Charlie Cochet is currently running a kickstart to fund special 10th anniversary editions of her THIRDS series, and in my excitement and anticipation I’ve decided to do a whole series re-read. Hell & High Water is the first book and introduces Dexter J. Daley as a detective working for the Human Police Force (HPF) who recently turned his partner in after he shot an unarmed Therian in the back. There is a lot of social conflict between Humans and Therians, and this translates to prejudice and Dex getting messages that he’s a traitor to his kind. After the trial he goes to his car, where he find the tire slashed and gets jumped, and when he gets home it’s to find his boyfriend, Lou, packing up and moving out. He’s sure things can’t get worse, but when he returns to work at the HPF he gets jumped again and finds out that he’s being transferred to the THIRDS.
The THIRDS stands for Therian Human Intelligence Recon Defense Squadron, and it’s a special government agency where an equal number of Humans and Therians work together in teams to handle cases involving Therians, ideally without the same prejudice or other issues of an entirely human police force.
I’ve gotten this far and not explained what Therians are. During the Vietnam war a virus infected many people, and the vaccine that was created was mixed with the DNA of various predatory animals like lions, tigers, and bears (oh my!). Due to some weird interactions, people who received the vaccine and especially their offspring gained the ability to shift between human form and animal forms.
There are a lot of heavy-handed themes with the Therians, like the prejudice and the fact Therians are required by law to have a tattoo on their neck of their classification. This is of course posed legislatively as a way to keep humans safe, but really it’s a way to other the Therians and make it easier to discriminate against them and keep track of them. I will admit this is a theme I wish was delved into more throughout the series, but I do like the world building itself around Therians coming into being and how their metabolism and stuff is handled (those are more explored in later books).
Okay, so Dex gets transferred to THIRDS where his (adopted, Therian) brother, Cael Maddox, and (adoptive) father Tony Maddox work. THIRDS is one of the only agencies where family can work on the same team, and Dex is looking forward to having more time with his family, who he is close to. What he’s not prepared for is the fact the spot he’s taking on the team belonged to Gabe Pearce, who’d died on the job, and the team as a whole has a lot of trauma and grief they’re still working through, but most especially the team leader, Sloane Brodie, is having a rough go of it. Despite the fact there’s rules against having romantic relationship with team members, Sloane and Gabe were together, so that Gabe was murdered and Sloane feels a level of responsibility as team leader, he’s not very open to a new partner. Unfortunately (luckily?) that new partner is Dexter. Their meeting is one of my favorite scenes – Dex buys the last bag of Cheesy Doodles from the vending machine, a bear Therian says all the Cheesy Doodles belong to him, and when Dex refuses to relinquish his cheesy snacks, chases him into the training room where Defensive Delta is training to snatch Dex up by his ankles. Sloane is the one who diffuses the situation by forcing Dex to give up the snacks – something Dex never does fully forgive him for 😂
Basically this is a very intense series but also there’s a lot of humor and the found family is top-notch. Over the course of Hell & High Water, Dex, Sloane, and the rest of Destructive Delta are trying to solve the murders of several HumaniTherians – Humans who believed Therians deserved equal rights and treatment. They’re having trouble catching any leads because they can tell the perpetrator is a large felid based on wounds, but no other trace evidence is available – no other scratches, no fur, no witnesses mentioning noises or anything of the sort.
i really liked how the mystery element plays out and the way the reveal is done. On a reread, the clues stand out and it’s like, woah, this was so well planned and plotted! And that’s definitely something I enjoy. I also like (only because all books are available) the way the ending immediately segues into the next with a lot of tension and a furthering of the overall mystery arc. There are definitely some throwaway lines that don’t need to exist and Ash is a very hard character to get behind because he’s the worst as saying harmful and hurtful things. He does grow and develop over the series (his romance takes place in one of the later books), but he’s definitely a rough one.
Speaking of the romance, this very much ends on a HFN type note and in some ways this reads less as a romance novel than a paranormal detective novel with romantic plot. Dex and Sloane are developing feelings and do have a situationship of sorts throughout this book (which, again, is against THIRDS regulations, so it needs to be kept secret), but in the end Sloane is ready to make a real go of having a relationship with Dex, ready to start moving forward in his grieving process regarding Gabe. I like that there is so much room for these characters to grow and develop in this series, and the way Hell & High Water introduces everyone works really well to set the stage for the overarching stories. To be clear, this series primarily follows Dex and Sloane’s relationship, but a few books follow other characters finding their own way to a happy love life.
In conclusion, this is a really solid series opener, though there are some elements that are clearly a debut. This is also a product of its time in some ways, though I think when Charlie re-published in 2019 she did some updates, but overall it does hold up as a high adventure murder mystery set in a contemporary paranormal setting and with complex, nuanced characters, as well as long-term relationship developments.