Category Archives: Mystery

June 9, 2023 · 12:01 am

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton

book cover

…all the great tragedies are stories ultimately of betrayal. They’re stories where people betrayed the people closest to them but they’re also stories where people betray themselves. They kind of betrayed the better person that they could have become. – B&N interview

Third Apparition –
Macbeth shall never vanquish’d be until
Great Birnam wood to high Dunsiname hill
Shall come against him.


Macbeth –
That will never be.
Who can impress the forest, bid the tree
Unfix his earth-bound root? – The Scottish
Play

Wanna bet?

Birnam Wood is a serious, literary novel, a tragedy, cleverly disguised as an eco-thriller. Mira Bunting, 29, a horticulturist, heads an activist collective called Birnam Wood. They grow food in found plots of land, sometimes with permission, sometimes not. What they grow they consume themselves and give away to any in need. She discovered in childhood an interest in horticulture. It drowns out the relentless patter of self-critique that drives her.

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Eleanor Catton – image from The Guardian

Shelley Noakes is number two, the sort of efficient workhorse that most organizations need in order to survive. Though she is Mira’s roomie and bff, Shelley has grown tired of being taken for granted, always relegated to second fiddle, and is determined to leave. She struggles, however, with the knowledge that if she leaves, Birnam Wood will not survive Mira’s laughable incapacity for meat and potatoes organizational management.

Tony Gallo has been away for several years, backpacking, teaching English in Mexico, trying to find himself. He wants to become a freelance journalist, despite a thin volume of actual experience. He is idealistic and insufferable, his ideological lines are not only clear, but electrified. He is carrying a torch for Mira and has returned home to see if there are any sparks left. Eager for a journalistic break, he stumbles across a biggie.

Robert Lemoine is an American billionaire, disgustingly rich from his drone business. He is looking for a bug-out retreat in case of global meltdown, and had found just the place. Is Lemoine a well-meaning rich guy, or a Bond villain?

Owen Darvish, recently knighted, is the owner of that place, a considerable swath, cheek by jowl with a national park. Unfortunately, there was a major landslide there recently, which has cut off the town of Thorndike. Will the sale actually go through now?

The landslide has caught Mira’s attention. What if Birnam Wood could set up shop in a place that was effectively cut off from most ongoing enterprise? Might be a great chance to grow her non-profit into a much larger player, and maybe do a fair bit of good? She decides to make the considerable drive and check it out. While there, she encounters Lemoine. This is where the story really gets going.

The novel flows in two parallel streams, often merging, then separating, then merging again. The first is the eco-thriller. What is Lemoine on about? He can certainly come across as charming, and sincere, but is he really? Is the money he offers Mira for Birnam Wood’s work being given sincerely, or is he up to something? Does the devil speak true? That he has a studly appeal adds to the confusion. The other is a deep dive into personality and motivation, with rich literary technique and a host of thematic concerns.

Privacy, or lack thereof, is a frequent focus in the book. Lemoine, for example, is a developer of drone technology, and is a one-percenter as well in terms of knowledge of and facility with surveillance. (…he took his phone out of his pocket, tapped the screen, then turned it around to show her. Under the list of detectable devices nearby was listed ‘mira’s iPhone’.) It permeates down to the ninety-nine-percenters as well. This, for instance, is our introduction to Shelley:

…the yellow circle labelled ‘Mira’ pulled out into the street and began traversing slowly north. Shelley Noakes reduced the scale of the map until her own circle, a gently pulsing blue, appeared at the edge of the screen, and watched the yellow disc advance imperceptibly upon the blue for almost thirty seconds before turning off the phone and throwing it, suddenly and childishly, into the pile of laundry at the end of her bed.

Mira has a tracker app on Shelley’s phone as well. Mrs Darvish keeps up on where her husband is by tracking his phone. Tony’s research is of the investigative reporter sort, on line and in-the-field which, of course, entails some significant snooping. And, of course, he is snooped on while he investigates.

Catton uses interior dialogue to let us in on the main characters’ struggles with who they are and what they want. Well, not so much Lemoine, who struggles less with a values dialectic than with figuring out how to get what he wants from the world. Tony sees himself as a progressive, but wrestles with his feminist credentials, and sincerely wonders if he is inauthentic in his desire to make a meaningful career for himself, in presenting himself as someone who has to struggle to get by, who criticizes the very system that makes his life possible. Mira struggles to hide (…a vanity, an appetite, a capacity for manipulation that she would rather other people did not see; she knew, and was ashamed to know). Shelly has to reconcile her seemingly permanent peace-maker role in life with her need to be her own person.

Shelley wanted out. Out of the group; out of the suffocating moral censure, the pretended fellow feeling, the constant obligatory thrift; out of financial peril; out of the flat; out of her relationship with Mira, which was not romantic in any physical sense, but which had somehow come to feel both exclusive and proprietary; and above all, out of her role as the sensible, dependable, predictable sidekick, never quite as rebellious as Mira, never quite as free-thinking, never – even when they acted together – quite as brave.

This being a tale not told by an idiot, inspired by a tragedy, there will be familiar tragic elements on display. Tragic flaws for everyone. Come one, come all. But can the mere hoi-polloi really be tragic characters? Isn’t that reserved for the high and mighty? Owen Darvish certainly counts for that, as does Lemoine. But Mira? Shelley? Tony? Or is grandiosity alone sufficient to elevate one to a height sufficient to mark a character as potentially tragic? Catton does make us wonder as we read just who are the tragic characters, and who the schlubs who are guilty of, maybe, a bit of overreach, or garden variety foolishness.

Of course, there is more to them than merely wanting beyond their capacities. There is another element from tragedy to consider. Note the quote that opens this review. Betrayal figures large. There is enough deception in the air here that one might be well advised to don a bee-keeper outfit to fend off the tangled webs that permeate the landscape. Secrets will be kept, some minor, some world-class. Our intro to Mira, for example, shows her using a false identity to research the landslide area. More importantly, is she selling out the collective if she comes to a deal with Lemoine? Shelley tries her best to seduce Tony as a passive-aggressive way of getting Mira to separate from her. Others have their own secrets and betrayals nicely tucked away.

Another tragedic element is that outcomes are the result of actions, not fate or chance. If you look back down the path from end to beginning you will see all the characters’ yesterdays lighting the way to an inescapable end. Although it is not the only influence on the book, Macbeth is clearly the primary one.

[Catton] drew up another intricate masterplan in which each of the main characters could be seen as Macbeth, with a corresponding Lady Macbeth, witches and so on. It sounds tricksier than it is: as the narrative perspective shifts, everybody could be the villain. She wanted to stop readers playing “the polarised blame game we are all used to in contemporary politics,” she explains. “You wouldn’t be able to say: ‘These are my people so they are obviously the good guys. These are the people that I despise so they are obviously the bad guys.’” – from The Guardian interview

You will have to find out for yourself how much of this structure made it into the final draft.

Other significant sources of inspiration were 20th century crime fiction, Jane Austen’s Emma, (the structure and taut language) and even Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The character Shelley was named for the author, leaving us to wonder whether this Shelley is creature or creator.

While this is a novel in which actions matter, and have consequences, it is also one in which the omniscient narrator will tell you everything you need to know about each of the characters. This ability to look into (monitor remotely? surveil?) everyone’s deepest inner thoughts and feelings resonates with the surveillance elements in the story. One of the precipitating ideas for the book, the Big-Brother-is-watching element certainly, sprung from a 2015 protest in which New Zealand police were taking photos of protesters as they walked past.

Catton is also interested in inter-generational dealings.

It’s something I have thought about a lot…how my generational placement or position has conditioned me. The book is designed generationally. There are three generations represented in terms of the points of view. And I wanted to really explore the generational differences in terms of how they deal with certain contemporary problems that we’re all kind of facing globally. – from The Toronto Public Library interview

But it is no boomer-bashing party.

“Millennials are quite willing to cosy up to the tech gen Xers,” she says. “We are all personally enriching billionaires like Elon Musk by freely giving away our data…These minerals are in the phones that are around us all the time. I want my iPhone. I want to be able to have the freedoms that it brings. We are all complicit.” – from The Guardian interview

In addition to its literary and thriller aspects, Birnam Wood is a satire, a caricature of diverse sorts. Most glaring is the Birnam Wood members, whose motivations and desires are often less idealistic than what they show to the world. Darvish comes in for an uncomplimentary look, too, as does Lemoine. It is a tale, also, about expectations.

Macbeth is a play that’s all about prophecy. It’s animated by prophecy. So I …re-read it with everything that was happening in terms of world events resounding in my head and suddenly saw it in a really different way, as a play that contains very interesting and loud warnings about what happens when you regard the future with too much certainty if you’re too convinced about what lies just down the road. Because of course Macbeth makes the ending of Macbeth happen. None of that was written on the wall before before he received those prophecies and I and so I kind of wanted to achieve a similar effect in a novel by writing a book about incremental political actions and moral actions that end up kind of having these enormous effects that were avoidable. – from the Barnes & Noble interview

In short (too late, I know), Birnam Wood is a multi-layered triumph, building on classic structures and themes to tell a very contemporary story, offering consideration of how people make very human choices, as they contain battles between morality and desire. The tale does not at all creep in a petty pace, but rolls along at a good clip, shifting into turbo as it nears the end, generating an abundance of sound and fury which certainly signifies something.

Like all self-mythologising rebels, Mira preferred enemies to rivals, and often turned her rivals into enemies, the better to disdain them as secret agents of the status quo.

Review posted – 6/9/23

Publication date – 3/7/23

I received an ARE of Birnam Wood from FSG in return for a fair review. Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating, but ever since writing the review, I acquired, and can’t seem to wash off, these bloody spots.

