Book Review: Crimson Creek

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

Crimson Creek     Amazon US TPB Amazon Canada TPB
Dean Feldmeyer
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Amateur Sleuth
Series: Rev. Dan Thompson # 4
Silver Dagger, Aug 2001, $13.95, 202 pp.

In Three Mountain Township, Kentucky, Methodist Minister Dan Thompson and Constable Ray Hall attend the funeral of Geraldine Shrewbridge. Although the senior citizen peacefully died in her sleep, funeral director LeRoy Whiteker asks the two men to take a close look at the corpse of Jonah Haycatcher, who died when he fell off his tractor and was run over by the disk. LeRoy shows his two visitors a bullet hole in the back of Jonah’s head.

Ray changes Jonah’s death from accident to homicide and begins an investigation into the man’s background. He quickly learns that Jonah has had a previous alias and had a belief that he was a reincarnation of the Prophet with Nineveh being DC. Because Jonah moved here not that long ago with his flock, the Children of the Lamb of God, Ray enlists Dan to help on the investigation in case religious questions surface. This case alone is difficult enough, but the duo also has to contend with a DEA agent who is busting half the county for growing weed.

CRIMSON CREEK is a warm regional mystery that focuses on life in Appalachia Kentucky. The story line stars a warm protagonist who has fallen from grace and is exiled to Three Mountain Township where he regains some of his lost esteem. The who-done-it is entertaining, but the tale belongs to the various characters living in this hilly county as they make the constable and the minister seem like real people involved in a murder mystery.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner