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Orchid Blues is the second in the series of Holly Barker mysteries. I haven’t read any of the others. Too bad, because if they are all as good as this, they would be worth reading.

Holly Barker is the police chief of Orchid Beach Florida. When the story opens, she is about to marry her boyfriend, Jackson Oxenhandler. Unfortunately, on his last trip to the bank before his wedding, Jackson runs into a bank robbery and somehow manages to get shot and killed.

Holly, understandably, vows revenge.

Working with her friend, FBI agent Harry Crisp, she starts to investigate the two newest employees of the bank on the theory that the robbery may have been an inside job. In the course of this investigation, she discovers a town that doesn’t appear on any map.

The town is beside a lake, so Holly goes with her father, Ham, to check it out, on the pretext of going fishing. The first thing they discover is a gun show in progress. The people running the gun show appear to be a little strange.

In an effort to find out more about them, Ham pretends to be sympathetic to conservative militia types such as they appear to be, and pretty soon they ask him to join them. His military record and excellent marksmanship help a lot in this endeavor.
As he gets more deeply involved in the organization, Ham works with Holly and the FBI to get listening devices planted in the headquarters building.
He accomplishes feats of espionage that Tom Clancy’s John Clark would appreciate. They seem to want him to shoot some mysterious target, but he can’t find out who it is. There are some close calls before they finally take off to run their ‘operation.’

Meanwhile, Holly and her FBI friends are also frantically trying to find out who the secret target is.

Pretty spooky.

Started reading Stuart Wood's Holly Barker series for the comfort of escape. First book was a sexy, romantic, violent, murder mystery. All good. But the second book did an about face and was a scary investigation into subversive American groups. Lots of action, lots of mystery, certainly gripping, but concerning as well as escapist. Side note: Woods is pretty accurate with ancillary things like the Atlantic coast of Florida, how to fly airplanes, sail a boat, shoot a gun, drink a vodka gimlet, etc. Probably done serious research. Kudos.

This book was exciting and suspenseful. It was nice to get to know more about Holly Barker and her family. I usually read the Stone Barrington books and she is in quite a few of those. I’ll definitely read more books with her as the main character.

I enjoyed this book but not as much as the first one. Loved getting to know all the characters better but felt the storyline dragged a little bit in the middle of the book which is why I gave it only 4 stars. I will continue to read Holly Barker books and do enjoy them as much as the Stone Barrington books by Mr. Woods.

Unlike Orchid Beach, this novel starts off (and continues) with detrimental factors, such as extended descriptions of mundane activities and use of first and last names and titles. After reading a few chapters I became completely disinterested, and deleted it from my Kindle

I was so excited after reading "Orchid Beach" to read part two of the Holly Barker Novels "Orchid Blues". The first 10 chapters were good and kept me interested, however, after that this book just dragged on and on and on. I mean I thought the novels were about Holly Barker not her father Ham. This book focused more on Ham and him investigating a group of individuals than it did on Holly and her investigative skills. I hope this book doesn't deter me from reading other Holly Barker novels. There were some pretty good points in the book though, some parts I actually really enjoyed, esepcially how Mr. Woods tied in Stone Barrington to this particular story. I loved that! Other than that I felt like this book was a really long read for me and I'd actually have to say it bored me most of the time. I have the next book Blood Orchid, I do hope its a much better book than this one. I'll give the series another chance.

All of the Stuart Woods books have provided me with a great deal of entertainment. Each is different but weaves in many of the same characters as they age and go through their lives. Some of the lesser characters recur here and there, making each book more interesting. Read them in order to keep up with the movement. Thoroughly enjoyable with many plots about places and matters that I otherwise might not have been overly interested in until reading them in these books. I keep tied for more from Mr. Woods.

Holly Barker and her dad Ham are fun additions to the Stone Barrington canon. A good read even if you have not read all of Stuart Woods' other novels. I only order ebooks when I can't find my real book's.