All the Dead Lie Down [Mass Market Paperback]

Mary Willis Walker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 26, 2002

When crime reporter Molly Cates’s father died more than twenty-five years ago, the case was ruled a suicide, and Molly’s efforts to prove otherwise led to nothing but anguish and the breakup of her family. But now new information has come her way and she reopens the investigation–and a rush of old wounds–with a vengeance. Soon the personal becomes dangerously political as Molly’s search for the truth leads her from the stately halls of Texas government to the mean streets of Austin’s down-and-out–and ultimately to a moral dilemma she never could have anticipated.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Quotations from Mother Goose and Macbeth (as well as the Emily Dickinson snippet of the title) provide the chapter headings in this engaging novel of suspense. The apparent peculiarity of such juxtaposition brings home the brutality of those childhood rhymes and the dangers of obsession and revenge. Both serve Mary Willis Walker's purpose well in setting up this tightly constructed mystery in which investigative journalist Molly Cates's own obsession with her father's untimely death from 30 years before gets mixed up in a current and far more dangerous scheme to release chemical gases into the Senate chamber of the Texas Capitol. The two plots, the first a traditional mystery, the second more a tale of suspense, are unconnected except for Cates's involvement; she is obviously central to one and initially only tangential to the other. Such a device would have proved unwieldy in less skillful hands, but in Walker's case the disparate strands are brought together beautifully, and Cates has a suitable sense of her own fallibility and the difficulty of harboring hate for the better part of a generation.

Walker's previous three novels have won six mystery-writers awards among them. All the Dead Lie Down is solid enough to continue the tradition set by the others. Within it there is much to relish: sensitive consideration of homelessness, thought-provoking questions about gun control, and a wry appreciation for the charm and arrogance of the Lone Star State and its citizens ("Texans do not scrimp on stars."). Indeed, Walker's sense of place--from Lubbock's dust and dry desolation to Austin's trendiness and political maneuvering--is sure and confident. There are moments when the worst of the perpetrators of the chemical weapons scare is portrayed simplistically, but this is more than made up for by the complexity of the other characters: the vagrants who discover the danger as well as the ghosts, both past and present, who haunt Molly in her investigations of her father's past. An excellent read, for even the most jaded of mystery lovers. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

While napping under the deck of an Austin, Tex., restaurant, a homeless woman called Cow Lady is awakened by talk overhead of a lethal gas soon to be released in the Texas State Capitol building. From there, Walker switches to the Capitol building, where Molly Cates, an investigative reporter last seen in Under the Beetle's Cellar (1995), is working on a story about the upcoming vote on a handgun bill. Cates runs into the man who had been sheriff when her father died 25 years earlier. Although her father's death by gunshot was judged suicide, Cates has never given up her belief that he was murdered and that the sheriff suppressed evidence of the crime. She's determined to resume her intensive personal investigation, despite the advice of her lover (who is also her former husband) and old family friends, including a state senator and his wife. Cates is out of town when a homeless woman?not Cow Lady but wearing Cow Lady's black and white coat?is murdered. From its compelling beginning to the extended conclusion, which moves from the depths of a garbage dump to the Capitol, Walker conjures a memorable, disparate cast. Only a few seams show as she connects the political conspiracy, the homeless community and the unexpected?and entirely satisfying?explanation for the death of Cates's father.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Bantam; later printing edition (February 26, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553578227
• ISBN-13: 978-0553578225
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 0.8 x 7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #470,889 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Turmoil in Texas, March 12, 2001

By 

sweetmolly (RICHMOND, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: All the Dead Lie Down (Hardcover)

This is an ambitious attempt by Edgar Winner Mary Willis Walker starring Molly Cates for the third time. For the most part, it was a first-rate effort of combining politics, homelessness, and a 28-year-old unsolved mystery.

I found no part of the novel far-fetched. I might have done so before April 19, 1995, (Oklahoma City Federal Building explosion), but no more. A well-designed plan to release lethal nerve gas in the State Senate Chamber was shocking, but by no means unbelievable. The chilling non-personage treatment of homeless people is an everyday occurrence. In Texas, unusual politics is politics as usual.

The characterizations are superb, and the story is tightly plotted. Balancing two main stories, the homeless Sarah Jane and Molly's self-mutilating investigation of her father's death 28 years ago, is a tough assignment, and is not always successful. I found myself deeply involved with homeless Sarah Jane who seemed to me more interesting than Molly. It could be that crimes committed 28 years ago lack in immediacy. I would find myself drawn back to Molly's story by the repulsive former Sheriff Crocker. The worst part wasn't his disgusting persona, it was that it was so familiar. We have all met a Sheriff Crocker, and been far the worse for the encounter.

