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It's a lovely weekend in October and Sheriff Homer Deters is not on duty. He and Nina Ross are enjoying a romantic riparian picnic; he chooses this moment to ask Nina to marry him. Her response is interrupted by an frantic call from Deputy Festus Reagan: a body has been found. So much for romance. Deputy Reagan isn't even correct. It's not really a body per se; it's a bunch of bones tumbled willy-nilly into a ditch. They turn out, after autopsy, to be very old Native American bones. Homer isn't sure which crime he should be investigating. It doesn't look like murder, and what's the motive for disturbing a Native American burial ground?
It's a fairly typical week in some respects. One of the locals has issues with a new arrival from the Big City. Mary Lincoln is an avid recycler and a determined walker; she uses her walks to clean up the roadways and keep the landfills just a little less full. Next-door neighbor Wilma Netherton is convinced that there are rats living in the neatly stacked, clean piles of non-trash.
There's been a truck hi-jacking, and then the truck (which has been impounded) is stolen from the impound lot. There's a brewing fight at the Town Council meetings about a possible big-box liquor store coming to town; they are somehow able to sell quite a bit of alcohol at incredibly low prices, which is making the local moonshine supplier upset. And there is a real murder, again with no readily obvious motive. Not to mention Nina Ross won't marry him, set a date, or wear the ring out in public until another contender for her hand is fixed up with somebody else. And there's the little problem resulting from Homer providing a temporary foster home for a jackass: he's being evicted. Homer has had easier weeks.
I have to say that the Homer Deters books are not great literature. They are, however, lots of fun and well written. Some of the humor is what one might expect from a book set in rural anywhere - small town life with all its foibles is great fodder for this. Dymmoch is excellent at keeping the truly blatant hillbilly jokes to a minimum, and setting the reader up for some long-range humor. Homer may come from a small town, but he's not an idiot. People not from West Wheeling have a definite tendency to underestimate his abilities, which makes for entertaining reading. The characters are people any reader might encounter, no matter where that reader lives. Idiots and bigots are not limited to rural zip codes and neither are good-hearted people who want to do the right thing. Homer handles events and people with an admirable aplomb, which makes the humor all the more understated.
§ I have been reading and reviewing mystery fiction for over a quarter of a century and read broadly within just about all genres and sub-genres. I have been a preliminary judge for the Malice Domestic/St. Martin’s Press Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Contest for at least 25 years. I live in Northern lower Michigan with my spousal unit, one large cat, and two fairly small dogs.
Reviewed by PJ Coldren, June 2016
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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