This review has been cross-posted on GoodReads

=======================================EXTRA STUFF

Links to Catton’s Good Reads and Wikipedia pages

Profile – from Wiki

Eleanor Catton MNZM (born 1985) is a New Zealand novelist and screenwriter. Born in Canada, Catton moved to New Zealand as a child and grew up in Christchurch. She completed a master’s degree in creative writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters. Her award-winning debut novel, The Rehearsal, written as her Master’s thesis, was published in 2008, and has been adapted into a 2016 film of the same name. Her second novel, The Luminaries, won the 2013 Booker Prize, making Catton the youngest author ever to win the prize (at age 28) and only the second New Zealander. It was subsequently adapted into a television miniseries, with Catton as screenwriter. In 2023, she was named on the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list.

For those looking ahead

…her next work, “a queasy immersion thriller” that will be called Doubtful Sound, after the remote fjord in the south-west of New Zealand where it is set. She has had the title for a long time – “I just think it is so beautiful” – but it was only in the final months of completing Birnam Wood that the story came to her. – from The Guardian interview

Interviews
—–Poured Over: A Barnes & Noble Podcast – Eleanor Catton on Birnam Wood with Miwa Messer
—–Toronto Public Library – Eleanor Catton – Birnam Wood – Mar 6, 2023 – video – 44:50
—–The Guardian – Eleanor Catton: ‘I felt so much doubt after winning the Booker’ by Lisa Allardice
—–NY Times – Eleanor Catton on ‘Birnam Wood’ with Gilbert Cruz – audio – 35:11
—–Stuff – Eleanor Catton on guilty pleasures, being a slow writer, and whether NZ is still home

Songs/Music
—–Rockwell – Somebody’s Watching Me
—–The Police – Every Breath You Take

Item of Interest from the author
—–Waterstones – Eleanor Catton on Birnam Wood and its influences – video – 6:29 – on Emma as inspiration. There is a lot in here.

Item of Interest
—–The New Yorker – March 13, 2023 – Eleanor Catton Wants Plot to Matter Again by B.D. McCloy

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May 5, 2023 · 12:01 am

What Have We Done by Alex Finlay

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As the bus disappears in a trail of black exhaust, Jenna notices a woman across the street who seems to be staring at her. She’s not one of the usual bus-stop parents. She has a pretty heart-shaped face, high cheekbones. Someone new in the neighborhood maybe. Too young to be a mom. An au pair? Jenna raises her hand to wave, but the woman turns away. Not even fellow outcasts want to be friends. Jenna watches a long moment as the woman crosses the street to avoid the other parents chatting on the sidewalk.

No matter how bad the person, we all cling to the days of innocence we remember from our youth.

Of course, not everyone was innocent. Savior House was less of a group home and more a ring of hell for Jenna, Donnie, and Nico. When they were teens, their female peers were disappearing at an alarming rate. This on top of unhealthy quantities of brutality to endure or evade, not to mention a strange rich person who stopped by occasionally with mysterious purpose. Twenty-five years ago, the three, together with two other friends, committed a homicide. (It’s in the prologue) Today, one of their group is already dead, and the rest are in mortal peril. Can any of them be saved? What goes around…

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Alex Finlay – image from AnthonyFranzenBooks.com

We follow the three as they try to survive. The action is mostly contemporary, with looks back at their teen experience, which was not pretty, and the events that led up to that fateful day. They did not escape Savior House unscathed.

I love exploring how people deal with, and overcome, trauma. I’d read somewhere about how many people with childhood trauma somehow later channel that into highly successful careers. That was the spark for the idea of a group of teenagers in an abusive foster home growing up and having accomplished lives, but also a secret that will come back to haunt them 25 years later. – from 2023 The Big Thrill interview

Jenna is a DC-suburb stay-at-home stepmom, with a particularly dark past, which she believed she had left behind. Donnie was in a popular band twenty years ago, and is now playing the oldies circuit, currently working a cruise ship. He has issues with substances. Nico is an executive producer for a successful reality TV show, set in a mine. He has issues with gambling. Maybe their troubles are a form of penance. Attempts are made on all their lives.

Asked in the above interview how he came up with the unusual characters in this book, Finlay said,

For Donnie, I’ve long wanted to create an aging rocker as a character. In fact, seven years ago I interviewed the members of a popular 80s band knowing that someday I’d use it for a character. That day came when I wrote my first Donnie chapter for WHAT HAVE WE DONE.
For Nico, I have a friend who’s an executive producer of hit reality TV shows, so I had access to someone with a unique job. And the great fictional characters of others—Jason Bourne, Nikita, and Orphan X to name a few—inspired Jenna.

The book is divided into three parts. In The Targets, we meet and spend some time with each of the three, get to know them, their situations in life, their strengths and their issues. The Reunion brings at least some of the group back together, and The Truth is self-explanatory.

It is a wild ride, as Finlay keeps the action moving, and the pages flipping, as the three do their best to remain alive in a hostile world. There are plenty of white-knuckle passages, and chapter-ending questions left to be answered. Finlay knows how to end his chapters with a hook, to keep you from switching off that bedside lamp (or e-reader). He keeps you wondering who can be trusted.

The chapters are short, averaging a little over four pages per, and many, eighty-six, so you can pop into the book for a few minutes at a time, and still scarf down a chapter or five.

Some moral questions are raised. You will pick up some unexpected bits of intel. A killer uses an unusual weapon for their dark purpose. And there is some useful info on mining safety. You are hardly likely to fall in love with any of the characters, particularly any with a psycho-killer persuasion, but you will like them enough, particularly Jenna, (who, BTW, gets 36 of the 86 total chapters; Donnie and Nico get 22 and 16 respectively) to care about how things go for them, to hope that they can find some redemption, in addition to surviving. But this is pretty much a pure entertainment. Don’t worry about underlying content, themes, or larger issues. Just see what happens next, and then, and then, and then. It is a wonderful beach read. You won’t wonder what you have done once you finish reading. You’ll know. You will have had a good time.

he’s startled by a memory: the four of them at the bank of the river, on their knees, the gun barrel put to the back of Donnie’s head.
Ben’s voice echoes in his head. You don’t have to be scared anymore, Donnie.
A tear rolls down Donnie’s cheek.
I’m not so sure about that, Benny. I’m not so sure.

Review posted – 5/5/23

Publication date – 3/7/23

I received AREs of What Have We Done from Minotaur Books in return for a fair review. Now, would you please tell that person who keeps following me to go away. Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating.

This review has been cross-posted on GoodReads

=======================================EXTRA STUFF

Links to Finlay’s personal,
FB, and Instagram, and pages

Profile – From the author’s real-name website

Anthony Franze is a critically acclaimed novelist with St. Martin’s Press, and a lawyer in the Appellate & Supreme Court practice of a prominent Washington, D.C. law firm.
For more than a decade, Anthony was an adjunct professor of law teaching courses in Federal Courts, Legal Rhetoric, and Appellate Practice, and he currently participates in a European faculty exchange program where he teaches at law schools abroad.
He writes legal thrillers under his own name, including THE LAST JUSTICE (2012), THE ADVOCATE’S DAUGHTER (2016), and THE OUTSIDER (2017He writes commercial fiction under a pen name, [Alex Haley] and his 2021 novel was an Indie Next pick, a LibraryReads selection, an Amazon Editor’s Best Thriller, as well as a CNN, Newsweek, E!, BuzzFeed, Business Week, Goodreads, Parade, PopSugar, and Reader’s Digest best or most anticipated thriller of the year. His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages and optioned for television and film.

Interviews
—–The Big Thrill – Up Close: Alex Finlay – A CHILDHOOD DEED TO DIE FOR by K.L. Romo
—–The Big Thrill – 2022 – The Ties That Bind by Dawn Ius
—– Annie’s Book Stop of Worcester – Alex Finlay Interview – on The Night Shift

Item of Interest from the author
—–Criminal element – Excerpt – Chapter 2

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March 31, 2023 · 12:01 am

The Angel Maker by Alex North

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Our experiences and fears collect in the backs of our minds like dry kindling…

…there is really no such thing as long ago

After writing eleven stand-alone mystery/thriller novels, author Steve Mosby shifted course to horror, birthing his nom de doom, Alex North. The Angel Maker is his third under that name. The first, The Whisper Man, was a spine-tingler of the highest order. His second, 2020 – The Shadows, took on lucid-dreaming, bound to garish murders. The Angel Maker returns us to a contemporary setting brought into being by crimes committed a generation ago. It revolves around a spooky book, around one seriously messed-up family, around a young woman, and around a central philosophical theory that fuels a psycho-serial killer.

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Alex North – image from Hull Noir

Thirty-something Katie Shaw is a caring teacher with a three-and-a-half-year-old daughter, and a shaky marriage to her childhood sweetheart. Her brother, Chris, a couple years younger, has been out of touch for quite a while. Katie had finally reported him to the police after he’d stolen money from her bag during a family event. Drug addiction can do that to a person. But then, if you were 15 when some seemingly random psycho tries to kill you on your own street and literally tear your face off, it can have lifelong repercussions. So, Chris has issues. But he is out now, of jail, of rehab, has been for a while, even has a partner and a life. Which is why Katie is confused when her mother tells her that Chris has gone missing. And the hunt is on, as Katie goes all Miss Marple, trying to track down her little brother.

Professor Alan Hobbes, seventy-something, is getting his affairs in order as he expects to die on October 4, 2017, the present of the novel. He lives, or rather lived in a very large house, one with some decidedly spooky elements.

…at the far end of the room, an archway.
He stared at that for a moment. It clearly led away into some deeper chamber of the house, but the blackness there was impenetrable. [Detective] Laurence [Page] could hear the faintest rush of air emerging from it, and the sound reminded him of something breathing.

This in addition to a section of the upstairs floor that burned decades back, but was never repaired. (The UK title of the book is The Half Burnt House.)

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Tartini’s Dream by Louis Leopold Boilly – image from Wikipedia – this appears in a lecture Hobbes is giving

Why did Chris disappear? How did Hobbes foresee his own end? And what does all this have to do with notorious child-killer (and possible seer) Jack Lock, who died in prison in 1956? What was Lock writing in his book all those years ago, and why is some rich guy looking to get it? Edward Leland is clearly a nogoodnik, rich, angry, sociopathic, employer of bad people. And he wants that book, whatever it takes.

