What is Chad Dundas reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Chad Dundas, author of The Blaze.

His entry begins:

The sad truth is, with three kids under the age of eight and what amounts to two (or three) jobs depending on my workload any given week, I don’t get to read as much as I should. I’m also embarrassed to say I’m a bit of a slow reader, which further complicates things. I’m always amazed by people who can steam through an entire book in a day or two. I’m dying to know their secret. But I am resolved to do more reading in 2020 – it’s the time of year for resolutions, after all.

I’ve stockpiled a disconcerting number of year-end “best of” lists in my browser bookmarks folder during the last couple of months and I’m intent on working my way through as many of them as I can. At the moment, I’m about halfway through The Bird Boys by Lisa Sandlin (a New York Times pick for best mystery of 2019, if I’m not mistaken) and so far, it’s delightful. Set in New Orleans during the mid-1970s, it has a pleasing “’70s cop show vibe” as fledgling private investigator Tom Phelan and his embattled secretary/investigative partner Delpha Wade meander through a series of cases while searching for the estranged brother of a mysterious wealthy client. Phelan and Wade are...[read on]

About The Blaze, from the publisher:

One man knows the connection between two extraordinary acts of arson, fifteen years apart, in his Montana hometown–if only he could remember it.

Having lost much of his memory from a traumatic brain injury sustained in Iraq, army veteran Matthew Rose is called back to Montana after his father’s death to settle his affairs, and hopefully to settle the past as well. It’s not only a blank to him, but a mystery. Why as a teen did he suddenly become sullen and vacant, abandoning the activities and people that had meant most to him? How did he, the son of hippy activists, wind up enlisting in the first place?

Then on his first night back, Matthew sees a house go up in flames, and it turns out a local college student has died inside. And this event sparks a memory of a different fire, an unsolved crime from long ago, a part of Matthew’s past that might lead to all the answers he’s been searching for. What he finds will connect the old fire and the new, a series of long-unsolved mysteries, and a ruthless act of murder.

Visit Chad Dundas's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Blaze.

The Page 69 Test: The Blaze.

Writers Read: Chad Dundas.

--Marshal Zeringue