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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Book Review: "The Murderer Vine" by Shepard Rifkin, June 29, 2008
This review is from: The Murderer Vine (Hard Case Crime) (Mass Market Paperback)
Hiding out in Puerto Lagarto as the novel opens, our hero Joe Dunne begins a detailed confession to a traveling American priest. He has been hiding out for two years with no one to talk to and clearly is a bit lonely. Besides that, he has been watching the American in a clerical collar chasing butterflies with a net and thought it was funny. As the pages turn, he tells his story and explains how e got a job that was to set him up money wise pretty good as well as cause his exile far from home.
After handing a case that pushed the bounds, his name is passed on to an angry father by a client who really should have kept his big fat mouth firmly shut. The father is aware of some of the details of the other case and thinks that Joe Dunne could be willing to do what he wants done. It seems his boy was one of three men who went down to Mississippi to help with voter registration. His son, who was a good student at Harvard, along with two friends are now missing and presumed dead. Dad knows who did it thanks to another contact and Dad wants justice.
"'I know they're dead. I don't know what your political views are and I don't care. But I think you know what justice is. If it doesn't exist, then you make it. I want my boy's body. And I want justice."
"You mean revenge."
"I don't make any distinction. Shall we talk business?'"
(page 34)
Dad also knows that the legal system in 1970 Mississippi isn't going to do anything to the five that local gossip says were involved. He wants proof of their guilt and he wants justice.
Justice he is willing to pay for and justice of a kind that means Dunne will have to close his private investigation business, send his receptionist, Kirby, on her way and disappear. The father is willing to pay for finding the bodies of the victims, another higher amount for proof of the guilty and a still higher amount for their execution--no matter how many are ultimately guilty of the crime. Justice that he is wiling to pay for and will pay well for once he has the proof he needs of their guilt. Justice that can be bought at these prices and justice that Dunne is willing to deliver.
Like most releases from Hard Case Crime, this recent re-release is a dark atmospheric one. One knows from the opening page something went horribly wrong and the only real question as the pain filled narrative begins from Joe Dunne is exactly what went wrong. Everything and everyone is flawed in some fatal way and that certainly is the case here. Like many from this publisher, there is a certain inevitability in the read that means all the hard work, the meticulous planning of every last detail, in the end truly did not matter.
Joe Dunne is a complex character and as this slow moving novel tells the tale, a character that the reader begins to identify with more and more. A character, that while one knows is probably doomed, one that the reader pulls for all the way to the bitter end.
The novel is a read full of rich detailed characters, a time that wasn't the best in American history, and plenty of evil. It is a read that also makes one wonder just how much, if any, things have really changed.
Kevin R. Tipple (copyright) 2008
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Partially political pulp, May 5, 2008
This review is from: The Murderer Vine (Hard Case Crime) (Mass Market Paperback)
As I read more and more of Hard Case Crime's re-releases of old mysteries from decades past, I have noticed that in a certain way they are mostly similar in that they focus on crime. That, in itself, is not surprising (especially given the name of the publisher), but what is a little more so is where the focus isn't: on anything even vaguely political. The Murderer Vine by Shepard Rifkin, originally published in 1970, is an exception.
The politics in this case deal with the civil rights movement in the Deep South. Then three young men disappear while trying to register black voters, murder is the obvious conclusion to be arrived at and, of course, the fix is in to make sure no one is ever prosecuted for the crime. One of the victims, however, has a rich father, and he hires ex-cop-turned-private-eye Joe Dunne to find the bodies, determine who the killers are, and make sure they pay the ultimate price. Dunne has some ethics, but the hundreds of thousands of dollars his client offers overrides any moral concerns.
Dunne heads down to Mississippi along with his beautiful assistant Kirby, who not only offers cover, but as a native Southerner, can teach him the ways of Dixie. Figuring out who the killers are will require blending into small town Southern life and - against Dunne's better nature - adopting a bit of a racist nature.
Will he succeed? Well, the novel begins with Dunne hiding out in Latin America, telling his tale in the form of a confession to a visiting priest. He has committed some sort of crime to justify his hiding out here, but what it is - and how it was done - is the basis of the story.
The Murderer Vine is not the best in the Hard Case Crime series, but it is a decent book. The main flaw is that the first half is pretty slow moving, and it takes nearly a hundred pages (out of a 250 page book) for Dunne to finally get to his destination. Once he's there, however, things to pick up, and by the end, things really move. This one should not be your first choice in this series, but when you get to it, you won't be disappointed.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the best in the Hard Case Crime series, May 4, 2008
This review is from: The Murderer Vine (Hard Case Crime) (Mass Market Paperback)
I've read every book in the HCC series to date, and this is definitely one of the best. The book's focus on racism in the South circa 1970 (when the book was originally written) was a surprise, especially for this genre. However, you'll still find a beautiful dame, a crooked cop, an evil mastermind, plenty of hardboiled characters and of course first person writing that prove that this book very much belongs in the Hard Case Crime canon. If you have seen the film Mississippi Burning (or are familiar with the events depicted in that film), this is a very different take on the subject of 3 missing civil rights workers. An enjoyable read.
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