Intriguing characters take a wild ride through backwoods Wisconsin in this irresistible mystery.
Rural Wisconsin is darker than you might think in the third gripping mystery featuring a young woman sheriff.
Sheriff Heidi Kick has seen murder victims before. Even in Wisconsin’s Bad Axe County (or maybe especially there), people kill each other. But she’s never before seen one who looks like he crawled back out of the grave. Besides a coat of dirt, this dead man has two gunshot wounds, one boot, one bare foot, and no name. That’s also rare, since the sheriff knows almost everyone in her sparsely populated jurisdiction. As Heidi tries to find out who the man is and how he ended up dead in a ditch, Leroy “Grape” Fanta begins to suspect the stranger’s death might be connected to a string of unhinged letters and calls he’s received from someone who signs himself “FROM HELL HOLLOW.” Leroy, a Vietnam vet, has served as the dedicated editor-in-chief of the town’s newspaper for 43 years. But no more—he’s been fired, and the paper’s been turned into a shopper. Leroy and Heidi are friends who share a nemesis: Babette Rickreiner, a rich widow with a mean mouth and a dictator’s personality. She bought Leroy’s paper, and her spoiled, vicious son, Barry, is running against Heidi in the sheriff’s election with all the cheap tricks he can muster. Heidi tries to ignore them and do her job. From the site where the murder victim was found, she follows a trail of empty beer cans to a remote farm where she finds a young woman, dressed in the plain clothing of the Amish, passed out drunk and an older man nearly dead in the outhouse. Things accelerate from there for both Heidi and Leroy. Heidi has worries at home, too. She and her good-guy husband, Harley, have three kids, and Taylor, one of their twin sons, is acting out in unusual and worrying ways. And Heidi just might be pregnant again. This is the third book in Galligan’s series about Heidi, who has become a solidly engaging character amid a small-town swarm of strange folks. The plot is gritty and propulsive, the prose well crafted, the finale satisfyingly bizarre.
Intriguing characters take a wild ride through backwoods Wisconsin in this irresistible mystery.Pub Date: June 29, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-9821-6653-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.
The loss of her police officer father and the discovery of an abandoned car in a local lake raise chilling questions regarding a young woman’s family history.
When Hazel Sharp returns to her hometown of Mirror Lake, North Carolina, for her father’s memorial, she and the other townspeople are confronted by a challenging double whammy: As they’re grieving the loss of beloved longtime police officer Detective Perry Holt, a disturbing sight appears in the lake, whose waterline is receding because of an ongoing drought—an old, unidentifiable car, which has likely been lurking there for years. Hazel temporarily leaves her Charlotte-based building-renovation business in the capable hands of her partners and reconnects with her brothers, Caden and Gage; her Uncle Roy; her old fling and neighbor, Nico; and her schoolfriend, Jamie, now a mother and married to Caden. Tiny, relentless suspicions rise to the metaphorical surface along with that waterlogged vehicle: There have been a slew of minor break-ins; two people go missing; and then, a second abandoned car is discovered. The novel digs deeper into Hazel’s family history—her father was a widow when he married Hazel’s mother, who later left the family, absconding with money and jewels—and Miranda, a consummate professional when it comes to exposing the small community tensions that naturally arise when people live in close proximity for generations, exposes revelation after twisty revelation: “Everything mattered disproportionately in a small town. Your success, but also your failure. Everyone knows might as well have been our town motto.”
Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781668010440
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Marysue Rucci Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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