So, we have our hero, Katie, who is the primary page-getter here. (19 chapters of 50) We follow along as she tries to track down her brother as the threat levels against both her and Chris keep ratcheting up. Oh, and the guy who had tried to kill Chris all those years ago? Out of jail.

When I first started planning and writing The Angel Maker, all I really knew was that I wanted… the characters [to] be searching for a rare and forbidden text. Some of them would end up doing so for innocent reasons, of course, but there would be others who genuinely coveted the dark knowledge they imagined it contained…I settled on the journal of a fictional serial killer called Jack Lock, an item that would be valuable in and of itself to certain damaged people. But I also wanted it to contain some kind of secret knowledge, which raised further questions. What else might drive people to seek this book out?…in the end, I went with an idea that has haunted me more than a little for many years now, and which engages with a number of the themes that have always interested me. Nature versus nurture. The influence of the past on the present. How much control any of us really have. – from the Crimereads interview

North flogs this theme throughout, which is a strength, giving the book more heft than relying solely on a scary story. Here we have a scary philosophical theory. Leads one to wonder, with a shudder, just how many people might hew to this perspective.

Detectives Laurence Page and Caroline Pettifer offer some entertaining banter, but serve mostly as a way of connecting parts of the story. Laurence offers some echoing of parental issues as well.

The story is definitely engaging. Katie is a good egg, and is easy to root for. North provides her with the handicap of an unsupportive, disbelieving husband, which was cause for a bit of eye-rolling. It is such a trope these days. Maybe always has been.

Dangling fantasy items are tossed in, but seem gratuitous. Katie’s daughter reporting that the moon comes to talk to her, for example. There are a few more otherworldly gewgaws added here and there, but they serve, mostly, as window-dressing.

There are elements that permeate. The first is, obviously, the quest for the magical book. Second is Katie’s quest to find her brother. Parent/child relationships are important, particularly when parents display a clear preference for one child over another. Siblings have issues with each other as well. (Don’t we all?) Thematically, the book is about free choice. Are we really free, or is everything laid out, reducing us to actors reading lines? Do events in our past define our options moving forward? And if the future is set, where lies personal responsibility? North has some fun counterpointing characters named Lock and Hobbes, standing in for the immutability of determined events vs the ability of people to effect change via personal decision-making, reflecting their well-known namesakes from Western philosophical history.

The story dips back from the present (2017), with scenes set in the 1950s, ‘70s, 80s, and 90s, offering explanations for what is going on today. Some might find it a bit tough to follow. I did not have a problem. There are fifty chapters in this 336-page book. So, it is easy to read this one in small chunks if that is your style.

There probably are no books that can foretell the future. But, the odds are that by the time you finish reading The Angel Maker, I predict, you will be quivery and exhausted. You are free to read this book, or to pass, a matter of personal choice. But if one believes in God, a god who knows all that has happened, all that is happening, and all that is to come, then the decision was made long before you were ever offered the choice. Are you still responsible for that decision? And if you veer from what is written in God’s plan, are you not defying the Almighty? Read it or not. The choice is up to you?

“If you could see the future,” Sam asked her, “would you want to?”

Review posted – March 31, 2023

Publication date – February 28, 2023

I received an ARE of The Angel Maker from Celadon in return for a fair review and agreeing not to dig up those things in my yard. Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating.

This review has been cross-posted on Goodreads. Stop by and say Hi!

=======================================EXTRA STUFF

My reviews of other books by North
—–20219 – The Whisper Man
—–2020 – The Shadows

Songs/Music
—–Cher – If I Could Turn Back Time
—–Jim Croce – Time in a Bottle
—–La Stravaganza – Violin Sonata in G Minor—the Devil’s Trill

Item of Interest from the author
—–Crimereads – Alex North on the Pleasure of Fictional Forbidden Texts

It’s a familiar and recurring motif in fiction: the search for a work of art that may or may not exist. One that is difficult to find. One that is rare because it’s awful, and which is sought after for both reasons. The idea speaks to a human desire to face the forbidden simply because it is forbidden. To be a member of the select few that have gone through an ordeal that others have not. To be let in on a secret even if learning it will ultimately destroy you.

Item of Interest
—–Wiki – Laplace’s Demon
—–CRAM – Hard Determinism and John Locke’s Theory of Human Philosophy

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March 3, 2023 · 12:01 am

Don’t Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones

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Dark Mill South’s Reunion Tour began on December 12th, 2019, a Thursday. Thirty-six hours and twenty bodies later, on Friday the 13th, it would be over.

…souls are like livers: they regenerate and regenerate, until you’ve finally poisoned them enough that the only thing they can do is kill you…

First, while I suppose it is possible to read Don’t Fear the Reaper as a stand-alone, I would not advise it. It is the second entry in The Lake Witch Trilogy. I mean, would you read The Two Towers without having first read The Fellowship of the Ring? Sure, Jones fills in enough details here that you could get by, maybe. But why would you want to? There is too much from the first book that you should know before heading into this one. So, if you have not yet read book #1, My Heart is a Chainsaw, settle back in your favorite reading spot, have a go at that one first, then head back here.

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Stephen Graham Jones – image from The Big Thrill

Well, it had been a quiet week in Proofrock, Idaho, “the little town that time forgot and the decades cannot improve.” But it somehow makes itself the Cabot Cove of slasherdom. A chapter walks us through the place’s dodgy past, which culminated in the Independence Day Massacre of Book #1, four years before Book #2 picks up.

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Michael Myers of Halloween – image from Vulture

Jennifer Daniels, Jennifer, not Jade, Jennifer, the kick-ass final girl last time, is out of jail, but only if she can keep from destroying any more government property (as if). It just so happens that there is an epically murderous killer also just out of jail, but not from having been released. Dark Mill South is not a typical name for a killer, for anyone really. But then his killings are not usual either, offering, in addition to severe personal carnage, the placing of bodies facing north. He is supposedly seeking revenge for the hanging of thirty-eight Dakota men in 1862. And, in a nod no doubt, to urban legends, DMS is short one hand, while being plus one hook. A very large, burly person as well, up past 6’5” Jason Voorhees, giving him the BMOC title for slashers. Whoo-hoo! And unlike the main killer of book #1, DMS is an actual flesh-and-blood (lots of blood) monstrosity, not an ageless spook. He can be killed.

He wasn’t meant to make it as far as he does in the book. The way I initially conceived him, he was gonna be this big bad killer who comes to town, and then within a matter of minutes, he gets put down. But then I built him too bad. He couldn’t be put down easily. – from The Big Thrill interview

Even wildlife gets involved in this one. Not the first time of course. Jones did present a vengeful ungulate in The Only Good Indians, and unhappy ursines were a presence in My Heart is a Chainsaw.

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Jason Voorhees of Friday the 13th – image from Vulture

It will give Jade, no, Jennifer, Jennifer, sheesh, the opportunity to go all Final Girl again, but she would rather not, thanks. Who will she identify as the FG this time?

Her fingernails aren’t painted black, and her boots are the dress-ones her lawyer bought for her. The heels are conservative, there are no aggressive lugs on the soles, and the threads are the same dark brown color as the fake, purply-brown leather.

She has gone mainstream, even has long, healthy (Indian) hair now, and a passel of credits from community college correspondence courses. She is back in town after five years of dealing with the justice system from the wrong side of the bars. It is ten degrees, and there is a nasty winter storm making it tough to get around, effectively isolating Proofrock, and it’s unwelcome visitor. The local population will be compressed into a smaller piece of town, as survivors congregate where they might gain some security.

The bodies start piling up in short order, a range of unpleasantries foisted upon them, the local constabulary, per usual in slasher tales, offering a somewhat less than totally effective level of protection to the community.

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Jigsaw – of Saw – Image from IGN

At age 17, Jade (yes, she was Jade then) offered us a tutorial on slasher norms. And saw how what was happening in her town fit the slasher-film norms (maybe should be ab-norms?) Her encyclopedic knowledge of the genre gave her an edge, allowed her to predict the future by looking at what had been produced in the cinematic past. This was done in chapters titled Slasher 101. That has been much reduced here. Although there are a few essay chapters in which a student writes to her teacher about similar subject matter, replicating the Jade-Holmes connection. Additional intel is presented through several characters who share Jennifer’s encyclopedic knowledge of the genre.

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Freddie Krueger of Nightmare on Elm Street – image from Vulture

As with its predecessor, DFtR is an homage to the slasher film genre, particularly the product of the late 20th century golden age. I thought about keeping track of the films named, but it was soon clear that this was a fool’s errand. Like Lieutenant Dunbar says in Dances with Wolves, when Kicking Bird asks how many white men will be coming, they are like the stars. I enjoy slasher films as much as most of you, but am not a maven, by any stretch. One can enjoy this book without being familiar with ALLLLL of the gazillion films that are mentioned, but it did detract from the fun of reading this to feel as if the slasher film experts were passing notes behind my back, and that I was missing the significance of this or that flick nod. Sure, some explanations are offered, but the book would have to be twice as long to explain all of the references, in addition to the dead weight it would have added to the forward progress of the story.

There was almost no weight to be added for this novel.

Never planned on My Heart is a Chainsaw being the first installment of a trilogy, nope. But then in revisions, Joe Monti, my editor at Saga, said… what if everybody wasn’t dead at the end?
I hemmed and hawed, didn’t want to leave anyone standing, but gave it a shot anyway. And it worked, was amazing. And it meant Chainsaw felt like it wanted to now open up to a trilogy, which I think is the most natural form for a slasher to take. – from The Lineup interview

But Jones did not roll out bed knowing how to structure, to write a trilogy, so he studied some of his favorite film series, Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings, to see how it is done. He also corralled a novel into his self-study class and learned a lot, particularly on handling multiple character POVs.

I wrote Don’t Fear The Reaper right at the end of rereading Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove. And that’s in parts, and each part introduces a new character and then it goes into everything else. And it cycles through all their heads. So that’s what I tried to do in Don’t Fear the Reaper—-and following that model was really productive. I don’t think I could have written Don’t Fear the Reaper if I hadn’t just come out of Lonesome Dove. – from the Paste Magazine interview

Part of that cycling includes a peek inside the squirrelly brain of DMS, who, at one point, is in pursuit of two females and relishing the thought of skinning them both alive in a creative way.

