When Stacy takes on the job of attempting to catch the jogger, she runs into more trouble than she ever expected.

This is the seventh book in the Rocky Bluff series. The book can be read as a stand-alone. Many of the characters have been highlighted in previous books in the series and readers will be glad to see their return. Although a lot of the book dwells on happy events, there is plenty of crime going on in Rocky Bluff to keep the readers glued to the book.

* * *
It is said that writers become better with each novel and F.M. Meredith is no exception. Her novel writing just gets better with each book. Her characters have grown so much since the first part of the series and reading each new novel is like being reunited with family. In this latest novel from the Rocky Bluff P.D. mystery/crime series, Angel Lost,  we meet up with Doug and Stacey, both police officers in the same unit, as they finally decide to tie the knot. This romantic story has been building since the first part of the series. 
Like the fictional small town of Rocky Bluff where the community gathers together to watch out for each other, they do so again when one of their own officers goes missing. Stacy Wilbur, days before her wedding goes missing while on the search for another criminal prowling the beaches. Will she make it to her wedding?

Marilyn brings in a lot more detail on other characters which in the past had just been background 
characters. She also introduces a new character to the police force, a hot shot from Los Angeles looking for some relief from the crime sprees in the big city. Little does he know that Rocky Bluff had its share of twists and turns that keep the police force on their toes. However, he isn’t free from suspicion as his partner has a bad feeling in his gut about him. Will this feeling turn into anything more?  
Meredith embraces quite a few themes throughout her book, family taking care of each other when an Alzheimer’s diagnosis is in question, new and expanding relationships  and what to do with your roommate when you decide to get married.

I thoroughly enjoy novels that continue and have followed these novels and this author from the beginning. I hope there is many more to come in this series. I highly recommend all the books in the Rocky Bluff P.D. Series. – The Paperback Writer, Rebecca Camarena

To buy in either paper or for Kindle:

 

 F. M. Meredith aka Marilyn Meredith






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