Customer Reviews

All the Dead Lie Down

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I have read all the author's mysteries, and this strained credibility a bit, but it was hard to put down! If you can buy into the premises, it's a winner. If not, it's entertaining and somewhat educational, especially the homeless perspective. Mary Willis Walker is a talented writer!

Molly Cates was introduced in the Edgar Award winning novel THE RED SCREAM. She is a writer for Lone Star Monthly and she has been obsessed in learning the truth about her father's death. For the last twenty-eight years she has spent her spare time investigating her father's alleged suicide at the expense of her job and her family. In Mary Willis Walker's latest novel Molly will finally learn the truth.

While covering a Texas bill for concealed weapons registration Molly sees Olin Crocker. Many years ago he worked as a sheriff and was in charge of investigating the alleged suicide of Vernon Cates. Molly believes that her father's death was murder and that Olin was paid off to look the other way. Molly also has a personal reason for loathing Crocker and it will be made clear further in the novel. This has motivated her to finally learn the truth once and for all.

The book has a second plotline involving Austin's homeless population. For the last few months Molly has been writing articles about the people she has met and trying to put an eye on the problem. One of the individuals she meets is Sara Jane Hurley who is better known as Cow Lady in the homeless circles. Cow Lady has kept to herself reciting Mother Goose rhymes. She spends the night under a deck and one day she learns overhears a plot to spray nerve gas in the Texas legislature before the concealed weapons bill is passed. Cow Lady does not know what to do and eventually tracks down Molly and asks for her help.

The reader gets to know a lot more about Molly than they did in THE RED SCREAM and UNDER THE BEETLE'S CELLAR. We learn why she became a writer, what drives her, and finally the truth about her father. Molly idolized her father for many years but in the end she will find out that he was just an ordinary person under extraordinary circumstances. Only time will tell how she will feel. The book's two storylines crowd each other and makes it feel like a tennis match. The nerve gas story seemed more like filler and the people involved do not seem real. It is good that the author brings social issues to her novel and that is what she should have focused on.

I've gotten to know Molly Cates so well that it's hard to believe this is only the third novel in which she appears (Walker's fourth novel overall). Anyone who has witnessed Molly's moral dilemmas or her night vigils in the previous novels will be well rewarded here as Molly tries to solve the mystery of her father's death 28 years earlier and to come to grips with her memory of him. Although the picture of gun fanatics seems over-simplified, the portrait of the homeless here adds a realistic and timely touch to the story.

This book was definately a page-turner but not quite up to par with what I've come to expect from Mary Willis Walker. There seemed to be less character development than in her previous books and I kept getting frustrated with the usually level-headed Molly Cates. I felt like the author tried to do too much in one book so things like fleshed-out characters and plotlines tended to suffer. I think the parallel stories in this novel were worthy of standing alone and would've fared much better if they had.

Molly Cates is an investigative journalist with an obsession to find out the truth about her father's death. The M.E. ruled the death a suicide, which Molly still refuses to accept after twenty eight years. In a plot which intertwines the hopelessness of the homeless as well as gun control lobbying and a Waco-type anti-government group, Molly tries to find out how her dad died and why a homeless woman is desperate to contact her. The characters are well defined--from Cow Woman to police detective Grady Traynor, Molly's ex-husband. The action is fast-paced and intensely dramatic, with the reader urging Molly to hurry with her investigation before the Texas Senate chamber erupts into a gas chamber of death!

For the past twenty-eight years, Molly Cates, a Journalist on the Lone Star Monthly Magazine, believes her father was murdered and not a suicide victim as the official position states. While working on two stories (on the homeless and a bill allowing the concealment of weapons), Molly comes across new information on the death of her father.

While digging up her own past, a homeless person, the "Cow Lady" tells Molly that she overheard a plot to kill everyone inside the Texas Senate building when the gun bill goes on the floor for a vote. While Molly and the "Cow Lady" try to save lives from a militant gun group, she also learns the truth behind the death of her father.

Mary Willis Walker has won numerous awards for her mystery novels (ZERO TO THE BONE, THE RED SCREAM, etc.). Her latest book, ALL THE DEAD LIE DOWN is a good story, but not on the same quality level as the previous tales, thereby, leaving many readers disappointed. Still, many readers will enjoy the self-examination of the protagonist even as they will be a bit disappointed over the slow moving story line which takes a back seat to the wonderful characterizations.

Harriet Klausner

I liked the storylines, but felt the parallel stories would have been better if written individually.

However, quite an enjoyable read.