IDYLL HANDS

Idyll Hands                

By Stephanie Gayle

ISBN: 978-1-63388-482-3

A 2018 release from

Seventh Street Books

Not to mince words, this is an excellent novel. The story travels between 1972 in Charleston, Massachusetts, and 1999 in Idyll, Connecticut. In its emotional beginning, Susan, the sixteen-year-old sister of a new policeman, Michael Finnegan, is running away from home, at least for a few days. Why, we don’t know for sure.

Twenty-six years later, in a town not far from Charleston, the new chief of police in Idyll, Connecticut, named Thomas Lynch, is confronted with allergies and the preserved bone of an unknown woman or girl, the cops in that town have named Colleen. The bone is from a body unknown and unnamed found years earlier.

And so the story begins. As it unfolds, Michael Finnegan, now an experienced detective and his boss, Chief Lynch, working together and separately, among the small force of law enforcement people, confront questions of other missing young women. And throughout the novel, the hard loss of Finnegan’s still missing sister is always present.

In carefully measured chapters, the search for the woman found in the grave in Idyll is laid out and the detectives draw ever closer to the murderer. At the same time, detective Finnegan continues to pick away at random small clues to the enduring mystery of his sister’s disappearance.

Scenes are carefully and sometimes elaborately described; the pace of the novel is intense, and readers will be treated to a small cadre of police individuals whose emotional investments in their careers are carefully laid out, along with the civilian sides of life. Readers will also be treated to an interesting look at the process of crime detection in this town where the authorities are anything but idle.

In carefully measured chapters, the search for the woman found in the grave in Idyll is laid out and the detectives draw ever closer to the murderer. At the same time, detective Finnegan continues to pick away at random small clues to the enduring mystery of his sister’s disappearance.

Scenes are carefully and sometimes elaborately described; the pace of the novel is intense, and readers will be treated to a small cadre of police individuals whose emotional investments in their careers are carefully laid out, along with the civilian sides of life. Readers will also be treated to an interesting look at the process of crime detection in this town where the authorities are anything but idle.

CAKE, THE MOVIE

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Jennifer Aniston stars. Yes, that glamorous, wonderful-looking Jennifer A. You almost don’t recognize her as Claire Simmons, a pain-wracked survivor of a terrible accident. She is struggling to recover. Her body doesn’t work the way it is supposed to anymore and she uses copious amounts of pain pills. She attends therapy sessions which seem to depress her even more than she already is. Depressed, that is.

This is a movie about depression. There is no glamour here. No make-up, frumpy clothes, no hair styling. This is a movie about pain, enduring, persistent, stultifying pain. And this is a movie about one woman’s struggle, through her inquisitiveness about another woman’s suicide, to come to terms with her life and its ongoing reality.

Aniston is the star and she lifts this movie out of the doldrums of hundreds of ordinary Hollywood flicks. Cake lets its audience experience some of the weighty characteristics of pain and depression. I wonder if some of the negative elements of some reviews are not because the reviewers were experiencing personal feelings of déjà vu. In the end, this movie is affirmation of life and gut-clenching determination.

Anniston should have received an Oscar nomination for Cake. For a lot of reasons, I strongly recommend this movie, not just to the depressed among us, but to everyone.

INSPIRING CHRISTMAS MUSIC

Tonight we were treated to the fine music of two local college departments. First an hour of vocal music from several excellent vocal aggregations  of St. Olaf  University, then an equally fine series of new and old songs and pieces from the musicians of St. Thomas University in Saint Paul. In both cases we heard passionate performances from students of the universities, offering a wide variety of music from several nations. The recorded performances are undoubtedly available on DVD and in repeat television performances from the local public television station,  I commend them both to your ears.

A JOURNEY TO DIE FOR

      

By Radine Trees Nehring

ISBN 978-1-60364-020-6

Wolfmont Press, trade paper

296 pg., May 2010

Here’s a good example, if readers at large still need one, of a crime novel that fits comfortably into the fine tradition of fiction that relies on good writing, a fine plot, odd and usual suspects and an interesting setting. The author relies on a good story rather than tortured or crass language, logical development rather than constant physical action.

Carrie King a neighborly, bright woman of late middling years and her husband, Henry King, a retired cop from Kansas City, are making an exploration into Arkansas history with a trip on a restored train to a small historic community on the shores of the Arkansas River. At the halfway point passengers leave the train to enjoy a brief sojourn in the town of Van Buren. When Carrie and Henry reach the river and a large historic mural to study, the possibility of encountering a dead body of the farthest thing from their minds. But alas, there it is and then there are the buttons.

A charming and delightful mystery ensues. Nehring’s unerring ear for dialog and her sense of what constitutes a well rounded character serve the reader well as the Kings travel between home, Van Buren and Kansas City where Henry had a solid career as a police officer. There have been allusions in the past to Henry’s rather abrupt retirement and in a powerful emotional scene at the Van Buren police station, Carrie and readers will receive serious and deep insight into Henry’s secret.

In the tradition of traditional American mysteries, A Journey to Die For is an excellent and satisfying entry.