Review: False Trust

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As a bourbon enthusiast, I was excited to see Steve was writing a story about a great whisky heist! It immediately brought to mind Pappygate and some other bourbon dramas. So there is no shame for me in saying that the whisky heist was my favorite aspect of the story. I was glad that some of the aging process was discussed, but I would have liked more detail on the filtering and proofing from barrel to bottle. There were many references to wine/wineries and Australia, neither of which are familiar to me, so I was yearning for that warm comfort that I find in the caramel nectar.

So, the real dilemma for me was when your rare whisky is stolen, and then your wife… which takes precedence??? 🤭 This probably would explain why I am NOT married. 😏. There was certainly a lot going on in this story and Blake Willis, our main character was getting betrayed quite boldly. You are able to figure out the culprit almost from the beginning, so sometimes I felt like our hero was a bit willfully ignorant of what was going on around him. He was also very loose with information sharing, so I wanted to clobber him a few times. Otherwise, I found Blake to have an interesting life and career. I liked the story of his grandpa’s whisky, and it was interesting to see a career that morphed from IT to private security. There were a few times I thought his responses strange… but that’s a man for ya. (I’m just digging a deep hole with this review. LOL)

I did not connect to Blake’s wife at all, so I hope to see her character developed a bit more as the series progresses. I find the concept of her character extremely interesting - I love an intelligent and accomplished female lead/co-lead. But Rebecca didn’t have much of an opportunity to shine in this installment, so I think her time will come in a future book. I do hope that some of our secondary characters, namely Daniel, Blizzard, David and Gavin, will continue to appear in the series as I liked all of them. And I really really liked Carla, I would like to see her play a strong presence going forward.

I recommend this book if you are a fan of whisky, corporate espionage, and the wine country of Australia.

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