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Small Town & Rural

Review

The Local

by Henrietta Thornton

Hartstone’s debut draws on the real-life town of Marshall, Texas: a quarter of all patent cases in the country are heard there. In the 1990s, Judge T. John Ward made his courtroom in the Eastern District of Texas, or EDTX, a kind of patent-trial machine, using timers when lawyers spoke and limiting the number of pages they could file. In addition, Marshall’s juries award unusually high amounts in damages, all making EDTX attractive to those suing for patent infringement. Judge Ward is called Gardner here, but the practices are the same. Appearing in his court is Amir Zawar, whose rideshare app may have stolen another product’s design. Representing Zawar is James Euchre, a lawyer who tells himself he’s quit smoking…he only has a few per day, after all…and is trying to limit himself to three drinks a day. His resolve is tested when his client is, shall we say, reluctant to go along with court decorum. It’s not a great idea to hit your lawyer and threaten the judge’s life, but it’s even worse when the judge is later found dead. Euchre has never worked on a criminal case before, let alone one that could involve the death penalty, but Zawar insists he stay in the lead counsel seat, with both characters, along with Euchre’s love-interest coworker in the trial, taking readers on a tension-filled ride to justice. Lawyers, such as one Mr. Grisham, have long written compelling legal thrillers; this book, by an experienced TV writer, stacks up favorably against the legal greats.

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Review

After We Were Stolen

by Henrietta Thornton

Avery lives outside in a tent while her family sleeps inside. Over the years, she’s learned to start her own fires; sometimes it doesn’t work and she’s freezing and hungry, but things aren’t much better for her nine siblings inside. Their parents, cult leaders preparing the family for when they’re the only ones left on Earth, emphasize toughness over all else. The children get their hopes up when the parents announce a buddy system, but it turns out that your buddy is the one who will be punished if you leave, so escape seems unthinkable. Avery finds a way out, though, accompanied by her little brother Cole, only to discover that they’re famous in the outside world as victims of years-ago child abductions. What happened the night the pair escaped and how they will navigate notoriety and society’s expectations are mysteries that will keep readers rapt. Also engrossing are the overwhelming emotions involved with both staying and going, the realization that just because the biggest problem is over doesn’t mean everything is rosy, and the ways tormented people treat one another even when survival is no longer at stake. Avery has grit and attitude to spare and will stay with readers long after the last page.

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Review

Kalmann

by Brian Kenney

Deeply heartfelt and gently humorous, Kalmann is as unique as its eponymous hero, Kalmann Odinsson. Self-proclaimed mayor of Raufarhöfn, a small town in Iceland’s far north, early thirty-ish Kalmann is also the town’s one remaining shark catcher and producer of hákarl, a delicacy made from fermented shark. But Kalmman’s mind works differently from most people’s. You could call him neurodivergent, but he just says that “things with me have never really gone forward.” Then one day, when hunting a fox outside of town, he comes across a large pool of blood in the snow. This leaves him completely rattled, but instead of reporting it to the police, he goes home and watches Dr. Phil. Kalmann is called in for questioning the next day; it seems that a local businessman has disappeared. While Kalmann remains sort of focused on solving the murder—while putting forth the theory that a polar bear could be the culprit—Schmidt takes us deep into Kalmann’s life, from his mixed experiences growing up to all he learned about survival from his wonderful grandfather, and from his bouts of loneliness to the challenges he has communicating with others, and vice versa. Still, the criminal element remains the rope that pulls us through the book. Schmidt’s creation of the character Kalmann is no less than masterful. Can we hope that this is just our first foray with Kalmann?

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Review

Dirt Creek

by Henrietta Thornton

Searing heat and searing pain pulse off the pages of Scrivenor’s debut novel, which brings to mind the colonially forged dysfunction described by her Australian countryman David Malouf. The sad tale, in which awful events take on an air of near-inevitability, is narrated by Ronnie, a 12-year-old girl whose best friend, Esther, vanishes one day after school. Esther wears her name “like a queen wearing her crown at a jaunty angle” and even on a normal day exudes a kind of magic, says Ronnie; it’s impossible to her that anything bad could have happened. Still, nighttime comes and Estie’s not home, and the search is on. While the girls’ movements take center stage in Ronnie’s mind, to the reader, there are three centers of gravity here. Yes, there’s Ronnie and Estie. But also starring are their mothers and other weary, disappointed women of the dilapidated town. Finally, there’s a Greek chorus of disembodied children’s voices whose chillingly detached versions of what happened alternate with the more conventionally delivered story. Brace yourself, this is something.

