Customer Reviews

The Hangman's Knot: A Novel

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Since abandoning his terrific John Becker series Wiltse has created another winning protagonist with Billy Tree. Hangman's Knot, the second in this series, has it all. On one level it is a mystery with historical roots, written seamlessly with thorough characterizations and a tight plotline. On another level it is a gentle but firm examination of buried prejudice in a time when everyone realizes none should continue to exist. Billy Tree is a comfortable protagonist - despite his frequent bouts with his own angst. This book doesn't pull any punches as it stays true to its theme. There are no cop outs here. Just a solid story well worth any reader's time.

The Hangman's Knot by David Wiltse is the exactly what I expected. Wiltse just writes one terrific book after another and this is certainly no exception. I was able to see life through Billy Tree's eyes again, and I've missed the view since reading Heartland. In The Hangman's Knot we learn a great deal about how Billy's personality was created with flashbacks into his childhood. I found these glimpses revealed many clues as to how he thinks and made me adore the character even more.

Billy receives a hangman's knot and the adventure begins. It all seems to go back to a lynching held in a nearby town many years ago. The writer's portrayal of current and past bigotry in a small town was told easily as he held the suspense level to a maximum. The story could stand alone, but when you add the beautiful prose and great characterizations, you change what could be a good book to a great one.

If you enjoy terrific writing and a wonderful story, I highly recommend you read The Hangman's Knot. If you've not read Heartland, I urge you to read it as well.

Billy Tree is the hero of Heartland, from a couple of years ago. He's a small-town boy who joined the Secret Service, and became a hero for his actions in a shootout with a lunatic. Unknown to virtually everyone, he completely lost control of himself in the shootout and basically now is a complete coward. He's terrified of guns and confrontations, and will do anything to avoid them, so he's decided to pass his time working as a deputy sheriff in his small hometown. In this second book he goes a long way to avoid things he didn't need to, and gets himself in way over his head when things don't go the way he thinks they will.

This book is mostly about a lynching that happened over 50 years before the time the book took place, and the repercussions that result from it, through the years. It involves one whopper of a coincidence, and a lot of misconceptions, mistaken identities, and confused motives. At the end of the book you're still not entirely certain what happened, and it's apparent that the main characters aren't sure either. While the book does have an interesting plot, and some action that keeps it moving, it also can be just annoying. There's a scene where one character repeatedly refers to the "weapon" because saying anything else would give away to the reader something the author wishes to conceal, for instance. Anyway, I enjoyed the book, but not that much, and I think I'd be wary of recommending it.

What a fascinating book and what a fascinating author. I have read all of Wiltse's books and each seems better than the other, but he's on a new level here with characterization, content, psychological insight. If there's a better writer in this genre, I've never read him.
The range of matters he hits on here is wide, but the nature of jealousy, sex, racial relations and personal ego are among them. I can't rate The Hangman's Knot highly enough, they don't offer enough stars at this site.

The Hangman's Knot is more then a mystery. It's a mirror that shows all the flaws of a society that will not face its racist history. I rate it five stars.

I found Wiltse's The Hangman's Knot a compelling book. Good story, good action, very readable. It stands well on its own, but is even better as a sequel to Heartland. Billy Tree is a complex character, and I found him a realistic sort-of hero. The inter-weaving of the original lynching and the present-day plot made me stop and think about my own family and prejudices. It seems that I got a lot for my money. I recommend it highly.

He's done it again and I find that surprising because most writers have maybe one good book in them and the others are just lame copies of the good one, but Wiltse has written a lot of books and everyone of them is at the very least very good and some of them well beyond that. This one comes after Heartland, which was terrific and this one is even deeper, more complex, and intensely interesting. Billy Tree is a great protagonist, extremely human, no superman he, Falls City is a fascinating ambiance, and the story with its interplay of the past and the present and social justice paired with criminal justice is a mix I've never see before.

He doesn't carry a gun because he's afraid. He quit the Secret Service after killing his partner to save his own skin, an act that causes Billy to lose all self esteem he previously had. He believes himself, perhaps rightly so, a coward, a loser, and a worthless piece of garbage. The reason he doesn't kill himself, i believe, is to rid himself of this burdon he decides is his 'raison d'etre'.

Doesn't sound like a pretty good cop (not really a cop, more of an unpaid 'advisor'). WRONG. He still posesses great investigating skills. You kind of like this character in spite of himself: his being funny at the wrong time, telling jokes to relieve pressure situations, talking in his Irish brogue for no apparent reason, speaking to people over their intellectual powers without insulting them.

This second book in the Billy Tree series involves the lynching of a black man some 50 years in the past and the repercussions today. Excellent writing - the kind you have to read a bit more slowly than normal to appreciate to gift that David Wiltse posseses.

This is a story of a small-town investigation into a lynching that took place 50 years ago. Our hero, and the hero of his hometown of Falls City, Nebraska is sheriff's deputy Billy Tree and he is urged to investigate by an unknown person who uses a very unconventional method in which to grab his attention. The lynching from so long ago is destined to affect Billy and others close to him in more ways than he can imagine.

Although Billy is a good man who is admired by his fellow townsfolk, he constantly battles his own feelings of jealousy and prejudice and never believes that he his worthy of their admiration. This book deals quite sensitively with race issues and prejudices and the way, not only Billy tries to fight them, but the way the greater population still accepts them.

Wiltse manages to describe rural Nebraska so poetically that he makes what would normally be considered a boring landscape of flat fields of corn seem beautiful and special to behold. His description of a Nebraska sunset had me ready to pack up my belongings and head straight to the cornfields myself.

This is a great, entertaining and thought provoking read. Wiltse's characters are always very introspective. I found this to be an honest representation of a man keenly aware of and working through his feelings about race. This is an old mystery solved in the present with a realistic perspective. Wiltse writes this type of character so very well and, as always, weaves a solid mystery plot.