Wisconsin | Seattle Book Mama

“It was in the ratio of good to bad that monsters were distinguished from decent people.”

My thanks go to NetGalley and Atria Books for the invitation to read and review. This book is for sale now.

This book is the second in a new series by Amy Pease; this is her sophomore debut. I didn’t read the first, so I can tell you with certainty that you don’t have to, either. There are frequent enough references to the backstory here that I could follow it just fine, yet I also wondered why I was invited to read this one without having read the first. I’m over it. This is a terrific series, and when the third installment is written and available, I’ll be ready for it.

The setting is an idyllic small town in Wisconsin. “There was something in the water in Shaky Lake that turned even the toughest people into extras in a Hallmark movie.” Yet things are not as tranquil as they appear. A woman is reported missing, and the authorities that enter find blood spattered all over the walls, pooled on the mattress. Why would anyone do this to a young woman that lived alone in a singlewide trailer? But soon we see that nothing is as it appears.

Our protagonist is Deputy Sheriff Eli North, a recently deployed vet recovering from PTSD and alcoholism. I cringe when I read the latter, burned out as I am on alcoholic crime busters, but happily, booze is not at the forefront of this mystery. The sheriff, Eli’s boss, is also his mother. And this is a breath of fresh air; for a while, it seemed as if every mother in every book was a terrible person.

This is Eli’s investigation, but before we know it, the Feds are involved, too. Turns out that the missing woman—she of the blood-covered trailer—was also a confidential informant of the FBI. From there, the story unfurls in a way I find captivating. The ratio of crime-solving to character development is perfect. Whereas one has to suspend disbelief a little bit, it’s not more so than in most mysteries, and I like the way the ending plays out.

Highly recommended to mystery lovers.

AcrosstheGreatLake I received this book free from Net Galley and University of Wisconsin Press in exchange for this honest review. It will be available for purchase on September 18, 2018.

Conceptually this story has great promise. The Great Lakes are where important American naval battles have taken place, and yet very little fiction is set there. This reviewer lived near Lake Erie for most of the 1980s, and I thought this novel would be a sure fire winner.

An elderly woman is looking back at her life, and the story starts with her earliest memories, when her parents separate and her father, a sea captain, takes her from her unstable mother and the girl goes to sea with him. Sailors mutter dark things. There’s a ghost ship that the crew speaks of ominously.

Zacharias nails Fern’s developmental stages, which is critical for anyone writing about a child, particularly if that child is going to voice some of the narrative. Failing to do so breaks the spell entirely, and I am cheered when I see it done correctly. There’s also a great deal of painstaking historical and nautical detail here. As a history teacher I appreciate it, and I learned some things.

Sadly, the character feels weighted down by the setting instead of developed by it. I never feel as if I know the protagonist, but rather as though the author has a great deal of research done and is going to use as much of it as is humanly possible. I pushed my way through it until just before the halfway mark, and then I abandoned ship.