John SmolensRezensionen

I found Cold by John Smolens simply passable as a crime thriller. The author excelled at describing the harsh winter conditions in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula but the story felt dragged out and the characters didn’t feel authentic.

During a blizzard, Norman Haas walks away from his prison work detail completely undetected. He is on a mission to travel back home and back to the past in order to right some wrongs. He encounters a woman who tries to help him but he ends up leaving her alone in the snow, he reunites with his old girlfriend and her daughter and they travel even further north to her father’s wilderness lodge where secrets are buried and confrontations await. Tracking Norman, Constable Del Makki realizes that there is more going on here than simply a walkaway prisoner seeking freedom but by the time he puts all the pieces together, it’s too late to prevent tragedy.

Unfortunately I found Cold overly melodramatic. The narrative was uneven in style, irregular in quality and the ending was entirely too predictable. On the bright side, I did enjoy the snow clad setting.

John Smolens' novel, DAY OF DAYS, is a fictionalized account of the 1927 bombing of the consolidated school in the small farming community of Bath, Michigan. It is told mostly by Bea Turcott, looking back at that day as an old woman, and remembering her life on that fateful day. At fourteen, she was one of the survivors of the bombing, carefully planned and carried out by a disturbed and disgruntled neighbor. Smolens skillfully portrays the lives of the townspeople, and particularly the Turcotts and the Brownes, two families whose lives impinged closely on that of the bomber, Andrew Kehoe, and his invalid wife. Although the novel starts slowly, the prose that sets the stage for the heinous act is beautiful enough to keep you engaged, and then the narrative really gets rolling and catches you up in the action of the bombing itself and the events that followed.

Smolens is no newcomer to historical fiction. Two of his best are THE ANARCHIST and WOLF'S MOUTH. Now you can add this one to the list. Very highly recommended.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER½

The Day of Days was March 18, 1927. The place was the small farm town of Bath, Michigan.

Andrew Kehoe blew up the Bath Consolidated School, killing 44 people, including 38 schoolchildren--one of the worst terrorist acts in American history. He murdered his wife and horses and blew his farm and himself up while he was at it.

John Smolens has wrapped this horrific event in a novel of great beauty and wisdom through the experience of surviving school children.

After WWI the chemical companies were left with stockpiles of explosives which they sold to farmers to help them clear fields.

Andrew Kehoe was smart and inventive. He studied electrical engineering. After an accident left him in a coma his personality changed. His wife inherited a Bath farm but Kehoe found himself in financial straits. He blamed the tax burden for the new school.

In Smolens' novel, Kehoe hires the boy Jed. He takes Jed with him as he removes tree stump with explosives. Jed was impressed by this farmer who wore a suit.

Bea, the narrator of the novel, works for Mrs. Kehoe. She tells her story from her death bed, of life before the incident, the horror of that day, and the broken lives it left behind. There is survivor's guilt, broken people carrying on, and eventual healing.

I first heard of the Bath school bombing when living in Lansing. Smolens fills the novel with Michigan places and references. Kehoe travels to Lansing and eat at Emil's Italian restaurant, a place we knew well. The children are given Vernors ginger ale. The historical setting is given, the innovative changes happening in science. Electricity. Biplanes. Lindbergh's famous Atlantic crossing concluded while citizens were frantically looking for survivors.

I loved Smolens writing and how he handled this story. Accurate in historical details, Smolens demonstrates the benefit of fiction's ability to delve into the depth of human experience to bring the past to life.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

It's been 18 years since John Smolens gave us COLD, and introduced us to Del Maki, the dogged and resourceful sheriff of a small township near Marquette in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. In COLD, Smolens' third book, Maki was just one of a fascinating cast of characters, but he was the unifying element of the chilling suspense novel that left many of his readers, I am sure, wishing for more of Maki's story. Well now, in OUT, Smolens' eleventh book, look out, old Maki's back. And Smolens once again sets his story deep in a dangerous and obliterating blizzard of a UP winter, making the weather almost an additional character, much like the river was in James Dickey's DELIVERANCE so many years ago.

This latest offering finds a 70-ish Maki, retired, widowed, and recovering from a second hip replacement. He lives alone, deep in the woods, or "out," as Yoopers call living off the grid, or nearly so, as Maki does. Still grieving the loss of his wife, Del has been gloomily contemplating his future, "waiting" for something, perhaps "impossible to determine." This quiet existence is unexpectedly shattered when his young, very pregnant, visiting physical therapist is stranded by the storm at his place. They are soon joined by her two boyfriends, Connor and Barr. This love triangle had already been upended by a savage beating Connor had given Barr, leaving him for dead in the snow of the approaching storm. Now all three are uneasily reunited at Del's place, with a pistol-packing Barr holding the other two hostage, and Del is forced to act as an intermediary, trying to protect the pregnant girl. Another character, known only as Essi, a kind of aging woods spirit, is also part of the cast. Her past remains mysterious and shrouded, and I wondered if her character had something to do with the concept of reincarnation, mentioned earlier in the story.

