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A bone-chilling Chicago winter. Marlo is still dead, Phil the cat still purrs for Old Forester bourbon, and Mack still watches himself from above. But nothing else is as it seems. Mystery nests within mystery. Villainy secrets itself, burrowed within the corrupted hollows of polite society, biding its time. Pressing questions about the mayor and a pick-pocket prostitute on the run from the mob must go unanswered as Raymond Mackey is sidelined in a new job. On the upside, the Chandler Illinois Police Department pays him enough to help take the retirement squeeze off the booze and cigarettes. The downside is the department rule against smoking and drinking. That, and everybody with a badge hates Mack as much as ever.

A welcome diversion shows up in the form of Nadia King, an alluring single mother who asks Mack for some off-the-books help recovering a missing heirloom. It might just be the easiest assignment he’s ever had. Until it isn’t. The hand-carved Russian nesting doll is one hundred seventy-four years old. Open her up and she’s full of secrets. But first he has to find her. Then he has to stay alive long enough to understand that smile on her face.

Mack’s road to enlightenment is fraught with danger and littered with cautionary tales. A casino manager brutally beaten into the afterlife by his own employees. A decorated cop shot to death in his mother’s home as she listens, bound and gagged, from the kitchen. A dope dealer on trial for allegedly murdering a successful restauranteur in a robbery gone bad. A criminal defense lawyer with pointy boots, a ponytail, and a bottomless retainer. An ex-felon pornographer accusing a cop of running a protection racket. A quiet girl in a yellow coat who knows too much for her own good. And a giant, brick building of a guy named Hell with a broken poker chip in his pocket and Mack on his mind. It doesn’t help that trust is in such short supply, or that Big Man is watching him from every corner of the city. Marlo is dead and gone. The only one who can watch over Mack… is Mack.

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5 STARS. Stellar writing, impressive characters

Okay…. to all mystery fans out there…. Mack is back!! And I, for one, am so incredibly happy about that. Raymond Mackey is one of the best characters out there in the literary world and Owen Thomas does not disappoint in giving readers a second installment about the life of this wonderful, troubled, still grieving policeman, who reminds me of an old 50s cop in one of those wonderful TV shows or movies from days past.

While the weather in Chicago has changed in The Russian Doll, this book gives us a dreadful Chicago winter instead of a humid and horrible Chicago summer. The life and attitude of the main character is still the same. He is still mourning the loss of his wife Marlo, Phil the cat still likes attention and bourbon, and Mack still describes his life via the third person as he is watching everything unfold in the novel.

Mack is back to work with the Internal Affairs Division and trying to regain his personal and professional ground. Of course, this is a character who does not like to play by the rules and cannot, much to his supervisor’s dismay and frustration, avoid straying from the path of trying to weed out the bad cops. Instead, he puts himself in the middle of numerous other cases that have nothing to do with IAD. Cases like a drug dealers trial for killing a man in a robbery, a well-known and well-liked police officer who is shot to death in his mother’s home, a very pretty girl in a yellow coat who has disappeared, and a man named Hell. In addition, there is Nadia…a kind and loving, or so it seems, woman with a spitfire daughter, who comes to him for help to find an especially sentimental and important family heirloom. Sounds like that should be the very easy part but, as with everything else in our favorite cop’s life, it ends up being an extremely difficult endeavor that turns into the one thing that may take Mack’s life in the end and he does not have a lot of trust in those around him or a lot of help along the way.

The Russian Doll, is a wonderfully written novel that is filled with so many great characters that it is hard to decide which one is the best. Mr. Thomas has an incredible talent for writing personalities into each character, even the ones that seem minor in the huge scope of things that the reader truly feels involved in each and every one and their lives. He also has an incredible grasp of writing dialogue and it is impressive all the way through the novel. He is able to change expressions and lingo to make each character seem real to us and I love it. Finally, the way Mack is written, as a character who is in the middle of everything at one moment and then watching himself and describing it to the reader in third person in the next moment, is just fabulous. I cannot say enough good things about the way the novel is written and progresses from chapter to chapter up to the final moments which are, of course, not what you expect and it leaves an opening for so much more.

This is just an incredible series so far and I see it becoming, I certainly hope, a hit with all mystery readers and continuing on for a long time. Raymond Mackey is definitely a character worth reading and one who remains in the mind of readers for a long time after they put the book down. I cannot wait to see what awaits our favorite cop in the next book. Definitely 5 stars here!!!

— Review by Kathy Stickles for Reader Views Book Reviews

In The Russian Doll, Book 2 of the Raymond Mackey Mysteries, Mack has a mission to fulfill, but his simple artifact-retrieval case isn’t as simple as it looks. Once again, Owen Thomas displays his uncanny ability to weave a myriad of plotlines into a labyrinthine tale of deadly machinations, astounding epiphanies, and complex circumstances with multitiered consequences. It’s a wonder Raymond Mackey has time to sleep.

He’s known as Ray to some and Mack to others. After 30 years as a Chicago homicide detective, Mack is persona non grata with the police force after a bad falling out. With his wife taken by cancer years ago, he only has his bourbon-drinking cat, Phil, to keep him company. An odd twist of fate has now put Mack back to work in a building full of uniforms and badges, trying to keep his head down working for the Internal Affairs Division of the Chandler Illinois Police Department. The work is dull, and the environment is generally hostile, so maybe it is no surprise when a walk-in case catches Mack’s attention. The assignment seems simple enough: find an old matryoshka doll.

Passed down through generations’ worth of dark family history, the Russian nesting doll has secrets to hide that go back over a century. Nesting is the theme of this novel. Mysteries within mysteries. Villains watching heroes watching villains. If anyone can find the connection between an inextricable sequence of events, it’s Raymond Mackey. Full of pain, and mourning his lost wife years after her passing, his dogged determination through hardships captures the gritty essence that classic noir characters were originally built on. When Mack gets cornered, he comes out fighting.

Languid, intoxicating meditations punctuated with clever revelations make this story a treat for the wit and a balm for nostalgia. Owen Thomas has a masterful grasp of language. His creative expressions spice up descriptions and brings characters, places, and scenarios to life in striking detail.

Mack’s antiquated view of the world is made unique through a disorder that periodically has him viewing himself from overhead, giving the reader a 3rd-person perspective of events. Not only does Mack need to discover the secret of the nesting doll, he has to do it while navigating problems with the police department, the mayor, murderers, lawyers, thugs, and conspiracies. A compelling mystery thriller that is hard to put down, The Russian Doll has Mack up to his eyeballs in problems that will leave nobody unscathed.

– Review by Book Excellence (bookexcellence.com)