review 1: Though this book is listed under the Mystery genre, and many people talk about the main plotline being the mystery/crime, to me the actual main plotline was the relationship between Sheriff John Lawson and his father Rusty. The crime served as a nice backdrop and gave us a lot of background and character development, but that father/son relationship was what poked at me and kept me thinking about the characters after putting the book down.All that being said, I found the Sheriff's girlfriend to be nice, but rather confounding, even when the author tries later to explain her actions/thought process. Her reaction to certain events was fairly extreme, and I didn't think the reasoning given was satisfactory for such an extreme reaction.All in all, though, I really enjoyed th... moree book. I'd recommend it to a friend. review 2: Just couldn't get into this one, although I read it all the way through. Why did I persist? It had good reviews on Amazon, and I just kept hoping it would improve. Maybe it's not my genre. This was a "guy book" -- lots of male characters, sheriffs, law enforcement-types. There was a crime to solve that took up 3/4 of the book, but then the last 1/4 was focused on the main character's bipolar dad. I kept wondering how the two things connected. Many descriptions of the Texas heat, poker games, food, and scenery while driving (the main character drives a lot). The title comes from a muffin that "talks" to the main character about 5x during the story. The muffin says a mysterious phrase, which the main character then rhymes with something else which has meaning to him. In the end, the muffin was abandoned as well, and I didn't really see its significance as great enough to title the book after it. This book just didn't do it for me, and I was relieved when I finished it. less
