Clark’s second fictional slice of St. Paul history (In the Deep Midwinter, 1997) goes back to 1939—and the most tender account of a sex-killing investigation you’ll ever read. If it weren’t for his size and his limping gait, making him look like an overgrown teddy bear, no one would ever notice Herbert White, an inoffensive clerk at Griggs-Horner whose only pleasures in life are the letters he writes to an indifferent Hollywood starlet; the copious journals he keeps as an attempt to compensate for his flawed memory—he can remember yesterday, and his childhood, but not much in between—and his photography sessions with the women he meets at the Aragon Ballroom. When one of his models, Carla Marie LaBreque (nÇe Charlene Mortenson), is strangled, Homicide Lt. Wesley Horner questions White and even finds some promising evidence against him. But all too soon it’s clear that the lead is a dead end; as the Aragon survivors agree, White couldn’t harm a soul. But then a second Aragon dancer is found murdered, and witnesses place White at the scene. By this time, he can’t remember meeting Wesley before; he certainly can’t remember either killing or not killing Ruby Fahey; and he’s a ready target for a bullying Vice cop who’s eager to euchre him into a confession, sign Wesley’s name as witness, and send him to prison for life. By the time Wesley, whose fragile romance with a teenaged runaway mirrors White’s own stumbling attempts at intimacy, rouses himself on White’s behalf, the story seems headed toward an inescapably melodramatic climax. But because Clark’s true subject isn’t the mystery of the Aragon dancers’ murders (wound up in a brilliantly offhand sentence), but the sovereign power of memory to nurture desires that would otherwise never survive, his closing scenes amount instead to a transfiguration of his decent, tempest-tossed heroes. Despite its florid subject, then: a gently, powerfully moving demonstration of the ways, as White concludes, that “we are but memory enfleshed by love.” (Author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 7, 1998
ISBN: 0-312-19217-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Picador
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1998
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that...
Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Joe Pickett (Free Fire, 2007, etc.), once again at the governor’s behest, stalks the wraithlike figure who’s targeting elk hunters for death.
Frank Urman was taken down by a single rifle shot, field-dressed, beheaded and hung upside-down to bleed out. (You won’t believe where his head eventually turns up.) The poker chip found near his body confirms that he’s the third victim of the Wolverine, a killer whose animus against hunters is evidently being whipped up by anti-hunting activist Klamath Moore. The potential effects on the state’s hunting revenues are so calamitous that Governor Spencer Rulon pulls out all the stops, and Pickett is forced to work directly with Wyoming Game and Fish Director Randy Pope, the boss who fired him from his regular job in Saddlestring District. Three more victims will die in rapid succession before Joe is given a more congenial colleague: Nate Romanowski, the outlaw falconer who pledged to protect Joe’s family before he was taken into federal custody. As usual in this acclaimed series, the mystery is slight and its solution eminently guessable long before it’s confirmed by testimony from an unlikely source. But the people and scenes and enduring conflicts that lead up to that solution will stick with you for a long time.
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that periodically release the tension between the scheming adversaries.Pub Date: May 20, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-399-15488-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2008
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.
Too much free time leads a New Hampshire bookseller into yet another case of murder.
Now that Tricia Miles has Pixie Poe and Mr. Everett practically running her bookstore, Haven’t Got a Clue, she finds herself at loose ends. Her wealthy sister, Angelica, who in the guise of Nigela Ricita has invested heavily in making Stoneham a bookish tourist attraction, is entering the amateur competition for the Great Booktown Bake-Off. So Tricia, who’s recently taken up baking as a hobby, decides to join her and spends a lot of time looking for the perfect cupcake recipe. A visit to another bookstore leaves Tricia witnessing a nasty argument between owner Joyce Widman and next-door neighbor Vera Olson over the trimming of tree branches that hang over Joyce’s yard—also overheard by new town police officer Cindy Pearson. After Tricia accepts Joyce’s offer of some produce from her garden, they find Vera skewered by a pitchfork, and when Police Chief Grant Baker arrives, Joyce is his obvious suspect. Ever since Tricia moved to Stoneham, the homicide rate has skyrocketed (Poisoned Pages, 2018, etc.), and her history with Baker is fraught. She’s also become suspicious about the activities at Pets-A-Plenty, the animal shelter where Vera was a dedicated volunteer. Tricia’s offered her expertise to the board, but president Toby Kingston has been less than welcoming. With nothing but baking on her calendar, Tricia has plenty of time to investigate both the murder and her vague suspicions about the shelter. Plenty of small-town friendships and rivalries emerge in her quest for the truth.
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0272-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
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