Pinned!
Roxie's Dangerous Flaws
By eva breedlove on July 30, 2013
Format: Paperback

This is Charles Massie's first book. I am always apprehensive when I purchase a book by an unknown author. This time I was not disappointed. The book is well written. It crosses several literary genres including romance, mystery, erotica and drama.

According to the author this a true story about a man in his late fifties who searches for love on the internet. He thinks he has found the perfect woman living in a small southern town. The character of Roxie, his love interest and sex partner,is well developed and easy to picture. Mark, the main character, comes to visit Roxie and is soon captivated by her many charms. She keeps him under her spell by giving him wild and kinky sex. Mark is suspicious of her lies and deception but does not want to accept it, and thus does not confront Roxie. Apparently his libido is in control and he becomes a victim.

After a confrontation between Mark and Roxie, she calls the police and Mark is arrested. Mark's inability to recognize Roxie's dangerous flaws leads him to being convicted of a crime he did not commit. He finds himself in a nightmarish, unthinkable situation with little money and no place to turn.

Mark's legal problems are accentuated by local cronyism and incompetent law enforcement. There is a sequel to this book that promises to detail the rest of the story. I read this book in two evenings and I am looking forward to the sequel which promises to be released soon.

Pinned!
Trapped by a Human Black Widow!
By Michael A. Newman VINE VOICEon May 9, 2013
Format: Kindle Edition

I was lucky to receive an advance copy of this book with a nice little note from the author. I only say that because otherwise I might have missed out on this powerful and impelling story that took over my life for several days! Based on the part of the title True Crime in Kentucky and the afterword by Mr. Massie as well as his own biographical information, I am assuming that Mr. Massey is telling his own story. However, the main character's name is Mark. Mark narrates the tale in first person beginning with his arrest at his girlfriends house and then backing up and telling the tale how he first met her on the Internet through the aftermath of his arrest.

Mr. Massie has such a way of spinning it with so much detail that I actually felt that everything was happening to me. He seems to have met his ultimate soulmate (Roxie) through Craigslist. The two exchange emails at first and seem to have everything in comman. That elevates to phone calls that get expensive for Mark (he keeps talking about using up his minutes and he prefers talking at night where the calling is unlimited). Mark lives in Syracuse, NY and Roxie is in Burkesville, Kentucky. After about a month of constant conversation, Mark decides to meet his "dream" woman in person and makes arrangements to take a 19 hour bus trip to meet her.

Mark is not very well off financially and he lives with an obnoxious roomate, Les who gets arrested for DUI just before Mark's trip. When Mark gets to Kentucky all he can see is a beautiful goddess in Roxie who gives him amazing sex right away. He seems to be blind to signs that she is probably bad news (kind of like the Seinfeld episode where Jerry is dating a woman that everyone sees as a loser except Jerry).

Roxie is subject to mood swings and seems to leak hints to Mark when she gets drunk that she may have done some really bad things or was involved in some things that had some really bad outcomes. Mark seems to keep saying he will file these tidbits in his mind for later investigation. Then Roxie does some obvious things like forcing Mark to take a daily dose of foul tasting "vitamins" for which she will not reveal the ingredients.

No matter what Roxie does Mark thinks with his libido and keeps getting suckered in more by Roxie until she has her claws deeply in him. Again the author does such a good job that the reader feels like they are the ones being victimized by Roxie and being pulled into a position of no escape.

I really liked this book and the only complaint I have is that I think that the author should tone down some of the gratuitous sex scenes that are presented in excessive detail. Other than that I still give this book a full five stars.

Pinned!
An Interesting Read
By Literary Litter on November 6, 2013
Format: Paperback
I actually picked up this book after reading its sequel Stains on the Gavel. Stains tells the story of Mark, who has been wrongfully incarcerated. Pinned is the back story. It's the story of how Mark fell in love with a woman, Roxie, over the internet, moved to Kentucky, and became 'pinned'. Keep in mind that this is all based on a true story. It's one man's fight against a woman who 'done him wrong' and the 'good ole boys' in the Kentucky judicial system.

For me, I was fascinated with the second book, but I couldn't quite put my finger on why. It wasn't a bad book, but I've read better. Something about it just kept me hooked, addicted. I was interested in finding out Mark's back story and how he ended up in his situation in Stained, but I also was hoping for further insight on exactly what it was that made Stained so fascinating to me. I found it!

First of all, this is an intriguing story. If you read one of the books, you simply have to pick up the other and read either the back story or the continuation. It really is an interesting saga. You'll find yourself flipping page after page to find out what happens next, even though it really isn't an edge of your seat kind of thrill.

So, here's the fascination. I've never read a character like Mark before. The entire story is told from Mark's point of view. The thing is, that we really get to see Mark's perception of himself, which is unusual to this degree. For example, Mark and Roxie will be having an argument. Mark will say or do something that will make me cringe. Usually, it's something that I would never put up with. Then Roxie would retaliate and say something hateful or go off pouting. Sounds like a normal argument, right? The interesting thing is that Mark then can't figure out why Roxie is so upset and begins to think she's 8 crayons short of a box. As readers, we get to see Mark from our point of view, but also from his point of view, which can be two drastically different things.

