Customer Reviews

Lead, So I Can Follow

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This is the first Harold Adams book that I've read. The mystery is set on the northern plains during the Great Depression. Carl Wilcox and his new bride are honeymooning when they hear a gunshot and scream. They stay and solve the mystery. I enjoyed the book a lot and recommend it as light summer reading. I plan to read some of his other books as well.

As a fan of the Carl Wilcox series and having read all the previous novels, the author has done his readership damage by marrying Carl off! Part of the glamor of this series has been the sort of sexiness of a well-meaning, intelligent bachelor who solves murders in very interesting and creative ways in an era before today's technology. Carl has shown his interest in women through out the series and that idea of romance draws the reader in. As a female, his allure as a bachelor detective took me in -- always wondering about whether there would be a conquest or not. For me, the best Harold Adams can do is write out Hazel, Carl's wife, in some calamity that Carl can deal with and solve!

I was not only disappointed by this book, but irritated by the style of writing which seemed to be a combination of the poor sentence structure of a high school freshman to the dated expressions of a senior citizen. You gain little insight to the personality of the main character or his bride. The plot is too pat; town folk interviewed are oh so eager to talk about characters in suspicion, and the police are too relieved to hand the murder investigation over to complete strangers. The only saving grace are physical descriptions of the local area, and the beauty of the river area where the characters camp and canoe. Once I like a book and discover there are others in a series with the same character, I'm ready to read the rest. I will certainly pass on this one.

In mystery writing--as in all fiction writing--when you pull apart the hardcover buns, there should be a sizeable slab of conflict inside. Sure, depending on how the author or readers like it, condiments such as plot, characterization, and blah, blah, blah, can be added to enhance taste. But conflict is the "beef" of all fiction. Harold Adams' book has small meat.

The writing is tight, the history and scenic descriptions accurate and well-done, but everyone gets along. A stranger dies in the beginning, but no one is ever threatened again. The protagonist gets along with his wife, the local cops, the local residents, even the suspects. What's the point? There's no urgency. I only turned the pages out of curiosity to find out when something good might start happening. It didn't.

Okay. I'm exaggerating. The book is not that bad. Give it three stars. Lovers of pure whodunits may give it four. But for me this was no Whopper. --Christopher Bonn Jonnes, author of Wake Up Dead.