Review: Soldier's Gap

Little Falls, Minnesota, author Schwinghammer spent many years as an English and Social Studies teacher in junior and senior high schools. It shows. Soldier’s Gap is a well-written, neatly organized work of crime fiction. It is complex, with a lot of characters. They all live in and around a small town somewhere in Minnesota, but make no mistake, this is most definitely not Lake Wobegon.

The town itself, Soldier’s Gap, takes some getting used to. Most of the characters take some getting used to. Everything is just a little bit out of whack here, especially the small police force. Take Mingo, the night duty deputy. He’s a Mescalaro Apache and he sometimes dresses the part. On duty. He wants to hold a ghost medicine ceremony for the deceased. The sheriff is way overweight, smokes, chews, and eats all the wrong things. He’s ripe for a heart attack or a recall petition very soon. The sheriff is sliding into depression because important people in town are working to get the Deputy Sheriff, Dave Jenkins, protagonist of this story, to run against him in the next election and the mayor is extremely meddlesome. Jenkins is everything the Sheriff is not, plus he’s sort of going with volunteer fireperson, Annie, the Sheriff’s daughter. Jenkins also has visions.

Dave Jenkins is very friendly with a teenager who appears to know more about everything that’s going on than anyone. There are a raft of other teenagers surging in and out of the story, who interact with many of the adults in sometimes strange and mysterious ways. In this book you’ll get murder rustling, inter-cop-agency byplay, sex, teenaged angst, alcoholism and drug use, and a flickering look at a different dimension. None of these are fun topics, but the author is able to balance them with a particularly tongue-in-cheek attitude, some outrageous activities and some snappy dialogue. Soldier’s Gap is not a town you’d want to live in, but it's an interesting place to visit. The book is too long but well-written, once you get comfortable with the characters.

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

Book Review: Soldier's Gap