Resolve (Hensley) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Hensley has drawn upon his law enforcement experience and his love of long-distance running to create a fast-paced novel about murder at the Pittsburgh Marathon. The descriptions of running rituals and what happens once sneakers are laced feels real enough to get the heart of even the most committed couch potatoes racing. 
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette


This artfully constructed mystery makes effective use of the third-rate-college setting and of Pittsburgh, as revealed by the course of the marathon, marked by each of the 26 chapters plus a brief final one headed “.2.”
Publishers Weekly


J.J. Hensley's debut novel is a lean, fast-paced, suspenseful murder mystery—told with style, intelligence, and wit. It pulled me in immediately and kept me guessing from start to finish.
John Verdon - bestselling author of Let The Devil Sleep


Resolve marks the emergence of J.J. Hensley as a crime writer to watch, an author whose real world scars give him an insight into fiction's mean streets.
James Grady - author of Six Days of the Condor and Mad Dogs


Five Stars...this is a near-perfect debut that gripped me from the crowds milling at the starting line, to the exhausting sprint across the finish line.
Rachel Cotterill Book Reviews


It takes serious resolve to run a marathon, to solve a crime, or to kill someone, and this Pittsburgh race provides a perfect framework for the murder to come. But what makes a former police officer turned criminology professor turn so far from the rule of law? The route twists and turns through wide streets of clean modernity down into poverty and shame, while the plot twists through Keller’s memories, giving both race and mystery a taut immediacy. Perfectly paced like the runner’s tread, cleverly revealed, tautly plotted and convincingly woven, Resolve brings vivid excitement and complex drama to marathon running, murder and investigation. Authentic, compelling, gripping and impossible to put down, this pleasingly different mystery novel is highly recommended.
Sheila Deeth, Gather.com