December 22, 2014
Retired detective Simon Sunderson returns in the latest from Harrison (after The Great Leader), which the author describes as a “faux mystery.” This time Sunderson is investigating a series of homicides near his newly purchased fishing cabin in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The victims are all members of the Ames clan, a nefarious backwoods family, and the first act of violence strikes down Lily, Sunderson’s housekeeper. After entangling himself intellectually with aspiring writer Lemuel Ames and physically with 19-year-old Monica Ames, Sunderson devotes himself to tracking down the culprits, all the while suspecting his beautiful paramour to be behind the crimes. Characters from the detective’s previous adventure return, including sidekick Mona, who assists Sunderson by scraping together information on the Ameses, and Diane, the ex-wife he still fancies. The novel takes its time finding its story, with characters introduced early who never reappear, and at one point, Harrison halts his hero’s investigation with a long vacation to Mexico. This wandering can frustrate, as can the hillbilly stereotypes and Sunderson’s obsession with female posteriors. But when our hero is neck deep in his quest for justice, snooping while also considering the seven deadly sins (hence the title), Harrison proves once again that he is an inimitable, inexhaustible talent. Agent: Steve Sheppard, Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams & Sheppard.
January 1, 2015
Now retired, detective Sunderson (introduced in The Great Leader) upgrades a cabin in Michigan's Upper Peninsula to enjoy the trout fishing, only to find that his lunatic neighbors, the gun-and-vodka-fueled Ames family, will shoot at anything, themselves included. Harrison, one of the best, appropriately calls this a "faux" mystery; Ames men are being poisoned and there is a culprit, but the mystery is subordinate to observation and speculation. If Lee Child is a Wellcraft speedboat, Harrison is an excursion boat. Much of Sunderson's musing centers on the seven deadly sins, especially lechery; after only a few chapters the 66-year-old protagonist has "been with" two teenagers, one his adopted daughter. Flawed, he meditates on his imperfections (as he works on an essay about the eighth deadly sin--violence--with help from his ex-wife)--as well as politics, trout, wrongs done Native Americans, history, sex, more sex, and writers on a long spectrum, from Raymond Chandler to Sir Thomas Browne. VERDICT Maybe not Harrison at his best but not far off either. Fox News addicts and Tea Party types should avoid; this is a treat for curious and speculative mystery readers. [See Prepub Alert, 7/28/14.]--Robert E. Brown, Oswego, NY
Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from January 1, 2015
The ever-befuddled Detective Sunderson (The Great Leader, 2011) is still a retired cop living in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, but, retired or not, he remains hip-deep in troubles, many of his own making. The idea of buying a remote cabin near a trout stream in the upper part of the U.P. sounds good, until the cabin turns out to be adjacent to a compound that's home to an inbred batch of outlaws who make the Snopes boys look like the chamber of commerce. Naturally, Sunderson gets involved with the vodka-swilling Ames clan, offering writing advice to one of them, who developed a yen to pen mysteries while in prison, and making love to a couple of the female members whose age puts them just north of legal and a long way from Sunderson's sixtysomething. Along the way, he muses on the seven deadly sins (the titular big seven) and on his abiding passion for ex-wife Diane, who stops counting Sunderson's drinks long enough to rekindle some passion of her own. This one is even less of a mystery than its predecessor, but who cares when you can watch and listen to a character who somehow combines the boisterous spirit of Falstaff with the neurotic soul of Woody Allen, a randy, boozing backwoods philosopher who sins with raucous abandon, frets about what it means, and then comes back for more, all with a life-loving romantic streak that makes you, well, want to put a little sin back in your own life.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)
January 1, 2015
Ex-cop Sunderson is as bemused as ever in Harrison's follow-up to The Great Leader (2011)."The Big Seven" are those deadly sins their Lutheran pastor thundered against when Sunderson was a boy, leaving him with a permanent fixation on his own and others' moral failings. Lechery and gluttony are definitely the big ones for the now-retired Michigan State Police detective: This semimystery contains the same abundant, enthusiastic descriptions of food found in virtually all Harrison's work, and the heavy drinking that led to Sunderson's divorce from still-beloved Diane doesn't keep him from a booklong affair with 19-year-old Monica or a one-night stand with his adopted daughter, Mona (both relationships, improbably and distastefully, initiated by the young women). Sunderson's misdeeds pale in comparison to those of the Ames family, which occupies three ramshackle farmhouses near his fishing cabin in rural Michigan. Monica is one of the low-life clan's many women abused from childhood by male relatives; the lurid plot is launched by her sister Lily's death in a shootout with her cousin Tom, both wielding AK-47s. It doesn't get any more plausible after this, as an epidemic of poisonings carries off several more Ameses, none of them any great loss. Violence should definitely be considered the eighth deadly sin, concludes Sunderson, whose efforts to write an essay on the subject-and to cut down on his drinking-bring him closer to Diane and the possibility of a reconciliation. You can't help but like feckless, unpretentiously intellectual Sunderson, inclined to tie himself in metaphysical knots when not fishing or otherwise engaging with the natural world whose splendors, movingly described, succor him in a way nothing else can. The poisonings are resolved with yet more bloodshed, and the possibility of another case for our hero is blatantly flourished. After a lifetime of deep, dark fiction like Dalva (1988) and True North (2004), Harrison is entitled to relax with these autumnal ramblings.
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