Historical fiction that unsuccessfully tries to tie its grand-scale vision to a small-town focus.
The quiet town of Providence, Kentucky, becomes part of a surge in organized crime in Crowell’s (A Few Caves and Cavers of the Southeast, 2016, etc.) historical mystery, based partly on true events.
Jim Crowell, the owner of the local gas station, often goes down to the old trout pond to meditate and catch dinner for his family. One November day in 1950, his habitual visit is cut short when he catches sight of a body floating in the water. As the Providence police try to make sense of the murder, Jim’s luck doesn’t improve; in short order, he’s robbed at knifepoint near the pond and, on a different fishing trip, he spots another corpse. As it turns out, the FBI is already in town, hunting for the members of a gang that planned and executed the infamous Great Brink’s Robbery in Boston. Ron Smith has just moved to Providence to lay low with the stolen money, while his brother, Big Ferdinand, waits in Massachusetts. Ron misses his old life, but he adapts easily to his new circumstances: he quickly picks up arson jobs from the United Mine Workers of America union, which is targeting local, non-union mines. As the feds work to bring Ron to their side to testify against his fellow gang members, Big Ferdinand becomes interested in stopping Ron’s testimony—whatever way he can. The novel’s plot initially draws on just a handful of historical events, but as the narrative continues, things begin to pile up in convoluted ways: an increasing number of crime syndicates becomes involved, Ron finds his way to Korea, and a great trial is held for the Brink’s gang members. The attempt to connect the local history of Providence to national events is an intriguing idea. However, the author doesn’t manage to effectively bring it off, as the overstuffed plot and furious pacing make it difficult to tell what (or who) is actually important to the story. Often, when a surprising or traumatic event occurs, the characters oddly take it in stride; for example, when Ron’s accomplice, Fred, is shot, he immediately limps home—there’s no description of Fred’s pain or struggle, and the gunshot wound is never brought up again.
Historical fiction that unsuccessfully tries to tie its grand-scale vision to a small-town focus.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5195-7738-2
Page Count: 250
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
All these problems are handsomely solved at the unsurprising cost of making the human characters less interesting than the...
Just when you thought you’d seen a detective in every guise imaginable, here comes one in sheep’s clothing.
For years, George Glenn hasn’t been close to anyone but his sheep. Everyday he lets them out, pastures them, reads to them and brings them safely back home to his barn in the guilelessly named Irish village of Glennkill. Now George lies dead, pinned to the ground by a spade. Although his flock haven’t had much experience with this sort of thing, they’re determined to bring his killer to justice. There are of course several obstacles, and debut novelist Swann deals with them in appealingly matter-of-fact terms. Sheep can’t talk to people; they can only listen in on conversations between George’s widow Kate and Bible-basher Beth Jameson. Not even the smartest of them, Othello, Miss Maple (!) and Mopple the Whale, can understand much of what the neighborhood priest is talking about, except that his name is evidently God. They’re afraid to confront suspects like butcher Abraham Rackham and Gabriel O’Rourke, the Gaelic-speaking charmer who’s raising a flock for slaughter. And even after a series of providential discoveries and brainwaves reveals the answer to the riddle, they don’t know how to tell the Glennkill citizenry.
All these problems are handsomely solved at the unsurprising cost of making the human characters less interesting than the sheep. But the sustained tone of straight-faced wonderment is magical.Pub Date: June 5, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-385-52111-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Flying Dolphin/Doubleday
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2007
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