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B0DLT72YMY
| 4.11
| 51,146
| Mar 12, 1996
| May 01, 1997
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None
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Notes are private!
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0
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not set
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not set
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Jul 22, 2025
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Mass Market Paperback
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9798987556979
| B0DMST6FZM
| 4.60
| 183
| unknown
| Nov 11, 2024
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None
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Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 13, 2025
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not set
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Jul 13, 2025
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Paperback
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B0F25NTNXT
| 4.31
| 111
| unknown
| Oct 22, 2020
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it was amazing
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A. W. Hart, the nominal "author" of the Avenging Angels series of western adventures featuring a twin brother-sister pair of bounty hunters in the pos
A. W. Hart, the nominal "author" of the Avenging Angels series of western adventures featuring a twin brother-sister pair of bounty hunters in the post-Civil War West, is actually a house pen name; the books are all really written by different authors. (The writer here, Paul Ebbs, though working in a quintessentially American genre, is an Englishman, but a long-standing Western fan.) Barb and I were introduced to the series because the author of one of the books, Charles Gramlich, is one of my Goodreads friends. Before starting on this one, together we'd read and liked three of the books. But, because it's a long, episodic series (in which the books after the first one don't have to be read in order), and I was impatient to see whether one romantic connection and another possible one set up in the first book would really come to fruition, I suggested that we make this concluding volume our next read, and she agreed. (To avoid a spoiler, I won't say whether or not my hopes on that score were fulfilled.) No exact dates are given here; but since the first book began in 1865 (the next book would have to have been set in 1866) and judging from the number of intervening adventures, I'd guess the main storyline here to be set no earlier than 1870, making co-protagonists George Washington ("Reno") and Sara Bass in their early 20s at least. But the book opens with three short Prologue vignettes, the first dated "twelve months ago," from the viewpoint of an unnamed female pushed off of a bridge to a 40-foot drop into a raging river, followed by two more dated, respectively, three and two "months ago." None of these give us much information; but we are told that she survived, that her brother Robert Stirling-Hamer was a wealthy Arizona copper-mining magnate who has been murdered, and that his accused killer "Don" was in turn killed by bounty hunters (guess who?), but that Don's brother in New York has now gotten an anonymous letter claiming that his brother was innocent. Our main story opens with the Bass twins in a tight situation in West Texas, in danger from a psychotic fugitive who's already murdered his own parents and set fire to a schoolhouse full of kids. But they're soon to learn that there are now wanted posters out for them, claiming that their killing of Donald Callan eight months previously was an unauthorized murder. From there, the present narrative is periodically interspersed with flashbacks to "eight months ago," doling out strategic memories of the earlier events (which will finally come together with the present), and at times some short scenes from an omniscient third-person narrator describing present goings-on in Robert's town of Dry Mouth; but none of these fully explain what actually happened with Robert's murder. and may at times deepen the mystery. Ebbs writes very well, with a gift for apt and fresh (but not overdone) similes and vivid turns of phrase. He also brings the varied Southwestern landscape to well-realized life. The publisher and writers have always tried to make this series Christian-friendly; but where it's clear that some of the authors had only vague knowledge of Christian beliefs, Ebbs actually does explicitly refer to Christ's sacrificial death for sin in one place. A unique feature here (at least, compared to the other three installments we read) is that all of the chapter titles have biblical or hymnic cadences, and epigraphs that I'm guessing come from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. Although the book is very violent (as usual for this series), bad language is scanty and not very rough, and there's no graphic sexual content and little reference to sex at all. (A Catholic priest is a sympathetic character, Reno's search for God's guidance here is a realistically-treated and important theme, and the Bible he inherited from his dad plays a big role.) Reno and Sara's character portrayals are in keeping with the earlier series books we've read (except that Sara's ruthless streak, at one point, cranks up a notch that even startles Reno). There are a few nits to pick here, mostly with a number of places where typos in the form of omitted words, negative statements inadvertently expressed as positives or vice versa, etc. change the meaning of sentences; but I could always tell what was meant. A statement early in the book seems to suggest that Sara has lost her faith, but Ebbs subsequently back-peddles from that. Reno's Bible at one point is described as a "Lutheran Bible," so while the author knew about the Christian gospel, he obviously wasn't much versed in church history. (Many U.S. Lutherans in the 19th century were still German-speaking, so would probably still have used Luther's 16th-century translation; but any that were English-speaking used the King James Version, like all other Anglophone Protestants.) But these are minor quibbles. Overall, I found this an outstanding entry in the series! However, Barb did not; she greatly/exclusively favors linear plots, so she was VERY put off by Ebbs' non-linear storytelling here (and also disliked the ending, though I didn't), to the extent of being soured on the rest of the series. So, we'll be abandoning it, at least for a while. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 23, 2025
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Jul 13, 2025
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May 23, 2025
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Paperback
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1335597948
| 9781335597946
| 1335597948
| 4.57
| 129
| unknown
| Feb 20, 2024
|
liked it
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Love Inspired is the Christian fiction branch of the Harlequin paperback romance empire; Love Inspired Suspense is a sub-imprint that specializes in r
Love Inspired is the Christian fiction branch of the Harlequin paperback romance empire; Love Inspired Suspense is a sub-imprint that specializes in romantic suspense/mystery, often with characters in law enforcement-related occupations. We've all seen many of these books on sale in most venues that carry mass-market paperbacks. Given the huge volume at which these are churned out, one can guess that the house authors produce them under tight deadlines that allow little time for planning or polishing them (Jodie Bailey, the author here, has 111 distinct works listed on Goodreads, apparently all under the Love Inspired label; that statistic is probably indicative), and under market-driven guidelines that tend to give the resultant books a formulaic quality. Love Inspired would also conform to ECPA guidelines, which prohibit bad language, sexual content and gory violence (none of which, to be sure, are elements that I miss!). Preferring my reads to be less formulaic and mass-produced, I've personally never been interested in the imprint; but knowing that this particular book would appeal to my wife Barb, I gave it to her as a Christmas gift last year. At that time, I didn't plan to read it myself; but, as it turned out, we wound up reading it together. Going into it, my expectations weren't very high. Neither Goodreads nor the cover copy of this book give any hint that it is not a stand-alone (and the plot does have a resolution). But I guessed from the detailed references to past experiences shared by the two protagonists, and to the back stories of their mostly off-stage colleagues, that all of these characters had appeared in other books by Bailey, and that two married couples in the broader team found their way to each other in prior books. The author's “Dear Reader” afterword confirmed this; her novels Captured at Christmas and Deadly Vengeance introduce Phillip Campbell and Thalia Renner as supporting characters. Here, they take center stage. As the (somewhat clunky –and that's not unusual for this imprint) title indicates at the outset, our setting is Colorado, at Rocky Mountain Summit, a pricey resort where, several times each year, an adoption agency, Stardust Adoptions, hosts week-long retreats for would-be adoptive couples, where they can bond with other couples and meet agency counselors who can connect them with birth mothers. Over time, however, several couples who put up thousands of dollars for ostensible “birth mother's” expenses have been disappointed, when they're told she's changed her mind and will keep the baby. Inquiring minds in law enforcement have begun to suspect that some of these women were never really pregnant. One or both spouses in some of the disappointed couples have been enlisted in the military (Stardust pays the resort expenses for two military couples at each retreat, in what they bill as a patriotic public service.) That piques the interest of certain military investigative types. Army career soldiers Phillip and Thalia are partnered as undercover investigators for “Overwatch,” which is apparently a fictional branch of the U.S. Army's C.I.D. (or perhaps a fictional substitute for it). They're close friends as well as co-workers, both competent professionals who've been through a lot together already, work well together, and have each other's backs. Here, they're posing as a married couple who want to adopt, and tasked with ferreting out the truth about whether or not the entrepreneurial couple who run Stardust really are swindling some of their clients. (Thalia is herself an adoptee; she was born in Moldova to parents she doesn't remember, and adopted by a loving American family when she was three.) Of course, acting like a loving couple is strictly a pretense (or is it....?). The novel tag-teams the third-person perspectives of both protagonists, and spans just two event-packed days. At 215 pages, it's a fairly quick read. Bailey's writing style is clear and professional, neither minimalist nor ornately detailed. IMO, the basic premise here is implausible; it's not likely that a real-life adoption agency would feel any need for such retreats, or that a military investigative agency would concern itself with a possible crime committed by civilians, even if some of the victims happen to be military families. The way that the plot is spun off continues the implausibility. Some of the activities of the baddies here are pointless at best and counter-productive at worst; the level of skullduggery going on isn't believable, and there are other credibility issues. For a pair of ace investigators, our H/h here struck me as bumbling and ineffective, and at times withhold information from each other in a way that seems unprofessional; and the solution is dropped into their laps at the tales' climax and its aftermath, without them actually nosing it out at all. (Except that the “solution” doesn't make sense of a couple of the incidents that preceded it; but that difficulty is just glossed over.) Bailey also doesn't evoke much of a sense of place. She's better at creating characters than at plotting. Both Phil and Thalia are three-dimensional, well-developed personalities who were, for me, easy to like and root for. Their psychological baggage was understandable, and the events furnished a catalyst for working through some of it. Romantic attraction (albeit unrecognized for what it is) has grown naturally between them in the fertile soil of close association, in stressful settings which have revealed each other's mettle and engendered mutual respect and trust. It feels real, as does their fear of changing an already familiar and strong friend dynamic to something new for both, and their doubts about how much the fake relationship is messing with their perceptions. As a Christian writer, Bailey is interested in their spiritual lives, and also handles that aspect naturally, without Bible quoting and theological discussions. (Phil's a Christian believer; Thalia isn't, being unsure that the idea of Divine love squares with the reality of being abandoned by her birth parents. But for both of them, this op will greatly stimulate their prayer life....) I also give the author credit for a very sensitive handling of a secondary character's experience of multiple miscarriages. Bailey's good at writing dialogues, and that one was particularly moving. Phil and Thalia (who has competed in MMA bouts on one of her undercover assignments) do have action-hero/heroine chops. Both pack guns, though when Chapter One opens en media res, with Thalia being attacked on a mountain trail, while on an early morning exercise run, by a musclebound thug with a silenced pistol, she's left hers back in the resort room. However, she doesn't need it to leave him greatly regretting that he tangled with her. (That's not a spoiler; if she got killed in the first chapter, this would be an awfully short book!) She actually has more combat training than Phil does, though in the climactic show-down here, he's the one who actually gets to shine. All of that said, though, action is a very minor part of this book, with physical violence or attempted violence only occurring rarely, and taking little time when it does; Thalia never engages in actual combat after the first chapter. It's no great surprise that Barb liked this better than I did (when we discussed it after finishing the read, she noted that her rating would be five stars –and she does understand Goodread's rating scale.) But while my reaction was less adulatory, and I'm not “inspired” (pun not intended, but it came naturally) to seek out more books in the imprint, this one was better written than I'd expected, and I did mildly like it. It won't ever be confused with great literature; but it does provide some wholesome entertainment. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 13, 2025
