MRC RECOMMENDS: The Flip Side by Ted Richardson
“…a highly engaging story that includes endearing characters, charming descriptions, and an original storyline mystery that spans generations.” —The Mystery Review Crew
The Flip Side
By Ted Richardson
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Theo has everything a promising musician could want. He’s the front man for the hottest band in New York City, with mad guitar skills and a pending record deal. The only catch: Theo is losing his mind.
After his on-stage breakdown and six-week stay at a psychiatric hospital, Theo is ordered to move back home with his mother. As part of his outpatient treatment program, he is assigned a job as an orderly at a local senior home. There, he meets Lucy, a terminally ill resident whose life is somehow mysteriously linked to his. One day, Lucy overhears Theo practicing an original song in the music room. But what she hears isn’t possible. Lucy’s first boyfriend wrote the same song the night before he was murdered—fifty years earlier. Things only get stranger from there.
Desperate to make sense of the unexplainable things happening to him and reclaim his music career, Theo attempts to solve the cold case murder. In doing so, he hopes to find answers to questions he’s had his whole life. But it could cost him more than just his sanity in the process.
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Find it on Goodreads and Amazon (the book is also currently on Kindle Unlimited!).
Review of The Flip Side by Ted Richardson
The Flip Side is a highly engaging story that includes endearing characters, charming descriptions, and an original storyline mystery that spans generations. The book also includes an ethereal element that takes a good story and catapults it into the realm of exceptional. We couldn’t put it down.
If you have ever lived in or near the South Carolina Lowcountry—Bluffton, Hilton Head, Beaufort, etc.—you will likely find this story nostalgic. Further, you will have a wiser perception of why the Lowcountry is the ideal location for this story to take place.
Theo—the main protagonist— was an up-and-coming singer-songwriter in New York City, on the cusp of a recording contract, when something happened onstage that landed him in a mental hospital to avoid incarceration. When released, Theo is required to live with his mother in Bluffton, South Carolina, and find employment not related to the music business. He gets a job at Mossy Oaks, a senior living facility, as a Patient Care Assistant.
Although a loner, Theo befriends Lucy, “who looks like she could have been a model back in the day.” Sadly, Lucy has terminal cancer. As time passes, Lucy persuades Theo to begin playing music again, because life is too short not to do what you love.
When Lucy hears Theo playing a certain song, she opens up to Theo and her daughter Olivia about a mystery that has perplexed her for the last several decades. Theo and Olivia then team up to try and solve it before Lucy’s cancer wins this final battle. The rest of the story is a page-turner that runs the gamut of human emotions, with reveals and switchbacks that keep the reader wondering where everything is going. Once the climax presents itself, you would think the story would be over, but you’d be wrong. There’s one last reveal that puts the cherry on top.
This story excels at the necessary ingredient of conflict. Conflict exists on several levels: between characters, one’s own mind, and the passage of time are but a few of these. The description is so good that the reader can easily perceive the muskiness in the air when traversing a small, decrepit cemetery.
The other mechanics of a good book are also present. The book is very well edited, the pacing is perfect, and the character arcs are extraordinary. The ending of the story goes beyond satisfaction into the realm of enlightenment.
This book opens the mind in ways seldom achieved by fiction. If we said we absolutely loved this story and highly recommended it, we would still be underselling it.
About Ted Richardson
After more than twenty-five years as a business professional, Ted parlayed his fascination with American history and love of a good mystery into writing his own works of fiction. His inde-pendently published first novel, Imposters of Patriotism, was released in June 2014 to enthusiastic reviews. Three sequels were published over the next five years that followed protagonist Matt Hawkins on a series of historically-charged adventures. His newest novel, The Flip Side, is a contemporary mystery and is unrelated to the first four novels. Ted lives in the Atlanta, Georgia area.
The Matt Hawkins’ series revolves around a recurring theme—an inexplicable historical artifact whose discovery results in unforeseen and explosive present-day consequences. Readers are reintroduced to famous historical figures like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Meriwether Lewis and Teddy Roosevelt—albeit through the lens of fiction. It is precisely this infusion of history (both faux and real) into the storylines that makes these tales unique. The end result is a series of smart thrillers that toggle seamlessly between past and present to keep the action moving and the reader engaged—and maybe even wondering ‘did that really happen?’
The author’s fascination with American history was planted in his early childhood. Ted grew up the youngest of five children in a New England family with roots that literally dated back to the Mayflower’s arrival in 1620. His mother’s side of the family (at least that’s how the story goes) can be traced to a man named William Brewster who arrived on the Mayflower and became the senior elder of the original colony and an advisor to the first Governor William Bradford.
With five children and a limited budget, Richardson family vacations usually involved piling into the family’s ’67 Ambassador Wagon and hitting the road. Destinations had to be no more than six hours away—because any longer than that and all hell would break loose in the back seat! If you took a compass and drew a six-hour radius from Ted’s childhood home, it would cover an area from Maine to Virginia – which included most of the places that gave birth to our country.
The family traveled north to places like Sturbridge Village, Plymouth Plantation, and Lexington and Concord—where the ‘first shot heard around the world’ was fired. Traveling south, they visited Colonial Williamsburg, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. As you might imagine, it didn’t take Ted long to become hooked on American history.
Find him on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/AuthorTedRichardson/
