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Welcome to Mysteries to Die For and this Toe Tag.

I am TG Wolff and am here with Jack, my piano player and producer. This is normally a podcast where we combine storytelling with original music to put you at the heart of mystery, murder, and mayhem. Today is a bonus episode we call a Toe Tag. It is the first chapter from a fresh release in the mystery, crime, and thriller genre.

Today\\u2019s featured release is Bastard Verdict by James McCrone

Bastard Verdict was released in May 2023 and is available from AMAZON LINK and other book retailers.

About James McCrone

James McCrone is the author of the Faithless Elector series\\u2014Faithless Elector, Dark Network, and Emergency Powers\\u2014\\u201ctaut\\u201d and \\u201cgripping\\u201d political thrillers about a stolen presidency. Bastard Verdict, his fourth novel, is about a conspiracy surrounding a second Scottish Independence referendum. To get the details right for the new thriller, he drew on his boyhood in Scotland and scouted locations for scenes in the book while attending Bloody Scotland.

He\\u2019s a member of MWA, Int\\u2019l Assoc. of Crime Writers, and he\\u2019s the new president of the Delaware Valley Sisters in Crime chapter. He lives in Philadelphia.

You can learn more at his website: JamesMcCrone.com

TG Wolff Review

Bastard Verdict is a Political Thriller. FBI Special Agent Imogen Trager is on sabbatical. She\\u2019s taking a break from the fall out of her last cases to dive into the safe world of academia. At visiting fellow at Scotland\\u2019s University of Glasgow, she\\u2019s diving into the data behind referendums in the US, Scotland, and Sweden. But then a question is raised about the validity of the 2014 Scottish referendum on independence. And that quick, Imogen is back in the thick of it.

Bottom line: Bastard Verdict is for you if you like sophisticated, intricately woven political thrillers steeped in real historical events.

Strengths of the story. The strength of the story is the premise: the exploration of a fascinating \\u201cwhat if\\u201d. What if an election was stolen\\u2026that the victor would have won anyway? Was a crime committed? Where is the accountability? How high does it go? What would the victors do to stop the story from coming out?

This is Imogen\\u2019s 4th case so she is an established and well-developed character. As this book is set in Scotland, not the US, there are no continuing characters from previous books. This makes it an easy choice to pick up, even if you haven\\u2019t read the previous books.

Thriller lovers should be aware this is a political thriller, so the tension and action are more intellectual and less physical. The pacing is strong with the storyline continuously moving forward. Interestingly, the story is largely driven by the \\u201cvillains\\u201d, forcing the heroes to act and react throughout the book.

Where the story fell short of ideal: I had two minor challenges reading the book. First centers around point of view. Bastard Verdict is told from multiple points of view, as is common with thrillers. But occasionally, the change in point of view happened within a continuous scene, often subtly. It was enough that I had to stop and re-read to understand the narrating character changed.

The second challenge centered around logic and sequence. Once the story gets rolling, the actions of the characters are...'