Red Gold

By: Robert D. Kidera

Narrated by: Richard Poe

Length: 7 hrs and 16 mins

Publisher's Summary

"If you're going through hell, keep going...."

Shaken by the death of his beloved wife and wrestling with powerful personal demons, Professor Gabriel McKenna leaves New York City for New Mexico to claim an inheritance from mysterious distant relatives. He finds something other than a Land of Enchantment.

Unseen enemies threaten his life. Old friends turn up and rally to his side. Together they plunge into a lethal struggle for a 19th century treasure, the fabled Lost Adams gold. McKenna enters a world of violence, passion, sexual abuse, deceit, and death that causes him to question his core beliefs and values, and even his sense of self. Desperate to find a way home, McKenna must first unearth the secret of an old family manuscript and risk his life against overpowering odds. He must rekindle his long-dead fighting spirit and discover new reasons to live and love.

Red Gold earned the Tony Hillerman Award as Best Fiction of 2015 at the New Mexico/Arizona Book Awards. It was also named as Best Mystery of 2015 and the best eBook of the year.

©2015 Robert D. Kidera (P)2017 Audible, Inc.

I loved it

This book seemed to come out of nowhere for me. I am not normally a reader/listener of this style, but this book was a pleasure for me to hear. I have lived in Colorado and been to New Mexico a few times so I enjoyed the cultural angle immensely. Normal mysteries drive me crazy as I never can see where they are going and the end seems ridiculous. This book avoided the pitfall of totally unrealistic outcomes while still telling a pretty sold story. I enjoyed this book so much that I bought the next book in the series.

So so story

I will always listen to Richard Poe, his bad guy voice always makes me hate the bad guy, lol. As for the story, the characters remained two dimensional, the dialogue always seemed lacking, and as for the characters' actions, stupid stupid stupid. Not one of the main characters had a lick of sense; their actions kept me in a constant state of anger, which doesn't make for an enjoyable book experience. Example: when my life is at stake and I know the other guy is going to kill me if I give up my gun, the last thing I'm going to do is give up my gun because of a threat to a near stranger, even if that stranger is a woman. Call me a mysoginist, lol, but giving up the gun results in everybody dying. Anyway, I won't be listening to any more Gabe McKenna mysteries.

Start out with a bang

I didn't know if I was going to like it or not but wow. I'm going to get the whole series. One reason is I love the west, I love mysteries and there is a cat in it, it's perfect.

A bit ridiculous but very well written.

What I found refreshing about this book was that the author has a crystal clear vision of both story and characters, which removes the irritation of inconsistency. I’ve read three books in a row now that were all over the place in terms of story and characters, which makes it a significantly less fun to read. That said, you will need a pretty massive dose of suspension of disbelief here – annoying decisions and the pretty silly gold hunting trope muddy what should be a very positive experience. The redemption for these is that the protagonist sometimes does include the police in the various attempts on his life and investigation etc, which makes the times that he doesn’t more palatable. I must be careful not to exaggerate this – there are hints of cliché tropes here but it’s never that bad and the writing is good enough to water those down. Another element is that people are being murdered over a rumour that there is possibly gold hidden somewhere. I know that in real life it’s actually happened where people went ‘gold crazy’ and people were murdered, but I found the motivation for the murders a bit ridiculous. By the end, the bad guy is basically acting like a super villain – it was extremely difficult to take him seriously. The treasure hunt itself is less prominent than I expected and honestly, it’s not that interesting. While the more ‘recent’ parts of the treasure hunt are more fleshed out, the actual original gold source (the Adams gold) is only very vaguely mentioned and it felt more like an excuse than a solid part of the story. I wanted to know more about that and ended up having to Google it instead. I’d say this is a very good book - it’s reduced from being excellent by the occasional stupid decision and the bit over the top gold hunting element of the story, which are just annoying enough to sour the experience a bit. I will continue reading the series without hesitation because of the quality of the writing and characters, but it did annoy me occasionally.

Outstanding Novel

This is the first book in the Gabe McKenna series and my first RD Kidera novel. I can't say enough about how enthralled I was with this mystery. Kidera's style kept me riveted and the characters continually amazed me with unexpected twists a nd turns throughout the story.

Gold Fever

Nicely paced, interesting characters. We listened to the audio version and the reader did a nice job. Very easy to follow the action.

Liked the atmosphere

I really liked the setting,...and the story was good, not great, but a little predictable..

Red gold

Wow! What a good story! This book had it all....scary bad guys, good friends reaquainting, romance and mysteries to solve.

Red Gold

A great story really enjoyed this book will read more like this . Narration was terrific

Exciting!

I really enjoyed this audiobook. A great story that kept me interested. The narrator was good too.