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THE HUCKLEBERRY MURDERS
by Patrick F McManus
Simon & Schuster, November 2010
272 pages
$25.00
ISBN: 1439190844


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Although local rancher Marge Poulson and her husband Orville are divorced, she has enough feelings for him to be concerned when he goes missing. She reaches out to Sheriff Bo Tully, who immediately concludes that Orville is a victim of the ranch caretaker, Ray Crockett. Crockett claims that Orville is alive and has just gone on an adventure. Meanwhile, Crockett claims that he sends Orville's Social Security check to him every month. Something is not right in Blight (Idaho); Tully feels that Crockett is a sociopath and it's just a matter of time before Orville's body will be found. I wondered how Tully came up with his judgment about Crockett's mental health; there was nothing substantial to lead him to his conclusions.

Against his better judgment, Bo is convinced by one of his deputies and former lover, Daisy Quinn, to meet with a local fortune teller to see if she has a vision of where to find Orville. Etta Gorsich, destined to be a new love interest, claims not to be a psychic, although she sometimes has psychic flashes. When Bo finds three bodies near his secret huckleberry picking patch, the Orville investigation is temporarily put aside. FBI agent Angela Phelps, also a possible romantic interest, is sent in to help, as the crime took place on federal land. Eventually, everything connects and the mysteries are solved—all except for the mystery of why every woman that Bo meets falls hard for him.

This is billed as a "comic mystery," but I found that the humor in this book was spread mighty thin. Every once in a while, Tully came up with a wry observation, but other than that, the laughs were in short supply. The author seemed more interested in presenting Bo as a lady killer, who hit on every woman that he met and was always successful in his romantic endeavors. Frankly, I saw this as wish fulfillment on the part of the writer. Perhaps being female has made this particular aspect of the books distasteful to me. What was the purpose of having four women lose their heads to him?

I'd love to see McManus reduce the emphasis on the romantic elements in these books and focus instead on some of the potentially interesting characters that he has created—Bo's father, Pap, and several members of the police department in particular. Barring that, this is not a series that I will continue to follow.

§ Formerly a training development manager for a large company, Maddy is now retired and continues to enable the addiction of crime fiction fans as owner of the online discussion group, 4 Mystery Addicts(4MA), while avidly reading in every possible free moment herself.

Reviewed by Maddy Van Hertbruggen, March 2010

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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