I’ve a special fondness for mystery series set in the Appalachian Mountains as there’s not lot of good ones even though there’s a lot of not so great ones. Sharyn McCrumb’s Ballads series had some memorable outings, particularly among the latter novels, and one which was outstanding, Ghost Riders.
I stumbled upon this series in a used bookstore called The Green Hand (which was of course named after the Stephen King novel of that name) and read all six of them in order, (save for the first volume) which was a great delight. (Finding a hardcover edition of the first novel was a difficult quest indeed.) So let me discuss the first novel without going into any too detailed a manner. I was originally going to review the entire series but that would involve divulging too much of the story so I decided not to do that.
Fever Devilin is a retired anthropology professor now living back in the Georgian region of the southern Appalachians. However his arrival is less than auspicious when he finds a body on the porch of his house — a half brother he didn’t even know existed.
What secrets there are about bother Fever and family are going unanswered as anyone in the local area will remained kept unless he can figure out what it is his family history that no one will talk about. And given his messy family, to be precise an adulterous mother whose fate is unknown and a father whose identity was never known, only knowing those secrets will help him in knowing who murdered his half-bothered.
It’ll take another murder, much more brutal this time, for Devilin to realize his beloved community holds dark secrets, sacred and profane, that someone is willing to kill in order to keep them.
Ok, a good mystery needs a number of things — a compelling sympathetic narrator (and I prefer first person singular which we have here), secondary characters that round out the cast so to speak, a well-crated representation of the setting, and, of course, superb story lines. All of these are here in of the best mystery seties I’ve had the pleasure to read.
DePoy has a firm and deft manner of telling his story that keeps from becoming the hackneyed tale that many writers setting their mysteries in the southern Appalachians end up telling. Certainly I was not disappointed at the time it took the read all six books released so far. Indeed I’ll likely read them again at some point. And I’m eagerly awaiting the next novel!
(St. Martin’s, 2003)