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Leather Face – of Texas Chainsaw Massacre – image from Texas Monthly

There is some other pretty weird material in this one that might take up residence in your nightmares, substances that may or may not be real, that may be or may become human, or humanoid, or some sort of living creature. Thankfully, we do not see things through their eyes. (do they even have eyes?)

Many horror products, films, movies, TV shows, et al, get by with a simple surfacy fright-fest, counting bodies and maybe indulging in creative ways of killing, but the better ones add a layer. Jones looks at things from a Native American perspective, as well as that of a serious slasher-movie fan. Not only is Jennifer a Native American final girl (well, she was in the prior book anyway. We do not know straight away if she will be forced to reprise the role this time.) The Jason-esque killer is a Native American as well. Inclusion all around. As noted above, the literary references SGJ favors are to slasher films, but he is not above tossing in more classical literary references. I particularly enjoyed:

In the summer of 2015 a rough beast slouched out of the shadows and into the waking nightmares of an unsuspecting world. His name was Dark Mill South, but that wasn’t the only name he went by.

Jones is offering here a reference to a world famous poem by William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming, which ends with an end-times image (what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?) of a nightmare realized. (You can read the poem in EXTRA STUFF) It will certainly be end-times for many residents of Proofrock.

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Ghostface – of Scream – image from Variety

One of the underlying elements of the slasher story is that it is a bubble inside which some form of justice will be meted out.

Now in 2023, I think the reason we’ve been into slashers the last few years….I think the 24-hour news cycle has greatly contributed to that, and also the election in 2016 that resulted in the news feeding us daily images, hourly images of people doing terrible things at podiums, at rallies, and then walking away unscathed. And what the slasher gives us is the ability to engage for two hours, for six hours, whatever, a world that is brutally fair. A world where if you do something wrong, you’re getting your head chopped off. That sense of fairness is so alluring to us – from the Paste interview

Maybe not so alluring for the collateral victims who clog up the streets, buildings, and waterways, but there is usually some justifiable revenge taking place. Bullies get comeuppance, which is always satisfying.

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Pinhead – of Hellraiser – image from Wired

While Jade/Jennifer does not get our total attention this time ‘round, she remains our primary POV in a town where, really, not all the women are strong, only some of the men are good-looking, and a fair number of the children are, well, different. She is a great lead, having proven her mettle in Book #1, an outsider, that weird kid, charged with challenging a mortal assault on the residents of her town, her superpower her scary knowledge of slasher canon, and a hefty reservoir of guts. Rooting for Jade/Jennifer is as easy as falling off a log, but hopefully without the dire consequences such an event might have in Indian Lake. You will love her to pieces. There are plenty of twists and surprises to keep you in the story. There is creepiness to make you look around your home just to make sure everything is ok. There is a semi’s worth of blood and gore, a bit more tutorial on the genre, and the action is relentless. Once you begin this series one thing is certain. You are sure to get hooked.

slashers never really die. They just go to sleep for a few years. But they’re always counting the days until round two.

Review posted – 3/3/23

Publication date – 2/7/23

I received an ARE of Don’t Fear the Reaper from Gallery / Saga Press in return for a fair review. Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating.

This review has been cross-posted on GoodReads

=======================================EXTRA STUFF

Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pages

Interviews
—–The Big Thrill – Between the Lines: Stephen Graham Jones by April Snellings
—–Esquire – How Stephen Graham Jones Is Reinventing the Slasher By Neil Mcrobert
—–Gizmodo – Horror Author Stephen Graham Jones on His Latest Chiller, Don’t Fear the Reaper by Cheryl Eddy
—–The Lineup – Cut to the Heart: An Interview with Stephen Graham Jones/a> by Mackenzie Kiera
—–Litreactor – Stephen Graham Jones on Trilogies, Deaths, Slashers, and Dog Nipples by Gabino Iglesias
—-* Paste Magazine – Stephen Graham Jones Talks Final Girls, Middle Books, and Don’t Fear the Reaper by Lacy Baugher Milas – This is primo material

Paste Magazine: So, the title Don’t Fear The Reaper —which is one of my favorite songs, by the way—I’m assuming that must come from Blue Oyster Cult.
Stephen Graham Jones: Well, it does come from Blue Oyster Cult, but really it’s that—in Halloween, Jamie Lee Curtis and her friend are riding in her friend’s Monte Carlo, and they’re listening to (Don’t Fear) The Reaper, and then in 1996 with Scream, a cover of Don’t Fear) The Reaper is playing over Billy and Sid, and so it seemed like that was a kind of momentum. I had no choice but to call it Don’t Fear The Reaper, I was going to honor my heroes. Stephen Graham Jones on Writing, the Pantheon of Horror, and Clowns by Leah Schnelbach – nada on Reaper

If you want even more interviews with SGJ, I posted a bunch in my review of My Heart is a Chainsaw. There are plenty more contemporary (2023) interviews to be had if you feel the urge.

Songs/Music
—–Blue Oyster Cult – Don’t Fear the Reaper
—–Largehearted boy – Stephen Graham Jones’s Playlist for His Novel “Don’t Fear the Reaper”

My reviews of (sadly, only three) previous books by Jones
—–2021 – My Heart is a Chainsaw – on Coot’s Reviews
—–2020 – The Only Good Indians
—–2016 – Mongrels

Items of Interest
—–Pop Culture – Horror Movie Characters – includes stats on them
—–William Butler Yeats – The Second Coming

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February 3, 2023 · 12:01 am

The Hunter by Jennifer Herrera

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Maude’s voice was far away, the way the chime of a bell can feel distant even if it’s right in front of you. “You’re too late,” she said to me, to no one. “Every last one of them is dead.”

“Every gift comes at a price.”

NYPD detective Leigh O’Donnell is on double-secret suspension. Her prospects of returning to her job are about as real as Dean Wormer ever authorizing the return of Delta Tau Chi. On top of that, she is newly separated from her (boss) husband, the person who suspended her. He could not understand why she would pull her gun on a fellow officer, allowing a caught suspect to escape. Thankfully, her brother, Ronan (Ro), gets in touch. Seems that back home in Copper Falls, Ohio, there had been a very suspicious triple death. And they would love it if an actual NYC detective could pop by for a look-see. Leigh takes the opportunity to skip town for a while, bringing along her four-year-old daughter, Simone.

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Jennifer Herrera – image from her site

Who says you can’t go home again? Oh, Thomas Wolfe, in his novel of that name. Ok. Fine, whatever. Well, Leigh gives it a go anyway, taking the opportunity to introduce Simone to Leigh’s uncles, to Ro, and to the town in which she had grown up. It will come as no shock that author Jennifer Herrera spent much of her childhood in a small Ohio town.

For the first five years of my life, I lived in a trailer park, which, while not economically diverse, was diverse in just about every other way. So when my family moved to a small town in rural Ohio, I wasn’t prepared for how alien I would feel there. Everyone was related. They all looked alike. They went to the same church. They held the same beliefs. If you’re not from there, it’s unbelievable. But those places still exist.


When I was a kid, all I knew was that I didn’t fit in and wanted to get out. When I got older, I started to wonder what it was about this community that made them so afraid of letting the outside world in. – from The Book Club Kit

Herrera comes up with a few possibilities about that, most of them less than complimentary to the residents of her fictionalized version. This is a place with secrets. Pretty tough to make any progress finding out the truth when you are struggling upstream against a torrent of lies.

The first-person story-telling is mostly linear with some flashbacks. Added to the presenting mystery of what happened to these three young men are Leigh’s personal struggles. She wants to save her endangered marriage. She wants to resurrect her career as a detective. But she also wants to get a better handle on who she really is. For better or worse, this Podunk town is a part of her, even if she had left it years before, intending never to return. She has loving family here, in addition to painful memories. This was once a true home for her. Could it ever be that for her again? It would be great for her daughter to have a larger family tree than the few branches Leigh can offer her in NY. So, Leigh is engaging in a journey of self-discovery. But it is also a quest. You can tick off the Campbellian stages, as our hero does battle with dark forces and descends to the equivalent of hell, fending off monsters in order to reach her goal. One of her uncles even thinks of her as a classic Irish hero of legend, Fionn MacCumhaill – aka Finn McCool. The uncles serve multiple roles, connection to and intel on locals, child care for Simone, a warm, familial homey element, and comic relief.

Imagery abounds. Herrera clearly enjoys playing with archetypal images. Snakes put in appearances. There is an apple orchard that, when paired with the snakes, certainly gives one an image of a corrupted Eden. A house tucked away out of sight makes one wonder if there might be someone inside preparing to cook children. A flock of birds massing to protect one damaged member has got to mean something, right?

Shrines figure large. There are said to be shrines in the caves under the waterfall, likely remnants of indigenous people who were driven out by colonizers. The people of the town seriously want to keep their town the way it is, preserved in amber, a sort of shrine to their past, to themselves. Herrera includes a fun reference to a relevant Twilight Zone episode to bolster the image. The title of the book comes in for some use. Early on a character refers to detective Leigh as a hunter. An archetypal native personage figures large. There is even a sly reference to hunter green.

There are peculiarities that grab our attention and demand exploration. For example, threes abound here. Maud had three brothers who perished together a lifetime ago. There were the multiple deaths seven years back of three young men of eighteen. The latest mortal hat trick included men in their twenties, contemporaries of the prior three. Interestingly, the last two trifectas all turned up in the pool at the bottom of the same waterfall. Curious, no? And Leigh’s mother had three brothers, the uncles of this tale. What’s up with all the treys?

Obviously, poking through all this imagery stuff, looking for connections that may or may not be real, digging down into rabbit holes as they appear (What is that rabbit late for, and where is he going?) is great fun. But, pleasurable as that is, the book would not succeed if we did not feel a connection to the lead. Not to worry. Leigh has her issues, but she is definitely relatable.

