Beautiful writing about so many sad and disturbing things in a riveting crime story.
In 1975 rural Kansas, some aimless young men—many of them Vietnam veterans—grow hemp without repercussions until they clash with a rival group versed in murder.
In this first volume of Litton’s Kansas Murder Trilogy, “the boys”—including handsome Frankie Sage, one-eyed Jacko Kelly, confident Will Wolnofsky, fun-loving Gabe Swenson, and Lee Clayton, who has “a pretty wife”—have no money or worthwhile plans and little education. But they realize they can profit by growing, drying, and bagging hemp. Somebody else will sell it, as they know selling leads to the murkier side of things, and “Frankie always cautioned, ‘It’s not the law, it’s our own kind we’ve gotta watch out for.’ ” Indeed, the entry of a vicious rival group coincides with a brutal double murder. Dead are a teenage girl and her boyfriend, who recently told others that he “saw something.” The homicide investigation dovetails with the increasingly dangerous hemp harvesting and selling. A spooky subplot has Lee and his wife and young child thinking that ghosts reside in their house. The author excels at storytelling and characterization, creating a mood of loneliness. The frustration and desperation of being poor are vividly illustrated. Litton also shines at establishing a sense of place; for example, a farm carries the rich scents “of autumn grasses, cattle grazing, the milo harvest, and the broad blankets of turned-up soil.” Vibrant details enrich the novel: the clink of a glass, the swish of a dress, the yips of coyotes accompanying the wail of a distant train. The author gets the feel of the ’70s just right—the cars (Ford Fairlanes, GTOs), the clothes, and the songs. Lee keeps his radio tuned to a country station, and Litton gets bonus points for referencing not just “City of New Orleans” and its singer, Arlo Guthrie, but also the songwriter, Chicagoan Steve Goodman. Still, racist language, used infrequently, is jarring, and descriptions of cruelty to people and animals—chickens, puppies, and a beloved old bull—are hard to read.
Beautiful writing about so many sad and disturbing things in a riveting crime story.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63789-875-8
Page Count: 420
Publisher: Gordian Knot Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 8, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Breezy, entertaining characters and a cheeky premise fall prey to too much explanation and an unlikely climax.
An aspiring mystery writer sets out to solve her great-aunt’s murder and inherit an estate.
Twenty-five-year-old Annie Adams has never met her great-aunt Frances, who prefers her small village to busy London. But when a mysterious letter arrives instructing Annie to come to Castle Knoll in Dorset to meet Frances and discuss her role as sole beneficiary of her great-aunt’s estate, Annie can’t resist. Unfortunately, she arrives to find Frances’ worst fears have come true: The elderly woman—who’s been haunted for decades by a fortuneteller’s prediction that this will happen—has been murdered, and her will dictates that she will leave her entire estate to Annie, but only if Annie solves her killing. It’s a cheeky if not exactly believable premise, especially since the local police don’t seem terribly opposed to it. Annie herself is an engaging presence, if a little too blind to the fact that she could be on the killer’s to-do list. Her roll call of suspects is pleasingly long, including but not limited to the local vicar, a one-time paramour of her great-aunt’s; a gardener who grows a lot more than flowers; shady developers and suspicious friends from Frances’ past; and Saxon, Annie’s crafty rival, who inherits the estate himself if he manages to solve the case first. Annie pieces together clues through readings of Frances’ journal, but the story eventually runs aground on the twin rocks of too much explanation and a flimsy climax. Cute dialogue gives way to lengthy exposition, and by the time Frances’ killer is revealed you may well be ready to leave Annie, Dorset, and Castle Knoll behind for the firmer ground of reality. Fans of cozy mysteries are likely to be more forgiving, but if you cast a skeptical eye toward amateur sleuths, this novel won’t change your mind about them.
Breezy, entertaining characters and a cheeky premise fall prey to too much explanation and an unlikely climax.Pub Date: March 26, 2024
ISBN: 9780593474013
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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
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