Review: Where Evil Hides

“I have family and other connections to Pine County,” says White Bear author Dean Hovey, “but I’ve never encountered anyone like Timothy Ross Cooper up there.” Those connections made Pine County a natural as a setting for his debut crime novel, “Where Evil Hides.”

Pine County lies on the eastern border of Minnesota, a few miles south of Duluth. It’s home to about twenty five thousand souls, and to the DAR, General Andrews and Nemadji State Forests. It is a rural area, peopled by more wildlife and trees than humans. Law and order there is primarily the responsibility of the county sheriff and his staff.

Dean Hovey, a 3M engineer travels some, and he’s in the habit of picking up a mystery or two at the airport to read during his flights. “I used to say to my wife when I’d come home from a trip that I could write a mystery as good as some I’d just read. I guess she got tired of hearing that and she sort of challenged me to prove it.” “Where Evil Hides” is the result, a dark engrossing story that follows some law officers including new young deputies and an experienced investigator, Undersheriff Dan Williams, in Pine County, as they struggle to find a murderer.

When a man loses his sense of reality and his moral compass, anything can happen. When that loss is coupled with strong native intelligence and a considerable degree of cunning distorted by abuse, the resulting monster can be difficult to identify and then even harder to find.

Dean Hovey has served up such a monster, in his novel. Rape and murder, are the vehicle by which Hovey examines the internal workings of the fictional Pine County Sheriff’s office. Rape and murder are not subjects usually associated with entertaining reading. Yet the rising tension and the relentless pace of the story make this an entertaining book. We are drawn to the investigator and we share his frustrations, his concerns over the stresses of the job, over incompetence, political maneuvering and a lack of adequate resources.

There are two strong subplots, both nicely linked to the main story, both of which support the overall structure of the novel. The novel’s pace is well-handled and readers will get a sense of the rural context, although more could have been made of the particular wildness of many parts of the county. Hovey says he has an irregular writing schedule due to family and career obligations, none of which he’d change, but he intends to continue his mystery writing and has a second book in the life of Undersheriff Dan Williams all ready for consideration.

“There’s no particular message here,” Hovey says, although readers may not all agree. “I’m just trying to tell a good story, something that I’d like to read.” Nevertheless, one of the subplots, dealing with the political maneuvering necessary to maintain good community relations and still get competent investigatory analysis done, is a telling comment on the realities of life in some rural areas. Hovey maintains contacts with a number of professionals in order to insure technical accuracy in his stories.

“Where Evil Hides” is a product of a young independent publisher, J-Press, located in White Bear. The novel is handsomely packaged and while it could have used another go around with an editor to both tighten the narrative and correct some errors, this is a fine effort. Expect more good additions to the crime fiction genre from both Dean Hovey and J-Press.

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Carl Brookins - RAM

Book Review: Where Evil Hides