On the down side, I found it a bit tough to accept that Leigh would do what she did in NYC for the reason that is offered.

The supporting cast is a mixed crew. Some stand out, like the elderly, mysterious Maud. Onetime bf and now reporter, Mason Vogel, is a confusing foil for Leigh. Her brother, Ronan, is a likeable partner. The uncles are fun. Most stand back, as supporting characters do. Means to an end, whether advancing the plot or offering atmospherics. The notion of history, both the immediate and personal history of individuals, and the larger, longer cultural history of a place, and its hold on the present, for good or ill, is palpable. The procedural elements are well done, and the explanations make a dark sort of sense. The lead is someone we can pull for. The Hunter is a fun read, an engaging mystery that will keep you well-entertained, and keep your gray cells firing for the duration.

…most of the businesses in town—the grocery store, the antiques market, the candy shop—they’re all owned by the same seven families. The Wagners are the majority share, sure, but this town? It’s all one big family business.”
“That’s insane.”
“Not really. I’m sure it’s like that in a lot of places. See, those seven families have never left. Some individuals left, sure, but most of them stayed. People give their houses to their kids or their grandkids. Sometimes nephews and nieces. But it’s rare for them to sell to outsiders. Especially the houses close to the center of town. There are ordinances forbidding new construction. We don’t get many new people here.”

Review posted – 2/3/23

Publication date – 1/10/23

I received an eARE of The Hunter from Putnam in return for a fair review. Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating.

This review has been cross-posted on GoodReads

=======================================EXTRA STUFF

Links to the author’s personal, Instagram, and Twitter pages

Interviews
—–Oh! Murder – Interview: Jennifer Herrera, The Hunter
—–The Mystery of Writing – The Hunter: Debut Thriller

Items of Interest from the author
—–Book Club Kit
—–Crimereads – MEN ARE THE MOST LIKELY VICTIMS OF HOMICIDE. WHY DO CRIME WRITERS KILL SO MANY WOMEN?

Items of Interest
—–Wiki on Thomas Wolfe’s novel, You Can’t Go Home Again

“You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood … back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame … back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting, but which are changing all the time – back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.”

—–Discovering Ireland – Fionn MacCumhaill – aka Finn McCool of Irish legends
—–Twilight Zone Fandom – The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine
—–ProWritingAid – Deep Dive: Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey”
—–Wiki on Animal House

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January 27, 2023 · 12:01 am

The House in the Pines by Ana Reyes

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An ancient poplar loomed at the entrance to the abandoned road, its rounded mass of huddled gray limbs reminding her of a brain. She passed beneath its lobes, twigs branching like arteries overhead as she entered the forest.

Deep in these woods, there is a house that’s easy to miss.
Most people, in fact, would take one look and insist it’s not there. And they wouldn’t be wrong, not completely. What they would see are a house’s remains, a crumbling foundation crawling with weeds. A house long since abandoned. But look closely at the ground here, at this concrete scarred by sun and ice. This is where the fireplace goes. If you look deeply enough, a spark will ignite. And if you blow on it, that spark will bloom into a blaze, a warm light in this cold dark forest.

Maya Edwards is 25, not well off, ½ Guatemalan, ¼ Irish, ¼ Italian, with no career drive after getting her degree from Boston University. She is from Pittsfield, MA, where her mother still lives. Her father died before she was born. Not the only significant death in her life. When she was 18, her bff, Aubrey, died a mysterious death, at the hands, she believes, of a man they had both dated. But, despite her being present when it happened, there are no viable clues with which to make a case, and folks thought her nuts for even trying. Today Maya has a life, just moved in with her boyfriend, is about to meet his parents, when she sees a video on Youtube. A young woman, in a diner with her bf, suddenly keels over dead. A close look at her table partner reveals the same man who had killed her friend. She is terrified that he might continue to kill women and may become back to Pittsfield to clean up loose ends.

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Ana Reyes – image from her site

Maya keeps having dreams about a cabin in the woods, a welcoming abode, with a warm blaze in the fireplace, the burning pine logs adding their scent to the room, the log walls offering shelter from a strong wind. It is cozy, feels like home. But there is danger there as well. Frank is there in the dreams, always there. She struggles to understand the sounds she hears, but realizes they are coming from Frank, who appears suddenly behind her, and she wakes, drenched in sweat. So, what’s up with that?

The central mystery (well, there are two, the first one is whether Frank actually killed those two women, and if so how, and) what is the deal with the strange house in the woods that haunts her dreams, the House in the Pines of the title.

Maya is not the most reliable of narrators. She is going through withdrawal from Klonopin. It was prescribed to help her sleep, but the scrip can no longer be filled and she is trying to go cold turkey. She has used alcohol liberally to help her both sleep and drown out the darkness that troubles her. Is she imagining things? Are the drugs and alcohol causing her to hallucinate? Is the stress of white-knuckle withdrawal impairing her ability to reason?

I was living in Louisiana, working toward my MFA in fiction, and, like Maya,…had suddenly quit Klonopin after several years of taking it nightly for sleep. The doctor who had prescribed it back in LA never said anything about addiction, while my new Baton Rouge doctor treated me like an addict when I asked her for it. She cut me off cold turkey, and I went through protracted withdrawal syndrome, the symptoms of which inform Maya’s experience in the book. Writing about benzodiazepine withdrawal—albeit from her perspective—helped me through it. – from the Book Club Kit

The story flips back and forth between the present day and seven years prior. We get to see her friendship with Aubrey, and how Frank had come between them. We see how her current troubles with withdrawal and her determination to look into the Frank situation may be interfering with her current serious relationship.

Maya does her Miss Marple thing to try to find out what really happened to Aubrey, to find out how Frank killed her, and one more thing. During the few weeks in which she dated Frank, there were multiple episodes in which she lost hours of time. Did Frank drug her? There is peril aplenty, as we take Maya’s word that Frank is a killer, so all her activity might be putting her in mortal peril. If only the cops had taken her seriously, but you know the cops in such almost stories never do.

Pliny the Elder said Home is where the heart is, but how can a place that feels so home-like also be so terrifying? This reflects some events and concerns in Reyes’s life.

The inspiration was mostly subconscious. I was living alone in a new city, cut off from any place I’d call home, when I wrote the first draft. This lonely feeling inspired one of the book’s major themes, which is the universal yearning to return to a place and time of belonging. That theme shaped the story and helped me build the titular house in the pines. – from the Book Club Kit

Reyes incorporated several elements of her life into the book. In addition to struggles with addiction, both Maya and Ana are half Guatemalan. Both were raised in Pittsfield, MA. The book took seven years to write, and the gap between Aubrey’s death and Maya’s return to the scene of the crime is seven years.

In order to solve the mysteries, Maya must figure out the imagery in an incomplete book her father had been writing when he died in Guatemala. The references take one a bit afield, but if you dig into them, you will be rewarded. I posted some info in EXTRA STUFF.

Maya’s father’s book points to an important truth about the danger she’s in. For me this was a metaphor for inherited trauma. Like so many people with roots in colonized places, the violence of the past has a way of showing up in the present in unexpected and highly personal ways. This is true for Maya in a very literal sense. To save herself, she must understand a story written before she was born. – from the Book Club Kit

There are some fairy-tale-like references in here, but I am not sure they are much more than added in passing. One can see certainly see Frank as a seductive wolf, a la Little Red Riding Hood. A musical group dresses as the fairy godmothers, lending one to consider Sleeping Beauty, which is further reinforced by Maya’s several episodes of lost time, and, ironically, her difficulties with sleep. Woods, per se, have always been a source of fear in Western lore.

So, is it any good? Yep. Ana is certainly flawed enough for us to gain some sympathy, although she cashes in some of those chits with occasional foolish decisions. Secondary characters are a mixed lot. Her boyfriend is thinly drawn. Mom has more to her. Her teen bud, Aubrey, even more. Frank is an interesting mix of loser and menace. The strongest bits for me were a visit to Guatemala and the depiction of the attractiveness of the house. I will not give away the explanation for it all, but, while it may have a basis in the real world, I found it a stretch to buy completely. Still, righteous, if damaged, seeker of truth digging into the mysterious, while imperiled by a dark force, with little support from anyone, with a fascinating bit of other-worldliness at its core. I enjoyed my stay in the cabin. Page-turner material.

The image is both comforting and really sinister at the same time once we learn more about it.
Exactly. That’s definitely what I was going for, that dark side of nostalgia. – from the Salon interview

Review posted – 01/27/23

Publication date – 01/03/23

I received an ARE of The House in the Pines from Dutton in return for a fair review, and another log on the fire. Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating.

This review has been cross-posted on GoodReads

=======================================EXTRA STUFF

Links to the author’s personal, FB, Instagram, and Twitter pages

The House in the Woods Was a Reese’s book club selection for January 2023

Interviews
—–NY Times – Teaching Writing to Retirees Helped Ana Reyes Stay Focused by Elisabeth Egan
—–Salon – “House in the Pines” thriller author on the “dark side of nostalgia” with a narrator no one believes
—–Writer’s Digest – Ana Reyes: On Working The Writing Muscles by Robert Lee Brewer
—–Professional Book Nerds – Talking The House in the Pines with Author Ana Reyes by Joe Skelley – audio – 40:00

Items of Interest
—–Book Club Kit
—–Gnosis.org – The Hymn of the Pearl – The Acts of Thomas

Songs/Music
—– Emily Portman – Two Sisters – referenced in Chapter 5, although by a different performer
—–Bobby Darin – Dream Lover – playing at the Blue Moon Diner in Chapter 10
—–Mano Negra – El Senor Matanza – noted in Chapter 11 as Maya’s new favorite band
—– Nine Inch Nails – The Downward Spiral – mentioned in Chapter 17
—– The Foo Fighters – There is Nothing Left to Lose – mentioned in Chapter 17
—–Lenny Kravitz – Mama Said – mentioned in Chapter 17

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January 20, 2023 · 12:01 am

Blaze me a Sun by Christoffer Carson

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I raped a woman in a car. It’s near Tiarp Farm. A brief silence followed. Then: I’m going to do it again. Bye.

