Long Review
Twelve Palominos is an old-school private-eye novel with a high-concept hook: twelve rare palomino horse miniatures, each acquired at a bloody cost, and one aging oil baron obsessed with owning the full set. The prologue flashes around the globe—Saudi Arabia, Beijing, Cairo, Mumbai, London, Istanbul, Bangkok, Rio, Marseille, Bogotá, Berlin—showing how each tiny horse changes hands and leaves another body on the floor. By the time the last piece, “The Riser,” is smuggled into San Diego, the reader understands that McCullum’s dream collection sits on a foundation of exploitation, greed, and quiet horror.
Enter Brig Ellis, a San Diego P.I. with a classic noir résumé—ex-military, ex-classified operations, stubbornly independent, making a “modest” living because he’d rather be his own man than somebody’s hired gun.
His introduction in The Four Aces, a dockside dive bar with scarred mahogany and Reagan-era regulars, establishes the tone: hard-boiled but not cartoonish, wry without slipping into parody.
The set-up “test” with fake divorce clients is a nice genre flourish—it shows Ellis as decent and principled before the real money walks in—but it also leans heavily on a trope seasoned crime readers will recognize. The scene works, but it isn’t subtle.
The heart of the book is the triangle between Ellis, billionaire horse-man C. Tyler McCullum, and McCullum’s household—particularly his lethal right hand, Skeffington, and volatile daughter Alex. McCullum himself is drawn with relish: a lanky, orangutan-gaited oil baron in a Stetson, his Texas-sized ego wrapped in charm, scripture, and carefully curated self-mythology. Skeffington, the butler/bodyguard with CIPA (congenital insensitivity to pain), is one of the book’s standout creations. The scene where he casually handles scalding plates while Ellis yelps is both darkly funny and genuinely unsettling, and the explanation of his condition gives the story a concrete, unnerving edge.
Alex, by contrast, is more of a mixed success. She’s introduced with energy and danger, and her relationship to her young son Tanner and dead husband Drexel provides essential emotional stakes. But as the story escalates, her characterization swings hard into “beautiful, reckless, unstable heiress,” and by the time she is literally galloping a palomino through a window in a suicidal, glass-shattering charge, she feels more like a gothic device than a fully inhabited psyche.
The scene itself is a hell of a set-piece—visceral, chaotic, and cinematic—but the emotional groundwork leading up to it doesn’t always match its intensity.
Plot-wise, Twelve Palominos is less a puzzle mystery than a steadily tightening web of loyalties, lies, and leverage. Ellis’s job ostensibly is to help secure the final palomino and sort out the mess around Drexel’s disappearance, but what’s really on trial is the McCullum family’s soul: how far a man will go to secure his legacy, and what “family” even means when money, control, and fear trump love. Conversations about Tanner’s whereabouts and who really knew what about Drexel’s situation give the late-book chapters a welcome moral ambiguity—almost everyone is lying to protect someone, themselves, or the dream of the collection.
Stylistically, the prose is clean and visual. The author knows how to sketch a room, a bar, or a poolside spread in a few strokes and let the reader fill in the rest. The banter between Ellis and McCullum is frequently sharp and fun, especially the power-play about punctuality and the riff on Ben Franklin and wine. The book wears its research lightly when it comes to horses, oil money, and exotic locales; the early vignettes give the sense of a long, bloody trail without choking the reader in travelogue detail.
The downside of the global prologue is that it becomes somewhat mechanical: location, hand-off, death, repeat. It sets the stakes, yes, but it also risks feeling like a montage of disposable NPCs dying so a rich American can complete his toy set. Once we’re in San Diego with Ellis, the book settles into its real strengths; some readers may wish the opening were tighter or more varied in texture. Similarly, the middle third sometimes bogs down in conversations that rehash known information or reiterate how wealthy, dangerous, or obsessed McCullum is. A bit of judicious cutting there would sharpen the tension.
The ending, though, sticks the thematic landing. Without spoiling every twist, the palomino collection is not preserved in pristine, museum-ready glory. The pursuit of all twelve leads to chaos, and Ellis’s final drive down the private road in a gifted white 1966 Mercedes becomes a quiet meditation on legacy and unfulfilled dreams—on what it means to chase something your whole life, and whether actually getting it is a blessing or a curse. The closing reflection—that unfulfilled dreams may be kinder because they don’t have to pass the test of reality—is surprisingly poignant for a genre thriller and elevates the book beyond simple caper.
Overall, Twelve Palominos is a solid, character-driven P.I. novel with a distinctive hook, a memorable supporting cast, and a satisfying thematic arc. Its pacing isn’t flawless, and some character beats (especially around Alex) lean toward melodrama, but fans of classic private-eye fiction with a modern polish will find plenty here to enjoy. It feels like part of a larger Brig Ellis universe in the best way: self-contained, but with a hero you could easily ride along with again.
Short Review
Twelve Palominos follows Brig Ellis, an ex-Ranger turned San Diego P.I., as he’s hired by oil billionaire C. Tyler McCullum to help secure the final piece in a deadly set of twelve rare palomino miniatures. From the global prologue that shows each figurine changing hands at a gruesome cost to the present-day tangle of family secrets, missing husbands, and a hidden grandson, the novel blends cursed-artifact intrigue with classic California private-eye grit.