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Review

The Girl They All Forgot

by Brian Kenney

Life is certainly nasty, brutish, and short—at least for most of the characters in Edwards’s much-awaited new installment, set on the edge of England’s Lake District. DVI Hannah Scarlett is in charge of cold cases, and she’s actually been funded well enough to put together a small team. Here she’s investigating the disappearance of a young woman, Ramona Smith, who is presumed to have been murdered 21 years ago. The case gets noticed when a young man commits suicide by running into quicksand—at the exact location and date that his father, who was acquitted of Ramona’s murder, took his life. The search for Ramona takes Hannah and colleagues through quite a number of plot lines with quite an assortment of characters, one creepier than the last: a sexually repressed antiques dealer, an over-the-top toy boy, a sexy—but completely plastic—middle-aged woman, and so many more. What’s remarkable is how intertwined the characters are; even Hannah’s personal life comes into play. As Hannah digs deeper into the evidence of the past, and confronts the present, readers have the pleasure of seeing such a complex narrative effortlessly resolve itself. For readers of Ann Cleeves, Mark Billingham, and Clare Donoghue.

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Review

It Dies with You

by Brian Kenney

A straightforward mystery that is brought to life by three wonderful characters. Thirty-something Hudson Miller is down on his luck. His boxing career is over, he’s working as a bouncer, and he’s couch surfing with friends. To make matters worse, Hudson’s estranged father is murdered, shot in the back of the head while sitting at his desk at his salvage yard in deeply rural Flint Creek, North Carolina. To Hudson’s surprise, he inherits the business, and—with no other options apparent—goes home to run Miller’s Pull-a-Part. He also takes on the job of finding his father’s murderer, helped out by Charlie Shoaf, a Vietnam vet who more or less comes with the salvage shop. When a corpse is found in the trunk of a salvaged vehicle, and a cache of firearms is discovered as well, Hudson realizes that his father’s life was a whole lot different than it appeared. Add to the mix the self-assured, brilliant teenager Lucy Reyes—who is seeking answers to her own family tragedy—and you’ve got a great threesome. I have no idea of the author’s intent, but I’d love to hear more from Hudson, Charlie, and Lucy—their chemistry is dynamite. Fans of the TV series Ozark will love this book.

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Review

Pay Dirt Road

by Henrietta Thornton

In this striking, character-driven debut, Annie McIntyre is back in her stifling—temperature-wise and socially—Texas hometown, Garnett, where football is a religion and prom queen a lifetime appointment. Smart, introspective Annie escaped and went to college, but now she’s waiting tables while student-loan repayments loom. When a hit-and-run death and the strangling of Annie’s coworker happen within days of each other, it seems like Garnett’s dirt and buildings as much as its people heave a resigned sigh at another thing to deal with. Annie’s former-sheriff grandfather now has a private investigation business, but it falls mostly to his granddaughter to care enough to solve the cases. The language of Annie’s inner thoughts is the kind of writing that makes you too stunned to read on for a bit. Her anguish at a teenage attack is “a morsel of pain under my tongue” and her lingering bedtime thoughts are “ghosts pressed and curled against my back.” Allen already won the Tony Hillerman Prize for Best First Mystery Set in the Southwest for this book, and no wonder. While waiting for this, try Wiley Cash’s also-stunning A Land More Kind Than Home, which Allen’s writing brings to mind.

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Review

The Houseboat

by Brian Kenney

A lyrical, moody crime novel—there’s no mystery and just a smidgen of suspense—set in small-town Oscar, Iowa in 1960, a town “as plain as a white wall.” When a young couple, spending the night on the banks of the Mississippi River, are attacked—and the young man is murdered—local sheriff Amos Fielding knows he needs help, so he calls for regional backup. He’s rewarded with Edward Ness from Minnesota, a stylish detective who hasn’t put down the bottle since his wife and young son were murdered seven years earlier. We follow Ness as he discovers and flirts his way through Oscar. But soon enough the narrative turns to Rigby Sellers, a terrifying, angry recluse—with coke-bottle glasses and a “jutting brow and a bent nose, a patchy beard and an incomplete set of long jaundiced teeth”—who lives on a decrepit houseboat moored on the river. Still not convinced of Sellers’s creepiness? His lovers are mannequins that he dresses and paints for their date nights. Days go by without a confirmed suspect but with plenty of rain, and a long-standing drought gives way to a swollen Mississippi that rips through the town, upending it. When more bodies are found, the townspeople are, literally, up in arms, and Sellers is directly in their cross-hairs. Hard to put down and even harder to forget, The Houseboat is a poignant rendering of a place and time.

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Review

The Stalker

by Brian Kenney

nitially, this novel seems weighed down by clichés: the weak, timid wife; the macho, type-A husband; the island rumored to be haunted. But keep going and you will be rewarded with a top-rate thriller which is nothing as it seems. Liam and Laura chose to spend their honeymoon on a remote Scottish island, empty except for the two of them. Their lovely cottage is stuffed with a week’s worth of fine foods and wine, and all they plan to do is explore the island’s ancient burial sites and ruined castle. Until things start to get weird—is someone in the bushes watching them?—and they wake to find a message scratched into the window. Clearly they aren’t alone, and their one way of contact with the mainland, a satellite phone, is missing its charger. Then the electricity goes out. From there, it’s clear that their stalker isn’t playing trick or treat, he’s out to murder them. You would expect this book to end with a face-off between the newlyweds and the villain, but a 180-degree twist ends up rewriting the whole book, leaving readers absolutely stunned.

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