The Dirty Dozen - Murder in a Small Town
Books featuring crime-solvers in remote locations
* Denotes first title in a series
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1. Box, C.J. Open Season. (2001) *
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2. Erdrich, Louise. The Plague of Doves. (2008) Erdrich's 13th novel, a multigenerational tour de force of sin, redemption, murder and vengeance, finds its roots in the 1911 slaughter of a farming family near Pluto, N.Dak. The family's infant daughter is spared, and a posse forms, incorrectly blames three Indians and lynches them. Erdrich plays individual narratives off one another, dropping apparently insignificant clues that build to head-slapping revelations as fates intertwine and the person responsible for the 1911 killing is identified. |
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3. Flynn, Gillian. Sharp Objects. (2006) “Flynn gives new meaning to the term "dysfunctional family" in her chilling debut thriller. Camille Preaker, once institutionalized for youthful self-mutilation, now works for a third-rung Chicago newspaper. When a young girl is murdered and mutilated and another disappears in Camille's hometown of Wind Gap, Mo., her editor, eager for a scoop, sends her there for a human-interest story. Though the police, including Richard Willis, a profiler from Kansas City, Mo., say they suspect a transient, Camille thinks the killer is local. Interviewing old acquaintances and newcomers, she relives her disturbed childhood, gradually uncovering family secrets as gruesome as the scars beneath her clothing. |
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4 . Greenlief, K.C. Cold Hunter’s Moon. (2002) * Wear a parka and snow goggles while you read this frosty and blood-spattered first novel. Set in the north woods of Wisconsin, the tale pits widower sheriff Lark Swenson and…state police officer Lacey Smith, against a relentless killer who murdered two U.W. coeds three years apart and hid the bodies in a snow-covered marsh on the property of John and Ann Ranson in Big Oak, Wis. Police procedure and medical terminology are spot on, as is the aura of winter in the woods with hunters (of both deer and humans) zipping around on snowmobiles…The plot races along with the threat of more murders heightened by a bone-chilling blizzard. |
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5. Hamilton, Steve A. Cold Day in Paradise. (1998) * …Alex McKnight is a retired Detroit cop living in Paradise, Mich., on disability with a bullet next to his heart. He rents cabins to hunters and has recently taken out a private-detective license at the suggestion of Lane Uttley, a local lawyer. The book begins fast, with a lot of background deftly woven into the narrative. Edwin Fulton, the scion of a wealthy Detroit family and a compulsive gambler, calls Alex from a nearby motel where he has found the murdered body of his bookie. When another local bookie is murdered and Edwin disappears, prompting Alex and the lawyer to start a search of their own. |
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6. Johnson, Craig. The Cold Dish. (2005) * Walt Longmire, the veteran sheriff of Absaroka County, Wyo., usually has little to do on his patrols. When Cody Pritchard is found shot to death near the Cheyenne reservation, everyone, including Deputy Victoria Moretti, a transplanted Philadelphian, believes he died in an accident. But two years earlier, Cody was one of four high schoolers convicted of raping a young Native American girl. All were given suspended sentences, and when another of the four turns up dead, it appears that someone is out for revenge. As fear mounts, Sheriff Longmire feels tension in the air between the white population and the Native American community. |
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7. McCarthy, Cormac. No Country for Old Men. (2005) In 1980 southwest Texas, Llewelyn Moss, hunting antelope near the Rio Grande, stumbles across several dead men, a bunch of heroin and $2.4 million in cash. The bulk of the novel is a gripping man-on-the-run sequence relayed in terse, masterful prose as Moss, who's taken the money, tries to evade Wells, an ex–Special Forces agent employed by a powerful cartel, and Chigurh, an icy psychopathic murderer armed with a cattle gun and a dangerous philosophy of justice. |
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8. Pickard, Nancy. The Virgin of Small Plains. (2006) Pickard probes the truth behind miracles and the tragedies behind lies in this mesmerizing suspense novel set in Kansas. While rounding up newborn calves during a 1987 blizzard, Nathan Shellenberger, sheriff of Small Plains, and his teenage sons, Rex and Patrick, discover the naked frozen body of a beautiful teenage girl. Like the heart-stopping skid that sets it in motion, this book hurtles inexorably toward a startling conclusion. Along the way Nancy Pickard wrests magic from the everyday and redemption from broken dreams. ”The Virgin Of Small Plains” is a beautiful and resonant book |
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9. Read, Cornelia. A Field of Darkness. (2006) * Read's impressive debut stars the unusual Madeline Dare, a jumble of contradictions who comes from an old-money Long Island family. Madeline writes fluff features for the local newspaper. Nothing in her background prepares her for trying to solve the bizarre 20-year-old murder of two young women, a crime that her cousin, Lapthorne Townsend, might have been involved in. The author's sharp social commentary on everything from the idle rich to the environment adds to the pleasure. |
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10. Sallis, James. Salt River. (2006) Turner, the sheriff of a nameless rural community near Memphis, ponders the abstractions of life on a Main Street bench, a speeding car crashes through the front wall of city hall driven by the former sheriff's troubled son. The ensuing investigation leads Turner to some startling revelations about human nature as well as his own uncertain future. Sallis brilliantly uses …. the richly described rural Southern backdrop that make this slim book such a rewarding read. |
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11. Sharfeddin, Heather. Mineral Spirits. (2006) Sharfeddin's…is a sharp, perceptive blend of crime and contemporary life issues. When 10-year-old Gray Dausman reports a badly decomposed body near the Clark Fork River, Kip Edelson, the new sheriff of Montana's sparsely populated Mineral County, is impressed by the boy's bravery, but becomes concerned after he learns about Gray's troubles at home. A tip about the female corpse's identity leads the sheriff to investigate area women with names similar to "Chris," including Gray's missing mother, Kristi Blackhorse. Tight and emotionally satisfying, this impressive novel should gain the author new readers. |
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12. Spencer-Fleming, Julia. In the Bleak Midwinter. (2002) * In this debut novel, a riveting page-turner from start to finish, born-and-bred Virginian Clare Ferguson, newly ordained priest of St. Alban's Episcopal Church in the small upstate New York town of Millers Kill, is faced with not only an early December snowstorm and the bitter cold of her first Northern winter but also a conservative vestry, who apparently expended all their daring on hiring her, a female priest. When a baby is left on the church doorstep with a note designating that he be given to two of her parishioners, Clare calls in police chief Russ Van Alstyne. The foundling case quickly becomes an investigation into murder that will shatter the lives of members of her congregation, challenge her own feelings and faith and threaten her life. |