The Fifth Season: A Novel of Suspense [Paperback]

Don Bredes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 26, 2005

In Don Bredes’s Cold Comfort, Hector Bellevance left Vermont for Harvard, graduated into a job with the Boston Police Department, made detective, married, divorced, accidentally shot his partner during a raid gone bad, and then returned to Vermont because, as Robert Frost famously said, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”

Now, in The Fifth Season, he’s back in the town of Tipton, growing vegetables for the farmer’s market, dating Wilma Strong, the hotshot reporter for the local paper, and serving as town constable, when Marcel Boisvert—a contrary town father who, as road commissioner, maintains Tipton’s rural thoroughfares—apparently goes berserk. Hector finds the county sheriff shot dead in Marcel’s dooryard and the Tipton town clerk shot dead in her office. Marcel has disappeared.

Hector and Wilma and half of the Vermont State Police are looking for Marcel—and looking over their shoulders at the same time. The small town’s history, the complex interrelationships of people whose fathers and grandfathers were friends, and the outlaw independence of such a place all play into a tale of love, betrayal, and one very strange season.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The idea of the big city cop who accidentally kills his partner and then shakes up his life by going back to his rural hometown receives fresh treatment in Bredes's suspense series featuring Hector Bellevance, a Harvard graduate who was a detective in the Boston police department before tragedy overtook him. In Bellevance's poignant second outing (after 2001's Cold Comfort), the author deepens an already original character, who has returned home to Tipton, Vt., where he works as town constable, grows vegetables for tourists and dates local reporter Wilma Strong. When Marcel Boisvert, a Tipton power broker, apparently goes berserk and murders two public officials, Bellevance and Wilma find all sorts of local secrets under various Vermont rocks. Though the novel is based on an actual 1997 case, Bredes manages to add a sizable amount of fictional flourish with impressive results. Agent, Howard Morhaim. (May 3)
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Review

“Don Bredes is a writer whose work I’ve admired for many years, but I was especially taken with The Fifth Season, the work of a singular talent at the height of his powers. . . . This is a brisk and well-shaped story of crime and detection; yet it’s more than that. It’s also a work of considerable literary ambition and solid achievement, one that deserves a wide audience.” —Jay Parini, author of The Apprentice Lover

“From its appealingly reluctant sleuth-hero, Hector Bellevance, to its precise and lovely language, to its terrifying climax in a quiet Vermont town, The Fifth Season is the most surprising, original, and entertaining literary thriller I've read since James Lee Burke's Purple Cane Road.” —Howard Frank Mosher, author of A Stranger in the Kingdom

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press; 1st edition (April 26, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0609606883
• ISBN-13: 978-0609606889
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 4.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,571,274 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

DON BREDES lives high in the hills of northern Vermont. He is a novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and teacher.

He was born in New York City and educated at Syracuse University, the University of California, Irvine, where he was awarded an MFA in Fiction, and Stanford University, where he was a Wallace Stegner Fellow. He has published five novels, HARD FEELINGS (Atheneum, 1977), MULDOON (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982), and his Hector Bellevance literary suspense trilogy, COLD COMFORT (Harmony Books, 2001), THE FIFTH SEASON (Three Rivers Press, 2005), and THE ERRAND BOY (Three Rivers Press, 2009). He has also published numerous short stories and essays.

Don Bredes's HARD FEELINGS was a 20th Century-Fox film release in 1982. The American Library Association selected HARD FEELINGS as one of the Ten Best Books of the Year for Young Adults in 1977. HARD FEELINGS was also included in the New York Times list of notable books.

His feature film adaptation of Howard Frank Mosher's novella, WHERE THE RIVERS FLOW NORTH, starring Rip Torn and Michael J. Fox, received an National Endowment of the Arts grant in 1991 and has appeared on screens in theaters across North America, Europe, and Asia.

www.donbredes.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Irresistible, May 3, 2005

By 

Nathan Huttner (New Haven, CT United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Fifth Season: A Novel of Suspense (Paperback)

When I can read a novel straight through in one or two sittings, something special is going on. I usually like to savor literature, sleep on it, come back to it. But there are novels that simply demand a lot of attention and are worth of every minute of it. THE FIFTH SEASON is one of those novels.

As other reviewers have pointed out, Hector Bellevance is really the heart and soul of the book, which is great, since he brings a clear, well-defined, and imminently likeable voice to the narrative. Alongside Bellevance is a cast of characters who are at points quirky, caring, brutal and treacherous-but always human. Bredes skillfully weaves the stories of these Vermonters into a tale that, as my bleary eyes can attest to, pulled me along to its powerfully realized, but devastating, conclusion.

That is not to say that FIFTH SEASON is not without its faults. Bellevance at times seems a little too precious, even for a Harvard graduate (did we really need to know about the morning cantaloupe?). Of course, Bredes adds these touches consciously, heightening the tension and contrast between Bellevance and his nemeses, who are decidedly more gritty.

In the end, Bredes is a skilled, canny writer, who has managed the rare feat of crafting a truly literary thriller. I look forward to watching Bellevance develop, and can't wait to see what sleepy Tipton has in store next.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Irresistible Hero, May 1, 2005

By 

Ann Mckinstry Micou - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Fifth Season: A Novel of Suspense (Paperback)

Hector Bellevance is an irresistible hero: he is bright, stoical, and attractive; there is a tragic accident in his past about which he behaved honorably; he is divorced and seeing another woman but may still love his former wife. He was terrific in Cold Comfort; he is even more so in The Fifth Season.

The Fifth Season has a lot going for it. For one thing, it has a riveting plot, clever and suspenseful and thoroughly satisfying. Second, it has real characters who are vital, believable, and unusual. One of particular interest is Marcel Boisvert, descended from the first Abenaki landholders in the valley in northern Vermont where the novel takes place. Third, it gives the reader a wonderful sense of Vermont, the topography, the customs, the way of life. Hector grew up in Vermont and knows everyone in Tipton. Finally, the language is superb--literate, lovely, and lithe.

This is novel everyone will enjoy reading and talking about. In addition to action, it gives the reader lots to think about--and a yen for the next in the series.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars He Keeps Stepping In Blood, May 15, 2005

By 

Gary Moore - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Fifth Season: A Novel of Suspense (Paperback)

This book was hard to put down. There's a special sense of violation when multiple murders blast a peaceful Vermont village, but as the wise and awful depths of this fast-moving story show us, the seeds of angry violence are always there, here, hiding and waiting to bloom.

Constable Hector Bellevance is a big quiet guy who grows organic tomatoes and throws a mean right. He's a one-time Harvard basketball player and short-time Boston cop who just wants to be a nice guy with a pick-up truck and a girlfriend, but he keeps stepping in blood.

Through concise vivid details of daily life, Bredes puts the reader swiftly in his reluctant hero's shoes. A few pages into the book I found myself with a couple of victims on my hands and the threat of being killed by my wife because I couldn't get out of The Fifth Season to do my pruning and window-cleaning. A few pages from the end of the book I was sorry it was going to end. When's volume three in the Bellevance saga coming?