Meet the Characters of Magnolia Bluff: The Detective

 A Review by Caleb Pirtle III

CW Hawes cleverly opens old wounds and reveals dark secrets as his story sets Magnolia Bluff on fire, and we watch it smolder and burn.

Reece Sovern is the chief detective in Magnolia Bluff.

His is not a difficult job.

Magnolia Bluff is usually quiet and peaceful, an eccentric little town near the shores of Burnet Reservoir.

He investigates the usual fare of crimes and misdemeanors.

A few thefts.

Burglaries.

Carjackings.

Nothing serious.

Of course, there’s the string of deaths that occur every May 23.

Been going on for several years.

Never solved.

Probably never will be.

Sovern only hopes the last one has died.

But in Death Wears A Crimson Hat, Book 1 of the Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles, he has another real crime to investigate.

One murder.

A hit and run.

He has lots of suspects.

He has hardly any evidence at all.

***

Enjoy an excerpt from Death Wears a Crimson Hat, available on Amazon.

Back in his office, Detective Reece Sovern pushed his glasses up and looked over his notes. Three people had seen the hit and run. No one had been able to catch the license plate number, and the three didn’t agree on make or model of the vehicle. They did agree that the car was a dark color. But whether it was black, navy blue, brown, or gray, not one of the three could say.

The vehicle seemed to come out of nowhere, hit Mary Lou as she began walking away from her car, and kept on going. Which told Sovern that the hit was probably intentional, rather than accidental.

He would have loved to talk to her, but at this point Mary Lou was in a coma and not talking to anybody.

“That’s the second Crimson Hat Society member in as many days,” he muttered. “Which is just a bit too coincidental for my liking.”

Aside from Mary Lou’s group, what did the two women have in common?

The cigar rolled from one corner of his mouth to the other. “From the looks of it, that’s all they had in common,” he said to his desk.

He looked at the ceiling and frowned. There was all the gossip flying around town concerning Mary Lou and Reverend Cole, which gave Ember Cole a motive. 

After all, Mary Lou was threatening to get her canned from the church. At least that is what Ray Holden said, and he should know. He was after all the chairman of the pastor-parish relations committee.

Plenty of motive to kill someone who was threatening to destroy your career. And, sad to say, ministers weren’t exempt from the baser human passions.

With the reverend’s car at the garage and the forensics people crawling all over it, he’d know soon enough if her car was the one that had done in the Middlebrook woman.

His gaze shifted back to his notes. Unless Cole had gotten a car from someplace else or borrowed one from someone, she was off the hook for Mary Lou Fight. Unless she’d paid someone to do it. And that was a distinct possibility. In fact, it made a whole heck of a lot of sense to Sovern.

Then there was Harry Thurgood. “Now that’s a guy with a past if I ever saw one,” he muttered. “And he seems to be pretty thick with the Reverend. The gossips can’t miss an unmarried man and a single woman spending time together. Which means they might be in it together. Maybe I should take a look at Thurgood’s car. Although he seems too shrewd to use his own vehicle for something like this.”

Sovern took the cigar out of his mouth, looked at the soggy end, pitched it towards the wastebasket, missed, and took a fresh stogie from his desk drawer to replace it.

He leaned back in his desk chair, cigar jutting out of his mouth, hands behind his head, and said to the ceiling, “Don’t see sufficient motive to pin this on the Reverend or Thurgood. Maybe in time, but not right now.” He sat up. “But somebody had sufficient motive, and if it isn’t Cole or Thurgood, who is it? Then there’s that nutty hat group. Other than the society, what connects Fight and Middlebrook? Or is that it?”

He shook his head and stood. He had more people to interview, and that wasn’t going to happen sitting at his desk.

***

And there’s more of Reece Sovern in the upcoming Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicle release: Second Chances by Joe Congel.

I’ve had a sneak peak of Second Chances and it’s going to be a fabulously good addition to the series. The book’s on pre-order at Amazon.

In the meantime, you can read the other books in the Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles series, if you haven’t already. Find them on Amazon.

And if you’ve read all the books in the series, while you’re waiting for Second Chances, you can read Joe’s Tony Razzolito PI mysteries. Find them on Amazon. 

And you can read my own Justinia Wright PI mysteries, also on Amazon. Mysteries that are gently paced until the whizz-bang endings.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

(This post originally appeared in a different form on calebandlindapirtle.com)

CW Hawes is the author of the bestselling Death Wears a Crimson Hat; he’s also a playwright, screenwriter, fictioneer, and an award-winning poet. When not writing, he’s an armchair philosopher, political theorist, social commentator, and traveler. He loves a good cup of tea and agrees that everything’s better with pizza.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider buying me a cup of tea. Thanks! PayPal.me/CWHawes 

TV Review: Murdoch Mysteries

Steampunk is alive well. Not only as a sub-genre of speculative fiction, but also as a lifestyle movement and a musical genre.

A few weeks ago, while looking for something to watch on Netflix streaming, I stumbled upon the retro-detective series Murdoch Mysteries. I fell in love immediately. I mean who wouldn’t love a show that features Nikola Tesla in the first episode? I’ve been binge watching ever since.