The book’s strengths lie in its voice and characters. Ellis is a principled, slightly sardonic investigator whose decency is established early and tested often; McCullum is a richly drawn oil baron whose charm, ego, and obsession drive the whole plot; and Skeffington, the pain-insensitive butler/bodyguard, is an unforgettable presence every time he steps on the page. The prose is clean, visual, and confident, with several standout set-pieces—including a shocking horse-and-rider crash through a mansion window that sends glass, blood, and priceless miniatures flying.
The trade-offs: the global prologue, while effective at conveying the cost of McCullum’s obsession, runs a bit repetitive, and the middle stretch occasionally lingers in conversations that restate known stakes. Alex, McCullum’s daughter, provides crucial emotional fuel but sometimes reads more like an archetype of the unstable heiress than a fully excavated character, especially toward the climax.
Still, the ending’s meditation on legacy, dreams, and the price of “getting what you want” gives the novel a surprisingly resonant aftertaste. For readers who enjoy traditional private-eye fiction with a high-concept hook and morally tangled millionaires, Twelve Palominos is an engaging, satisfying ride.
One-Sentence Review (Primary)
Twelve Palominos is a sharp, character-driven P.I. novel that turns one billionaire’s obsession with a cursed horse collection into a smart, violent meditation on legacy and the cost of getting what you want.
Alternate One-Sentence Reviews
- A globe-spanning trail of blood leads to one San Diego stable in Twelve Palominos, where Brig Ellis navigates rich-man obsession, family lies, and a collection that refuses to stay harmless.
- Mixing old-school private-eye grit with a cursed-artifact hook, Twelve Palominos delivers a lean, satisfying thriller about money, mortality, and how far people will go for one last dream.
Book Rating
📘📘📘📘 – Strongly Recommended: A well-crafted, voice-driven private-eye thriller with a memorable cast and a resonant ending, best for readers who enjoy classic P.I. fiction with a slightly offbeat, high-concept twist and don’t mind a few pacing bumps along the way.
Pull Quotes (3–5)
- “Twelve Palominos takes a billionaire’s art obsession and turns it into a bloody ledger of favors, secrets, and debts that can never really be paid off.”
- “Brig Ellis is the kind of P.I. you follow anywhere—wary, principled, and just reckless enough to walk into a billionaire’s war over twelve tiny horses.”
- “The cursed palominos may be miniature, but the lives shattered to obtain them give this story a grim, compelling weight.”
- “When a palomino comes crashing through McCullum’s window in a storm of glass and blood, the book’s slow burn explodes into pure, chaotic cinema.”
- “The final pages trade spectacle for reflection, turning a hard-boiled caper into a quiet reckoning over dreams, legacies, and what it really means to ‘win.’”
Market Positioning Snapshot
Twelve Palominos is ideal for readers who like contemporary but classic-feeling private-eye fiction—think lone-wolf investigators, morally ambiguous millionaires, and cases where money and family are hopelessly entangled. It sits comfortably at the intersection of crime thriller and traditional P.I. mystery: grounded in San Diego bars, ranches, and boardrooms, but framed by a globe-spanning, cursed-artifact backstory that gives the stakes a mythic tinge. The tone is more Michael Connelly/Robert Crais than ultra-grim noir: tough, seasoned, occasionally witty, with bursts of violence and an ultimately reflective, human core.
Content Notes
- Language: Mild to moderate adult profanity and irreverent expressions in dialogue; no relentless barrage of slurs, but the vocabulary fits a hardened P.I. world.
- Violence: Multiple on- and off-page violent incidents, including maiming, stabbing, arson, crashes, and a dramatic horse-through-a-window sequence with blood, shattered glass, and injuries. The violence is impactful but not lingeringly graphic or sadistic.
- Sexual Content: Brief references to transactional sex and implied sexual encounters; no explicit on-page sex scenes or detailed erotic content.
- Drugs/Alcohol: Recurring alcohol use (dive bars, heavy drinking) and some drug-trade adjacency (cartel, cocaine shipment); substance use is depicted as dangerous or self-destructive rather than glamorous.
- Sensitive Topics: Organized crime, corruption, coerced or risky dealings in multiple countries, manipulative family dynamics, death and injury of numerous side characters, and a climactic scene with a terrified, badly injured horse that some readers may find particularly distressing.
ReadSafe Rating
- Rating: PG-13
- Labels: V, ST
Explanation:
The novel features repeated instances of non-graphic but clearly described violence (maiming, stabbings, crashes, arson, a violent horse accident) and a body count that accumulates across global vignettes and the main plot. Sexual content is limited to brief, implied encounters and references, without explicit detail, and language stays within the range of typical adult crime fiction. The primary intensity comes from the cumulative death toll, organized-crime context, and emotionally charged scenes of injury and chaos rather than graphic gore or explicit sex. For those reasons, Twelve Palominos fits comfortably at PG-13 with Violence (V) and Sensitive Topics (ST) flags, most suitable for mature teens and adults who are comfortable with crime-fiction-level peril and death.