Review by New York Times Review
COVER YOUR EYES - this one's really nasty. Not even cookie-baking moms and their innocent children are spared in THE KILLING LESSONS (St. Martin's, $25.99), Saul Black's thriller about an interstate manhunt for a killer whose modus operandi is so bizarre even his own accomplice can't figure it out. Xander King and his browbeaten sidekick, Paulie Stokes, have been doing their filthy business for the past three years, abducting women in one state and usually leaving their mutilated remains in another. The death count is up to seven and climbing, according to Valerie Hart, the San Francisco cop who's lead detective on the case. But by the time the killers make their way to the isolated farmhouse in Colorado where Rowena Cooper and her two children live, Xander is starting to unravel. He's unable to complete his peculiar ritual of leaving a foreign object in each victim, and although he doesn't realize it, Rowena's 10-year-old daughter has escaped. Despite the almost shockingly good writing, it's too easy to pick the book apart. For one thing, it feels researched, which wasn't the case when this British author, writing under his real name, Glen Duncan, produced a stylish horror novel called "The Last Werewolf." It's fun to spot a sly acknowledgment of one obvious reference work, "The Silence of the Lambs," embedded in the story. But the alcoholic, obsessive, self-destructive detective is no less a cliché because she's a woman, and the graphic brutality directed at women who bear no resemblance to the maternal figure who made a monster of Xander evokes torture scenes straight out of "Criminal Minds." And while Valerie's detective skills are impressive (watch for the witty thought process that takes her from Christmas shopping to Russell Crowe to the true identity of Xander King), you still have to wonder why the F.B.I. isn't all over a case of interstate kidnapping. But even when the plot goes into melodramatic overdrive, it's impossible not to be swept away by its propulsive momentum. The appeal of this dark and intensely disquieting book isn't entirely visceral either. By shifting the narrative point of view, Black allows us to peer into the depths of his many richly developed characters, from the surprisingly complex killers and their dedicated hunters to the supporting players who pop up only to be ruthlessly disposed of. AFTER KNOCKING AROUND Europe in his last book, Lee Child's wide-bodied hero, Jack Reacher, is back where he belongs in MAKE ME (Delacorte, $28.99), bumming around the country and checking out the infinite weirdness of the American heartland. There's a lot of weird going on in Mother's Rest, the intriguingly named agricultural town that greets Reacher when he obeys a directive from what he calls his "lizard brain" and hops off a train in the middle of nowhere. Everyone from the motel clerk to the counterman at the diner immediately takes Reacher for someone else - possibly a colleague of Michelle Chang, a former F.B.I. operative who's in town looking for a missing colleague - and a neighborhood watch is set up to keep an eye on both of them. This would be comical, if it weren't so sinister; but Child has always been sensitive to the air of menace clinging to lonesome towns on railway lines that only run from here to there, dropping off travelers who promptly disappear. Once the obligatory out-of-town action scenes are out of the way and Reacher comes up for air from his steamy affair with Chang, the story returns to Mother's Rest to expose the unspeakably creepy things that go on in the small towns you see when you look out the window of the speeding train that's taking you away from all that. DONALD SMITH'S exceptional first novel, THE CONSTABLE'S TALE (Pegasus, $25.95), is a revelatory look at colonial America, as seen through the eyes of a volunteer constable in North Carolina. Harry Woodyard is a man of strong principles, some acquired by observing the "Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour." Rule No. 110 - "Labour to keep alive in your Breast that Little Spark of Celestial fire Called Conscience" - serves Harry well when the Campbell family is murdered. An old Indian named Comet Elijah, found camping in the woods, is jailed for the massacre, and given the prejudices of the Indian-hating sheriff, Harry is the old man's only hope. In unmasking a villain, the investigation also provides insights into the surprisingly worldly ways of our colonial ancestors. THE BEST AMATEUR sleuths are often social misfits like Patrick Fort, the appealing hero of Belinda Bauer's deliciously macabre mystery, RUBBERNECKER (Atlantic Monthly, $24). Though Patrick has Asperger's syndrome, the results of his biology and zoology exams are off the chart, winning him a place at Cardiff University. Despite having zero social skills, Patrick is a whiz in the anatomy lab, so far ahead of his class that he alone realizes the cadaver on his dissection table didn't die of natural causes. In a parallel narrative sizzling with tension, Sam Galen, a fully conscious but paralyzed patient in a coma ward, silently rages at his inability to tell anyone that he's seen another patient being murdered. In a tour de force of plotting and writing, Bauer not only establishes a bond between Patrick and Sam but renders their separate voices with beauty and compassion.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 23, 2015]