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May 20, 2025
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Apr 13, 2025
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Mass Market Paperback
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031286986X
| 9780312869861
| 031286986X
| 4.10
| 109
| Apr 22, 2000
| Apr 22, 2000
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it was amazing
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Popular American author John Jakes got his start writing short Western fiction, and never lost his interest in and affection for the genre. Looking ba
Popular American author John Jakes got his start writing short Western fiction, and never lost his interest in and affection for the genre. Looking back over the span of the 20th century at the dawn of the 21st, and at a time when the demise of general circulation magazines and other factors had drastically curtailed the market for Western short stories, he assembled this collection of 30 tales, by as many authors (including himself), as a celebration of the best fiction the tradition has to offer. (He was assisted in the selection by veteran anthologist Martin Greenberg and by fellow author John Helfers, so his assessment of the quality of the material isn't entirely idiosyncratic.) His two introductory pieces, the Introduction or "What Happened to the Western?" which both analyzes the current diminished state of the genre and speculates about the prospects for its enduring survival and future directions (drawing upon, for the latter, the thoughts of a number of current Western writers) and the much-shorter Preface, which briefly sketches the genre's roots in the 19th-century dime novels, are spoiler-free. At nearly 90 pages, one selection here, Wolf Moon by Ed Gorman, is really a short novel, and was originally published as one. (I've treated it by itself in a separate review.) The only story here I'd previously read is the lead one, Louis L'Amour's outstanding "The Gift of Cochise" (which I've commented on elsewhere). So virtually all of the material here was new to me; and more than half of the authors are ones whose work I hadn't previously read, and in a number of cases had never heard of before. (My review doesn't discuss all of the stories individually, but does comment on most of them.) This anthology mines territory similar to that of Jon Tuska's Shadow of the Lariat: A Treasury of the Frontier, though Jakes' chronological range is broader than the 1920-1961 one covered in that book. Seven authors --Zane Grey, Max Brand, Les Savage Jr., Ernest Haycox, Frank Bonham, Luke Short, and Dan Cushman-- are represented in both collections, but by different stories, so there's no overlap at all in content. Some defects of this collection, compared to Tuska's, are that the arrangement of the stories is not chronological (indeed, there doesn't really seem to be any principle guiding the arrangement), publication dates aren't usually given with the selections, though copyright dates for most of them are listed in the front matter, and the author introductions preceding each story are only single short paragraphs. More seriously, the Gorman novella and the Evans story (see below), for me, dragged down the overall average rating of the stories. But the excellent quality of the rest allowed for a five-star rating (rounded up) for the book. And on the plus side here, while Tuska's book doesn't include any female authors, Jakes included three. Both the writers and readers in this genre have historically been overwhelmingly male; 90% of those represented here are men, but I appreciated the effort to represent women's contribution to the genre. (Many of the stories here --and actually, in both anthologies-- present strong and admirable female characters who earn respect from readers and fellow characters alike.) To consider the distaff contributions first, Marcia Muller's "Sweet Cactus Wine" (1982), set in the Arizona desert country in the early 1900s, would have made a great selection for the anthology Just Desserts. (The same could also be said for "The Burial of Letty Strayhorn" by four-time Spur Award winner Elmer Kelton.) Like Peggy Simson Curry's 1959 story "Geranium House," it's a deeply thought-provoking story, which tests and challenges our understandings of right and wrong. IMO, neither tale "result[s] in a blatant subversion of morality", though another reviewer used that language; they simply present stories of human behavior that could realistically happen in an unusual (but far from impossible) situation, and invite us as the readers to bring our own moral judgment to bear on it. That sort of experiment in the moral imagination is inherently the stuff of serious literature. (I felt the same way about another selection criticized on the same grounds by that reviewer, Evan Hunter's "The Killing at Triple Tree," where our main character is a marshal whose young wife was brutally raped and murdered, and who's now obliged to lead the manhunt for the thug who did it. It's a harrowing practical exploration of the ethics of justice, but no spoilers here. Hunter is best known under his Ed McBain pen name, as an author of police procedurals, I've read none of his work in that vein, but read his novel Last Summer when it was published in 1968. That book is very different from "The Killing at Triple Tree;" but the two works share an intensely grim vision of human moral darkness, though not from a premise that applauds darkness.) My Goodreads friend Debbie Zapata is a fan of the Western writings of Bertha Muzzy Bower (1871-1940), so I recognized her name here. She's represented by "The Lamb of the Flying U," one of many works she wrote about everyday cowboy life on a fictional Montana ranch. (Having grown up on a real one, she was writing about what she knew.) This tale of attempted hazing of a new hand whom the older ones mistakenly assume to be effeminate and incompetent is humorous in intent, but for me somewhat marred by my basic contempt for the warped attitudes demonstrated by the smug in-group here. (If they'd been working for me, they'd have been looking for a new job.) Several stories are drawn from the earliest generation (except for the "dime novel" authors) of Western writers. Published in 1908, Owen Wister's "Timberline" is the oldest of the stories that has a definite date. (The title is actually the nickname of the character of whom this tale is essentially a character study.) Wister does an excellent job here of evoking a sense of place in the Rocky Mountain high country, makes good use of the electrical phenomena of a high-altitude lightning storm. and shows his mastery of the surprise ending technique, done rightly. (His landmark Western novel The Virginian is on my to-read shelf.) One of the longest stories, "Tappan's Burro" by Zane Grey, about the bond between a prospector and his donkey, is also one of the most powerful and poignant. Jack London's "All Gold Canyon," which has one of the most sensuously beautiful descriptions of unspoiled nature that I've read in any genre, also has a prospector for its protagonist, and benefits from the author's detailed knowledge of mining and prospecting procedures --but before it's over, more will be going on than just prospecting. "The Weight of Obligation," by now little-known author Rex Beach, is set in the frozen North of Alaska during the Gold Rush days (like his contemporary London, Beach took part in the latter, though he would outlive him by over 30 years). Arguably, that setting isn't what most readers view as the true locale for a Western; but it's a gripping story of men vs. nature, as well as a serious psychological study. German writer Karl May (1842-1912) isn't well known to American readers, since few if any of his books have ever been translated into English. But his 40 Western novels featuring his iconic hero Old Shatterhand (also nicknamed Old Surehand and Old Firehand) and the latter's Indian sidekick Winnetou were, and still are, highly popular with readers in German and other European languages. (I'd heard of him and his series character from reading a secondary account of him some years ago, though I don't remember where, but haven't read anything by him.) He's not directly represented in this collection. But Jakes' "Manitow and Ironhand," set in the "Stony Mountains" (as May sometimes designated the Rockies) in 1833, and featuring title characters who are fur trappers, is "Dedicated to the memory of Karl May," and its heroes are inspired by May's own, though it's more of a homage than an actual pastiche. (Jakes' two-page Afterword gives more info on May, and on the similarities and differences of this story and the May corpus.) One of the longer tales in this anthology, this was definitely one of my favorites, despite the fact that the principal villain is a sanctimonious hypocrite who pretends to be a Christian. Unlike at least one reviewer, I didn't view Jakes' purpose here as slurring Christianity itself, though I might be mistaken. (Another of my favorite selections here, Savage's 1951 story "King of the Buckskin Breed," is also set in the milieu of 1830s Rocky Mountain fur trapping.) Other stories also feature interactions between Anglos and Native Americans, but the authors develop that theme in very different ways. Haycox's "Stage to Lordsburg" (which was later adapted in the classic film Stagecoach) is the most traditional, following a disparate group of men and women in a two-day horsedrawn journey over mostly empty land being scoured by Apache war parties. In "Sergeant Houck," Jack Schaefer (best known as the author of the landmark 1949 Western novel Shane) explores the challenges faced by a returning married woman who's been for three years a captive among the Indians --and who's bringing with her the son she bore to a brave who bought her from her original captors as a slave. Glendon Swarthout is best known for his Western novel The Shootist (1975), for which he won the Spur Award. His "The Attack on the Mountain" is set in Arizona in the 1880s, against the background of the warfare between the Army and the Apaches, and is also one of my favorites here. Finally, "The Shaming of Broken Horn" (1960) by Bill Gulick, set in the days of wagon-train travel, has a brave and resourceful female protagonist and packs a feminist message at a time when the gene wasn't known for that. (The portrayal of Native Americans in all of these tales is realistic rather than racist, but none of the authors subscribe to "noble savage" mythology.) Though they're very different stories, "The Tin Star" by John M. Cunningham and "Killers' Country!" by Dan Cushman both represent the violent action-centered tradition of the mid-century pulps (the titular "country" of the latter is both geographical and metaphorical). But both are also serious stories about what matters in life and emotionally evocative in powerful ways. The selection here by Max Brand (whose real name was Frederick Faust) is "Wine on the Desert." It features a totally despicable protagonist, guilty of murder and on the run ahead of a posse, who's quite confident that he's got a fool-proof plan for a clean get away (but has he?). Luke Short's title character in "Top Hand" is a "kid" perhaps in his late teens (older than 17, by his own statement), and older folks in the town he's just ridden into are skeptical of his "top hand" claim ...but a chance to prove himself might come sooner than expected. In "The Trouble Man," Eugene Manlove Rhodes makes brilliant use of the surprise ending technique, in a story set in New Mexico against the background of strife between cowboys and sheepherders. A more modern story by Bill Pronzini (who is married to Muller, though Jakes doesn't mention that fact, and like her writes in both the mystery and Western genres), "Fear" (1995) is serious and evocative, and takes its premise in an unexpected direction. "Hell on the Draw" (1989) by Loren D. Estleman is arguably out of place in this anthology, since its supernatural and SF premises place it more in the "Weird West" subgenre (and it's more than a little dubious theologically!); but it holds interest, and makes very good use of the surprise ending device. The only outstandingly bad selection here is "Candles in the Bottom of the Pool" by Max Evans. I started to just skim the latter after only a few pages, because I found all the characters unlikable and wasn't enjoying it, but it didn't take long to make me quite glad that I didn't actually read it. This one, set somewhere in the Southwest in the author's 1973 present, isn't a Western by any definition other than the ridiculous one of "any work set west of the Mississippi, in any time period." (By that yardstick, for example, both The Maltese Falcon and Twilight are "Westerns;" any "definition" that broad is obviously useless for serious purposes.) But that's far from being the biggest problem with that selection. It's a genuinely repulsive, ugly and morally sick story, which makes Jakes' extravagant praise for the author incomprehensible. (Whether the protagonist's "visions" of supposed scenes from regional history are meant to be understood as supernatural or as a madman's hallucinations is unclear, but I frankly didn't care.) But despite this turkey, my overall assessment of this collection is very positive, and I recommend it to genre fans. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jun 27, 2025
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Apr 08, 2025
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Hardcover
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B09Z8NYHX9
| 4.64
| 351
| unknown
| Dec 20, 2022
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really liked it
