Tense, filled with sharp characterizations, and beautifully worked out (especially in its explanations of said characters’...
The Virginia author of such highly praised mainstream fiction as A Walk to the River and Godfires may have another winner in this Deliverance-like tale of a hunting expedition that has lethal consequences, a partial sequel to his very successful 1998 thriller Tidewater Blood.
Mild-mannered Richmond attorney Walter “Raff” Frampton, the narrator, is one of the two unlikeliest members of the grouse-hunting trip to the nearby West Virginia hills organized by Walter’s old friend, army vet and ardent outdoorsman Drake Wingo. The other is Drake’s casual acquaintance Wendell Ripley, unknown to both Frampton and his other old friend, Cliff Dickens, who shoots Ripley (with whom he's been “paired”) to death in what must surely be a grotesque accident. But investigating Sheriff Sawyers uncovers evidence that contradicts Cliff's account of what happened. As a result, Cliff is soon extradited, charged with premeditated murder—and badly in need of Walter Frampton’s services. Walter’s investigations lead him to a Shaker-like commune, The Watchers (of which Ripley was a member), thence into the heart of Richmond’s gay community, the known habitat of Ripley’s son Jeremiah (who may or may not be dead—and, strangely enough, was formerly employed at Drake Wingo’s sporting goods store). Furthermore, Cliff, an artistic type who visibly lacks female company, did raise numerous eyebrows with that notorious exhibit of homoerotic photography (though he doesn't seem to be gay). It’s all fairly hokey, but Hoffman builds his narrative quite skillfully, juxtaposing Walter’s little shocks of discovery with telling emphases on the complex lifelong bonding that complicates the interrelationships of that fateful grouse hunt’s three survivors. And he manages a smashing end, precipitated by a very revealing daytrip to Fort Lauderdale and climaxing with a dramatic recapitulation of the hunt, in which Walter risks his life and gets his (unspoken) answers.
Tense, filled with sharp characterizations, and beautifully worked out (especially in its explanations of said characters’ credibly mixed motives).Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-06-019794-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2000
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
As tangled and turbulent as the hero’s nightmares, and that’s saying quite a bit.
Having survived his tempestuous debut, P.T. Marsh, of Georgia's Mason Falls Police Department, is back for more—including some residue from that first case that just won’t go away.
Dispatched like an errand boy to wealthy real estate mogul Ennis Fultz’s home to find out why he hasn’t joined his bridge buddies, Mayor Stems and interim police chief Jeff Pernacek, for their monthly game, Marsh and his partner, Remy Morgan, find Fultz dead in his bed. It turns out that his passing, devoutly longed for by so many of the people he’d crushed or outwitted on his way to the top, was helped along by the strategic dose of nitrogen somebody substituted for the oxygen he inhaled regularly, especially when he was expecting particular demands on his virility. Marsh and Morgan quickly focus on two candidates who might have made those demands: Suzy Kang, a recent visitor who was so eager to cover any traces that she’d been to Fultz’s house that she sold the car she’d driven there, and Connie Fultz, the victim’s ex-wife and perhaps his current lover, who acidly swats them away and tells them: “Look for some little gal who’s into bondage.” McMahon excels in sweating the procedural details of the investigation, which take the partners from a search for Suzy Kang and that missing car to a not-so-accidental car crash that’s evidently targeted a young girl who has no idea she’s implicated in the case. But he’s set his sights higher, taking in everything from a civil suit the relatives of the perp Marsh shot in The Good Detective (2019) have launched against him to a possible conspiracy behind the deaths of his deeply grieved wife and son, all of it larded with Georgia attitude and truisms, a few of which rise to eloquence (“I wasn’t good at faith. I was good at proof”).
As tangled and turbulent as the hero’s nightmares, and that’s saying quite a bit.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-53556-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
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