Dead Man Blues by S.D. House

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

Dave Hendricks had it all: mayor of a small town on the Tennessee/Kentucky border, he was a big fish in a small pond.  He had a beautiful wife, Janet, nice house, and Victor, a best friend he loved like a brother. And then he found out Janet was cheating on him with, of all people, Victor, and the next thing he knows he’s drunkenly driven a car into the courthouse.

That pretty much ended the political career.  The friendship and the marriage were already toast.

Nowadays Dave lives on a houseboat with his dog Shorty and helps Ray out at the marina.  Then a man is murdered at a nearby fishing camp, and Victor asks Dave’s help.  Victor is the sheriff, but Dave had been sheriff previously and has had experience with homicides.  It’s an uneasy partnership, but Dave finds that the thrill of investigation gives him a purpose he’d lacked since, well, the incident.

The victim, Esau Campbell, is a local man who had been in trouble before, and there are many people who had reason to dislike him, and to dislike his family.  The Campbells are one of the wealthiest families in the area, and most feel they came by their money dishonestly—cheating people out of their property. This means there are suspects galore, and Dave has his work cut out for him finding the guilty party.

S.D. House is Silas House, an award-winning Appalachian author who has decided to try his hand at a mystery.  As expected, the book is well-written, with vivid characters and a good sense of place: a rural area where people tend to have long memories.  A dam was constructed a few years back, uprooting families and changing some ways of life, leaving a sense of loss among some residents. The 1950s setting means that a lot of investigating is done without modern technology like DNA analysis, which I find more interesting than the high tech method.

House is good at red herrings; I thought I had spotted the murderer early on and was a bit disappointed but I was pleased to be proven wrong.  I will say a couple of things troubled me as not being true to the era but again, I might be mistaken.  I did enjoy the book and I hope House will try his hand at a mystery again.