Review by New York Times Review
SOME STORIES ARE so sad, you want them to have the comfort of a gentle storytelling voice. Tom Bouman extends that kindness in DRY BONES IN THE VALLEY (Norton, $24.95), his beautifully written first novel set in the mountainous region of northeastern Pennsylvania that sits atop the Marcellus Shale, a vast geological treasure, prized and exploited for its natural gas resources. With neighbors feuding over whether to lease drilling rights to companies accused of poisoning the environment, it's no wonder that a crazy old recluse like Aubrey Dunigan would be testy with anyone he finds hanging around his decrepit farm. But these hills are also overrun with meth cookers, dope dealers and Mexican drug cartels. So just because a stranger is found dead on his property doesn't make poor old Aubrey a murderer. Officer Henry Farrell is one of those stoic heroes who see what's in front of their eyes but refuse to let it break their hearts. He plays the fiddle on Tuesday nights with friends who can pick out old bluegrass tunes. He hunts deer and keeps his gun clean, although he can't help feeling bad that the woods are "full of junk," strewn with the detritus of thoughtlessly lived lives. The broader story Bouman tells is more disheartening than the murder story. It's about a hopeless generation of rural Americans who no longer work their own land - if they have any land left and if they have any work at all. Suspicious people living with guard dogs in trailers and abandoned school buses, they're so filled with blind hatred for any kind of authority that they can't see the ground opening up under their feet. WHERE DO THEY go, all those memories that are lost when a mind begins to fail? And who has the courage to set off in search of them? Maud Horsham, the narrator of Emma Healey's spellbinding first novel, ELIZABETH IS MISSING (Harper, $25.99), is aware that she's slipping into dementia. So she depends on the handwritten notes she calls "my paper memory" to remind herself not to buy any more canned peaches or try to cook. She must also remember to look for her best friend, who has disappeared and may be dead, possibly murdered. "I can see they won't listen, won't take me seriously," Maud says of her daughter and the various caretakers who dismiss her concerns. "So I must do something. I must, because Elizabeth is missing." Maud makes her way to Elizabeth's eerily empty house, to the church Elizabeth no longer attends, to the charity shop where they met as volunteer workers and to the local police station, where she's rudely patronized by the same officer who brushed her aside on previous visits. Healey's narrative takes its structure from the shifting patterns of Maud's thoughts, pursuing what appear to be random images back to postwar Britain, when her sister left her husband and simply vanished. No one in authority paid much attention to that either, not when so many wives were running away from hasty war marriages that the newspapers tried to reach them with public pleas. In Maud's deteriorating mind, the two mysteries become so entwined that a fresh clue can dislodge associations from the past yet also make sense in the present. It's a sad and lonely business, watching your identity slowly slip away. But even at the end, Maud insists on making herself heard and understood. WITH CAMPUS VIOLENCE now embedded in our social culture, the classic academic mystery could use an overhaul. Lori Rader-Day gives it the old college try in THE BLACK HOUR (Seventh Street Books, paper, $15.95) by putting familiar genre conventions (the killer on campus, the faculty member as amateur detective, the back-stabbing at the president's reception) in a more realistic context. Amelia Emmet, the sociology professor playing sleuth, not only teaches the "Sociology of Deviance and Crime" but was also the victim of a campus shooting, a crime the teaching assistant with whom she shares the narrative is secretly researching. The traditional whodunit procedures feel so contrived that the background material makes better reading, offering insights into the operation of a student-run suicide hotline and debunking the old myth that someone whose roommate commits suicide automatically gets a single room - without charge - the following semester. ANTONIO HILL'S first novel, "The Summer of Dead Toys," introduced Inspector Héctor Salgado, a temperamental detective with the Catalan police force. Contemptuous of the conformity, hypocrisy and decadence he finds in Barcelona, his adopted city, this moody Argentine lives by the philosophy of his native country's dance. ("As the tangos say, life isn't fair. I pity anyone who thinks otherwise.") Salgado's cynicism runs deeper and darker in THE GOOD SUICIDES (Crown, $26), which presents him with an extraordinary case. After being warned with a cryptic message attached to a photo of three hanged dogs, the senior executives of a successful cosmetics firm begin killing themselves in gruesome ways. The macabre premise is a shocker, but Salgado is the real surprise: a tough cop with the sensitivity to be distressed that no absolution has been granted to these unfortunate men. There are "no good or bad suicides," he glumly acknowledges. "Taking one's own life was the ultimate sin. But if we don't even have that, what is left to us?"