Monstrousness was always sleeping right beneath the surface, just out of sight.

1986 – A terrible crime in an out-of-the-way place. A young woman is brutally raped and murdered in her own car. It might have gotten a bit more national attention had there not been another crime that night, the murder of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme. The attention would have been merited, as the killer taunted the police with a phone call, boasting of his deed and promising more of the same. He will become known as Tiarp Man. The case falls to Sven Jörgensson. It will consume him.

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Christoffer Carlsson– image from Ahlander Agency

Blaze Me a Sun has a frame structure. It opens in 2019, with a writer looking into the famous crimes that had taken place in Halland County, in southern Sweden. He is a local, who has been away for a long time, but felt a need to return home. Those who knew him as a kid call him Moth. The primary story is the one that Moth researches and tells. Then we go back to Moth for the final fifth (or so) of the novel.

The book is divided into multiple periods. The first (inside the frame) is 1986, when the first crimes take place. Next is 1988 when the national police take over the investigation. In 1991, there are more violent crimes. Is it the same person? 2019 is when Moth is up front as our narrator, at the beginning and end of the novel.

I was reminded of the true-crime format, in which the host/narrator walks you through all the details of one or multiple crimes, then offers the reveal at the end. But the first-person perspective of the frame is replaced in the core here by a third-person-omniscient perspective. At the back end of the story, the narrator takes center stage again, leading us through his further inquiries.

Mostly, we follow Sven as he looks into several murders and one near-killing. As with the Palme murder, finding the perpetrator is a fraught, frustrating job. Evidence is scarce and the struggle to identify the perpetrator wears down the patience of both Sven and his superiors over time. He is an intrepid detective, someone who takes his responsibility to the victims and their families to heart. He thinks of them every day, even long after he is no longer on the case, even after he is retired. Sven is an easy character to pull for, mostly. A white knight on a worthy quest, but there is tarnish on that armor as well. Sven is far from purely benign.

Even heroes can make mistakes. The dream of a spotless past is, after all, only a dream. No one makes it through unmarked. We have to learn to live with it. If we can.

One element that struck me was that we come to think of the victims by their first names, as Sven does. It gives them a bit of extra presence that enhances our feel for Sven’s struggles, his determination to see justice done.

Even Sven’s son, Vidar, as an adult, gets caught up in the complications, the reverberations of the case. Families are a major focus of the book. The crimes have both immediate and long-term impact on the people who must survive the horrific loss of a loved one. Single crimes echo through time to generate multiple waves of misery and destruction. People come to learn things about those to whom they are the closest. You can see why some folks might be jarred learning those things. The truth doesn’t just hurt, it can break your psychic bones, change your direction in life, make you into a different person than you were. Sven’s relationship with Vidar is both loving and strained, a source of tension that carries through the story.

Carlsson links the Tiarp Man murders to the Palme assassination thematically, rather than concretely.

When the prime minister was shot and the shooter was never more than a shadow heading up the stairs into the dim light of David Bagares Gata, it unleashed something. Distaste. A rage that no one could quite control.
From opinion pages and kitchen tables came an indignant clamor over police and politics, criminality and immigrants, the wretched creature that had become Sweden and one’s own reflection in the mirror. It was clear now. The country could have come through anything unscathed—anything but this. The youthful boy with his smiling eyes, a mother-in-law’s dream who turned out to be a murdering monster up there in the north: Maybe that’s us.
Of course this sort of thing leaves its mark on you. Of course it marks a country. How could it not?

Tiarp Man personified that for this part of Sweden. Things that remained unresolved for far too long. A sense of community comfort that was forever disrupted.

There is no real magical realism at work in this book, but Carlsson does offer up an omen in the form of a local superstition.

As spring arrived, the village came to life. Everything seemed to shimmer, and the colors grew so vivid. Sweet days awaited.
The first white wagtail sighting also brought a moment of uncertainty. We learned to be very cautious. If you saw the bird from the back, which you almost always did, it meant happiness and good fortune. But on those rare instances in which you first happened to catch sight of it from the front, and got a good look at the black spot on its tiny breast, it was a bad omen: Misfortune and sorrow lay ahead.

Carlsson knows a bit about police work and crime. Mom was the Swedish equivalent of a 911 dispatcher. And the author’s day job is putting his Criminology PhD to use as a college professor, and writer of professional papers on criminology. His father was an auto mechanic, a job he hands off to Moth’s father in the book. Carlsson is from the area in which these crimes take place. I suppose only those who know the area can opine on whether he presented it accurately.

Criminology taught me the rough brutal truths about crime: it’s dirty, bloody, messy, painful, raw, costs a lot, and, sometimes, it’s beyond meaning in any reasonable sense of that term. – From Crimereads article

I had only two real issues with the book. There is a gap between some of the crimes that is not really explained, and an authorial disinclination to go into the killer’s motivations. If you are ok with that, then this one should satisfy. It enhances a procedural mystery with a look at family, questioning how well we really know those closest to us, and the limits of what one might do for loved ones. It adds a take on the sense of the place and the times. Best of all, there are some excellent twists.

The one she asks for light is also the one who will bring darkness. Like the face of Janus.

Review posted – 01/20/23

Publication date – 01/03/23 – (English translation) – It was originally published in Swedish in 2021

I received a digital ARE of Blaze Me a Sun from Hogarth in return for a fair review. Tack, gott folk, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating.

This review has been cross-posted on GoodReads. Stop by and say Hi!

=======================================EXTRA STUFF

Links to the author’s Instagram and Twitter pages

Blaze Me A Sun is Carlsson’s ninth book and American debut.

Interview
—–Penguin Random House – Book Club Kit – there is an excellent interview in this
—–Booktopia – An award-winning crime writer’s advice for aspiring authors. by Anastasia Hadjidemetri – from 2017

Songs/Music
—–Sting – Russians – noted in chapter 23

Items of Interest
—–Wikipedia – Assassination of Olof Palme
—–Oregon State University – frame structure in novels

Items of Interest from the author
—–Google Scholar – Carlsson’s criminology writings
—–Crimereads – 1/11/2023 – With the Dead

Could the worst of crimes be devoid of meaning? Strange things happen all the time, every day, and we don’t think too much of them because they don’t affect us that deeply. They are just “coincidences” or something else, depending on what you believe in. Criminology taught me the rough brutal truths about crime: it’s dirty, bloody, messy, painful, raw, costs a lot, and, sometimes, it’s beyond meaning in any reasonable sense of that term.

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September 23, 2022 · 12:01 am

My Dirty California by Jason Mosberg

book cover

I love this state, I really do. Yet, at times, California feels like something hip someone in marketing tried to fit in a bottle to sell. California is the kind of place that can make a person who doesn’t care about flowers care about wildflowers. But there’s a dark history below California’s undeniably beautiful surface. A dark history with how its destiny manifested. Japanese internment. The LA riots. The California Alien Land Law of 1913. The Mexican-American War. Facebook. Sometimes I think California never left the gold rush era. Gold was merely substituted with other treasure to chase. Movies. Fame. Waves. Venture capital. Youth. Wine. Love. Spirituality. Technology. I guess I’m part of the everlasting, ever-changing rush.

When I first moved to LA, I realized no one here goes bowling. There’s too much to do. Marty Morrel did it all. He explored every inch of the city of LA, every crack and crevice of the state of California, and it’s all documented in hundreds of videos, thousands of pictures, and scores of essays and journal entries. Even if there hadn’t been any crimes, I think I would have wanted to make a podcast about Marty. But there were crimes. I thought murders would be the most disturbing part of this podcast, but that was before I learned about Pandora’s House. – from a fictional, unaired podcast

As you can see, My Dirty California opens with a fun, noir narration. The sensibility persists, although there is no troubled detective or PI asking uncomfortable questions, drinking too much, and getting beaten up. After that opening bit, Mosberg leaves the boundless beauty (the clean aspect?) of the state to other writers. This is today’s off-the-tourist-map California, violence, murder, drugs, trafficking, scams, surfer dudes, documentary film-making, outrageous, long-lasting parties, portraits of some Cali subcultures, a bit of mental illness, sleuthing, sex (only a little) and some serious other-worldly notions. There are LOLs to be had here, and even some tears. Jody, Pen, Tish and Renata are all searching for something, and Marty Morrel is at the center of it all.

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Jason Mosberg – from his site

Unfortunately for Marty he is not around, as he becomes late early on. After a ten-year hiatus he returned to his home near Lancaster, PA, where his father and brother, Jody, live. Soon after, a hooded gunman killed him, for reasons unknown, and his father, for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But before his demise, he had clued Jody in to a project he had been working on

“I’ve been making this thing. I don’t really know what it is yet. It’s called My Dirty California.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s a website. But it’s really just a place I’ve been doing a . . . project. I didn’t even know what it was at first. I wasn’t trying to define it. Eventually it kinda became a video log, about my adventures or whatever. A place to store all the pictures I take. And I kept up with it. Posting these videos online.”
“So it’s a blog.”
“No,” Marty says…“It’s more a place I can store all these photos and videos and essays till I figure out what to do with the project. Maybe at some point I’ll edit them into a documentary or a piece of long-form web video art.”

When Jody decides to heads out to LA to find out what Marty was up to, what got him killed, that collection is his starting point, along with letters and postcards his brother had sent home. Jody is not the only person availing of Marty’s trove.

Penelope Rhodes is a documentary film maker. She’d had some success with an earlier film about a UFO, which gets her several meetings about her new project. The driving force of her life is finding her father, who vanished when she was a kid. However, this is a search with a difference. Pen has a rather peculiar idea of what may have happened to him, involving Matrix-like simulations. Don’t ask. She is fixated on finding a particular place, Pandora’s House, where she believes it might be possible to move from this simulation (the one we are all living in) to another, where her father might be. This obsession has made getting by in this simulation rather a challenge. In her explorations, she comes across Marty’s vast materials, and follows the clues wherever they lead, or wherever she imagines they might lead.