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In terms of setting, continuing characters, basic ethos and style, this seventh episode (it's actually the eighth altogether, but the Kindle-only nove
In terms of setting, continuing characters, basic ethos and style, this seventh episode (it's actually the eighth altogether, but the Kindle-only novella House Blend doesn't officially have a series number) in my Goodreads friend Heather Day Gilbert's Barks and Beans Cafe' mystery series is very much of a piece with the preceding ones. Friends and others who follow my reviews have read the eight previous ones of the earlier books, so lengthy repetition of the series basics probably isn't necessary. And presumably readers simply checking out this book are doing so because they've read the preceding ones (since for the most part these books need to be read in order; there are progressive developments in circumstances and relationships), and in that case are also familiar with the basics. Our first-person, past-tense narrator is again likable and down-home series protagonist Macy Hatfield (calling her a series sleuth would be crediting her with more ability than she possesses --though, as was said of the heroine of another mystery series my wife and I both liked, she does tend to "attract corpses"). This outing takes place about a month after the previous book, set around Thanksgiving. It's now close to Christmas. Macy's elderly neighbor Vera (who by now is another old friend for series readers) has prevailed on our girl to agree to attend the December meeting of the book club Vera hosts in her home. Vanity Fair is the book up for the discussion, to be led by Lewisburg's mayor (who's a retired English teacher), and Macy will be on the program to plug the Barks and Beans Cafe' and its unique features. (Book discussion doesn't play a big role in the plot, but it's clear the author has actually read Vanity Fair, rather than just dropping the name.) But this club meeting won't be as festive as Vera would like, since the holiday spirit is about to be dampened by murder.... Before the last page is turned, readers will get a glimpse at the epic-scaled illicit drug problem in West Virginia, and a bit of a window into the state's sometimes vicious local politics. We'll also be treated to not just one, but two, major developments in the personal life of Macy's big brother Boaz "Bo" Hatfield (but you won't hear any spoilers from me!). I was genuinely surprised by the revelation of the killer here; and I would also say that the resolution of the mystery was darker and more thought-provoking than is typical of this series. But I'd still recommend it as relatively light entertainment, particularly tailored to the tastes of "cozy" fans, and as a pretty quick read. (Even reading it only during car trips, Barb and I finished it in less than a month!) ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 27, 2024
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Aug 24, 2024
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Jul 27, 2024
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Kindle Edition
| |||||||||||||||||
1641196521
| 9781641196529
| 1641196521
| 4.40
| 530
| unknown
| Oct 01, 2019
|
liked it
|
Published in 2019, this is the opening volume of Wolfpack Publishing's Avenging Angels series. Barb and I had previously read the seventh and second i
Published in 2019, this is the opening volume of Wolfpack Publishing's Avenging Angels series. Barb and I had previously read the seventh and second installments out of order (long story!); and having really liked those, we recently decided to commit to reading the series. This one takes us to the very beginning of the titular "avenging angels'" adventures. The Bass twins, George Washington (nicknamed "Reno") and Sara, were 16 in the fall of 1865, just after the Civil War, when they returned home from school and found their western Kansas homestead burned and their parents and three older siblings dead or dying, murdered by a band of vengeful renegade ex-Confederates. (Their sister had also been gang raped.) Before he died, their father charged them to avenge that slaughter. This book is the story of that quest and its outcome (hence the title). "A. W. Hart" is a house pen name; all of the books of the series have different actual authors. Here, the writer was Peter Brandvold, who grew up as a Western fan in the 60s and 70s and went on to write over 100 Western novels, under his own name or his "Frank Leslie" pen name. (Neither Barb nor I had any prior experience with his work.) There are a couple of significant continuity issues between this volume and the later ones, though these aren't Brandvold's fault. Starting in the second book, our hero's and heroine's promise to their father is said to have explicitly included a charge to continue to hunt down and rid the earth of other evil-doers, even after justice was served on the original villains. That's not at all clear and explicit here. At the end of this book, their resolution to make their quest a continuing one is said to be their own decision, a response to an emotional need of their own. And in the seventh book (and possibly others earlier), the late John Bass is described as having been a Lutheran pastor. In this book, while he's said to have been a God-fearing person who raised his kids to be familiar with the Bible, there's no hint that he was a clergyman of any kind. IMO, on both points, the portrayal here is more plausible and realistic. However, there are definite flaws in Brandvold's craftsmanship here, starting with chronology. John Bass served in the Mexican War, after which he married and settled in Kansas. The Bass family graveyard on the homestead is said to hold the remains of an infant sibling who died over 20 years before 1865 --in other words, before 1845, and the Bass twins would have been born ca. 1849. But the Mexican War was fought from 1846-1848. There isn't time between Feb. 1848 and the end of 1849 to fit in John Bass' post-war activity, subsequent courtship and marriage, the couple's move to Kansas, and four pregnancies prior to Reno and Sara. (And Kansas was not even opened for settlement until 1854.) If his general knowledge of U.S. history didn't furnish red flags here, very basic research would have precluded these kinds of mistakes. Editing and proofreading here is poor. Brandvold loses the thread of which character is speaking in one key conversation; he can't make up his mind whether two or three antagonists are positioned in one spot during a gun fight, and near the end, a character's last name unaccountably changes from Hill to Stock in the space of two pages. The third-person narrative is consistently from Reno's viewpoint, but in the earlier chapters it incorporates gunslinger's slang (thankfully abandoned later) that a peaceful teenage farm boy would be unlikely to be acquainted with. Near the end, conduct by two of the villains is inconsistent with their group's overall plan. There are other logistical and editorial quibbles that could be made as well. Both Sara and another important female character, Isabelle Mando, act out of character, or unrealistically for the situation, in one place (though not in the same place). Sara's character, in particular, comes across as less winsome here than it does in the two later books we read. Of the two twins, she's always been the more enduringly angry and vindictive over her family's tragedy, the more aloof and self-contained, and the more ruthless and readily inured to violence. Here, though, she has a readiness to execute even disabled and helpless adversaries that alarms Reno, and at the same time a willingness to ignore a rape attempt on someone else as none of her business. (Thankfully for the victim, Reno didn't share that indifference.) At one point, Reno was feeling a genuine concern for the state of Sara's soul, and a resolution to try to influence her for the better. But later, he's surprised and puzzled when Sara expresses a concern about her own spiritual state; and that theme is never developed any further, just forgotten and left hanging. Brandvold is undeniably a prolific writer; but he comes across to me as a careless and hasty one who sacrifices quality to quantity. While the main characters here are Christians, and there's a definite theme of good vs. evil, with the idea that God sides with the former and against the latter, none of the series writers are necessarily Christians themselves as far as I know. Bible verses serve as epigraph and postscript, and are quoted at times in the text; but there's no real presentation of the gospel of grace and mercy, and not much wrestling with the Christian ethics of lethal force in a fallen world. Despite the teen protagonists, this is not really YA fiction either; it's a very violent book, with a high body count. (It is, however, free of sexual content, beyond some references to scantily-clad chorus girls in a frontier music hall, and has very little bad language.) There's a chaste romance which some readers will see as marred by an insta-love factor; but in the cultural context, I wasn't bothered by the latter, and for me it's a plus that it's inter-racial. (Positive portrayal of half-Lakota characters and a black character do Brandvold credit.) While I didn't rate this book as highly as the two later ones, Barb and I still plan to continue with the series. It won't disappoint genre fans who like a heavy dose of gun-fighting action. ...more |
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1
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Mar 31, 2024
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May 27, 2024
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Mar 31, 2024
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B09G94PLYX
| 4.58
| 332
| May 24, 2022
| May 24, 2022
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really liked it
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This sixth installment of Gilbert's Barks and Beans Cafe' mystery series is set about a month after the events of the previous one, Trouble Brewing; t
This sixth installment of Gilbert's Barks and Beans Cafe' mystery series is set about a month after the events of the previous one, Trouble Brewing; that one took place around Halloween, and this one during the week of Thanksgiving. (It's the same year, since protagonist Macy still refers to herself as 38 years old.) Like the previous entries in the series, it takes place in the real-life small town of Lewisburg, West Virginia, and makes use of real-life features of that setting. In this case, the author makes use of the fact that the mountainous topography of the area (like that of Appalachia in general) is fissured by numerous deep limestone caves, which are often tourist attractions. The one which figures prominently here isn't named, but is probably modeled on Lewisburg's Lost World Caverns (https://www.lostworldcaverns.com/ ). When our story opens, Macy learns that her boyfriend, FBI agent Titan McCoy, will be able to come into town for the week of the holiday. Yielding to her brother Bo's suggestion, she agrees to take Titan for a tour of the local caverns, though contrary to the cover copy (which the Goodreads description reproduces) it's not one of her 'favorite haunts;" she hasn't cared much for the place since, as a child, she nearly fell over a steep drop when she slipped on a slick underground trail. Despite that bad memory, she and her beau are enjoying the experience well enough --until (in Chapter 2) the lights inexplicably go out, and a couple of screams pierce the darkness. We're soon dealing with an apparent accident --or was it an accident?-- a missing person/corpse, and before long a definite murder mystery. (If this series were to be believed, for such a small place, Lewisburg's murder rate ought to be of serious concern to the DOJ's crime statisticians. :-) ) As usual, Macy's detective fever will find her snooping (with more zeal and naivety than finesse) into a tangle of not-very-loving family ties, toxic "friendships" and interlocking romantic triangles, with some illegal gambling thrown into the mix, among the town's monied set. (Since Barks and Beans' male barista, continuing character Milo, has wealthy parents and moves in those circles when he wants to, he gets featured here a bit more than usual.) Personally, my main criticisms of this book are twofold. First, as isn't uncommon in this series, the solution is arrived at through the killer's helpful, "Now that I have you at my mercy, since you're going to die anyway, I'll first obligingly explain the whole crime to you" trope (okay, that's not an exact quote :-) ). I've never been a real fan of that particular device. Also, I thought the motives behind two of the key mysteries of the plot were hard to credit; IMO, the decisions of both the two characters involved were too drastic under the circumstances, and were either unnecessary for their own interests or actually contrary to the latter. But while those are issues for me, they won't be with all readers. Although I sometimes finger the culprit in mysteries before the big reveal, I didn't do so for sure here (although I did divine the fact that one character had to be more involved in one aspect of the plotting here than he/she was wanting to shout from the housetops!). Our continuing characters, by now, are all old friends, the ambiance of modern small-town Appalachia is evoked realistically, and the book has a built-in attraction for dog-loving readers in particular. Like all the previous paperback entries of the series, I read this one aloud to my wife (who's not on Goodreads). She stated that she would give this one four stars; though she didn't like it as well as some of its predecessors, because she thought Macy's recklessness in self-endangerment here was worse than usual. My own perception was that this book wasn't that much of an outlier in this respect; Macy's likely to wind up in damsel-in-distress mode, but for her that's fairly characteristic. :-) Since the series is consciously written for "cozy" fans, those who actually prefer mysteries in that mode even over other traditional mysteries that incorporate less "cozy" formulaic characteristics, Barb is more the target audience for it than I am (though, for the record, I also like both this book and the series overall). So I went with her rating, to more fairly represent its merits in the context of the author's intention. ...more |