Review by Booklist Review
Craven County volunteer constable Harry Woodyard tosses rabble-rousers out of the courtroom and keeps the King's peace in Colonial North Carolina's townships, but he has never investigated a murder until the Campbell family is massacred. Although the constable suspects others, the sheriff and townspeople are quick to blame Indians, even going so far as to arrest Harry's mentor, the wryly funny Comet Elijah. Anxious to spring his elderly friend from jail, Harry leaves his wife and servant to the planting and sets off to trace the origin of a Masonic emblem found at the crime scene. His journey is also one of self-discovery to his shame, he gets drunk, is seduced by a French countess, and reunites with an old flame much later finding answers among French enemies near the Canadian border. These picaresque, coming-of-age adventures form the bulk of this amusing puzzler. Through detailed descriptions of characters and setting, readers can easily imagine early American life and its shifting governance. Compares well with the more serious Bone Rattler series by Eliot Pattison or the Smithyman saga by David More.--Baker, Jen Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Fans of Eliot Pattison's Bone Rattler series (Soul of the Fire, etc.) will relish Smith's impressive debut, set in 1759. Royal constable Harry Woodyard looks into a multiple murder at a plantation in North Carolina's Craven County. Someone shot nine-year-old Andrew Campbell in a field, then rested the boy's head on a pillow and put a sprig of rosemary under his nose. Andrew's parents were slain in the house, their bodies also posed; only the baby was left alive. Most people believe that Indians were responsible, though the sparing of the infant's life is uncharacteristic of similar Indian massacres. When Comet Elijah, a Tuscarora Indian and mentor to Harry, turns up in the vicinity, he's arrested. Convinced of Comet Elijah's innocence, Harry undertakes a perilous quest for the truth, which he believes is connected to a Masonic medal he found under the Campbell baby's crib. Smith balances historical detail and a twisty whodunit plot like a veteran. Agent: Jennifer Unter, Unter Agency. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
[DEBUT] Harry Woodyard, a farmer in 18th-century colonial North Carolina, is also a volunteer constable. His official duties include attending court, keeping the peace, and investigating possible crimes. Generally these tasks are monotonously mundane until the evening a breathless tinker reports the murder of a farm family; the only survivor is an infant. The primary suspect is an elderly Indian and chicken thief, whom Harry has known since his youth. Determined to hunt down the real killer or killers, Harry embarks on an extended and perilous journey informed by the strange and obtuse clues collected at the murder scene. Can he solve this mystery in time to save his friend? Verdict Making his fiction debut, writer and broadcaster Smith has penned an adequate historical mystery. Some passages feel true to the period, but his characters are vague and thinly developed. It's hard for the reader to care about the conclusion.-Russell Miller, Prescott P.L., AZ © Copyright 2015. 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
Being named Royal Constable and "leaving behind for good the brawlers and pranksters and wenchers he previously had kept company with" gives young North Carolina planter Harry Woodyard a chance to advance in Craven County society during the French and Indian War. What Harry can't suspect is that his duties will fetch him up on the Plains of Abraham as British Gen. Wolfe takes Quebec. Smith's spun a rollicking good yarn in his debut novel. Harry's pursuing the murderer of a local plantation family, heading over the Colonial border to Williamsburg, then Annapolis and Boston, and finally to the Quebec army camp. Comet Elijah, last of the fearsome Tuscarora tribe, has been jailed as the killer. It was Comet Elijah and Natty, Harry's grandfather, who raised the boy, teaching him woodcraft and the ways of the world. Harry's certain his friend isn't guilty, especially since he found an inscribed Masonic pin at the murder scene. Smith's sketches of life in 1759 are superb: "small beer" for breakfast, rogues on the post road, and notes on how plantations flourished behind the isolating Outer Banks. Harry's left his new wife, Toby with the "pretty brown eyes," waiting in North Carolina, and his letters home"My deareft wife, I pray thif letter finds you ye Plantation well"provide another window into Colonial life. Harry meets Washington"We are all proud of our George for his conduct at Monongahela"and teenage Jefferson and learns why his first love, Maddie, daughter of New Bern's chief justice, threw him over for a Virginia plantation scion, Richard Ayerdale. Seesawing between ambition and inferiority, Harry meets governors, generals, and aristocracy, relying on his treasured tome, Rules of Civilty Decent Behaviour for guidance. Top-notch historical fiction, authentic in character and setting, laced with a mystery and a bit of international intrigue, right up to the whipsaw conclusion. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
