In this my Sunday Extra! we have a book by a fairly local author. A neighbor, knowing that my wife likes to read, suggested she might be interested in reading this author. Since my wife was busy with another book or two - she has a long list of ebooks on her library hold list that usually become available in clumps, I decided, since I didn't have any other books to read, to give one of the author's books a try.
My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.
Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.
Dark Coulee by Mary Logue C
Dark Coulee is the second book in a mystery series featuring deputy sheriff Claire Watkins as a police detective set in rural Wisconsin along the Mississippi river, circa 2000. Though the town in which the story takes place is fictional, real towns within a hour's drive from home are mentioned, giving it a local flavor.
It is a murder mystery. Or rather it has a murder and a murder investigation woven through it to give it some structure.
It is more than a murder mystery. It is a slice of life story of small town life. The murder is the device that allows the author to tell of the lives and backstories of a number of characters in this small town. It is the type of story that will spend a page describing the making of pancake batter, quilt making, or glaucoma, just to mention a few things you might learn reading this mystery.
It is also a romance, of sorts. Plus, Watkins also has to deal with demons from her past as a police woman in a larger city.
The mystery involves a man murdered during a street dance in a small town, a dance that our hero, Claire Watkins, was attending with her new boyfriend. Who stabbed the victim, without anyone seeing the act - or at least admitting to seeing the act, is the central mystery. It turns out that the victim was not a popular man, and as Watkins finds out during her investigation, and that there are a number of people who with a iffy past, the motive, and the opportunity to do so. These are revealed as the story progresses, keeping you guessing - who's the least obvious, and thus, the most likely?
Since it is my policy not to spoil stories, especially mysteries, I won't say anything more about the story itself.
Having lived in a small Wisconsin towns for 40 years, I am far from sure they are quite as rotten with sordid secrets as writers would have you believe. Still, small towns are very closed societies, and since my grandparents were not born in those towns, we were always outsiders, and thus, I was never in the know; not privy to all the sordid secret that where floating around. Not, mind you, that I minded. My indifference to local society matched theirs to me. However, like all the mystery stories, cozy and otherwise, this story depends on those sordid secrets, which are revealed, one by one, as the story progresses.
What sets this story apart from a pure mystery is that Logue fills the pages with all sorts of everyday life events in the lives of half a dozen or more minor characters, far beyond what I think would be necessary for color and background. Written in 2000, this isn't quite a cozy mystery, but it still has all the trappings of one.
I have a feeling that the author used the murder mystery plot as mere scaffolding to hang the little, everyday stories of small town life she wanted to tell. I found that all these diversions from the mystery story line, crossed the line of character and background building to get in the way of spinning a good mystery story. I'd say at least half of the words weren't necessary to the mystery story. Only my desire to see who she would finger as the killer kept me reading the story. And I must confess, I did a whole lot of that reading skimming and skipping to reach the end.
So my takeaway is that if you're looking for a murder mystery, you might want to give this book a miss. If, for some reason, you are looking for a book of character studies of small town Midwesterners, then you may've come to the right shop. The murder is just the cherry on the top.
No comments:
Post a Comment