Title: The Country Road Murders
Author: James Patterson; Mike Lupica Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Genre: Mystery/Thrillers
Format: ALC
Narrator: Tom Pelphrey
Length: 10 hrs 50 mins
No. of Pages: 416
Date of Publication: July 13, 2026
My Rating: 5 Stars
After a shocking accident, Silas Tucker’s legendary football career is suddenly over in this action-packed sports thriller powered by loyalty, competition, and family.
Humbled, but never defeated, he returns to his backwoods hometown, Cross Rivers, North Carolina, where his father was murdered.
He goes back to what’s left of his family and their small, struggling farm. He reunites with his best friend in the world—Taylor McCarter Webb, who is now married.
Then Silas is pulled into a deadly battle with the Southern Mafia who control drugs, trafficking and murder.
As the suspense crescendos, Silas follows one rule for survival: you don’t ride these country roads alone, or in the dead of night.
Link to purchase the book
MY THOUGHTS:
Silas Tucker was once a collegiate sports hero with dreams of playing professional baseball or football. Those dreams came to a devastating end after he is seriously injured in a car accident. Looking for a fresh start, Silas returns to his hometown of Cross Rivers, North Carolina, hoping to his life, find a new purpose, and finally discover some peace.
Instead, he finds a town in turmoil. Young women have begun disappearing, and Cross Rivers has fallen under the grip of a powerful Southern mafia organization. As the investigation unfolds, it becomes clear that the criminal organization is involved in far more than anyone imagined, and the missing women may be connected to something much bigger.
While the police work tirelessly to stop the violence, Silas finds himself pulled into the center of the investigation. Determined to protect his community, he also hopes to uncover the truth behind his father’s murder years earlier, a crime that has haunted him for much of his life.
The Country Road Murders is a fast-paced, action-packed thriller filled with suspense, danger, and a relentless search for justice. The tension steadily builds with each chapter, leading to an exciting and satisfying conclusion. Listening to the excellent audiobook narration definitely pulled me deeper into the story. James Patterson once again delivers a story that kept me turning the pages. It was nearly impossible to put down, and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.
Many thanks to Little, Brown and Company and to NetGalley for this ARC for review. This is my honest opinion.
The son of an insurance salesman and a schoolteacher, Patterson grew up in Newburgh, New York, and began casually writing at the age of nineteen. In 1969, he graduated from Manhattan College. He was given a full ride to Vanderbilt University’s graduate program in English but dropped out after a year, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to continue reading and writing for pleasure if he became a college professor.
Instead, he moved to New York to become a junior copywriter for the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson, eventually becoming CEO of its North American company.
In 1976, while still working for J. Walter Thompson, Patterson published his first novel, The Thomas Berryman Number, with Little, Brown and Company. After being turned down by thirty-one publishers, it won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel. Patterson’s 1993 novel, Along Came a Spider, his first novel to feature Alex Cross, was also his first New York Times bestseller in fiction.
In 2001, Morgan Freeman starred as Alex Cross in a film adaptation of Along Came a Spider, and Tyler Perry also played the character in the 2012 film Alex Cross. A film adaptation of Patterson’s middle-grade novel Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life was released in theaters in October 2016.
For his initiatives to help kids become passionate readers and for his philanthropic efforts, Patterson was awarded the National Book Foundation’s 2015 Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community.
James Patterson has donated more than one million books to students, emphasizing some of the most under-resourced schools and youth programs in the country. In 2015, Patterson donated $1.75 million to public school libraries throughout the United States, $1 million to independent bookstores, and a further $250,000 in holiday bonuses to individual bookstore employees. He also gave $1 million to independent bookstores in 2014.
Patterson has recently donated over $26 million to his and his wife’s alma maters—the University of Wisconsin, Vanderbilt University, and Manhattan College—and he has established over four hundred Teacher Education Scholarships at twenty-four colleges and universities throughout the country. Patterson has also donated over 650,000 books to U.S. soldiers at home and overseas.
In May 2015, Patterson launched a new children’s book imprint at Little, Brown, called JIMMY Patterson, that is unwaveringly focused on one goal: turning kids into lifelong readers. This imprint also provides resources, strategies, and programs to serve teachers, parents, librarians, and booksellers. Patterson invests proceeds from the sales of JIMMY Patterson Books in pro-reading initiatives.
Patterson has also founded ReadKiddoRead.com, a website designed to help parents, teachers, and librarians ignite a new generation’s excitement for reading. Awarded the National Book Foundation’s Innovations in Reading Prize and the American Library Association’s Great Websites for Kids, the site features thoughtful book reviews from a variety of genres and age ranges, a large and lively Facebook community, and contributions from other authors.
Mr. Patterson’s awards for adult and children’s literature include the Edgar Award, the International Thriller of the Year Award, and the Children’s Choice Award for Author of the Year.
He lives in Palm Beach with his wife, Sue, and his son, Jack.
He began his newspaper career covering the New York Knicks for the New York Post at age 23. He became the youngest columnist ever at a New York paper with the New York Daily News, which he joined in 1977. For more than 30 years, Lupica has added magazines, novels, sports biographies, other non-fiction books on sports, as well as television to his professional resume. For the past fifteen years, he has been a TV anchor for ESPN's The Sports Reporters. He also hosted his own program, The Mike Lupica Show on ESPN2
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