Before I get to the book a personal note---Twenty-seven years ago today I married a young lady by the
name of Sandi in a church in Boston. The same church that both her parents and
her grandparents had been married in many years earlier. Considering the fact
that it was 100 degrees that June day in Boston and our limo had no air-conditioning
at all that should have been a sign that things would be a little off. Another
sign should have been the fact that the pants of my tux didn’t fit and the pins
I, my best man, and others had put in didn’t hold. Nothing quite like the sound
of a metal pin flying and hitting off of things every time I knelt or stood up.
Needless to say that was one of the reasons why our wedding pictures are rather
interesting.
If we hadn’t figured things out by that night considering all
that and a few other things, we should have realized something was up the next
morning when in the dawn's early light it was 28 and snowing heavily. This Texas boy was far from home
with nothing but shorts and t-shirts, one pair of jeans, and a strong conviction that
snow in June was a sign of up north freakiness. 27 years later it has been a
massive amount of sickness, very little health, a massive amount of poverty,
and a heap of struggle. The last two and half years have been absolutely brutal for so many reasons. But, somehow we are still here. Thanks to the doctors and a
ton of luck and prayers, Sandi is thankfully still alive and currently in
remission.
Today is also Friday and that means it is time for Friday’s Forgotten
Books hosted by Patti Abbott over on her blog at http://pattinase.blogspot.com/ So, I will quit talking about us and move on
to the book in question…….
It’s the summer of 1890 and while phones are a new novelty
that may or may not survive, death is nothing new. As this western mystery
opens, Sheriff Jeff Scott leads a group of investigators composed of Doctor
Chester Reynolds, (also the La Roca County Corner), Constable Kurtz, and Undersheriff
Elwood Riley out to an isolated homestead in the San Juan Valley. A week
earlier in the smoldering remains of his cabin, the owner was found dead,
burned beyond recognition. All that was
left of Konrad Schwable was a few bones.
By now, a week later, the trail has gone cold but it took
time for the investigators to get to the La Quinta area from the county seat of
La Roca. That the man is dead is easy to
discern. How he died and why he died is much harder to determine. Each man has a working theory as to how and
why and with no obvious evidence, Sheriff Scott allows each to pursue his own
relatively independent investigation.
After all, it is an election year and all four men are once more running
for office with the added complication of Undersheriff Riley seeking the office
of Sheriff. In a related secondary
storyline, Riley also wants the daughter of the Sheriff to marry him.
With a possible love triangle involved in the death of
Konrad Schwable, rustlers known as the “night riders” operating in the area,
ongoing land fraud involving homesteads, and other things including election
year politics and the beast known as progress, movement in the case is slow
with most of the novel devoted to character development. Gradually, over 319
pages in a novel that shifts continuously between the many characters, a
picture of what happened and why begins to take shape. Along the way, readers
are treated to an enjoyable mystery that not only shows how life was like a
little over 100 years ago, but also that for all the modern marvels, basic
human qualities haven’t changed much if at all.
Sadly the author passed in November 2008.
Playing God
Allen P. Bristow
Virtualbookworm.com Publishing
ISBN# 978-1589397453
July 12, 2005
Paperback
320 Pages
Back long ago this material was supplied by the author in
exchange for my objective review. Much of this review originally appeared at
OnceWritten.com where I was a reviewer a number of years ago.
Kevin R. Tipple © 2006, 2012
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1 comment:
Happy Anniversary, Kevin and Sandi! May things only go up from here.
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