The story was taut, leading to an unbearably suspenseful showdown. Even if the house were burning down, you wouldn't move till you finished the last ten pages.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars All The Dead Lie Down is a fierce modern-day tale!, January 22, 2001

By 

Rebecca Brown "rebeccasreads" (Clallam Bay, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: All the Dead Lie Down (Hardcover)

There are two stories weaving in & out of each other in this taut & fascinating tale. One is about an indigent, hollow woman who lives by her wits cheek-by-jowl around the Texas Capitol. One evening, above her fog of anger & booze she hears an act or terrorism being hatched.

The other is about middle-aged Molly & her one last bid to bring to justice the murderer of her idolized father. With clues & old enemies, sudden attacks of depression ameliorated by the re-awakening of her marriage, Molly too stumbles through her fog of her naivete & obstinacy.

Mary Willis Walker has written a gripper with a different point of view! Taken us into the cesspools of slums & politicians' lies. Shone a flashlight on the tarnished souls of those who would represent us & highlighted the bright bravery of those who would defend us. Do visit my site for my full review of this & other thrillers.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A SEDUCTIVE MIX OF FAMILY HISTORY AND MYSTERY, March 6, 2001

By 

Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: All the Dead Lie Down (Hardcover)

With an intriguing blend of Capitol mayhem and capital murder, Edgar Award winning author Mary Willis Walker returns to the scene of her last thriller, Austin, and to her previous protagonist, Molly Cates, an investigative journalist for "Lone Star Monthly.' Imaginatively conceived, All The Dead Lie Down offers seemingly parallel plots which eventually converge in a frightening yet exhilarating finish.

Sarah Jane Hurley, an alcoholic derelict known as Cow Lady because of the black and white spotted coat she wears, is huddled beneath the deck of an outdoor restaurant when she overhears a mephistophelian plot - the detonation of a poison gas bomb in the Texas State Capitol building. "Yessir," she hears. "...You're going to turn that Senate chamber into a gas chamber."

Cow Lady ignores this frightening revelation, seeking only drink with "the glow in her blood, the numbing buzz in her brain as it begins to work its magic."

Not missing a beat the rapidly pace narrative then switches to the legislature where Molly Cates is researching a story on the concealed handgun bill. Molly is as plucky and stubborn as ever, but misguided - obsessed with the belief that her father's death some 25 years ago was not a suicide as judged but murder.

Constantly reaffirming the links between an idealized father and herself - he was a writer, she is a writer; he loved the lake; she loved the lake - she has been consumed by her desire to solve what she believes was his murder. The result of her fixation has been the dissolution of her marriage and this distancing of her only child, Jo Beth, who has been raised by Aunt Harriet, her father's older sister.

Access to the Cates family archives eventually leads to unraveling the questions about her father's death. The answers, both unexpected and unwanted, force her to realize that her father was not the icon she believed him to be and enable a wiser Molly to say, "My father was grievously flawed. He is closer and dearer to me now than when I chose to believe him perfect."

Yet it was Molly's chance meeting with Cow Lady that irrevocably changed and endangered both women's lives. When a fellow street person wearing the trademark black and white coat is brutally murdered, Cow Lady realizes that the plotters know they were overheard and, once they realize they've killed the wrong woman, she will be next. Molly is the only person she can think of who might help her.

Unwisely responding alone, the journalist finds herself joining Cow Lady as the doomed prisoners of two avaricious sociopathic killers who would sell their sisters for a sou just as they've sold Cow Lady.

Thursting into overdrive the story takes a hariraising turn as a weakened Cow Lady and bludgeoned Molly try to escape execution style deaths and interment in Austin's city dump.

Mr. Willis' command of street patois adds authnticity to her tale, while her rich characterizations raise All The Dead Lie Down above conventional thriller level. Faces given to the homeless : Tin Can, a retarded woman with "baggy jeans rolled up on her stubby bowed legs" whose only companion is "Silky" a stray calico cat; and Lufkin, "his long, bony nose and thin red mouth just visible in the nest of his long black beard, streaked with gray," who always sharres his scrounged bounty.

Their portraits are vividly painted for us through Molly's eyes: "She glances at Sarah Jane and it occurs to her that this is where this woman lives all the time...inside this crack in the world where you become invisible, where the default mode is brutality and eventually a mean death." The plight of these people is memorable.

Ms. Willis has penned a seductive mix of family history and mystery - prime diversion on home ground, from the streets of El Paso to the plains of Lubbock (although Lubbockites may not care for the description of their fair city) to the shores of Lake Travis. Absorbing and suspenseful, All The Dead Lie Down is a first rate mystery thriller.