Also, once I picked up Pinned and read it, it changed how I felt about the second book. In the second one, I felt a modicum of sympathy for Mark and just couldn't comprehend how people like Roxie get away with it, or live with themselves. After reading the first book and finding out how everything really went down, I actually felt a little sorry for Roxie. I'm not saying she's in the right, or the wrong, just that I didn't see her as the cold and calculating woman that I found in the second book.

Read it for yourself and judge! Who's at fault here? Is Roxie a psychotic people user or did Mark really do the things he's accused of? Though this book was originally written to warn people of what can happen, if you look at it from a fictional perspective, it turns into a fascinating 'well, who's the bad guy?' sort of book

Pinned!
A Kentucky True Crime
By Beryl on March 14, 2017
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
Unfortunately I purchased this book thinking it was a true crime book, one can imagine how surprised I was to find out that I had been reading a novel the whole time! That being said, this book was very well written And keeps the reader's attention from first to last page.

Pinned!
PAGE TURNER - BUT, IS IT A NOVEL (FICTION) OR NON-FICTION?
ByJAMES RIGNEYon October 2, 2014
Format: Kindle Edition| Verified Purchase
Pinned – A Kentucky True Crime is a truly fascinating life shattering personal misadventure uniquely presented by the author. Although, one of the most readable “page-turner” true crime genre books I’ve read, the reader should be warned that this book ends without conclusion in a very disappointing type of a deus ex machine ending. That is, the reader will need to purchase a follow-up book (Stains on the Gavel) to learn the rest of the story. The author, Charles Massie, tells his personal misadventure as a victim of a mentally highly unstable woman he met on Craig’s List which enmeshed him in over-the-top sex exploits, criminality, arrest, betrayal, and incarceration stemming from an alleged small town Kentucky “good old boys” corruption network. The author substitutes the name Mark Casey for his own name in his book. A confounding matter with this book is that the author states it is a true (non-fiction) book while also stating in his book that the book is a novel (fiction). I had the opportunity to listen to a PBS (Philadelphia) radio interview in which the author spoke about his book. Throughout the interview the author insists that this is an actual true (non-fiction) event that happened to him. During the radio broadcast , the interviewer (Denise Turney) mentioned a number of times that she had thought his book was a novel (fiction). Thus, indeed one may be understandably confused as to whether they are reading fiction or non-fiction. Nevertheless, other than the above, the reader should find this a most very readable book.

Pinned!
Four Stars
ByLinda Montgomeryon September 12, 2014
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
It was hard to put it down. Kept wanting to see what happened next.

Pinned by Charles W. Massie: A Book Review

This book contains mega doses of sexually explicit scenes—too many for my liking which made me keep putting the book down. That is not a good thing and did not bode well in my opinion of Pinned. In the narrator’s defence he does apologize for this at the beginning of the book, I guess he had his reasons for putting that much smut in here.

This is a story of an internet love affair or a Craig’s List love affair gone wrong. Who would have thought, someone you meet on the internet and do not get to know personally before you fall head over heels in love would turn out to be someone not trustworthy? I was shocked! I want to say something here about the age of the main character and that he should have been a bit more prudent to keep himself and his possessions safe. Upon further thought, I don’t think age has anything to do with it.

Pinned by Charles W. Massie was slow to start, however; part two picked it up a notch or two which was good because I almost did not finish reading this book. There are some good life lessons here. The first lesson of course is that not everyone you meet on the internet is trustworthy so you need to be careful, or in this case be wary. Lesson number two; trust your instincts. Too often we do not listen to our gut telling us that something is not quite right and we just keep on keeping on. Last but not least is the lesson that you find out very fast who your friends are when you are in trouble. Some of us have many fair weather friends and not enough true friends we can actually count on when the going gets rough.

The cast of characters in Pinned include the two main ones: Mark Casey and Roxanne Patrick, (names in the book were changed to protect the guilty). There were also numerous sheriffs’ deputies who were a bit lax in their duties, Les (Marks ex-roommate) and of course there were various lawyers involved with Mark after his arrest (you will need to read the book to find out why he was arrested).
As for my opinion of this book; I was disappointed in it, not sure I liked it, but I am sure that I will not read anything from this author again. This is of course just my opinion, if you read this book, or have read it your opinion may differ from mine. My rating for Pinned by Charles W. Massie is a low 2**.
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Mark, who is from New York, meets a woman named Roxie on the internet. As time progresses, they continue chatting, he finds that Roxie shares many of the same interests and has the ideal outlook on life; they are even similar in age.

Mark and Roxie decide to test the waters at Roxie's home in Kentucky. A whirlwind romance ensues. They travel the local sites together, have rabid sex and fall in love. Everything seems to come together as the happy couple decide to live in Roxie's beautiful home.

Of course, nothing stays the same. After relocating his life to Kentucky, and their relationship declining into an abysmal failure, Mark is accused of a major crime.

The author did succeed in transferring the feelings of desperation and hopeless anger that the main character rightfully exuded.

Read the entire review here:
Bookend Chronicles ( )