Typhony Carter is young, married, with one son. She works cleaning houses, but cannot get enough work to keep her family afloat. Her husband, Mike, is a dedicated father. But when they go to a rally about cops killing yet another black teen, Mike gets into it with a counter-protester and winds up in jail. Times get even tougher, so when a scheme appears, that involves finding a hoard of art, supposedly secreted away by a recently deceased collector/dealer, she takes on the mission.

Renata, 19, travels from Mexico to the USA hoping for a better life, not, of course, through the legal channels. There is a contact in LA who can help her, a family friend. But things do not go to plan and Renata winds up trying to survive an abduction. Marty had been trying to find out what happened to her. Now there are others looking as well.

The POV alternates among Jody, Pen, Renata, and Typh. Jody is our driving force, where we spend the most time. There are 89 chapters in the book. Jody gets 31, then Pen, 24, Renata, 18, and Typh, 16. The chapters are short, so the four stories move along at a lively clip, clearly a product of a screenwriter’s appreciation of pacing

It also makes it possible to read this whenever you have small bits of available time, if that is something you like to do.

Since this is California, wheeled transportation figures large. Almost all the characters are assigned an auto-trait, like hair or eye color, or age. Jody, for example, drives a gray pickup. Pen drives a Prius. People are tracked, as well as defined, by the cars they drive. There is an Acura, an Accord, an old Lexus sedan, a Ford Focus, even a Tesla, and plenty more. I only started keeping track part way through. It is a small, fun element. There are appealing. surprising cameos by a range of wild creatures. These include a kangaroo, a wobbegong shark, and a jaguar. The notion of moving from one reality to another is given a look beyond Pen’s particular take on it.

Mosberg offers sly commentary on local sub-cultures. He looks a bit at how good intentions are used for dark ends. One thing to be aware of, different characters are on unparallell timelines, although those timelines do intersect. Characters in adjoining chapters could be doing what they do months apart. I found it a wee bit disconcerting at first, as actual dates are not provided, but one soon gets used to it.

Character engagement – Jody is righteous, on an understandable truth-seeking quest. His motivation makes sense and he is easy to pull for. Pen is also on a quest, although it remains to be seen for us whether there is enough reality basis there for us to go all in with her. Wanting to find your lost father may be a noble ambition, but she may just be nuts. Pandora’s House may be just another conspiracy theory (she nurtures loads of those) Makes it a bit tougher to go all in for her emotionally. Renata is an innocent soul, a pure victim, beset by dark forces, just wanting a better life. But is there enough more about her in here to make us care beyond wanting her to escape? Typh is a decent sort, although, in order to provide for her family, she is willing to go legally and morally rogue. So, depending on what works for ya, you may find one or more of these four worthy of following. I enjoyed the weaving together of the strands, as they all continue to connect through Marty’s storehouse of intel.

There is a considerable cast of supporting actors. Two thuggish sorts were a particular delight, a source of considerable merriment. There are occasional bits in which this character or that is presented in a bit more depth, but that is not what this book is about. It is about the story, and, of course, the state.

Bottom line for me was that I really loved this book. It kept me interested, offered enough characters to care about, gave a peek into places and groups I have never experienced, in short it kept me entertained for the duration. You may or may not ever find your way to Pandora’s House, but you should have no trouble finding your way to a copy of My Dirty California.

“Various rumors exist about Pandora’s House. Some people say the architect Zaha Hadid was paid eight figures to design a top secret underground property in Southern California but she had to sign an NDA, and no one knows where it is. Another rumor suggests the Church of Scientology began building a two-hundred-million-dollar bunker but abandoned the project halfway through and sold the property to a couple millennials whose parents had made billions in the dot-com era, and they use the house to throw elaborate weeklong parties. Some say it’s where the notorious lizard people live underground. Other people say the house was constructed by the US government as a safe house for the top one percent in the case of an apocalyptic event.”
“Has anyone actually seen the house?” asks Matt.
“Lots of people claim to have. It’s difficult to know for sure.

Review posted – September 23, 2022

Publication date – August 30, 2022

I received an DRC (digital review copy) of My Dirty California from Simon & Schuster in return for a fair review, and surrendering certain tapes that had come into my possession. Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating.

This review has been cross-posted on GoodReads

=======================================EXTRA STUFF

Links to Mosberg’s personal and Twitter pages

Profile
Jason Mosberg works as a screenwriter and TV creator in Los Angeles. He is the creator of the CBS All Access series One Dollar

Item of Interest from the author
—–Crime reads – Don’t Turn My Book Into a TV Serieson the fixation in Hollywood these days on Intellectual Property, or IP.

I first wrote My Dirty California as a pilot script and I gave it to a producer I knew—let’s call him Bob—a couple years ago. And at the time, Bob said he read the script and it wasn’t for him. A few days after the announcement of the sale of the book My Dirty California to Simon & Schuster, Bob called and said, “I heard you sold a book, what’s it about?” He was interested. And he had no recollection of the script I sent him because he probably didn’t bother to read it. That was just a script. But this? This is a book. This is IP.

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September 9, 2022 · 12:01 am

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher

book cover

The dead don’t walk. Except, sometimes, when they do.

It is a cliché to say that a building’s windows look like eyes because humans will find faces in anything and of course the windows would be the eyes. The house of Usher had dozens of eyes, so either it was a great many faces lined up together or it was the face of some creature belonging to a different order of life—a spider, perhaps, with rows of eyes along its head.

How many of you have not read Edgar Allan Poe’s story, The Fall of the House of Usher? Ok, now how many of you read it, but so long ago that you do not really remember what it was all about? All right, the link is right above, so, really, go check it out. Take your time. I get paid the same whether you take half an hour or a year, so no worries on my part. Pop back in when you’re done.

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All right, I think it has been long enough. Those who have not done the reading can catch up later. As I am sure you get, What Moves the Dead is a pastiche, a reimagining of Poe’s tale. Often these are temporal updates, moving the events to a more contemporary setting. But this one is different. Kingfisher (really Ursula Vernon) keeps Usher in the late 19th century. She supplants Poe’s thick style with a more contemporary, less florid, more conversational presentation.

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T. Kingfisher – image from her GR page

Poe’s unnamed narrator becomes Alex Easton, of which more in a bit. We first meet the lieutenant examining some disturbing flora.

The mushroom’s gills were the deep-red color of severed muscle, the almost-violet shade that contrasts so dreadfully with the pale pink of viscera. I had seen it any number of times in dead deer and dying soldiers, but it startled me to see it here.

Ok, definitely not good. Continuing on, Alex is alarmed at the state of the Usher manse.

It was a joyless scene, even with the end of the journey in sight. There were more of the pale sedges and a few dead trees, too gray and decayed for me to identify…Mosses coated the edges of the stones and more of the stinking redgills pushed up in obscene little lumps. The house squatted over it all like the largest mushroom of them all.

The invitation (plea) to visit in this version came not from Roderick Usher, but from his twin, Madeline. Neither sibling had had any children, so mark the end of their line, as many prior generations had failed to provide more than a single direct line of descendants. Both Madeline and Roderick look awful, cadaverous, with Maddy, diagnosed as cataleptic, quite wasted away and clearly nearing death. They are having a bad hair life.

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Redgill Mushroom – image from Forest Floor Narrative

There is another in attendance, Doctor James Denton, an American, whose primary narrative purpose seems to be to provide a conversational and analytical partner for Easton.

We track the demise of Madeline. Given her Poe-DNA, we know her chances for survival are not great. (But was she really dead in that one, or just entombed alive?) Add in a delight of an amateur mycologist, Eugenia, a fictional aunt of Beatrix Potter, who was quite an accomplished student and illustrator of things fungal. Potter is a pure delight upon the page, (maybe she used some spells?) possessed of a sharp mind and wit, and a bit of unkind regard for some. Other supporting cast include Easton’s batman (no, not that one) Angus, and his mount, Hob, who is given a lot more personality than horses are usually allowed.

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Image from from TV Tropes

So, plenty of dark and dreary, but the atmospherics are not all that is going on here. Kingfisher had read the book as a kid, but rereading it as an adult, found her curiosity piqued. She noted that Poe goes on a fair bit in his story about things fungal, so decided to dig into that as a possible reason for the sad state of the Usher land and clan. The result is a spore-burst of understanding,

…so I was reading old pulp, basically going, is there anything here that grabs me that I can see a story in. And I happened on Usher and I was like, I haven’t reread any Poe in a while. And I read Fall of the House of Usher and it’s obsessed with rotting vegetation and fungus. And it’s really short. And they don’t explain hardly anything…I wanted to know what was wrong with Madeline Usher because you get buried alive, that is a problem. And so I started reading about catalepsy which is what it was diagnosed as at the time and also fungus, there was just so much about fungus and I’m like, okay, obviously these two must be linked somehow.; – from the LitHub interview

There is a particularly creepy element, in the hares around the tarn that sit and stare at people through blank eyes. They do not behave like normal bunnies at all in other unsettling ways I will not spoil here.

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Image from Television Heaven

It is definitely worth your time to re-read Poe’s original. There are so many wonderful elements. One is a song that Roderick composes, which encapsulates the dark sense of the tale. There are some bits that were changed or omitted from the original. Poe’s Roderick was heavy into painting, an element that Kingfisher opted to omit. And he was particularly taken with Henry Fuseli, whose dark painting, The Nightmare, certainly fits well with the tale. His guitar work in the original was replaced with piano playing.

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The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli – image from Wikimedia

Kingfisher adds into the story a bit of gender irregularity. What to do if a non-binary person with mammaries wants to become a soldier? Well, these days, can do, but in the late 19th century, not so much. She learned of a practice in the Caucusus, borne of a shortfall of human cannon fodder. A woman could join the military by declaring herself a man, and voila, presto chango, she is legally a dude. Kingfisher took a tangent off that, giving Easton a home in a made-up European nation.

