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4.0 out of 5 stars
A good bginning to this series, December 12, 2000
This review is from: Mad Dog and Englishman (Hardcover)
For the most part, the citizens of Buffalo Springs, Kansas are law abiding. It has been seventeen years since the last homicide. The sheriff's brother, who is one-fourth Cheyenne, dresses up as an Indian. He goes to the local park seeking a vision, but instead stumbles over the mutilated corpse of Reverend Peter Samms. The deputy chases after an outsider, a black man who the law enforcement official believes killed the Reverend. During the pursuit, the deputy wrecks the car. Next, police officials find the Reverend's father dead with his head scalped in the same way as his son. These two murders are linked to the kidnapping of the sheriff's daughter by two dysfunctional adults. The sheriff needs to outwit the psychotic duo while outrunning a tornado. MAD DOG AND ENGLISHMAN does not contain Cocker or Russell, but remains a fascinating, unusual police procedural due to the cast. The ensemble seems to have just stepped out of the Twilight Zone or perhaps Eerie, Indiana. Thus, the plot and characters make for an uncanny tale that J.M. Hayes could turn into a series that serves as the exciting center of weirdness in the mystery universe. Harriet Klausner
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4.0 out of 5 stars
A good start to this series set in small town Kansas, July 6, 2011
First Line: Summer in Benteen County, Kansas, is a season possessed of all the gentle subtlety of an act of war.
When Sheriff English's part-Cheyenne brother, Mad Dog, arrives in the park to meditate, he finds the mutilated body of Reverend Peter Sims, and the entire county is set on its ear. Benteen County is sparsely populated. Everyone knows everyone else's business. Sheriff English has never had to investigate a homicide, even the coroner (who's been on the job for over seventeen years) has never had to deal with a murder victim. So it's important that they do everything right.
Since Mad Dog is the natural prime suspect, Sheriff English has to not only look for suspicious characters, he has to delve into the history of the Simms family, which is very dark indeed. More murders seem almost inevitable-- just like that tornado that's on the horizon.
Hayes brings small town Kansas to life and doesn't put a foot wrong with his cast of characters. Sheriff English's ex-wife is a teacher, and they have a mouthy teenage daughter. Although they're divorced, they can't seem to keep their hands off each other-- which is something the entire town knows.
There's also the incompetent police officer who got his job through nepotism. He can't use his handcuffs because his kid lost the key and he hasn't got the replacement yet. The dispatcher is good at her job, but she's also Gossip Central. The guy who lives behind the police station keeps planting roses in the parking lot and then has fits when the police run over them. Anyone who's ever lived in a small town recognizes these folks.
The identity of the killer and the reason behind the murders were a bit obvious to me, but that didn't matter so much because I truly enjoyed getting to know this corner of Kansas and the entire cast of characters. This first book has set me up perfectly, and I can't wait to continue with the series.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
The next Tarantino or Coen Brothers movie?, April 18, 2010
This review is from: Mad Dog and Englishman (Hardcover)
Don't think that a thin book must have a simple crime padded with local color: this one is packed with PLOT! Unspeakable evil and cosmic forces do battle with the help of a fairly clueless and underfunded sheriff's department in cliffhanger after cliffhanger. Englishman is the sheriff (symbolically chief) of Benteen County, Kansas, and his older half-brother, former hippie Mad Dog, is the self-appointed medicine man; both are only slightly Cheyenne. Mad Dog believes that he has let a great evil into the world by bungling a vision quest; by the end his explanation may be the best, as he battles evil in a tornado.
Yes, it sounds over the top, but the characters and setting are deftly defined just enough to advance the action, while the reader has just enough more information than the characters to be on the edge of his or her seat, all the way to the end. Unspeakable evil is hard to come by these days, but the present, past, and ninety-year-old charges of child molestation are both shocking and, by the end, seemingly inevitable. These charges (both the true and the doubtful), the supposed suicides, and the several definite vicious murders all are tied together in shifting relations as the reader and characters learn more information, the plot twists making the identity of the present-day murderer always doubtful.
The cosmic forces that reach into the past and future come in spots of exposition between a professor and Mad Dog that seem like comic relief at the time. The fumbling deputy who chases down the visiting professor for being in Kansas while black advances the plot despite his constant deserved bad luck. In fact, all of the tragicomic failed actions and failures to communicate combine to paint an utterly believable but disordered universe, which is resolved either equally randomly, or by the properly spiritual efforts of the chief and medicine man, depending on one's point of view. The slipperiness of time and space are slightly reflected by writing scenes from the point of view of the characters; for instance, one character is struck by lightning and the action changes to other characters who do not see the lightning for several pages.
In the end, the moral seems to be that evil grows when unchallenged, much as the neighbor behind the courthouse parking lot encroaches his rose garden on the sheriff's parking space (that battle is also won.) The book as a whole seems like a thoughtful novelization of a film somewhere between a dark psychological thriller and a quirky action movie. Hollywood, are you listening?
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