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 6, 2014]
Review by Booklist Review
When an unidentified body is found under a boulder on an old man's land in rural Pennsylvania, the murder investigation reveals that the patchwork assembly of area law enforcement is paper-thin. And, when a second body is discovered, the lawmen find themselves even more shorthanded. Wild Thyme Township police officer Henry Farrell, a bearded, brooding veteran, throws himself into the case, working past the point of exhaustion and neglecting his own health as he navigates personal boundaries that must be considered in the context of property lines. A landscape wracked by fracking, poverty, meth, and a general mistrust of authority places this squarely in the burgeoning country-noir tradition, as does the fact that Bouman peoples his story with lawless outdoorsmen with Gaelic names and ancient grudges. (Farrell, who plays a passable fiddle, used music to court his bodhran-beating wife.) A dark ending unearths a long-held secret but leaves enough ambiguity to suggest plenty of tales to tell in future installments. A strong debut for readers who like their woods dark and deep.--Graff, Keir Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Although set in northeastern Pennsylvania, Bouman's outstanding debut has the feel of a western. Officer Henry Farrell became the head policeman in Wild Thyme Township because he expected it to be an easy job with hunting and fishing taking up most of his time. But uneasiness has settled into the economically depressed area with an active drug trade, including home-brewed meth. Drilling for natural gas is bringing money to the region, but this new wealth affects only a few residents, pitting neighbor against neighbor while potentially destroying the land. The discovery of a stranger's body on a disused dairy farm owned by elderly hermit Aub Dunigan, followed by the murder of a policeman, heightens the tension among the residents. Henry's growth from a grief-stricken widower to a lawman with an inner resolve fuels the brisk plot, as does an evocative look at a changing landscape. Agent: Neil Olson, Donadio & Olson. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
First, a reclusive old codger finds in his woods the body of a young man, apparently shot by a musket earlier in the winter. Less than 24 hours later, Officer Henry -Farrell discovers his deputy shot dead in his car. It's imperative that they get help from outside law enforcement agencies, but -Farrell best understands his rural northeastern Pennsylvania hamlet and can piece together the cases. An uneasy mix of old-timers, meth heads, and just plain poor people populates the region and some are selling out their mineral rights (think: fracking), pitting adjacent landowners against one another. If that's not enough, Henry literally stumbles over an ancient grave that might explain part of the current crime spree. But it's a wild ride to the finish line for this quiet, fiddler-loving officer. -VERDICT Don't miss this assured opener for a sure-to-be-popular projected four-book series. -Bouman's likable protagonist joins the ranks of police officers we want to know while introducing readers to an Appalachian region layered with story. This would appeal to fans of Craig Johnson, Julia Keller, and -Wiley Cash. (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The worn-down mountains and fertile river valleys of northeastern Pennsylvania hide some dreadful secrets.Officer Henry Farrell has returned, bereft and mentally damaged, from Wyoming to the land of his birth after his wife died from a number of health problems he suspects were related to fracking. In Henry's quiet corner of Pennsylvania, hardscrabble dairy farms and small businesses struggle for survival. For years, there have been few jobs and plenty of poverty. But that's all being changed by the influx of companies leasing land for gas drilling. When the body of a young man is found on the property of Aub Dunigan, and Danny Stiobhard appears at a local clinic to have buckshot picked out of his side after Aub "accidentally" shoots him, Henry realizes he'll have to call in both the sheriff and the state police. Aub, who's suffering from dementia, has little to say, and Danny takes off before the police can ask too many questions. Life only gets more complicated when Henry's deputy, George Ellis, is shot dead and Henry discovers a well-hidden old grave on Aub's property. Henry went to school with many of his suspects and believes that, despite their casual thievery and poaching, most of them are incapable of murder. But the drilling has brought an influx of out-of-state workers, set neighbor against neighbor, and opened the door to dangerous meth cookers and heroin pushers who've set up business in remote locations. The key to solving Henry's case may lie in a remarkably well-preserved body found in the hidden grave.Bouman's debut shows rural noir at its finest: a poetically written mystery about a man struggling with his inner demons and an area of great natural beauty few had heard of before the natural gas boom. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
