Showing posts with label seventh street books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label seventh street books. Show all posts
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Review: See Also Proof: A Marjorie Trumaine Mystery by Larry D. Sweazy
“’Yes. Hank fought a long, battle.”
“He’s in a better place now.”
I forced a blank look to stay on my face and stopped the words that
were about to erupt from my mouth. I couldn’t bring myself to accept the idea
that the better place Hank was in wasn’t with me. Most people took comfort in
the idea that my husband was waiting for me in the afterlife, but my broken
faith wouldn’t allow that kind of hope to take seed. My heart had suffered a
severe break that had left lingering damage.’” (See Also Proof: A Marjorie Trumaine Mystery, Page 79).
It is
January, 1965, in North Dakota as See Also Proof: A Marjorie Trumaine Mystery begins.
Marjorie’s husband, Hank, passed away last October and Marjorie is deep into
grief. She still is unable to sleep in the bed she shared with him nor do
anything with his clothes. Having been his caregiver for so long she desperately
misses the rituals of the chores she had to do to meet his needs. His dog,
Shep, a border collie, is now her dog though she realizes he will always really
be Hank’s dog. At least it is January and there is not much outdoors on her
farm as this is the time of year when humans and animals hunker down and just
try to survive the winter. An in home visit with several of the ladies of the “Ladies
Aid” reveals she is not alone in a personal family nightmare.
Tina
Rinkerman, a fourteen year old teenager with Down syndrome has wandered away
from the family farm. Not only was she not dressed for the January weather, her
disabilities make her even more vulnerable. Family and neighbors are out
searching for her, but that search has been fruitless and was suspended due to
nightfall.
The next
day, Marjorie assists in the search and is paired with Sheriff Guy Reinhardt.
Their hunt for the young teen takes them to a nearby area where members of the
family found foot prints in the snow by a fence line very late the night
before. After some walking across barren and snow covered fields, Sheriff
Reinhardt and Marjoire spot something in a shelterbelt. The stand of
cottonwood trees was planted as a wind break by some pioneer decades earlier.
Now that shelterbreak holds a car with the body of Niles Jacobsen. He has been
murdered as the bullet holes through the windshield clearly indicate. It seems
obvious that he was lured out there and executed by someone firing from a deer
stand inside the shelterbreak.
In
addition to the hunt for the missing teenager, Sheriff Reinhardt and the very
small police force of Dickerson, North Dakota now have a murder on their hands.
They are going to need Marjorie’s help as they all know she reads a lot and is
the smartest person around. Her latest freelance index project needs to wait as
Marjorie is going to have to help out. Driven by her natural curiosity and her
grief, Marjorie pushes to find out whether the two events are linked and how.
Like all
good series, this one that should be read in order starting with See
Also Proof, followed by See
Also Deception. Readers of this series have known from the start of
the inevitability of Hank’s death which ultimately occurred in the second book.
His death and Marjorie’s grief is one of the two major storylines in this book.
That situation made this read a
difficult one for me.
Not because the
book is not good. It very much is. Marjorie’s grief and her responses to it hit
very close to home. For some reason, I have always felt a deep kinship with the
very fictional mid 30s Marjorie Trumaine. I have no idea why as not only am I a
mid 50s male and a city boy, I have never lived in North Dakota, and would have
been a little over three years old at the time of this book. We have nearly
nothing at all in common. Yet, her grief over the loss of her beloved husband
so mirrors my own over the loss of my beloved Sandi, the book brought me to
tears several times. Not just because, like the fictional Hank, it was Sandi
that had faith and optimism and always believed she would survive. Marjorie is also
trying to find her way to go on, despite everything, and is having a very difficult
struggle with doing so. More than once she expresses how much she misses the routine
chores of caregiving as she met Hank’s needs. Those who know me are also very
much aware how much I am struggling with my loss as well as how much I miss the
routine chores of caregiving with the loss of my wife. Marjorie is trying to go
on by focusing on her work as an indexer and I am trying to do as the same by
doing reviews and other writing related projects. As it was for Marjorie, my
work began as an attempt to bring some sort of income into the household. Her
grief, at times, overwhelms her as does mine. There is still more to this
shared bond that I can’t even begin to describe. She is as broken in her own
way as am I though by the end of the book one gets the sense she is going to be
okay.
See Also Proof: A
Marjorie Trumaine Mystery by Larry D. Sweazy continues a very good series. The secondary
storyline of the missing girl and the murder are complex and full of surprises.
A solidly good book in an excellent series, See Also Proof: A Marjorie
Trumaine mystery is well worth your time.
For another take on
the book, make sure you go read this review
by Lesa Holstine from late last April.
See
Also Proof: A Marjorie Trumaine Mystery
Larry
D. Sweazy
Seventh
Street Books (Imprint of Prometheus Books)
May
2018
ISBN#
978-1-63388-279-9
Paperback
(eBook format available)
$15.95
251
Pages
My
review copy came by way of the Dallas Public Library.
Kevin
R. Tipple ©2018
Thursday, October 20, 2016
Review: See Also Deception: A Marjorie Trumaine Mystery by Larry D. Sweazy
October 1964 and for
Marjorie Trumaine the unthinkable has happened. No, her beloved Hank is still
alive, paralyzed, and holding his own. He still wishes that he had died in the
shotgun accident, but she is thankful he is still around. Despite the brutal
events in See Also Murder, life on her farm in rural North Dakota has
continued and she is managing to hold things together. The Knudsen boys,
Peter and Jaeger, continue to be a huge help to her, but they can’t make the
rains come. Rain is the lifeblood of any farm and Marjorie needs it to rain.
Indexing helps pay the bills, but that job can’t totally support the farm.
Unfortunately, her
powers to hold things together are tenuous at best and do not extend to the
town library. Calla Eltmore, librarian resource when Marjorie has a question as
well as a longtime friend, has been found dead at her desk in the Dickinson
library. Marjorie is devastated by the news and can’t believe it. Not only the
fact that she is dead, but the police seem to think it was by suicide.
Despite voicing her misgivings,
she can’t seem to get anyone else to listen to her. Even when she spots a clear
clue that the police should have figure out.
The death of Calla is
one of several storylines at work in this complicated and very engrossing
read by author Larry D. Sweazy. Building on the character of Marjorie
Trumaine as well as several other ones, a complicated mystery read full of rich
details is constructed. Readers are again exposed to the difficulties of rural
farm life in the early 60s in North Dakota, Marjorie’s duties as an indexer, living
in a place where everyone knows your business day and night, and numerous other
themes and angles in this complicated mystery. See Also Deception: A Marjorie Trumaine
mystery building on the first book and is a very worthy second book in this
intense mystery series.
Highly recommended, as
is the first book, See
Also Murder. Because those events are referenced in this read, it
is also recommended that readers new to this series start with the first book.
See Also Deception: A Marjorie Trumaine Mystery
Larry D. Sweazy
Seventh Street Books
May 2016
ISBN# 978-1-63388-126-6
Paperback (eBook format available)
$15.95
270 Pages
Both the author as well as the
publisher, Seventh Street Books, supplied review copies for my use to read and
review.
Kevin R. Tipple ©2016
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