BOOK REVIEWS FOR YESTERDAY CALLING

W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O’Neal Gear, New York Times bestselling authors of LIGHTNING SHELL

“Once more Steven W. Horn has provided us with a really, really good read. YESTERDAY CALLING is filled with twists and “didn’t see that coming” turns, as Sam Dawson makes his return. Lovable Sam is always just a little behind when it comes to “Hank Thompson”, the villain who hates Sam with a psychopathic vengeance and plays Sam and Sydney like a master. This one is a beguiling 5-Star read from Wyoming’s master of suspense. Highly, highly recommended!”

Theresa Hulongbayan

It’s as remarkably hard for a fan as the writer to wait for the publication of the next book. In our society books have become the gateway from the current times to a place better suited and lived. We yearn for the next book as we close the cover of the current publication. Steven Horn does not disappoint his fans. This soon to be published account of Sam Dawson is so addictive and enchanting that the reader will lose hours of time without a thought to when it passed until circumstances like bedtime or eating force them to close the book but for a moment to the real world.

Sam Dawson has grown up with his readers, and learned from his mistakes. Or so this reader believed, to have revealed in this book, more mistakes, wrong choices and regrets. Is it the character emulating the world or the world emulating the character. Haunted by a madman, Sam and Sidney are again placed in the most precarious situations. Sam is haunted by a nearly forgotten drunken memory of his youth, before he married his wife and had his daughter. An ill-conceived idea of finally grasping his fantasies, just before life and the world take him down a different path. This choice barely remembered will torture not only Sam, but Sidney and lead to the loss of friend and family in order.

The use of a Russian Spy is a conceptual masterpiece. The delusions and manipulations of despondent men after the dissolution of the Russian empire make the best of villains.  His intelligence, network, capabilities and the use of manipulations make him diabolical. You turn each page hoping that Sam, Sydney or whom ever he got his screws into will survive this next torture. It is dastardly amazing the methods he uses to disrupt Sam and Sydney’s lives. He has a phenomenal plethora of ways to make things worse. Each even piled on the next that the final twist will surprise the most predictive of readers, What a villain.

Readers’ Favorite 5-Star Review – Reviewed by Anne-Marie Reynolds

YESTERDAY CALLING by Steven W. Horn is a Sam Dawson Mystery. At 16, Sam had the same interests as any lad of his age – girls, cars, and fishing. He fell in love with a married woman, a woman he should have steered clear of, but fatal attraction lured him in. Now 50, Sam is paying the consequences of his early choices. His job is under threat, as are he and his daughter. Hank Thompson is a dangerous man and death is too good for his victims. With the past rushing back to haunt Sam, he knows he must pay the price but is that price too steep? With a psychopath on the rampage, Sam and Sydney must be one step ahead to stay alive but can they? Is there anything Thompson won’t do to get his revenge? And is everything really what it seems at first glance?

YESTERDAY CALLING by Steven W. Horn is the fifth book in the Sam Dawson mystery series. I haven’t read the rest but I would recommend anyone who chooses this book to read the entire series in order. This is an edge-of-your-seat story, a thriller of epic proportions that combines a coming-of-age story and all the trials and tribulations of growing up, with a haunting tale of revenge and reparation; a story of one man who must pay the price for choices he made years before. The primary characters are incredibly believable and easy to relate to, with realistic flaws and lives. This is action all the way through, with an attention-grabbing plot and lots of twists and turns before we get to the real truth and the explosive ending. Highly recommended for anyone who loves a good thriller.

D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review and/or D. Donovan, Editor, Donovan’s Literary Services

Mystery readers (especially those who have followed the adventures of Sam Dawson in prior stories) are in for a treat with YESTERDAY CALLING, which continues to follow Sam’s personal and professional evolution as he grapples with choices made in youth that, in his fifties, come back to haunt him.

Valentina Thompson is dead. A phone call brings his mind to the past, when he was sixteen and attracted to an older, married woman. His choices led to trouble then, and they’ve come back to plague him and his daughter Sidney now as vengeful husband Hank Thompson devises a series of deadly encounters designed to make Sam pay for his past indiscretions.

As Sam and Sidney face a clever psychopath on the rampage, their lives become entangled with Sam’s professional outlook, his personal choices, and the present-day threat that tracks their movements with a deft talent for kidnapping, assault, and framing Sam in a way that alienates him from his daughter: “Sidney’s cold indifference was palpable in the days that followed. She, too, was a victim of Thompson’s assault. Kidnapped, betrayed, and half-orphaned, she had seemingly lost hope. Once again she blamed her father. Sam’s grief, on the other hand, had turned to anger.”

More so than most mysteries, Steven W. Horn’s Sam Dawson stories rest on explorations of personal culpability, guilt, and growth to offer just as many satisfying psychological interplays as they do intrigue.

YESTERDAY CALLING‘s special skill in moving between past and present events, psyches, and interactions creates a link between various facets of Sam’s life that prove just as inviting and compelling as the underlying murder mystery that makes Sam a suspect.

As readers traverse the process by which he becomes alienated from his daughter and falls under the predatory spell of someone who might prove to be his greatest adversary, they will be fascinated not just by the intrigue, but by the psychological cat-and-mouse game Horn spins between all the characters.

The result is a compelling story that attracts on many different levels, both flushing out Sam Dawson’s checkered past and approach to conflict and providing a satisfying new mystery accessible to newcomers and prior fans alike. It’s highly recommended as either a stand-alone mystery or for prior fans of Sam Dawson’s life, and will find a home in any library strong in mysteries featuring strong psychological depth and intrigue alike.