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Dec 03, 2023
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Kindle Edition
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1735565148
| 9781735565149
| 1735565148
| 4.68
| 415
| Apr 19, 2021
| Apr 07, 2021
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really liked it
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Note: This review has no spoilers for this book; but it does presuppose that those who read it will have read the four full-length novels that precede
Note: This review has no spoilers for this book; but it does presuppose that those who read it will have read the four full-length novels that precede it in the series. I would definitely advise reading the series in order. When we finished this installment of the Barks and Beans Cafe' series, which we're reading together, my wife Barb (who's not on Goodreads), commenting on the appeal of the series as a whole to her, said that it's "simple, down-to-earth, country." She added words to the effect that much of its appeal comes from the basic likability of protagonist Macy Hatfield (who genuinely cares about others, and it shows), the small-town atmosphere, and the implicit message of the value of family and community. (And being an Appalachian native herself, the setting is a major plus for her.) Her comments do encapsulate a great deal of what the series has going for it, though I think its appeal would extend to readers in any geographic location, with or without an Appalachian connection or an actual rural or small-town background of their own. My star rating reflects what Barb would give it, since she's more the target audience --though I like the series too, and personally liked this particular book the best of those I've read so far (though it has enough similarity to the others that my general comments in most of those reviews would also apply to this one). For this adventure, Macy's brother Bo plays a much less prominent role than usual. He's in South America, and mostly incommunicado, for much of the book. As the first book ultimately revealed, he has a DEA background (from which he's "retired," sort of, but not so much so as not to keep his hand in at times!). Now, he's been called into a deep-cover mission to (hopefully) finally get the goods on Leo Moreau, the arch-criminal mastermind who's been his nemesis since his DEA days, and whose doings have formed a constant plot strand through the first four novels as well. But continuing character Kylie Baer, the Hatfield siblings' heavily-tattooed barista at Barks and Beans, plays a much bigger role than usual, and we get to know the usually taciturn and stand-offish young woman much better than heretofore. (Some mystery fans might wish that she were the series sleuth here! :-) Of course, Kylie wouldn't relish the circumstances that bring her so much to the fore here: early on, she happens to emerge as the leading suspect in the murder of her younger sister's detested boyfriend, who's found with one of her antique swords in his back.... This novel is paced and plotted very well, and presented in the straightforward, engaging style that's characteristic of the series. The mystery elements hold up to scrutiny. (As usual, pay attention to minor details; they may prove to be significant!) I actually guessed the identity of the principal baddie as soon as he/she was introduced, and foresaw the main outline of what was going on, though not some details; but that's only because I've read a lot in the mystery genre and understand some of its dynamics, not because the author ineptly telegraphs it. (She doesn't; my wife was in the dark until the big reveal.) Our small-town West Virginia setting continues to be effectively evoked; Coal and Waffles will appeal to dog lovers (and Stormy will please the cat persons in the reading community), and the interpersonal relationships outside of and around the mystery plot add texture. (These will see one significant development, but no spoilers!) At first, I felt that one not initially very likable character mellows and shows a more mature than expected side too quickly; but I ultimately put this down to the fact that first impressions can mislead us. Gilbert consciously (and skillfully) tailors this whole series to the tastes and expectations of "cozy" mystery fans in particular. For any of the latter who've discovered this series (and there are quite a few who have; this author has several series, in two genres, but this is the most popular of them!), and who have followed the previous installments, this one won't disappoint in the slightest. ...more |
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1
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Aug 04, 2023
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Sep 07, 2023
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Aug 04, 2023
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Paperback
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0671697978
| 9780671697976
| 0671697978
| 3.68
| 82
| Jan 1989
| Jan 1989
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Having read the first book in this series together, Barb and I also started this sequel together. She liked the series opener better than I did; but e
Having read the first book in this series together, Barb and I also started this sequel together. She liked the series opener better than I did; but even her interest began to flag in this one when the author switched the focus from the two main characters in his present to a lengthy info-dump about an Elder Race of long-lived and magically gifted aliens in the primeval past. These supposedly created human culture by their interventions with and selective breeding of pre-human primates, and later interbred with early humans to create the fairy-folk of Celtic legend. Neither of us were summoning much "suspension of disbelief" for this premise, and when we then have another of the protagonist's dream visions of the remote past in Chapter 4, which features a vivid description of a rape from the viewpoint of the rapist (view spoiler)[who may or may not be the protagonist; in the first book, the reader certainly gets the impression that Fitz's dream visions are of his own forgotten past (hide spoiler)], we agreed to bail on the read. So this isn't an actual review of the book, just a note to explain why it's shelved as "started, not finished." (And won't be finished!)
...more
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0
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not set
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not set
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Aug 06, 2022
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Paperback
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1335418768
| 9781335418760
| 1335418768
| 4.23
| 240
| unknown
| Apr 26, 2022
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it was amazing
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Evangelical Christian author Linda Goodnight is a new writer to my wife Barb and I, but not new to the craft; she's an established Goodreads author wi
Evangelical Christian author Linda Goodnight is a new writer to my wife Barb and I, but not new to the craft; she's an established Goodreads author with 160 distinct works listed on her profile, at least some of them best sellers. This particular novel was newly published early this year; I hardly ever buy new releases, but this was an impulse purchase, picked as a belated (long story!) Christmas present for Barb, on the strength of the cover and a recommendation blurb from a favorite author of ours, Mary Connealy. After reading a ways into it, Barb suggested we read it together, having guessed that it's the sort of book we both like. That guess proved to be right on the mark; we loved it! Our setting here is Oklahoma Territory in 1890. (At that time, the latter territory occupied the western part of the present-day state; the eastern part was the even more scantily-settled and lawless Indian Territory.) The author lives in Oklahoma (so writes about the setting with assurance); according to an online interview with her, this book was inspired by a photograph in the Territorial Museum at Guthrie, showing a lone pioneer woman toting a rifle in front of a tent as she stood guard over her claim in the 1889 Land Rush. Her spirit imbues Willa Malone, our heroine here. 30 years old, Willa sees herself as an "old maid." She's the eldest of three half-sisters, daughters of peripatetic ne'er-do-well Finn Malone, who outlived two wives (and was deserted by a third) in the course of his wanderings, which in 1889 led him to a homestead in the small community of Sweet Clover. Like many of the townsfolk, he was heavily in debt to conniving banker Theodore Pierce, and used his land as collateral. But he's now recently dead, murdered after he took off on his latest quest for gold. At the moment, the farm isn't productive; without him, the sisters won't be able to repay the loan, and they'll lose their home within months. His killer, though, has been identified as notorious outlaw Charlie Bangs, rumored to be hiding out in Indian Territory, and there's a $1,000.00 price on his head. When Willa, early on, conceives the idea of tracking him down and claiming the bounty, nobody can talk her out of it. The idea's not as hare-brained as some folks think. Tough and practical, "tomboy" Willa's a good shot with a rifle whose hunting skills keep her family supplied with meat; she can ride, and she's got guts. As even she recognizes, though, the enterprise she's contemplating is a deadly dangerous one. At the very least, she'll need the services of an experienced trail guide. Enter one Gideon Hartley. Gideon's about 35; he's fairly new in town, but the reputation that precedes him confirms that he's highly competent as a trail guide in rough terrain --when he's sober. But his reputation also suggests (correctly) that he drinks a lot. In fact, his alcohol abuse problem is longstanding and deep-seated. He and Willa meet in Chapter 1. Surprisingly (or maybe not, depending on how familiar readers are with "romance" genre conventions; this was published under the "Love Inspired" imprint, though I approached it as a Western, and it works on those terms) there's some chemistry between them; but neither is looking for that sort of thing, nor inclined to nurture it. More to the point, Willa's not thrilled with the idea of a "drunk" for a guide; and Gideon (who hasn't done any guiding for about a year) is pretty well convinced that he's not up to the job and that Willa would be embarking on a suicide mission anyway. But before long, it becomes clear to her that he's the only prospective guide she's going to get, and to him that she's going whether he goes with her or not. Goodnight gives serious attention to developing her characters (including the secondary ones, along with our H/h) and bringing the community to life, and she takes the time needed to do that in depth. We don't get started on our actual quest until a bit more than 200 pages in (and the book has 363 pages). Some readers, who expect the adventure of the trail to be the main warp and woof of the tale, won't like this aspect. Barb and I, however, fully appreciated the textured, in-depth approach. Both main characters (who alternate as viewpoint characters, though third-person narration is used throughout) are fully round and three-dimensional. Gideon in particular has a lot of psychological baggage, which is believable, and gradually disclosed. Western-style action, once it kicks in, isn't stinted; there are plenty of jeopardies on the trail, and the climactic confrontation will test our leading couple's mettle on more than one level. The author writes very well; her plotting is excellent, and her re-creation of the time and place masterful. (It features a cameo appearance by real-life person Bass Reeves, the first African-American deputy U.S. marshall.) In keeping with the standards of the ECPA, this book poses no content issues for bad language, sexual content (we do have reference to prostitution, and to the ugly trade of sex trafficking, which is a very contemporary reality, but which goes back a lot longer than that), or ultra-gory violence. Christian faith (which both main characters were raised with, though Gideon's faith has been long neglected) plays a positive role here, though the book isn't "preachy" and delivers its spiritual messages by example. I'd recommend this to fans of Westerns, Western romance, and clean (especially Christian) romance in general, as well as to fans of strong heroines. The story arc here is complete, and the book isn't said to be part of a series (though I suspect that both of Willa's sisters might eventually get her own sequel). Although some characters, such as Belle Holbrook, obviously have very intriguing backstories, I couldn't find any indication that they were in prior books by the author. (But if they were, or if they eventually get prequels, I'd be interested in reading those books!) ...more |
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1
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May 18, 2022
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Jul 07, 2022
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Feb 07, 2022
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088394099X
| 9780883940990
| 088394099X
| 4.22
| 9
| Oct 18, 1995
| Mar 18, 2006
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it was amazing
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Debuting in 1925, Lariat Story Magazine wasn't the first of the pulp magazines devoted to Western fiction that graced newsstands in the era between an