Some people might not call Murdoch Mysteries steampunk. And in a very real sense it isn’t. At least it isn’t traditional steampunk. However there are many steampunk elements that the writers incorporate in the episodes, so I call it steampunk light.

Detective William Murdoch, of Toronto Constabulary’s Fourth Station House, is an amateur inventor and a scientific sleuth worthy of Sherlock Holmes’s shoes, Inverness cape, and deerstalker hat. But Murdoch wears none of those. Just a conservative 1890s suit and Homburg, the classic hat worn by Winston Churchill, among others.

The show begins in the mid-1890s and in season six enters the new century. Numerous inventions are featured that were either invented or discussed at that time and some of them Murdoch himself invents to help him solve crimes. Also a feature of the show are the famous personalities who appear as part of the storyline; people such as Tesla, Henry Ford, Winston Churchill, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Jack London, and HG Wells.

The episodes are filled with humor and historical puns, such as when Constable Crabtree claps his hands to activate a sound activated switch (the Clapper of modern day fame), which makes the series almost a comedy were it not for the seriousness of Murdoch and the murders he’s trying to solve.

I believe the success of this series lies in the interaction of the main trio of characters: Detective Murdoch, Constable Crabtree, and Inspector Brackenreid. Murdoch is unrelentingly serious and conservative, in spite of his love of science, technology, and invention. When he invents “Silly Putty” to capture newsprint he can’t read on the inside of a wallet, Brackenreid wants to take some home for his boys because they would love the silliness of it. Murdoch rebukes him that the putty is not a toy.

Crabtree aspires to be like Murdoch, but has an imagination that enables him to see practical applications of Murdoch’s and other inventors’s inventions that they themselves don’t see or dismiss. When a microwave machine shows up in Murdoch’s office, having been used as a weapon, Crabtree envisions it could be used to bake potatoes. When told the machine would have to be the size of a room, Crabtree goes on to imagine homes being built in the future with potato baking rooms. Eventually in the course of the series, Crabtree puts his imagination to use and writes a novel.

Brackenreid is an old school cop who in the beginning has little toleration for Murdoch’s odd methods. He’s a blustering blowhard, who is really a marshmallow on the inside.

Of course no series would be complete without a love interest and that we have between Murdoch and the very progressive coroner, Doctor Julia Ogden.

The series also explores many social issues and can therefore be seen as a commentary on our own age, which in many ways isn’t much different from Murdoch’s.

As I noted above, many might not see Murdoch Mysteries as steampunk. But whatever genre you decide to call the series, the series is riotously good fun. Very highly recommended.

As always, comments are welcome and until next time — happy reading!

Book Review: Entangled by J. Evan Stuart

What makes for a good mystery? For me, it is having a sleuth who is memorable. Sherlock Holmes, Nero Wolfe, Sam Spade, Phryne Fisher, Kinsey Milhone, Nick and Nora Charles, Mr and Mrs North, Hercule Poirot, Inspector Morse, Inspector Barnaby, Matt Scudder.

I don’t remember the individual cases, the puzzles the detectives solved, I remember the detectives themselves. They are colorful, unique, quirky, and have a splash of panache.

For me, the characters make the story and therefore I tend to be quite forgiving if the puzzle is less than perfect, because I don’t really care about the puzzle anyway. And this holds true for me no matter what genre I read. Give me interesting characters and I am happy, just like that proverbial clam. The story is only there to make the character shine. It is as Ray Bradbury said, create your character, let him do his thing, and there is the story.

In Entangled by J Evan Stuart, Detective Sonya Reisler is just such a sleuth. She’s memorable. She has a strong sense of justice. She wants to prove herself and is willing to take risks to do so. And she has a past.

We love angst-filled detectives, don’t we? Matt Scudder, Jackson Brody, Phryne Fisher, Aimée Leduc, my own Justinia Wright. A past the detective is trying to hold at bay or run from. A haunting past he or she can’t get rid of any more than they can get rid of their brains.

Sonya has a past. A past which forces her to make decisions she might not otherwise make and to trust people no normal police detective would trust. And that’s what makes Entangled such a good read. It is the rollercoaster ride we emotionally share with Sonya as she tries to find the real killer instead of hanging it on the easy and innocent victim which the lazy sheriff wants to do — and at the same time deal with her demons.

Not that Entangled isn’t a good story in its own right, for it is. The storyline kept me on the edge of my seat. A classic howdunit, with a whizz-bang ending. What is significant, in my opinion, is that the story is the perfect stage on which the characters can do their thing and in the process tell us their stories. To me, that is the work of a superb writer.

This debut novel by J Evan Stuart is not only exquisite entertainment, it goes deeper and addresses what touches us as human beings most deeply: namely, relationships; both their significance and importance to us as social creatures. For even the most misanthropic curmudgeon amongst us still responds to a kind word and a gentle touch.

Entangled by J Evan Stuart is very highly recommended. The book is truly a cut above and one not to be missed.