Reviewing: "Nightwalkers: A Novel" by P. T. Deutermann

It began with “The Cat Dancers” and now in this fourth book, Cam Richter needs a break. “Hide and Seek Investigations” is doing well and the events of “The Moonpool” case are finally beginning to fade somewhat. Cam is tired of living in Triboro and tired of the tedium of the usual cases the company has going. Unlike Sharon McCone in “Burn Out” (written by Marcia Muller) he isn’t depressed or anything like that. Cam Richter has always done best when he has had a challenge and these days he needs a new challenge and a change of scenery.

He may have found both with his purchase of “Glory’s End.” A sprawling antebellum plantation of 700 acres located on the banks of the Dan River in North Carolina that also happens to be home to a Civil War massacre. History that hasn’t ever changed for some of his neighbors and is just as powerful today as then. Their ways are very strange to Cam and he has to adjust to their expectations as well as changing a few of his own.

Cam has another problem that takes a higher priority over the home renovation project. Renovation of the plantation home could take years. He won’t have that time if ex-con Billie Ray Breen follows through on his often made threats to get even. Billie Ray Breen unfortunately survived the shoot out with Cam years ago and the nasty piece of work is getting early release from prison.

Before long, “Glory’s End” becomes the site of a psychological and occasional shooting war as Cam deals with the past in more ways than one. Vendettas are an age old theme of the human race and its literature and that idea is worked well here.

This fourth in the series sheds little new light on the Cam Richter character or for that matter any of his team from “Hide and Seek Investigations.” Instead, much like what James Lee Burke often does in his Dave Robicheaux novels, the primary focus is on the past. The past becomes a character in its own right and that certainly is true here. “Glory’s End” officially established in 1838 has had a long and storied history as has the surrounding North Carolina and Virginia countryside. There is literally blood in the land and the land still draws blood in this modern age. Deutermann brings that Civil War past to life and pays homage to it while at the same time not celebrating the heinous aspects of it.

Along the way, he populates the book with a complex mystery that is obvious only in a couple of spots, plenty of action and intrigue, along with fully formed realistic characters engaged in their lives. The result is another very good book in a series that one hopes is not ending but branching off into a new direction for Cam and his dogs.


Nightwalkers: A Novel
P. T. Deutermann
http://www.ptdeutermann.com/
St. Martin’s Press
http://www.stmartins.com/
June 2009
ISBN# 0-312-37241-8
Hardback
311 Pages
$24.95



Review copy provided by the good folks of the Plano, Texas Library System.

If you haven't read this series, start with "The Cat Dancers."





Kevin R. Tipple © 2009