Debuting in 1925, Lariat Story Magazine wasn't the first of the pulp magazines devoted to Western fiction that graced newsstands in the era between and just after the World Wars (in one or the other of which many of the authors represented here served). That honor belongs to its rival Western Story Magazine, first published in 1919. But it was apparently one of the most successful and long running, continuing until 1950. During those 25 years, most of the leading writers in the genre had work published in its pages. Contrary to the Goodreads description, not all of the 22 stories, by as many authors, collected in this anthology were first published in the Lariat, though a number of them were. But the others are by authors who contributed to it frequently, or, in the case of the three selections written after its demise, by authors who write very much in the tradition of quality and style that the Lariat exemplified. Editor Jon Tuska (1942-2016) was, among other things, an avid reader/viewer of and well-known authority on Western fiction and films, as well as the literary agent, from 1991 on, for many leading Western-genre writers. He wrote or edited more than 30 books, many of them collections or discussions of Western fiction, or treatments of aspects of the history of the Old West. Here, besides selecting the chronologically arranged stories (just one slightly out of order), he contributed a roughly page-long bio-critical write-up about each of the represented authors, preceding their stories and including a bit of basic information about the selected story itself, such as original publication date and venue. (All of these are as informative and well worth reading.) Also, he provided a 14-page Introduction to the collection as a whole. Most of this is a very detailed summary of the origins of the Western pulp magazine tradition and especially the history of Lariat Western Stories magazine in particular, along with lengthy discussions of the careers of a number of Lariat regular contributors. (Many of the authors and stories referred to are ones I never heard of.) The level of detail here was ultimately eye-glazing; I skipped over a good deal of it, and I think it would mainly be of interest only to very serious genre buffs and academic literature scholars (if any) who don't despise Westerns on principle. But the last couple of pages provide a substantive and insightful discussion of the literary significance of the Western (which Tuska argues is America's only unique contribution to the world's literature), and the reasons for its continuing relevance and appeal. Generally, an anthology this size will contain some stories that don't resonate with me personally. However, every single one of those here were highly rewarding to read (sometimes in different ways). I was struck by the degree of literary quality, emotional impact, concern with genuine moral struggles, and other artistic positives on display here. Character-driven storytelling and realistic, nuanced characterization is the rule. We also have some major characters or even protagonists who are morally gray, and who wrestle with ethical decisions; this adds a significant depth to the reading experience. All the protagonists are male; but strong, capable female major characters with plenty of agency abound. In a number of stories, the plotting includes a strand of clean romance (often quick-developing, but believably so in the contexts presented), and these are always presented in a way that enhances the story. In three cases, the romance is cross-racial/cultural, and this isn't presented as something that's in any way odd or embarrassing; I give the writers high marks for that. The length of the selections varies; several are just 10-12 pages long, while others are at the long end of the "short fiction" continuum. Surprisingly, Louis L'Amour isn't represented here; but otherwise, the included authors seem to be pretty much a roll-call of leading Western writers from ca. 1920-60. (The last story, and one other one, were first published in 1961.) Because I'm not nearly as well read in this genre as in some others, every story here is new to me; and though I recognize a number of the names (being a librarian helps there!), I've only previously read work by four of them. (I'd gladly read more work by all of those represented!) As is often the case with short stories, a number of selections in this collection are hard to comment on in much detail without spoilers. But all the selections are top-notch examples of their type, and reflect well on the genre. The comments below don't touch on all of the stories, but mention some of the ones which stood out the most to me. I did my first actual read of the work of Zane Grey only this past summer, rating his The U.P. Trail at four stars. That work exhibits commendable sympathy with Native Americans in places. He's represented here by the wonderful story "The Great Slave" (1920), set in the world of the Crow and Cree Indians of Western Canada in the late 1700s or early 1800s. His main characters are treated positively, he shows First Nations people to have the same range of moral possibilities as whites, and he depicts their culture (and spirituality) both sympathetically and with accurate detail. Two other stories both by new-to-me authors, "Payroll of the Dead" by Steve Frazee and "The Silent Outcast' by Lauren Paine, focus on situations of whites vs. Native American conflict. Neither writer subscribes to "noble savage" mythology (and both have white viewpoint characters); but both treat their American Indian characters with respect and understanding, rather than demonizing or patronizing them. Interestingly, in introducing Les Savage, Jr., Tuska doesn't mention his corpus of stories about his iconic series character Elgera Douglas (a.k.a. "Senorita Scorpion"). But his story here, "The Beast in Canada Diablo," is likewise set in the Texas-Mexico border country and features Anglo-Hispanic intercultural interaction. It also similarly exhibits his liking for exotic, outre' plot elements (and here, the possibly supernatural --but no spoilers from me!). Emotionally evocative, violent and bloody, but ultimately beautiful, it's gripping from start to finish --a masterpiece! I'd previously read and liked "The Patriarch of Gunsight Flat" by three-time Spur Award winner Wayne D. Overholser. He's represented here by "Stage to Death" (1944), set in Oregon and revolving around a plot to rob a stagecoach. The other writer I'd previously encountered was Lewis B. Patten. My only prior experience with his work was reading his novel Vow of Vengeance, which was underwhelming, getting only two stars from me. But his story here, "Gun This Man Down" (1954), was a definite winner! This and the Overholser story are very different and distinct works; but they both (especially the latter, which has a particularly good use of physical evidence!) incorporate an element of mystery along with six-gun action. Most readers who have any acquaintance with American pulp literature of the period will recognize the name Max Brand. That was the best-known (but far from the only!) pen name used by prolific pulp author Frederick Faust, who would ultimately write some 500 adventure-oriented books, 300 of them Westerns, plus voluminous short fiction. (Given the size of his literary output, it's an anomaly that I'd never read any of his work before; but that's indicative of my relative unfamiliarity with the Western genre.) In 1921, he had been diagnosed with a treatable but incurable heart problem which could have suddenly killed him at any time. Readers will discover that this isn't just a random factoid; it's a central factor in his experience, which will have a big influence on the plot of the selection which represents him here, "Lawman's Heart." (The title has a particularly meaningful punning quality.) All three main characters here are highly nuanced, which adds greatly to the story's impact. I'd also previously heard of Ernest Haycox, and "Stage Station" (which was twice adapted as a film, though neither time under that title) was a great introduction to his work. It stands out particularly for its sympathetically depicted female Hispanic protagonist; and it proved to be an entirely different (in a good way!) type of story than I had expected it to be. "Lawman's Debt" (1934), by Alan Le Maye, is written from the perspective of a callow young bank robber. The story depicts the pursuit of the latter by a renowned but aging sheriff. But the whole situation, and the expectations of both men, is going to be greatly impacted by the sudden breaking of a dam under the pressure of a storm-swollen river; and how events will play out may be surprising. My only quibbles here were with the sheriff's name, "Bat Masters," and the protagonist's impossible feat, which he's looking back on when the story opens, of surprising two bank clerks and single-handedly tying them up. IMO, the lawman's name was too similar to the real-life Bat Masterson's; it had me constantly wondering if we're supposed to see this character as the real-life one (or, perhaps, a facsimile of him), and I think it would have been better to just come up with a more original moniker. And our robber here would have to use both hands to tie knots in a rope, requiring him to set down his gun; but I can't see two other men passively waiting to be tied up if they're not at gunpoint. But these are relatively minor points, which didn't at all keep me from really liking the story. Walt Coburn was actually raised on a working ranch in Montana, where "Riders of the Purple" is set; in describing the rigors of low-tech ranch life, he was writing about a world he knew intimately. Here, he spins a tale of the bonds of friendship and the violent dangers of a largely lawless land, set against the backdrop of the real-life disastrous blizzard-ridden winter of 1886-87 (which I knew about from other sources) and the equally lethal peril of flooding from the melting snows. Born and raised in Texas, Eugene Cunningham was fascinated with and often wrote about the Texas Rangers. His series character Ware (sometimes referred to as "Ware's kid") is a Ranger, and figures here in "The House of Whispering Shadows," set in the southwestern part of the state near the Mexican border, where Anglo and Hispanic cultures interact. Though T. T. Flynn is an author previously unknown to me, I can definitely say that "The Pie River" sets up one of the most emotionally evocative (and wrenching!) premises that I've encountered in fiction, and all three of the main characters are profoundly nuanced. (Note: the titular Pie River plays no role in the tale, save that it takes place in "the Pie River Country;" and as far as I know, the river itself may be a fictional one. It doesn't show up on Google.) Although “The Clown” is the original title that Verne Athenas gave the selection of his work that's included here, it's a misleading one, since the story actually doesn't feature a circus clown, nor really any sort of actual clownish behavior. (The editors at the Saturday Evening Post, when it was published there in 1961, gave it the title “Boy with a Gun,” which is much more accurately descriptive.) Set, judging by its details, probably in the 30s or 40s, it's also not actually a conventional Western as such, more a general fiction, coming-of-age story set in the wilds of the American West. But it's an extremely powerful, even wrenching, story with a very, very good message, and is guaranteed to remain in the reader's consciousness for a long time. Frank Bonham tended to draw his protagonists and plots from other milieus than the typical world of lawmen and ranchers/cowboys, preferring to focus on, for instance, railroad men, lumberjacks, or –as in the story here, “Furnace Flat”-- the borax miners of Death Valley. Peter Dawson's trademark humor is illustrated here by “Colt Cure for Woolly Fever.” (His real name was Jonathan Hurff Glidden, he and Frederick Dilley Glidden, who wrote under the pen name of Luke Short and is represented here by “Brand of Justice,” were brothers.) To comment very briefly about just two other stories, “Stagecoach Pass” by Giff Cheshire is an excellent “humans against nature” yarn. And despite its title, Barry Cord's “The Ghost of Miguel” is not a supernatural ghost story; but it is a great read! :-) These tales are all solid examples of excellent, serious, high-quality storytelling. Given that fact, it's worth noting that editor Tuska frequently, though not always, deliberately chose lesser-known stories here, which had not been included in previous anthologies. That suggests something of the overall quality of the genre itself in the decades from which these examples are drawn! I'd highly recommend this book, both to all Western fans and to short fiction readers in general. ...more |
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Aug 19, 2023
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Sep 07, 2021
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Hardcover
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1602601437
| 9781602601437
| 1602601437
| 4.34
| 2,203
| Jan 01, 2010
| Jan 01, 2010
|
really liked it
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The started and finished dates on this second installment of the author's Montana Marriages series are misleading; Barb and I read it as a "car book,"