Gallacia’s language is . . . idiosyncratic. Most languages you encounter in Europe have words like he and she and his and hers. Ours has those, too, although we use ta and tha and tan and than. But we also have va and var, ka and kan, and a few others specifically for rocks and God… And then there’s ka and kan. I mentioned that we were a fierce warrior people, right? Even though we were bad at it? But we were proud of our warriors. Someone had to be, I guess, and this recognition extends to the linguistic fact that when you’re a warrior, you get to use ka and kan instead of ta and tan. You show up to basic training and they hand you a sword and a new set of pronouns. (It’s extremely rude to address a soldier as ta. It won’t get you labeled as a pervert, but it might get you punched in the mouth.)

This did not seem particularly necessary to the story, but it is certainly an interesting element.

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Image from Filo News

So, while you know the outcome in the original, (because you went back and read the story, right?) there is a question of causation. Why is the land so dreary? Why are the Ushers so ill? Why was the family tree more like a telephone pole? Kingfisher provides a delightful answer.

So, What Moves the Dead, in novella length, (about 45K words) provides an intriguing mystery, renders a suitably grim setting, offers up some fun characters, with an interesting take on gender identification possibilities, delivers some serious, scary moments, and pays homage to a classic horror tale, while (didn’t I mention this above?) making us laugh out loud. I had in my notes FIVE LOLs. Add in a bunch of snickers and a passel of smiles. Not something one might expect in a horror tale. Bottom line is that T. Kingfisher has written a scary/funny/smart re-examination (exhumation?) of a fabulous tale. What Moves the Dead moves me to report that this book is perfect for the Halloween season, and a great read anytime if you are looking for a bit of a short, but not short-story short, creepy scare.

DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. – from The Fall of the House of Usher

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From Otakukart.com – image from Netflix

Review posted – September 9, 2022

Publication date – July 12, 2022

I received an eARE of What Moves the Dead from Tor Nightfire in return for a fair review. Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating. Wait, why are you staring at me like that? Stop it! Really, Stop it!

This review has been cross-posted on GoodReads

=============================EXTRA STUFF

Links to the author’s personal, Goodreads, and Twitter pages

Profile – from GoodReads

T. Kingfisher is the vaguely absurd pen-name of Ursula Vernon. In another life, she writes children’s books and weird comics, and has won the Hugo, Sequoyah, and Ursa Major awards, as well as a half-dozen Junior Library Guild selections

Interview
—–Mighty Mu – Spoilers Club 3: T Kingfisher and What Moves the Dead – video – 41:08

Item of Interest from the author
—–Sarah Gailey and T. Kingfisher Talk Haunted Houses, Fantastic Fungi, and the Stories Nonbinary Folks Deserve

Songs/Music
—–Carl Maria von Weber’s Last Waltz is referenced in Poe’s story, in which Roderick played guitar instead of piano
—–John Brown’s Body – Smile-worthy reference to a dead person who still walks among us
—–Ben Morton – Beethoven’s Fifth on piano – …he played dramatic compositions by great composers. (Mozart? Beethoven? Why are you asking me? It was music, it went dun-dun-dun-DUN, what more do you want me to say?)

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September 2, 2022 · 12:01 am

Dirt Creek by Hayley Scrivener

book cover

For every girl child, there seemed to lurk a dead-eyed man, hair receding prematurely, with a car and the offer of a lift and a plan and a knife and a shovel. Did we create the man by imagining him or was he idling there in his car regardless?

None of us can escape who we are when others aren’t looking; we can’t guess what we’re capable of until it’s too late.

Durton, New South Wales, 2001, the hottest November ever. Twelve-year-old Esther Bianchi has gone missing somewhere between school and home. Authorities are alerted, and a search is on. Her bff, Ronnie, believes that Esther has not met a dark end, and is determined to find her.

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Hayley Scrivenor – image from Writer Interviews blogspot

Durton is not exactly a garden spot, although a suggestive apple does put in an appearance. It is a secondary town, to a secondary city, a drive west from Sydney measured in double-digit hours. While there may be some appealing qualities to the place, what comes across about Durton is that it is the back end of nowhere, a physical manifestation of isolation, and thus a fitting image for the isolation experienced by its residents, albeit not quite actual outback. It is a place where there are some who are, wrongfully, ashamed of who they are, and there are some others who should be. The main exports of Durton appear to be fear, pain, abuse, and despair. The local kids call it Dirt Town, which is the title of the book in Australia. The name fits. Not sure why it was retitled Dirt Creek for its North American release.

The action begins on Tuesday, December 4, 2001, with the discovery of a body. Then it goes back to Friday, November 30, tracking the events that led up to that discovery, and continues for a few days beyond. Over the course of these days, we follow Ronnie Thompson and Lewis Kennard, Esther’s mates, Constance Bianchi, Esther’s mother, and Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels, the detective assigned the case, as they try to figure out where Esther is, and what happened to her, if anything. Ronnie is a first-person narrator, so we get a good close look at her. The Lewis, Constance, and Sarah chapters are in third person, but we still get a pretty good sense of what is going on inside them. The unusual element here is the presence of a first-person Greek chorus, speaking in the voices of children, and offering an omniscient view of the goings on.

I started a PhD in creative writing in 2016. It can be dangerous to ask me about collective narration because my research project looked at novels that had Greek chorus-like narration, and I can go on a bit. But I do have a clear sense of where Dirt Town the novel started. I sat down to write a short story from the point of view of the children of a small town, kind of like the one where I had grown up. What I wrote was largely just these kids coming home from school, but there was an energy in it that made me think it could be a novel. That writing is still in the book, pretty much as it was written. It occurred to me that if I was in these kids’ heads, then I needed something for them all to be looking at, thinking about: an experience that was as big as the town. One of the next flashes I had was that a girl had died, and the story grew from there. – from the Books and Publishing interview

Durton is a close-knit community in a way. Shelly McFarlane, for example, is best friends with Constance Bianchi, Esther’s mother. Shelly’s husband, Peter, is brother to Ronnie Thompson’s mother. There are more, but the connections in Durston occupy a place higher than purely communal, but less than purely familial. And yet, there are many ways to be, or to feel, alone. Constance is English-born, but married a local, and feels very out of place, as the cowboy-ish appeal of her handsome husband has faded under the weight of experience. Lewis has a secret that makes him feel very alone and vulnerable. Sarah must contend with her recent, nasty, breakup with her partner. There are abused people here, who are afraid to tell anyone, lest they suffer even more, given how ineffective or feckless law enforcement has been about such things. This includes a long-ago rape that was never brought to justice. As a part of this, people wonder if they have somehow brought their misery down on themselves, which, of course, only adds to their feelings of isolation. What makes them different also makes them feel alone.

The story moves forward in a moistly straight line, after the initial jump back. There is a bit of history on occasion, for backstory, and there is overlap as different POVs occur simultaneously, reporting events Rashomon-style.

The mystery unravels at a comfortable pace, with clues being presented, conversations being had, and determinations being made about whether this or that connects to the missing girl. There is other criminality going on in Durton that may or may not be related, and there is a pair of missing twins not too far away, whose fate may or may not have anything to do with Esther’s.

The characters are sympathetic and appealing, which makes us eager to keep flipping pages to see if they are ok, in addition to wanting to find out what actually happened. There are the usual number of red herrings flopping about in the bucket. The fun of the clues is trying to figure out which are germane to Esther’s disappearance and which are intended to throw us off the scent. There is also a fair bit about life in Australia, this part of it, anyway. The most interesting element of the novel for me was the Greek chorus. It took a while to figure out who comprised it. That puzzle was fun, too. And the chorus offers a tool for exposition, which worked pretty well.

Overall, I found this an enjoyable, well, considering the subject matter, engaging read, with interesting characters and a mystery that Scrivenor draws you in to trying to solve. Dirt Creek is an excellent Summer entertainment, good, clean reading pleasure.

We are not sure if it was our childhood or just childhood in general that has made us the way we are.

Review posted – September 2, 2022

Publication date – August 2, 2022 (USA)

I received an eARE of Dirt Creek from Flatiron Books in return for a fair review. Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating.

This review has been cross-posted on GoodReads

=======================================EXTRA STUFF

Links to the author’s personal and Instagram pages

Profile – from Booktopia

Hayley Scrivenor is a former Director of Wollongong Writers Festival. Originally from a small country town, Hayley now lives and writes on Dharawal country and has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Wollongong on the south coast of New South Wales. Dirt Town (our Book of the Month for June!) is her first novel. An earlier version of the book was shortlisted for the Penguin Literary Prize and won the Kill Your Darlings Unpublished Manuscript Award.

Interviews
—–Booktopia – Ten Terrifying Questions with Hayley Scrivenor
—–Books + Publishing – Hayley Scrivenor on ‘Dirt Town’
—–The Big Thrill – Much More Than a Familiar Whodunnit by Charles Salzberg
—–Crimereads – COLLECTIVE NARRATORS: THE BEST USES OF THE FIRST-PERSON PLURAL IN LITERATURE
—–Mystery Tribune – A Conversation With Australian Mystery Writer Hayley Scrivenor

Item of interest – author
—–Kill Your Darlings – Show Your Working: Hayley Scrivenor

tiny Q/A
I wondered why Scrivenor had set her story in 2001 and if there were any particular significances to her characters’ names, so I asked, on her site. She graciously replied.

The simple answer to the setting question is that the character of Ronnie is twelve in 2001, and so was I – so it helped me keep my timeline straight!

For the names query, she referred me to an interview in which some of the name considerations are addressed. Here is her response from there:

I spent quite a bit of time thinking about the names of characters. Some have been the same almost since the start: Veronica, the missing girl’s best friend, goes by ‘Ronnie’, and that always felt absolutely right for her character. The character of Lewis, a young boy who sees Esther after she’s supposed to have gone missing, gets called ‘Louise’ by his classmates, I had to reverse-engineer a name that kids could play with in that way. Sometimes, names can become a little in-joke with yourself, too. There is a character named ‘Constance’, who is the mother of the missing girl. I called her Constance because she changes her mind a lot, over the course of the story.

—–Author Interviews – Hayley Scrivenor by Marshal Zeringue

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