There is violence, there is blood. The storm itself joins the cast when a giant tree crashes through the roof, letting in wind and cold, and pinning people down, necessitating axes, saws and ingenuity. Maki's role here, because of his age and infirmity, brought to mind the protagonist of Hitchcock's "Rear Window," confined to a wheelchair. And indeed, Del spends most of his time sitting on a couch or stool, or hobbling precariously about with a cane. So. A hero? Damn straight, a hero, albeit an unlikely one.

But you'll get no spoilers from me. OUT is pure vintage Smolens, who knows how to create suspense and build to a chilling climax. And the characters. All of them (except perhaps the mysterious and elusive 'Esssi') are fleshed out, given backstories, motives, brought to life. Even the villain, Barr. But especially Del Maki, that hero from COLD. Now we know, as Paul Harvey used to say, "the rest of the story." Thanks, John. To all of Smolens' many fans, especially those who've wondered for years what happened next with Del Maki, I say, READ THIS BOOK. I will recommend it highly.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER½

This started out fine. Most of the characters were not very likeable and there was a lot of violence between the men, some for no reason. A different kind of book than I am used to reading.

Insightful look into sibling rivalry, compassion, and daily life in a remote rural town in Michigan's snowy Upper Peninsula. With limited education, and dead end jobs, drugs, sex, and drinking provide an escape from the boredom of day to day life for the 20 something residents. For the adults, who chose to live and work in this harsh environment, the outdoors, independence, and solitude are central to their souls, although some chose to profit by work outside the law. When one 20 something brother walks away from his offsite prison duty, his struggle to survive and return to a better time, before the crime, brings him to a new appreciation of life as he interacts with various characters along his journey home.½

I wanted to love it, I really did. But I think what broke this novel's potential in the very beginning is his choice to write from a female perspective when he clearly has none.

The book was filled with so many errors, but my personal favorite is this:

"Abigail felted tricked: the terms were changing." Page 60

I realize felted is a word and spell check won't correct it, but how can someone even write that? You'd have to be smashed, stupid, and negligent to miss a mistake like that.

Then I began to hate his imagery--especially concerning women:
"The back of the baby's head was as smooth and round as Rachel's breast."
Page 64

Um ew. No. Just don't go there. No similes about babies' heads and women's breasts, please. Sheesh. Men.

I will confess, I didn't make it through and don't know the full effect of the ending, but after reaching halfway and skipping ahead to read the last two chapters, I could easily agree with other reviewers who concede that his ending sucks.

2 stars for reasonable historical accuracy. But that's the last revolutionary war novel I'll read for a while.

WOLF'S MOUTH, by John Smolens.

As a long-time fan of John Smolens' fiction, I was extremely pleased to learn he had a new novel. Smolens is a master of the suspense thriller in its most literary form. He has demonstrated his mastery of this milieu in several of his previous works, most notably in THE INVISIBLE WORLD and COLD. The former was set in his native New England, the latter in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where Smolens has lived and worked for many years as a professor at Northern Michigan University in Marquette.

WOLF'S MOUTH is Smolens' tenth book and in it he returns to top form, as well as to the northern Michigan setting so chillingly and effectively used in COLD. Smolens' interest in historical fiction (see THE ANARCHIST, THE SCHOOLMASTER'S DAUGHTER and QUARANTINE) also plays a major part, with a story that spans nearly five decades, from the final years of the Second World War all the way up into the early nineties, moving from a POW camp in Au Train, downstate to Detroit, to a war crime tribunal in Germany, and back again to the Upper Peninsula. The story is narrated by Francesco Verdi, an Italian Army officer who flees Au Train to escape execution secretly ordered by Colonel Vogel, the despotic ranking German POW who continues to adhere to the orders of his Fuhrer, ruling his fellow prisoners with an iron fist. Verdi is aided in his escape by a beautiful young woman from nearby Munising, Chiara Frangiapani. The two make their way south, working briefly at a farm near Grayling (where they narrowly escape capture), before ending up in Detroit. There, with the help of some sympathetic members of the American Communist Party, they obtain new identity papers and become Frank and Claire Green, model post-war citizens. Alas, the crazed Colonel Vogel is not done with them, and continues to hound them through the years, driving them north, back into hiding in the UP.

Quite aside from its gripping plot and finely-drawn characters, WOLF'S MOUTH gives us fascinating glimpses into the nearly forgotten culture of POW camps that were scattered throughout the United States during WWII. In Michigan's UP alone there were five of them, converted CCC camps, housing over a thousand prisoners. Most of them are mentioned here, as the Au Train prisoners' soccer team competed with them, even the controversial Camp Germfask, which housed American conscientious objectors ('conchies').