The started and finished dates on this second installment of the author's Montana Marriages series are misleading; Barb and I read it as a "car book," one which I read aloud to her when we were in the car, and the circumstances this year with the pandemic greatly cut down our car travel. Like all of Connealy's books, this has a strong narrative drive and quick-flowing prose; the average reader would finish it in days, not months! As the series title suggests, the principal setting here is Montana: the harsh, unforgiving wilderness of the Rocky Mountains in 1876. Our story opens with protagonist Belle, newly widowed for the third time, and her four daughters --the oldest a teen, the youngest still nursing-- gathered at the titular "Husband Tree," the tree around which the graves of her husbands are sited, for the unceremonious and not particularly grief-stricken burial of the latest. Belle's a cattle rancher --not a "rancher's wife," but a rancher in her own right, because her husbands have been a worthless lot, and the considerable success of the ranch has been due to her smarts and hard work. None of her marriages have really been love matches, though when she married William at 15 (she's in her early 30s now), she thought she was in love; the unions have mostly been dictated by the economic necessities of life for women in that time and place, a constrained environment that Connealy explains very well. But she's resolved not to marry again; a succession of lazy, incompetent, abusive and/or drunken louts have given her a jaundiced view of the institution, and a hefty strain of misandry in her outlook, which she's passed to her older girls. (The husbands all died in genuine accidents, however --a circumstance not as unusual then as it would be now, because the conditions of ranch life were highly dangerous for anybody, and more so for the stupid and/or intoxicated.) Now, though, she soon finds that unforeseen but believable circumstances are forcing her into a late-season drive of much of her stock over a very rough stretch of mountainous terrain to market in Helena. Her three older daughters can acquit themselves as well as drovers as any boys their age could, and better; but she's still facing the unwelcome necessity of hiring some male help. Early on, we take a quick side tour into New Mexico Territory, a bit before husband #3's demise, to meet Silas Harden, a cowboy about Belle's age, who has some emotional baggage of his own, some of which we learn about only gradually. (Though it won't hurt to disclose that he was raised in a brothel, where his mother worked.) By application of hard work and good character, he's acquired a small spread of his own, and hopes to make a success of it; but there are some scheming brains in his locality that have other plans. Despite the geographic distance involved, readers will instantly suspect (so it's no spoiler to disclose!) that circumstances will quickly bring him to Montana. Barb and I read the third book of the trilogy before this one (long story!), and had in fact already encountered some of the characters here in reading another later trilogy by the author, so we knew where the plot was going. When I mentioned that fact in a conversation with my oldest daughter, she replied that she hadn't read the later books, but also knew where it was going. :-) It's true that, as a romance, this has some predictability. But the psychological realism of the appealing characters, and the issues they have to work through, make the tale worthwhile anyway. (In some romances, communication problems have a strained quality, but they're credible here, IMO.) While the main plot here is pretty linear, a subplot is also present (though it doesn't occupy a very big proportion of the book) involving local rancher's son Wade Sawyer and Glowing Sun, a young white woman raised by the Salish ("Flathead") Indians, who will take center stage in the next book, Wildflower Bride. The handling of this plot, though, actually helped to drag the rating down by a star, because I felt it to be inconsistent with the characterizations in the later book. There's an insta-love vibe here that's not present in the third book; Glowing Sun's English skills are much better (and were said to be better to start with, even before she met Wade) there than here, and her character is just better developed, more appealing and more believable in the third book. (Ironically, I might have rated this book higher if I'd read the books in order!) Although I shelved this book on my Action Heroines shelf and counted it for a challenge in the Action Heroine Fans group, it has to be said that the actual action content here is relatively scanty. Belle wears a Colt and knows how to use it, just as any male rancher would. She and her daughters do have to meet back-breaking and dangerous physical challenges on a grueling cattle drive, dealing with longhorn cattle that can't really be described as "tame;" they're tough females bred in a tough land, and able to face it on its own terms, and the two older girls can handle long guns. But the only time any of the females here have to shoot is close to the end, when there's a winter-time confrontation with a hungry wolf pack. That's an exciting passage, but not a large part of the text. (To avoid spoilers, I won't share the respective score cards for Cowgirls vs. Wolves; but as I said, I did encounter some characters here in later books. :-) ). It also has to be said that Connealy could use a gift copy of Farley Mowat's Never Cry Wolf: The Amazing True Story of Life Among Arctic Wolves. She obviously honestly believes it's credible that non-rabid wolves would attack human beings without provocation, but I don't personally believe that it is. (Attacking cattle or horses, of course, would be a different story.) Finally, we have more than one romance here (well, more than two, if we count the subplot), and it raises issues. The "insta-love" charge some readers might bring actually isn't as damning as it seems just going by the time factor, because some circumstances can bring people together, and reveal their mettle, very deeply even in a relatively short time. What might disturb some readers more is that a romance between two teens (a male aged 16 and a 15-year-old female very close to 16) results in marriage. (Pregnancy is not involved.) Under present-day cultural conditions, I would oppose underage marriage, and support legal bans on it. However, the cultural conditions of the 1876 frontier were significantly different, and my personal assessments of the character's actions and their appropriateness differs with it. These teens are substantially more like adults than most modern teens (and than many modern adults!); they're socialized to be more aware of and settled in what they want from life than their modern contemporaries would be, and postponing family formation for secondary and higher education isn't a feasible option in their world, nor something they're interested in. Personally, I wished them well in their life together. A Christian believer herself, Connealy depicts characters who are sincerely Christian, though not necessarily wearing their faith on their sleeve; she's sympathetic to the role it plays in their lives, but doesn't expound on it at length. The novel is free from bad language or graphic sexual content, and is an absorbing tale leavened with the author's trademark wry humor. I'd recommend it to fans (both Christians and non-Christians) of clean romance and relatively non-violent Westerns. ...more |
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1
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Feb 2020
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Jul 25, 2020
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Jan 12, 2020
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Paperback
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1785653792
| 9781785653797
| B071Z88YKZ
| 3.83
| 703
| Jun 06, 2017
| Jun 06, 2017
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None
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0
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not set
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Dec 26, 2019
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Kindle Edition
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1602601445
| 9781602601444
| 1602601445
| 4.13
| 1,462
| May 01, 2010
| May 01, 2010
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it was amazing
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Barb and I discovered evangelical Christian author Mary Connealy through her Sophie's Daughters trilogy, partially set in Montana in the years from 18
Barb and I discovered evangelical Christian author Mary Connealy through her Sophie's Daughters trilogy, partially set in Montana in the years from 1878 to 1884. Several characters who figure in her earlier Montana Marriages trilogy, of which this novel is the third, also play important roles in the later one. So we were interested in their back stories; and when I found this book in a thrift store, it was a natural purchase! (We've also just started reading the second installment; long story!) This means we're reading the trilogy in reverse order; so we started with much more knowledge of the characters' future than the original readers would have (the read was more like a visit with old friends). However, I'll avoid spoilers in this review. (Obviously, though, it might contain "spoilers" for the earlier Montana Marriages novels.) This tale opens in late spring/early summer, 1877, as young Wade Sawyer is awakened by gunfire as he's sleeping in his small cabin high in the Montana Rockies. The shots come from the nearby small Indian village, which is being massacred by four masked whites. Arriving too late to prevent the deaths of most of the inhabitants, Wade manages to wound one of the fleeing murderers, and finds Glowing Sun, a young woman raised for the past dozen years by the Salish (called Flathead by the whites), ever since they found her alone at about the age of eight after disease killed her white family, still alive. (One of the killers had tried to abduct her, but she slashed his face with her knife and escaped.) Her white name, as she recalls, is Abby, and she and Wade have met previously (as recounted, apparently, earlier in the trilogy), last fall --and were in fact attracted to each other; but she had an Indian fiance at the time, through an arranged engagement. He's now dead; and when she's cast out by a surviving matriarch who never liked her (and who blames her for attracting the massacre, assuming that the attackers' motive was rape), she's left alone in the world again. Soon after, Wade's summoned to the bedside of his estranged rancher father, injured and maybe dying; and since he won't desert Abby, and she believes responding to the summons is his duty, she comes along with him. Like all Connealy novels, this is a clean "romance" (in the modern-day book trade sense); but it has more going for it than romance (otherwise, I wouldn't have read and liked it!). For one thing, it's a perceptive exploration of cross-cultural romance, of the specific clashing cultures of whites and Indians in the late 19th-century West, and an ethically-aware indictment of the former's treatment of the latter. (Abby doesn't have much use for the attitudes and practices of a white culture she's mostly long abandoned, though she hasn't forgotten the language, and a lot of her criticisms strike home.) It's also a hard look at the dynamics of a dysfunctional, abusive family --because Wade's estranged from his dad for good reason!-- at co-dependency and how insidious it can be, and what does (or doesn't) contribute to familial healing. There's also a decided helping of Western-style mystery, because there's intrigue afoot on the Sawyer ranch. Who's behind the outbreak of cattle rustling in the area? And who were the attackers of Abby's village, and what was their real motive? Connealy's a Christian author, whose world-view influences her writing. Christian characters are common in her novels (Red Dawson, a supporting character here, is a lay preacher as well as a rancher). Wade has a sincere Christian faith, as does Abby, fostered in her case by the missionary activity of real-life Jesuit Pierre-Jean De Smet (1801-1873) and his colleagues, who really did have considerable success in their work among the Salish, and whose treatment here is very positive. (The author's approach to Christian faith is --commendably, IMO-- nondenominational, though sectarian rivalries and animosities weren't nonexistent in the real 19th-century West.) It's seen here as a genuine source of moral reformation, courage in adversity, and guidance and help in daily life; but though it's referred to more here than in the later trilogy, I wouldn't describe this one as "preachy." Christian ethics, with its basis in the love commands, also raises a serious issue for reflection, when it needs to be lived out in a violent environment, among people some of whom are perfectly willing to kill you, and others, to get things they want. Wade wrestles with this some, as does Abby --in fact, more so, since while Wade wears a gun and can use it, she's considerably more combat capable than he is. (She's also a stronger-willed personality than he is, and the more dominant partner in the relationship --okay, that word's not a spoiler, any reader knows these two are destined for each other!-- and Wade's willing to recognize that there's nothing wrong with that.) While she's not into guns (though if she slugs you in the head with one, you won't get up for awhile), she's handy with her knife, and it doesn't leave her person --unless she needs to throw it. Her personality could best be described as hot-tempered and fierce. The conclusion she comes to is that forcibly defending yourself and others IS morally right, but relishing the damage done isn't; and she's honest enough to admit that she needs to work on her attitude in that area. So when the chips are down here, the main question may not be, will our hero rescue the damsel in distress? Given their respective skill sets, it might be, will our tough damsel rescue her guy in distress? :-) ...more |
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2
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Nov 05, 2019
not set
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Feb 2020
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Sep 05, 2019
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Paperback
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160260147X
| 9781602601475
| 160260147X
| 4.29
| 1,821
| Sep 10, 2010
| Oct 01, 2010
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it was amazing
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This novel is the second one in Connealy's Sophie's Daughters trilogy, focusing on the McClellan family's third daughter Sally, who was only 15 when t
