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Summary
Summary
Jules Clement, sheriff of Blue Deer, Montana, suspects the victim's wife when a local writer is shot, but she is found dead and Jules is faced with numerous suspects in a mystery filled with humor and local color.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Blue Deer, Mont., cradled between the Absaroka and the aptly named Crazy mountain ranges, makes a fine setting for this debut mystery that is by turns side-splitting and dark. Early one Sunday morning, screenwriter George Blackwater types a script idea on his PC that smacks of autobiographical, and hungover, self-absorption: ``Crazy writer, victim of tragic error of youth, is dispossessed by soulless brother and bitch mother, embittered by fat wife.'' Moments later, a sniper's bullets waste George's monitor-and George. Enter Sheriff Jules Clement, whose first suspect is George's unlovable, oft-betrayed wife. But she disappears, and, by the time Jules finds her, is dead. Other suspects include George's brother, also a screenwriter and skilled seducer, whose hatred for George was generously reciprocated. A third party despises them both. As the body count rises, Jules, whose story this really is, contemplates the death of his father, also a sheriff, in the line of duty 20 years before and learns that George's high-school sweetheart died in a suspicious accident around that same time. Another corpse is found before the mystery's complicated, none-too-startling finale. Jules may often seem more surly than convivial, but that's a reasonable response to the doings in Blue Deer, a town harboring enough venality for more Jules Clement mysteries. Author tour. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
``Blue Deer had always boasted a high rate of insanity,'' reflects archeologist-turned-sheriff Jules Clement, and it's no idle boast. Even before whoever's been hiding in the new law offices of Biddle & Rake perforates both local screenwriter George Blackwater and his computer, this little town (pop. 3,872), tucked into the Montana mountains, is thronging with amiably appealing crazies; all George's lamentably nonfatal shooting does is sharpen their appeal by turning them into suspects. There's George's delighted wife Mona, the most likely suspect, whom Jules questions in a living room that's ``beige in every sense of the word'' just before she manages to remove herself from suspicion by getting killed considerably deader than George; George's spiteful older brother Ray, who writes thrillers and writes people off; disenchanted former lovers of George like Blue Deer Bulletin editor Ada Santoz and (maybe) George's former assistant Alice Wahlgren; the current lovers of those former lovers; laughably corrupt former deputy Bunny McElwaine, who surely knows more than he's saying about a 20-year-old fatality that's still on George's mind; and a supporting cast that could have strolled out of James Crumlish or Northern Exposure. Warm, flip, and as wiggy as the interspersed police blotters it so faithfully imitates. Harrison's debut will have you checking the schedule for the next train back to Blue Deer. (Author tour)
Library Journal Review
First novelist Harrison offers a microcosm set in Blue Deer, Montana, where a murder attempt shatters the usual calm. Jules Clement, archeologist-turned-sheriff, eyes the crime scene and then questions the wounded victimphilandering, alcoholic screenwriter George Blackwater. The Northern Exposure-like list of suspects includes his wild-eyed wife, his best-selling author brother, and a peevish ex-employee. When Jules subsequently finds the wife's body, the list grows longer. Harrison's stylistic prose, studded with spots of color and embellished by sometimes humorous characterization, lacks consistency and turns sluggish. For the persistent reader. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
