By Sandra Dallas, Special to The Denver Post
The Homeplace. By Kevin Wolf. Minotaur Books.
Chase Ford was a superstar, a small-town boy who made it good with the Lakers and married a country music singer. It all came crashing down, however, when a knee injury sidelined him and sent him into a world of drugs.
Now Chase comes home to Brandon, the eastern Colorado town where he grew up, where he still has friends, a few enemies and plenty of memories. Returning home isn’t easy under any circumstances, but in Chase’s case, it’s even more difficult because his arrival coincides with murder. The high school’s star basketball player is found shot to death in a field, and the team coach is knifed. Then the burned body of Chase’s half-sister, a girl he’s never met, is found in the aftermath of a prairie fire.
“The Homeplace” is a mystery, but it is so much more than that. It is a story of a Great Plains town whose residents drive pickups and wear Carhartt clothing, where men make up the volunteer fire department, and the pancake supper at the local church is a major social event. The characters ring true.
Chase’s best friend from high school, Marty, is a deputy, while Birdie, the fat tomboy with a secret crush on Chase, works as a wildlife officer. Then there is Mercy, the girl he left behind, who can’t make up her mind whether she wants Chase or the local sheriff. The sheriff is already married. He’s an opportunist with his eye on a seat in the state legislature. His future would be assured if he could just find Chase guilty of the murders.
“The Homeplace,” winner of the Tony Hillerman Prize, is the debut novel of Colorado author Kevin Wolf. The prose is exceptional. You feel the grit of the prairie wind, the bite of a blizzard, the bond among people who stay on. Wolf’s writing, in fact, brings to mind the novels of Kent Haruff, which is just about the nicest thing you can say about any Colorado writer.
Revelation. By Carter Wilson. Oceanview.
Harden Campbell, a naïve college student, wakes from a drugged coma in a basement cell containing the body of his friend–and a typewriter. He doesn’t know where he is or how he got there. One sentence is printed on the sheet of paper in the typewriter: “Tell me a story.”
The story Harden tells is about his psychopathic roommate, Coyote, whose goal is to create a new religion. The idea for the new faith actually comes from a school paper Harden writes that intrigues his roommate. Coyote’s brainwashed followers include Harden’s two demented jailers, who feed Harden only after he writes.
Harden knows Coyote is responsible for his imprisonment and will read the words, and so he spins a tale of the two men, their meeting and Coyote’s descent into religious mysticism. Does Coyote really believe what he preaches—and can he actually levitate, as he appears to do? Or is he a fraud whose goal is to consume others?
Coyote’s girlfriend, Emma, is also a skeptic and turns out to be a fellow prisoner. Both of them have been mutilated by the jailors. Harden’s goals are to stay alive and to escape with Emma. Despite the fact Emma was Coyote’s girlfriend, Harden writes, he and Emma were in love and hid their relationship.
“Revelation” (the name given to the new religion) is a dark and brooding thriller by Colorado author Carter Wilson. It delves into the mind of a psychopath who wants to control and manipulate those around him. Harden fascinates the madman because he holds out. Still, Harden is drawn to Coyote in an almost fatal way, and must make a decision between his safety and confronting a man he knows would kill him.
What You Don’t Know. By Joann Chaney. Flatiron Books.
Seven years ago, Denver detective Paul Hoskins arrested Jacky Seever, who tortured and murdered more than 30 victims, burying them in his basement. Reporter Sammie Peterson covered the discovery of the bodies and the trial for the Denver Post. Things have not gone well for the three. Seever is on death row, Hoskins has be demoted for beating up a woman, and Sammie has lost her newspaper job and works at a department store cosmetics counter.
Now, a copycat killer emerges, targeting people who were connected with Seever. Hoskins is pulled out of obscurity working on cold cases to solve the killings with his former partner, and Sammie sees the new murderer as a way to win back her old job. She shows up at a murder scene hoping to beat out the reporter who’s taken her place.
“What You Don’t Know” is one complicated and obscene book. Sammie and Hoskins were lovers before she dumped him and he ratted her out to her husband. She also has as a history with Seever. Hoskins has anger issues with perpetrators and with his weirdo partner. And then there’s Gloria, Seever’s faithful wife, who visits him every week in prison and takes home violent works of art that Seever paints.
The thriller is a another first novel by Colorado author Joann Chaney. It’s a dark, sexually explicit work that explores human evil and the depths that even normal human beings will go to achieve their goals.