This novel is the second one in Connealy's Sophie's Daughters trilogy, focusing on the McClellan family's third daughter Sally, who was only 15 when the previous book, Doctor in Petticoats, began. At the beginning of this one, in 1882, she's 18, and has traveled to Montana territory, along with a party headed up by a cavalry colonel (introduced in the first book) who's a friend of the family, to visit her married sister Mandy, who's now pregnant with her third child, and close to delivery. Except for the fact that this book is entirely set in Montana, most of the general comments I made in my review of the first one (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ) about the author's style and literary vision would apply here as well; and here too, as in the first one, Mandy and her situation shares the spotlight, that narrative thread alternating with Sally's. A comment I could also have added about the first one, but forgot to, is that Connealy's style includes a vein of dry and sometimes sardonic humor, which gives the tale a pleasant leavening and can sometimes relieve tensions. There's also somewhat more Western action here than in the first book, starting with a bloody gun battle just a few pages in. Sally's the toughest tomboy of her cattle-ranching family, a persona she developed early, in a futile attempt to get the love of her birth father, who wanted a son and only had daughters. Her stepfather, the man the girls think of as "Pa," never had that attitude; but Sally's behavior pattern, and visceral concern about not being loved if she fell short as a tough cowhand, was already set. Unlike her sisters, she carries it to the point of hiding and being somewhat ashamed of her femininity --she likes wearing a pink ribbon, for instance, but she wears it under her cowboy attire. :-) To Connealy's credit, she embeds some serious thought and life lessons in her story (as a natural part of the narrative, not blocs of sermonizing) about the value of being true to who you are as a person, and a recognition that female strength and can-do capability is a good thing, but that it doesn't at all preclude femininity. She also bends and challenges gender role stereotypes, not only through Sally as a character, but through city-bred artist Logan McKenzie, who's far from most Westerner's idea of "proper" masculinity. It won't be too much of a spoiler to observe that this novel also provides an example of a romantic attraction of opposites, who have in many ways different personalities and attitudes, but who can forge a mutually rewarding love relationship rooted in mutual respect and appreciation for who each of them are. Bottom line, this was an excellent continuation of the trilogy. Barb and I both gave it high marks! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 04, 2019
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Sep 28, 2019
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Feb 14, 2019
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Paperback
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1602601461
| 9781602601468
| 1602601461
| 4.28
| 2,479
| 2010
| Jul 01, 2010
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it was amazing
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Note: I don't recommend reading the Goodreads description for this book, because it gives away far too much information that the average reader would
Note: I don't recommend reading the Goodreads description for this book, because it gives away far too much information that the average reader would prefer to encounter sequentially on his/her own (and is written in such a way as to create a somewhat false impression on one point). Although I'm a Goodreads librarian, I can't edit it (even to correct a typo), because Connealy is a Goodreads author. Last year, the third book of this trilogy, dealing with three young women making their way in the late 19th-century American West, was a thrift-store discovery as a gift for my wife; I'd assumed that since each of the three novels focused on a different sister, they'd be readable as stand-alones. But when we started it, we quickly discovered that it presupposes considerable entwined back-story from the earlier books; the siblings' lives intersected as part of a close-knit family, and we decided we really needed to read the trilogy as a whole, in order. (As it turns out, the young ladies' mother, Sophie McClellan, is the heroine of Petticoat Ranch, the opener of an earlier series by Connealy; and some characters from a book in still another of her series, The Husband Tree, also play a role here. We didn't deem it necessary to read those first; but we definitely do want to do so eventually!) This series opener is set in West Texas, New Mexico, and Montana in 1878-1880 (the date on the first page says 1879, but the reference to "two years" near the end suggests that 1878 was meant). It opens with heroine Beth McClellan traveling by stagecoach back to her parent's ranch, hoping to arrive in time for her older sister's wedding. Gifted with an interest in and knack for healing, she's now finished her nursing studies in Boston. (Despite the book's title, she's not a physician as such; but she is trained as what we would today call a nurse practitioner. She and the doctor who trained her knew she'd be the only health care professional in her community, and she's equipped with a skill set appropriate to that situation, having even performed surgeries on occasion.) Not far into the book, the stagecoach winds up in serious jeopardy; but luckily, Beth's no shrinking violet. Though she'd rather heal injuries than have to inflict them, she packs a Colt and knows how to use it (she can handle a rifle as well); she's strong, athletic, courageous and tough-minded, good with horses --having been raised on a ranch-- and knows how to throw a punch when she needs to. These are qualities her mother and her two oldest sisters fully share. ("I like to include tough women in my books, in case you haven't noticed," Connealy comments in her dedication. "I like to think I've raised four tough women.") Evangelical author Connealy hasn't written a preachy book, but she depicts characters who have a strong Christian faith, who pray for strength and help in time of trouble, and who have a moral compass informed by Christian ethics. She creates very believable, well-drawn round characters who come fully alive for the reader and evoke strong liking or strong detestation, as appropriate; but even the unsympathetic characters are mostly drawn with a certain complexity, not just as cartoon villains. In keeping with this, she's aware that what makes a person heroic is more than what he or she can do physically --that it has more to do with the qualities of inner character. Clean romance forms a key part of the plot here, and the circumstances are unusual, but not impossible. But romance doesn't swallow up the entire book (and there's very little in the way of what romance-phobic readers might call "mushy" parts). Two interlocking plot strands, Beth's and older sister Mandy's, both character-driven, are woven skillfully together. Action elements don't dominate the book, but they're there. There are also some serious themes and issues brought out here, that continue to be relevant today. (The omnibus edition of the trilogy which Barb and I are reading includes 11 discussion questions for use by reading groups, which I think would be a helpful feature, though I didn't consider them in detail.) There are a few nits that can be picked here. At one point, hero Alex has to remove a bullet from a wound --even though there's an exit wound. We have a couple of references to "President Arthur," but when this book is set, Rutherford B. Hayes was President. I'm not sure how solid Connealy's grasp is of the history of specific Indian vs. cavalry battles she refers to; and her prose sometimes can be repetitious, using words or names several times close together. But those are relatively trivial points. This was a first-class read for both Barb and I, and Connealy is an author whom I expect will become a favorite. ...more |
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1
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May 2019
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Aug 2019
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Jan 22, 2019
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Paperback
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1602601488
| 9781602601482
| 1602601488
| 4.31
| 1,658
| Jan 01, 2011
| Jan 01, 2011
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it was amazing
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With this novel, set in Montana like the preceding one, Connealy brings her saga of the fortunes of the three oldest McClellan daughters to a satisfyi
With this novel, set in Montana like the preceding one, Connealy brings her saga of the fortunes of the three oldest McClellan daughters to a satisfying close. This time, the focus will be solidly on the eldest, Mandy McClellan Gray, whose story has also been a major strand in the two novels featuring her sisters. This review won't contain any spoilers for the plot here, but readers should be warned that it presupposes a knowledge of the previous two books, and will give away some plot details of those. (The trilogy is definitely best read in order, and I'm assuming that most readers interested in this review will have already read the other books, if they're going to.) Our story here opens in August, 1884, about two years after the events of Wrangler in Petticoats. We find that significant changes have taken place in the interval; and since the author brings us into the action en media res, it takes awhile to get up to speed. To summarize, though, Mandy's worthless husband Sidney --okay, financially he was worth quite a bit, since a gold strike had made him wealthy, but he was pretty worthless as a husband and a person-- has been murdered some time ago by the outlaw Cooter brothers, Cord and Fergus, whom we met in the second book. A Cooter was killed in the fighting with Sidney's guards, and the two brothers have enlisted a number of the shadier members of their clan to join them in a blood feud with the surviving Grays: Mandy and her three small kids. She's pretty much besieged in Gray Tower, her late husband's isolated mountain mansion; but since the place is an inaccessible natural fortress and she has the protection of the local Shoshone Indians, they haven't tried frontal assault. They'd like to get their hands on Sidney's gold mine (and so would Mandy!), but he never divulged where it was, and the enigmatic directions he left are tied to a seasonal celestial star pattern. Mandy's cut herself totally off from her close-knit family and friends to prevent them from being hurt or killed. But now, bachelor rancher Tom Linscott, who's carried a torch for Mandy ever since they met in the first book, is climbing a cliff face to invade her fortress (remember, "inaccessible" :-) ), resolved to insist she come home with him to his protection, and not about to take "no" for an answer. Tom's definitely an "alpha male" type (his sister describes him with the adjectives "stubborn, know-it-all"), and he has the common 19th-century cultural idea that the male should be the head of the house; but he's also in love with an alpha female, who's actually even more combat-capable than he is, and he has enough decency and common sense to recognize and accept this, and to realize that he can't expect to boss her around like a dictator. He's prepared to insist on his own way in rare extreme cases where it's in Mandy's best interests for him to insist --but even there, he knows he'll only get compliance if she basically wants to comply; and in practice he's willing to be more of a partner than a boss. For her part, Mandy has a challenge to grow enough to realize that it's not weakness to let someone who loves you share your danger and fight beside you to protect you. She also comes to realize that it's easier to accept leadership (which she also theoretically believes belongs to the husband; she grew up in the same culture Tom did) from someone when you respect him --but that respect has to be earned, and it can't be earned by somebody who, like Sidney, expects you to suppress your own identity and needs just to fit his wants. These kinds of attitudes tend to be modeled in most of the marriage relationships in this novel, and in the trilogy generally; the wives aren't doormats and not blindly "inclined toward obedience" for its own sake, and (like Tom) they'll insist on their own way when they know that it's best in the situation, and that deep down their husbands know it is too. Whether they (and Connealy) formally incorporate it in their theology or not, they embody the practice of equalitarian "mutual subjection" in marriage; and that's a good message for a novel by an evangelical author. Questions about the use of defensive violence and lethal force in a very flawed and dangerous world are also a significant theme here more than in the other two novels (though it came up in the second one --which has more actual violence than this one does). All of the adult McClellans are proficient with guns, and use them for hunting and dealing with wolves that prey on livestock, as well as occasionally for defense against other people. But Mandy's always been the fastest and most accurate shot with a rifle of any of the siblings in the family, with a skill that's almost preternatural; and she has a calm, icy cold collectedness in a crisis that stands her in good stead, but which scares her. Raised as a (more than nominal) Christian, like all of her family, she's well read in the KIng James Bible (in the 19th-century, virtually the only Bible Protestants had), and its dictum "Thou shalt not kill" tortures her with guilt, since she actually did kill a Cooter in self-defense on one occasion after Sidney's death. ("Thou shalt not murder" is a more accurate translation; but like most Western women, Mandy isn't a Hebrew scholar.) The book inherently raises the question of whether that angst is justified, and if it isn't, how far can legitimate self-defense be carried (even to taking the tactical offensive?). Connealy doesn't really resolve this neatly. (All three of these novels have discussion questions at the end for book clubs who might read the books, or perhaps just for lone readers who might want to reflect; the ones here don't address these issues directly, but they could come up in responding to a couple of them.) All of the stylistic characteristics of the first two novels are in evidence here, and Connealy's story-telling skills are again well demonstrated. The characterizations are vivid, rounded, and (except for the Cooters) appealing. (Several of them are cross-overs from other Connealy works, her Montana Marriages and Lassoed in Texas trilogies.) Barb and I really liked all three of the books, and this author's well on her way to becoming a favorite! ...more |
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1
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Sep 28, 2019
