Panowich deftly delves into "something deeper than bone" between fathers and sons, between the land and its people.
Hillbilly noir goes literary in Panowich’s debut, which is part crime fiction and part family saga.
As an outcast from his family, Sheriff Clayton Burroughs knows "The world is a broken place sometimes." Above northern Georgia’s Waymore Valley, where Clayton patrols, generations of Burroughses have ruled Bull Mountain, keeping the family whole with moonshine, then marijuana, and now meth. Bull Mountain is a kingdom, its ruler the sheriff’s brother Halford, clad in his own "warped sense of honor." The uneasy truce between Clayton and Hal fractures when Special Agent Simon Holly of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms arrives. Holly wants Clayton to persuade Hal to rat out his connection to a Jacksonville motorcycle gang, soldiers for a gun-running, meth-chemical supplier masquerading as a reputable businessman. In return, Hal won’t be prosecuted. Thus unfolds a Shakespearean tragedy, a bloody family implosion. In the fast-moving narrative, shifting from Burroughs to Burroughs over the past half-century, Panowich chronicles murders, hijackings, and gory beat-downs. Haunted by family sins, Clayton once lived in the bottle, which was creating "a fine layer of rust slowly decaying and dissolving his marriage." Clayton’s wife, Kate, steel-hearted and loyal, declares "I will not let some cop…drag you down a hole you can’t climb out of to help a man who doesn’t want or deserve your help." A one-time Burroughs enforcer, Val, "a hulk of a man," reminds Clayton, "It was your grandfather let loose the demons on this mountain." However, there’s a dark secret (a twist handled nicely by Panowich) that pulls Hal, sawed-off shotgun in hand, down from Bull Mountain. Ever true to his theme, Panowich then moves to a bloody, and believable, reconciliation.
Panowich deftly delves into "something deeper than bone" between fathers and sons, between the land and its people.Pub Date: July 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-399-17396-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days...
In 1876, professor Edward Cope takes a group of students to the unforgiving American West to hunt for dinosaur fossils, and they make a tremendous discovery.
William Jason Tertullius Johnson, son of a shipbuilder and beneficiary of his father’s largess, isn’t doing very well at Yale when he makes a bet with his archrival (because every young man has one): accompany “the bone professor” Othniel Marsh to the West to dig for dinosaur fossils or pony up $1,000, but Marsh will only let Johnson join if he has a skill they can use. They need a photographer, so Johnson throws himself into the grueling task of learning photography, eventually becoming proficient. When Marsh and the team leave without him, he hitches a ride with another celebrated paleontologist, Marsh’s bitter rival, Edward Cope. Despite warnings about Indian activity, into the Judith badlands they go. It’s a harrowing trip: they weather everything from stampeding buffalo to back-breaking work, but it proves to be worth it after they discover the teeth of what looks to be a giant dinosaur, and it could be the discovery of the century if they can only get them back home safely. When the team gets separated while transporting the bones, Johnson finds himself in Deadwood and must find a way to get the bones home—and stay alive doing it. The manuscript for this novel was discovered in Crichton’s (Pirate Latitudes, 2009, etc.) archives by his wife, Sherri, and predates Jurassic Park (1990), but if readers are looking for the same experience, they may be disappointed: it’s strictly formulaic stuff. Famous folk like the Earp brothers make appearances, and Cope and Marsh, and the feud between them, were very real, although Johnson is the author’s own creation. Crichton takes a sympathetic view of American Indians and their plight, and his appreciation of the American West, and its harsh beauty, is obvious.
Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days of American paleontology.Pub Date: May 23, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-247335-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.
Coulter’s treasured FBI agents take on two cases marked by danger and personal involvement.
Dillon Savitch and his wife, Lacey Sherlock, have special abilities that have served them well in law enforcement (Paradox, 2018, etc.). But that doesn't prevent Sherlock’s car from hitting a running man after having been struck by a speeding SUV that runs a red light. The runner, though clearly injured, continues on his way and disappears. Not so the SUV driver, a security engineer for the Bexholt Group, which has ties to government agencies. Sherlock’s own concussion causes memory loss so severe that she doesn’t recognize Savitch or remember their son, Sean. The whole incident seems more suspicious when a blood test from the splatter of the man Sherlock hit reveals that he’s Justice Cummings, an analyst for the CIA. The agency’s refusal to cooperate makes Savitch certain that Bexholt is involved in a deep-laid plot. Meanwhile, Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith is visiting friends who run a cafe in the touristy Virginia town of Gaffers Ridge. Hammersmith, who has psychic abilities, is taken aback when he hears in his mind a woman’s cry for help. Reporter Carson DeSilva, who came to the area to interview a Nobel Prize winner, also has psychic abilities, and she overhears the thoughts of Rafer Bodine, a young man who has apparently kidnapped and possibly murdered three teenage girls. Unluckily, she blurts out her thoughts, and she’s snatched and tied up in a cellar by Bodine. Bodine may be a killer, but he’s also the nephew of the sheriff and the son of the local bigwig. So the sheriff arrests Hammersmith and refuses to accept his FBI credentials. Bodine's mother has psychic powers strong enough to kill, but she meets her match in Hammersmith, DeSilva, Savitch, and Sherlock.
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9365-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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