Author: Michael E. Glasscock III
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group press
Rating: worthy!
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration of any kind for this review.
Shenandoah Coleman launched herself into my life like a kick-ass Femme Vitale on crystal meth. She's an investigative reporter at the Memphis Express, which is entirely unsurprising given her history. She came from dirt-poor roots in Oklahoma, but has taken the reins of her life and galloped herself out of it. She went to school barefoot, came from a family which was racist and despised locally (but not for its racism, of course); she flew airplanes in World War Two in the Women Airforce Service Pilots and now in the early 1950's, she finds a reason to go back to her roots.
She wants to report on a murder trial involving two people, perp (Doctor Kate Marlow) and vic (Lilian Johnson), both of whom she went to school with. To talk to Marlow, she has to go through the town sheriff: the same jerk who cut off her pigtail one day on the school bus. He paid for that by literally being beaten unconscious by Shenandoah. While I can’t condone that kind of violent reaction to something that 'only' involved slicing off her pigtail, I did fall in love with Ms. Coleman at that point! Plus we later learn how deserving Jasper Kingman was of his treatment as we see how appallingly, in the present, he treats Coleman.
How refreshing is it to open a new novel and find myself pulled right into it, and willingly at that, from page one? I can’t begin to express what a real delight it is, especially after reading the last novel with 'trial' in the title! The Trials of the Core looks even worse than I rated it in comparison with something that's as well done as this one is, and the Rose in Rose Under Fire wilts embarrassingly in face the of the blast furnace of a soldier that is Shenandoah Coleman.
Coleman meets with Marlow, and the two glow under their old friendship, even though the luminance has faded somewhat over the years. Coleman volunteers to help in any way she can. She visits the defense lawyer, and has little confidence in him, although he means well. She finds lodging in a local boarding house, but the next morning, all four tires on her new car have been slashed and she soon discovers she's being stalked by an anonymous grey pick-up truck, reminiscent of Stephen Spielberg's 1971 film Duel.
It seems that everywhere Coleman goes in pursuit of her story, she finds a surprising level of hostility and resentment towards Marlow. The prosecuting attorney seems to hate the "nigger lover" as he describes Kate Marlow (and he's not the only one around with that kind of appalling attitude). The victim's younger sister, who found her body, accuses Marlow of being a drug addict who was trying to steal Lilian Johnson's husband, who "obviously" was murdered because she was in the way.
The evidence - which is always circumstantial, BTW - is that Kate was supposed to visit the cancer-stricken Johnson that morning; a hypo containing traces of secobarbital sodium was found lying by the body and it had Marlow's fingerprints on it. Marlow herself was unconscious in her car at the side of a road during this time, and she has no recollection of seeing Johnson that morning. It was not looking good for Dr Kate.
Glasscock's first misstep for me was in bringing in a trope male romantic figure: a sweet, muscular, tight-clothes-wearing, tall, friendly, helpful guy who fits the additional trope requirement of being a down-rev from Shenandoah herself. I was hoping that this guy turned out to be the one who actually murdered Lillian. There seemed to be some suggestion that he could be, and I should have been very disappointed if he was not because then Coleman would have ended up with him. But I'm not going to tell you whether I was right or not. All I am going to tell you is that based on my percentages with such guesses, he probably isn’t, and I will, unfortunately, be as disappointed as I fear!
And that's all I gotta tell ya! Let me conclude by saying that this was really enjoyable. It did not end the way I expected (nor the way I'd hoped for that matter). In fact, the ending was somewhat of a disappointment to me, but I'm not going to take anything away from the way I rate the novel on that account, since, overall, it was excellent. It was very well written, with well-developed characters, a decent plot, and a believable 1950s world in which to set it all. I rate this novel a worthy read and I recommend it to anyone who is interested in period pieces, in "murder mysteries", in heartland tales, and in good, strong, female main characters.