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Nov 03, 2019
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Dec 26, 2018
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Paperback
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B0DM8Z3FPP
| 4.63
| 247
| Dec 2017
| Dec 2017
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it was amazing
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At the conclusion of the second installment of this mystery series set in contemporary Appalachia, Trial by Twelve (which won the Grace award in 2015)
At the conclusion of the second installment of this mystery series set in contemporary Appalachia, Trial by Twelve (which won the Grace award in 2015), series amateur sleuth Tess Spencer got a phone call from her mom, Pearletta Vee Lilly, announcing the latter's impending release from the Federal women's prison at Alderson, WV. In the first book, she'd already been there for several years, serving a sentence for drug dealing (she was both a dealer and user). The main narrative of this book opens with Tess' daughter about to turn two, and Tess about to head for Boone County (which actually is a real-life county, in southern West Virginia) for yet another visit to her mom, to help the latter navigate her continuing re-integration into the outside-the-bars world. But the discovery of the dead body of an apparently drug-overdosed teen --at the side of Pearletta's trailer-- soon takes this visit outside the realm of the ordinary. Tess' sleuthing skills will be needed; and one mystery to explore is whether Pearletta Vee is really as reformed as she wants Tess to believe. West Virginia has the highest per capita drug-related death rate in the U.S. Its destructive drug culture isn't confined to urban areas; it permeates the economically depressed rural areas as well, blighting community life and destroying countless lives in all age groups, not just the unfortunates who succumb to overdoses. This reviewer has personally observed the ravages of the drug epidemic; I live right on the border of West Virginia, and conditions in similarly-depressed southwest Virginia aren't a lot different. (So I have a somewhat different perspective on the subject than the smug politicians and pundits who push legalization, and less tolerance for the drug trade's slick PR efforts to burnish its image with the clueless.) To her credit, in this novel Gilbert focuses her attention --and the reader's-- squarely on the drug problem, and she treats it with a hard dose of realism instead of smiley-face attempts to legitimate it. Granted, her treatment is more descriptive than deeply analytical. But where both authors and readers of Christian fiction are routinely accused of wanting to simply ignore social problems around them, Gilbert refuses to do that. In many respects, this series entry has much in common with the two that preceded it. But the Boone County setting takes Tess into less familiar (to us, that is --she grew up there) territory, though several series characters, Tess' family and others, still play key roles in the plot. Also, we get much more of a look than before into the dynamics of her dysfunctional birth family, and her unresolved issues with her neglectful mom and long-absconded dad. (We're subtly reminded that at its heart, the Christian faith is about forgiveness; though Tess isn't a plaster saint and not all of her baggage is necessarily going to be magically resolved here. But the author allows Tess and others to be dynamic, not static, characters.) Also, structurally, this book is almost entirely Tess' own present-tense narration; rather than snippets from a trove of decades-old writings at the beginnings of chapters, here we have instead a prologue in another (and unnamed) narrative voice, giving us subtle clues to what's going on in the main book. They're not self-evidently easy to decipher, however; in this case, I didn't identify the primary villain until the denouement. Some nits could be picked in places. In one chapter, lunch seems to follow breakfast with unlikely rapidity. Near the end, Tess benefits considerably from some stupid behavior on her adversaries' part. And here, she packs her Glock in her purse, and plans at one point to get a more practical belt holster --but she already had one of the latter in the previous book. But those are minor quibbles; Barb and I both found this a great read. Tess is a heroine with a lot of heart, and the depiction of her strongly loving relationships with her hubby, her daughter, and the extended Spencer family are a major plus. Some reviewers might apply the label "cozy" to the series. (And this book, like the second one, has an appended recipe --I can't remember if the series opener did or not-- which is sometimes seen as a "cozy" characteristic; homemade food is characteristic of country cuisine in Appalachia, and I see this as just a touch of local color.) Personally, I've never cared much for the term "cozy" as applied to murder mysteries --it seems incongruous for explorations of the callous extinguishing of human lives as a result of serious darkness in the psyches of other human beings. But I do value the distinction between "traditional" mysteries, which presuppose moral order in the universe and view crime as an aberration that can be set right by the efforts of the hero/heroine and the community, vs. "noir" mysteries, which tend to presuppose moral anarchy and anomie and to view crime and injustice as the norm which no activities by the protagonist can really alleviate. In terms of that dichotomy, Gilbert's literary vision is squarely in the "traditional" camp. That's the camp with which my taste is aligned; and if yours is too, you may find this series right up your alley. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 02, 2018
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Jul 05, 2018
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Jul 05, 2018
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Nook
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1511740493
| 9781511740494
| 1511740493
| 4.44
| 439
| May 01, 2015
| May 2015
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really liked it
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Stylistically and in terms of its general tone and vision, this sequel has much in common with the series opener, Miranda Warning, and many of the com
Stylistically and in terms of its general tone and vision, this sequel has much in common with the series opener, Miranda Warning, and many of the comments in my review of the latter apply here as well. Even the structure is the same; through much of the book, heroine Tess' first-person, present-tense narration in normal text is supplemented, at the beginnings of the short chapters, by one or more italicized paragraphs from the unsigned and undated letters of a father to his child. As in the first book, we quickly get the idea that the two strands of material will prove to be related. But here, we also quickly form the suspicion that, in reading these letters, we're glimpsing into the insane world of a serial killer. Pregnant in the first book, Tess is now mom to a roughly year-old toddler. She's gotten back into church, and into a rekindled faith that plays a role in her life, but doesn't overpower the plot of the book. Also, she's finally gotten her concealed carry permit (so her fans don't have to keep worrying about her being arrested :-) ), and she's gotten a Glock of her own, which she packs in a hip holster and generally doesn't leave home without. Back in the work force, she has a new part-time job booking appointments at a fancy spa near Buckneck. It's a position that suits her well --until, in the first chapter, workmen digging for a swimming pool behind the spa unearth what proves to be a veritable boneyard of female skeletons, killed with arrows to their chests. These deaths took place years ago --but then a fresh corpse turns up.... As a rule, I tend not to like the idea of serial-killer fiction (and nonfiction), and normally avoid it. But despite that, I really liked this book --the killings aren't directly described, and there's no wallowing in grisly gore. Although I pegged the killer's identity pretty early on (that's not unusual for me in my mystery reading), there were still questions I hadn't answered, and the denouement managed to pack a surprise. I did find it somewhat dubious that a police detective would involve Tess in his investigation, despite her performance in the earlier book; and even more dubious that an inveterate tobacco-chewer would give up the habit, even temporarily, on the basis that he does here. But these quibbles aside, this was still a quick, enjoyable read, a re-connecting with some of the characters from the first book, and a chance to observe the continuing growth of an engaging protagonist. (Readers interested in such features will be pleased that the author has shared a recipe for "Cousin Nelma's Banana Pudding" in the back of the book. I haven't tried it, but it actually sounds like it would be pretty tasty, and relatively easy and inexpensive to make.) ...more |
Notes are private!
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Jun 08, 2018
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Jun 30, 2018
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Jun 08, 2018
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Paperback
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my rating |
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4.11
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not set
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Jul 22, 2025
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4.60
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not set
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Jul 13, 2025
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4.31
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it was amazing
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Jul 13, 2025
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May 23, 2025
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4.57
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liked it
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May 20, 2025
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Apr 13, 2025
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4.10
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it was amazing
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Jun 27, 2025
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Apr 08, 2025
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4.64
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really liked it
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Aug 24, 2024
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Jul 27, 2024
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4.40
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liked it
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May 27, 2024
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Mar 31, 2024
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4.58
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really liked it
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Mar 27, 2024
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Dec 03, 2023
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4.68
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really liked it
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Sep 07, 2023
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Aug 04, 2023
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3.68
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not set
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Aug 06, 2022
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4.23
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it was amazing
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Jul 07, 2022
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Feb 07, 2022
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4.22
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it was amazing
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Aug 19, 2023
not set
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Sep 07, 2021
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4.34
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really liked it
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Jul 25, 2020
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Jan 12, 2020
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3.83
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not set
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Dec 26, 2019
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4.13
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it was amazing
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Feb 2020
not set
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Sep 05, 2019
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4.29
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it was amazing
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Sep 28, 2019
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Feb 14, 2019
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4.28
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it was amazing
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Aug 2019
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Jan 22, 2019
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4.31
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it was amazing
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Nov 03, 2019
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Dec 26, 2018
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4.63
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it was amazing
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Jul 05, 2018
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Jul 05, 2018
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4.44
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really liked it
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Jun 30, 2018
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Jun 08, 2018
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