THE BRAMBLE AND THE ROSE :: Tom Bouman

A version of this review previously appeared in Shelf Awareness and is republished here with permission.

Henry Farrell's life is teetering toward a happy new start when a headless corpse is found off Red Pine Road. Although a bear has feasted on the body, it's clear the missing head was purposefully detached by something other than wildlife. In The Bramble and the Rose, third in Tom Bouman's Edgar-winning rural noir series (Dry Bones in the Valley), Henry is caught up in multiple homicides on the eve of his wedding.

Sole employee of the Wild Thyme, Pa., police department, Henry helps with the necessary tracking of the bear while also questioning neighboring landowners, trying to identify the body, investigating a string of convenience store robberies and coping with the stress of his and Julie's family in town for their impending nuptials. When someone from his past reappears with supposed information about the murdered man and his nephew goes missing, Henry's personal life is pulled into the mix, forcing him to leave his home and his family to clear his name of a second killing.

Bouman's writing is fluid, balanced and infused with a sense of place that makes Henry's mission all the more daunting. Bouman has a talent for "small town" writing--the secrets, character, quirky denizens and demanding landscape of Wild Thyme are seamless parts of the story but don't overtake it. The many intertwining plot arcs, both personal and professional, are compelling and always under control. Even with Henry on the run and loose ends fraying, Bouman ties the knots on another terrific mystery.

THE SMILING MAN :: Joseph Knox

A version of this review previously appeared in Shelf Awareness and is republished here with permission.

After the disastrous events in Joseph Knox's debut, Sirens, Detective Constable Aiden Waits is banished to the night shift with the partner no one wants, DI Peter "Sutty" Sutcliffe. Permanent night duty is the mark of no life or no career, and Waits has managed to blow up both. Then he comes across the Smiling Man.

An historic hotel, the Palace is closed for "renovations" (i.e., the acrimonious divorce of its owners) when an alarm is triggered. Waits and Sutty arrive to find the night watchman face down in a hallway. Behind the wide-open door of room 413, Waits spies a body in a chair, the muscles of its dead mouth "contracted viciously, and locked into a wide, wincing grin."

As the detectives spin down the rabbit hole of the unidentified man, new characters swarm around at a furious pace. The plot is thickened through flashbacks to a young boy abused as a crime tool by a Fagin-esque father figure. Knox never lets up, taking left turns just when the clues seems to jibe. Despite the chaos, he's always in firm control of each ball in the air, as if the precarious nature of their flight is merely an illusion.

The setting of gritty London is wonderfully on display (sounds emanate from a heat wave like the "slow-drip of people losing their minds"). Knox's vivid descriptions ("He was a wiry, fatalistic spider of a man who played chess with the people around him") make The Smiling Man a noirish pleasure.

STREET SENSE: Knox's take on the the disgraced cop brings enough to the table to make this more than just another disgraced cop story. I have not read Sirens, but the way Knox dealt with the prior installment felt Baby Bear just right. It made me want to go back and read Sirens rather than confusing or irritating me (and we know how easy that is). Knox's writing is pleasantly gritty and sometimes even more pleasantly snarky. It's also not the normal noirish "lean," but the style worked and I enjoyed Knox's descriptions enough that I often read them multiple times. 

A FAVORITE PASSAGE:  The heat that year was annihilating. The endless, fever dream days passed slowly, and afterwards you wondered if they'd even been real. Beneath the hum of air conditioners, the chink of ice in glasses, you could almost hear it. The slow-drip of people losing their minds.

COVER NERD SAYS: I find this cover super clever, but admit I missed the point at first. Why  not include the entire (or at least more of the) "x" as the "dead" eye of the smiling man? An effort to be obtuse? Maybe I'm the only dimwit who didn't see the "x" as that symbol at first, but once I did I liked the cover better (and thought "What, did some poor sap just stick the mock-up a bit too far into the paper cutter?" 'Cause I've been there, man, and it's a drag). My only other "complaint" about the cover is it's too busy. First, blurbs have become way too important (IMHO). Second, when it clutters your cover, put it somewhere else. Or don't make the description of the blurber almost as long as the blurb. This would have been a much stronger cover if it lost the blurb and the image dropped enough to show a little more of that eye. It feels way too bottom-heavy. Interestingly, my ARC has a different and much shorter blurb and does show more of the eye, so maybe it's just the cover image I pulled for this review that's f'd up and this entire rant has been about nothing. Wouldn't be the first time for that, either.

REVOLVER :: Duane Swierczynski

"The trick to being a cop, a veteran detective once told him, is to go home at the end of the day."

