The latest dispatch from Maggody, Ark., shows the town besieged by militant survivalists who'd be more threatening if their incompetence didn't rival the burlesque follies of the natives. The newcomers include ``General'' Sterling Pitts, the self-styled ``Silver Fox'' who takes time off from his two-bit insurance brokerage to send his overgrown Boy Scouts scurrying over rough terrain; unemployable drifter Reed (``Red Rooster'') Rondly and his more articulate buddy, ``Colonel'' Barry (``Apocalypse'') Kirklin; Dylan Gilbert, an auto mechanic who arrives in town stuffed to the gills with rumors of a double agent who's infiltrated the little band of patriots; and Kayleen Smeltner, the widowed pawnbroker who seems bent on supplying ordnance to every nutcase in town. Since the locals—especially Dahlia Buchanon, whose vast bulk demurely hides her pregnancy, and her husband Kevin, the half-wit scion of Maggody's first family—are just as goofy as Pitts's militia, if less dangerously so, that's a lot of loose cannons, even before a burglary turned murderous, a tactical exercise ditto, a pair of runaway ostriches, and Dahlia's peripatetic confinement put the icing on the cake. Hess's sublimely silly tales (Miracles in Maggody, 1995, etc.) have always trod a fine line between off-speed mystery and regionalist farce. Here, the demented militants, with their minor- key echoes of the natives' craziness, makes an offer you can't refuse.
Pub Date: April 14, 1997
ISBN: 0-525-94236-X
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This ran in the S.E.P. and resulted in more demands for the story in book form than ever recorded. Well, here it is and it is a honey. Imagine ten people, not knowing each other, not knowing why they were invited on a certain island house-party, not knowing their hosts. Then imagine them dead, one by one, until none remained alive, nor any clue to the murderer. Grand suspense, a unique trick, expertly handled.
Pub Date: Feb. 21, 1939
ISBN: 0062073478
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1939
SEEN & HEARD
One protest from an outraged innocent says it all: “This is America. This is Wyoming.”
Once again, Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett gets mixed up in a killing whose principal suspect is his old friend Nate Romanowski, whose attempts to live off the grid keep breaking down in a series of felony charges.
If Judge Hewitt hadn’t bent over to pick up a spoon that had fallen from his dinner table, the sniper set up nearly a mile from his house in the gated community of the Eagle Mountain Club would have ended his life. As it was, the victim was Sue Hewitt, leaving the judge alive and free to rail and threaten anyone he suspected of the shooting. Incoming Twelve Sleep County Sheriff Brendan Kapelow’s interest in using the case to promote his political ambitions and the judge’s inability to see further than his nose make them the perfect targets for a frame-up of Nate, who just wants to be left alone in the middle of nowhere to train his falcons and help his bride, Liv Brannon, raise their baby, Kestrel. Nor are the sniper, the sheriff, and the judge Nate’s only enemies. Orlando Panfile has been sent to Wyoming by the Sinaloan drug cartel to avenge the deaths of the four assassins whose careers Nate and Joe ended last time out (Wolf Pack, 2019). So it’s up to Joe, with some timely data from his librarian wife, Marybeth, to hire a lawyer for Nate, make sure he doesn’t bust out of jail before his trial, identify the real sniper, who continues to take an active role in the proceedings, and somehow protect him from a killer who regards Nate’s arrest as an unwelcome complication. That’s quite a tall order for someone who can’t shoot straight, who keeps wrecking his state-issued vehicles, and whose appalling mother-in-law, Missy Vankeuren Hand, has returned from her latest European jaunt to suck up all the oxygen in Twelve Sleep County to hustle some illegal drugs for her cancer-stricken sixth husband. But fans of this outstanding series will know better than to place their money against Joe.
One protest from an outraged innocent says it all: “This is America. This is Wyoming.”Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-53823-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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