Sharyn McCrumb

Sheriff Spencer Arrowood investigates the threatening messages being sent to Peggy Muryan, a famous folksinger of the 1960s, who has returned to her hometown of Hamelin, Tennessee, in search of peace and quiet

If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O

Daryl Houston

The ending of this one veered away from what you'd expect (even once the mystery itself was solved), and I suppose I liked that. The writing didn't do much for me, though. It made me think that there are several types of writing, of which the list below is a subset:

 
  

   Writing in which getting from point A to point B in the action is the main point and the author pulls it off fairly artfully or at least in a coherent way. I think some of the older hard-boiled mystery novesl I've read this year fit in this bucket pretty well. The point is the action, and the prose that gets us from A to B all makes sense, without much superfluity. 
  

   Writing in which A and B are less important than how the author writes about it (this tends to be my favorite). 
  

   Writing in which getting from A to be is what's important, and the author blunders through it kind of awkwardly, as if to fill time or pages between A and B. 
  

 

This book felt like it had a lot of the latter in it. I see this most often in just bizarre statements or rationalizations for behaviors, or weird behaviors on the parts of the characters. I see it in incorrect facts. It's really annoying and makes me doubt in a way that the author is working in good faith. It feels in a way like padding out an essay to hit a word count when you've run out of stuff of substance to say. I didn't jot down any specific examples of this from McCrumb's book, but it's very much the feeling I had while reading it.

I also found it annoying that the author's introduction makes a fuss about how there's some intellectual heft to the book -- that you have to keep your brain turned on to read this one. Well, sure. There's some consideration of how we trat veterans; there's some consideration of our narratives around women. But none of it is terribly compelling or artfully done. A few literary quotes and what I guess she felt like were clever references in the text don't make a book intellectually hefty, and to suggest that they do seems a little self-aggrandizing and silly.

So, it's an ok book, but a bit disappointing given expectations the author set. It is at least a quick read.

If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O

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