"Was his cover blown, forcing him into hiding? Or could he be a straight-up killer on the run?"
That line hit somewhere around the 2-hour mark and I was elbow-deep in making pancit for the kids' school lunches while Carlos slept. Saturday morning, post-shift, brain still buzzing from a gnarly MVA we'd worked overnight. I needed something to keep my hands busy and my mind from replaying the things I'd seen. Last Call delivered on that front - mostly.
Here's the thing that hooked me before I even hit play: Allyson K. Abbott is actually Beth Amos, an ER nurse writing under a pen name. The moment I found that out, I was in. One of us. And you can tell. Mack Dalton's bar might not be a trauma bay, but the way Abbott writes about gut instinct, about reading people's body language and trusting what your senses tell you even when the evidence says otherwise - that's nurse brain. That's what we do every shift. Mack has this synesthesia-like ability where her senses cross-wire, giving her extra-perceptive reads on situations, and while it's obviously amped up for fiction, the core of it felt honest. We notice things. We catch the thing the attending missed because we were actually in the room.
When the Nurse-Author Shows Her Badge
The medical and procedural details in this one aren't heavy - it's more mystery than medical thriller - but when they show up, they don't make me scream at my kitchen cabinets. The shooting investigation, the forensic logic, the way Mack processes physical evidence through her heightened senses - it tracks. Abbott doesn't try to get fancy with things she'd have to fake. Smart move. I've thrown audiobooks across my car (figuratively, I need my phone) for less. Them Bones was one that actually made me pull over and yell at my windshield over a forensic detail so wrong it was almost impressive.
What really works is the "barstool detectives" setup. Mack runs a bar in Milwaukee where regulars help puzzle through cold cases. It's cozy mystery meets crime procedural, and the group dynamic carries a lot of the charm. When one of their own - Mal, the undercover friend - disappears with his fingerprints on a murder weapon, the stakes feel personal in a way that the earlier books in this series apparently built toward. This is Book 6, and yeah, you can feel it. There's history between these characters that I was catching up on, relationships and trust issues that clearly have five books of backstory behind them.
And that's where it gets a little uneven.
The Cold Case of Connecting Two Plotlines
Jumping into a series at Book 6 is like walking into a patient's room mid-shift change without reading the chart. I managed. But some of the emotional weight - particularly Mack's shattered trust and her complicated dynamic with Detective Duncan Albright - felt like I was supposed to care more than I did. Not Abbott's fault entirely, but it did make the middle section drag. At nearly 9 hours, there are stretches where the investigation meanders, the romantic tension recycles, and I found myself bumping up the speed (more on that in a second).
Some listeners have called it predictable, and... yeah. I had the Mal situation figured out before the halfway point. The secret rooms and shocking revelations the description promises are more slow reveals than genuine surprises. But here's what saved it for me: I wasn't listening for the twist. I was listening for the people. And when Abbott lets her characters breathe - when Mack's gut tells her something's wrong and she has to decide whether to trust it after being burned - that landed. As someone who's actually worked a code where my instinct said one thing and the monitor said another, I get that internal war.
Nicole Poole Earns Her Keep
Nicole Poole is the reason this works as an audiobook rather than a skim-read. She's Audie-nominated for good reason. Her Mack is warm but guarded - you hear the walls going up in her voice when Duncan pushes too close. The male characters are distinct without being caricatures, which, look, that's harder than it sounds. So many female narrators doing male voices give me either "cartoon villain" or "same guy different name." Poole actually differentiates. Mal's voice carries this edge of someone who's been undercover too long, and Duncan sounds like every earnest cop I've ever worked with in the ER who genuinely wants to help but doesn't know how to stop being a detective for five minutes.
No sound effects, no music, just Poole and the story. Clean production. Night shift approved.
Who Gets a Seat at This Bar
If you've been following the Mack's Bar series, this is your payoff book. Don't start here. You'll survive, but you'll miss the weight of it.
If you're a cozy mystery fan who likes a side of real suspense - not cozy-cozy, there's an actual shooting and genuine danger - this hits the spot. Perfect for that post-shift decompression when you want engagement without emotional devastation.
If you need breakneck pacing or want to be genuinely shocked, this probably isn't your drink. It's more of a slow pour.
Clock Out, Grab a Seat
Carlos didn't ask why I was emotional after this one. It's not that kind of book. But he did ask why I was talking to the pancit about fingerprint evidence, so. That happened. I'd have loved this more if I'd started at Book 1, and I respect Abbott enough - nurse to nurse - to maybe go back and do exactly that. The woman writes honest characters who trust their instincts in a world that keeps telling them not to. I know that story. I live it every shift.