A law enforcement family. Multiple generations. Five decades. Three timelines. A city steeped in racial turmoil. Murder. Revenge. Redemption. All these elements are boxed up inside one well-wrapped package in Duane Swierczynski's Revolver, which knocked my socks clean off.

There are plenty of things to love about Duane Swierczynski (his unparalleled sense of humor, his humility, and his deep-seated love of 70s Billy Ocean singles to name just a few), but one of the things I admire most is that he's always pushing his envelope and changing things up.

Duane has a hat full of speedily-breeding rabbits and you never know which rabbit he's going to pull out next. All you know is it's going to be a fierce, wise-cracking rabbit. (I have no clue where that analogy came from, apparently my rabbits have been drinking.)

He's written a few series books (the Charlie Hardie trilogy is fantastic), some terrific standalone novels and also works in the comics industry. He writes in a wide array of subgenres and does them all well.

This time, he put one right in my bread basket. Realistic cop drama - check. Multi-POV format - check. Alternating timelines - check. Snark - check. When something is that dead center in your alley, you're sometimes a harsher judge than if you're pushing your reading comfort zone. No matter, Revolver knocks it out of the park.

May 7, 1965. Philly PD Officer Stan Walczak and his partner George Wildey don't go home at the end of the day. Shot down in cold blood in a corner bar while waiting for an informant, the murders haunt their families for generations.

May 7, 1995. Homicide Detective Jim Walczak is one of the haunted. Son of Stan, Jim is obsessed with the man he knows killed his father and George Wildey. The man is in prison on another charge but about to be set free. For decades Jim has dreamt of being able to look his father's killer in the eye. He's about to get his chance; the only question is what he'll do with it.

May 7, 2015. Audrey Kornbluth is a bit of a disaster, in no small part due to the ripples from the waves that first capsized her family back in 1965. Daughter of Jim, Audrey is the black sheep of the family. A hard-drinking, tattooed, foul-mouthed (i.e., in Duane's hands, fairly delightful) forensics student in Texas, Audrey has strained relationships with her cop brothers and her parents. Audrey is particularly confounded by her father, who she hasn't seen in three years, calls "the Captain" and describes as "an emotionless golem."

On the 50th anniversary of her grandfather's murder, Audrey reluctantly returns home for a ceremony dedicating memorial plaques to Stan and George. Feeling angry and out of place even with her family, Audrey gets the brilliant (i.e., destined to stir up major shit) idea to solve her grandfather's murder as her long overdue graduate school independent project. Of course, the more people -- including her own family -- fight her efforts, the more determined she becomes.

Via these three timelines, Swierczynski brings to life a family hit hard by life and legacy, a city mired in racial tension that may or may not have had something to do with Stan and George's deaths, and a troubled young woman bound and determined to set a few things right, even if she doesn't fully recognize the depths of her mission.

I'm a sucker for a multi-timeline work, and Duane does a great job with that format in Revolver. He weaves the three disparate decades together such that you know where you are in each arc and yet in many ways they are all set in the same place and time. Philly comes out in full color (or maybe stark black and white, Philly feels like it would always be in black and white) to tie all of the decades and characters together in a tight knot.

Part mystery, part procedural, part character study, social study and family drama, Revolver is a dark and gritty love story about a family, a city, legacy and what it is to be a cop. This is sure to be one of my favorite reads of the year. Philadelphia Police Officer Joseph T. Swierczynski (1892-1919) would be proud.

STREET SENSE:  I highly recommend Revolver to everyone who enjoys a good crime story, thick with history, that doesn't short-change on character or place. Although I had small issues with one minor plot point and Audrey could be a bit over the top at times (which is also what made her such a stand-out character), I loved this book unabashedly.

A FAVORITE PASSAGE:  And there he is, bold as day. His father's killer steps out of the halfway house, fists shoved into the pockets of a fleece jacket. The weird thing is, he looks nothing like the mug shot Jim knows in vivid detail (obsesses over). The guy in the mug shot looks feral, ready to punch you in the gut as soon as say hello. But this later, post-prison version is just a skinny old man, walking down Erie Avenue with his head hung like there are invisible weights attached to his forehead, presumably headed for the El so he can ladle out chicken noodle to the less fortunate.

COVER NERD SAYS: This cover is perfect. It evokes historical fiction and police procedural to a T. It might not give a clue about the deep character work inside, but anyone who is interested in stories based on cops and police work won't be able to resist this one anyway. I love the sepia tint and the stark fonts. Great work.