The book's title derives from an Italian adage involving luck, courage and thanks; but there is also a very real wolf that appears twice in the story, both times only briefly, but with chillingly symbolic overtones. It brought to mind, if fleetingly, Jim Harrison's first novel, WOLF, and his protagonist Swanson's search for a glimpse of the then-nearly-extinct animal in the rugged mountains of the UP. And the page-turning intensity of the evil Vogel's dogged pursuit of his prey for years after the war had ended reminded me of another novel, read over thirty years ago: Ira Levin's THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL.

But make no mistake. WOLF'S MOUTH is no pale imitation of anything. It is pure and vintage John Smolens, back again at the very top of his game. The pacing is superb, the suspense palpable, the characters as real as they come. This is storytelling at its best, a suspense chiller with class. I loved this book. My very highest recommendation.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER

Anarchists, Pinkertons, prostitutes, and unionists inhabit this pulpy, historical thriller based around the shooting of William McKinley. It offers a nicely imagined ground's-eye-view of the politics and mayhem surrounding the labor struggles of the turn-of-the-century in a fast paced narrative that features several real-life folks- including McKinley himself and his assassin Leon Czolgosz- among the colorful cast o' well-drawn characters. A fun read.

So often as a reader, we are presented in historical fiction unspecified details of how life was at the time. However, in this book set in Early American historical times (1796), we have exactly the opposite. The reader is awarded a tale of the decimating conditions that surround the small harbor town of Newburyport, MA when a ship arrives carrying an epidemic which swiftly spreads to the population when those quarantined on board the ship escape.

The story is told through the experiences of two main characters - Dr. Gilles Wiggins, the town physician who initiates the quarantine, and Leander Hatch, a young man who looses his entire family to the "fever". These two characters, so different in their backgrounds and yet so alike in their principles, show how good people can overcome any adversity presented to them.

This was a powerful story which had a few slow spots in the narration but the characters and the ordeal carried it through.

Quarantine surprised me in the brutal truth of the times. Newburyport ,Mass in 1796 and a ship comes into port with diseased passengers on board. At that time disease spread like wildfire and that is why this ship is put in quarantine and no one is allowed on board or off. True to the times, passengers did embark and then put the town at risk and sure enough, the disease takes off and the lives of the townspeople will never be the same. The brutality of the noble class, the plight of the poor and the lack of control most of these people had over their future is a wonder. The only concern I had was that the book was too true and mature for some younger audiences to handle. Giles the forlorn doctor who drinks to hide the pain , Enoch who drinks because he is afraid that his way of life is ending, Leander who will lose everything and mature overnight, the numerous servants who endure and Marie who is on the run only to find happiness for a short while. Their stories are real and we fall for them immediately. Your heart bleeds for Leander who will lose his whole family and way of life with this disease but finds a new career, love and greater understanding. Fantastic in its realism but just enough danger to pull in the teens.

John Smolens seems to have come full circle with the publication of QUARANTINE, his latest novel, set in the Massachusetts town of Newburyport twenty years after the American Revoluction. His first novel, WINTER BY DEGREES (1988), was set in the same town but nearly 200 years later. This northern New England seaport is a venue well known to Smolens, who spent several years there following his graduation from Boston College doing restoration work on colonial era houses.

Although QUARANTINE is perhaps a bit slow in its pacing and lacks the element of suspense that has been so important in almost all of Smolens' previous novels, he does present a fine cast of characters in this carefully crafted story of an epidemic that rages through the town, terrorizing and decimating its population. Protagonist 'Doctor' Giles Wiggens is an admirable hero in his self-sacrificing dedication to the people of his town and his tireless efforts to save the victims in the hastily erected 'pest house.' Medicine is obviously a science still in its infancy, as evidenced by Wiggens' own lack of training other than as a 'sawbones' surgeon who learned his trade on ships treating mutilated and wounded sailors during the war of independence. Forty-ish, Giles lives a near monk-ish existence in a spare set of rooms, while his older half-brother, Enoch Sumner, lives a dissolute and decadent life on the wealthy side of town in a mansion which also houses their calculating and most UNmaternal mother, Miranda. There are children from Enoch and Giles, some legitimate, some not. There is much drinking, carousing and skulduggery by Enoch, his spoiled son, Samuel, and others that precedes the epidemic and continues throughout.

Leander Hatch is a young man, 19, whose entire family is wiped out by the mysterious fever (which is raging all up and down the east coast), but manages to overcome his terrible loss and rise above the fear and nastiness in the town that accompanies the plague. There are love interests for both Giles and Leander who share a mysterious bond. And while the ending takes a surprising twist, it seems fitting and believable, and the Epilogue serves to wrap things up in a profoundly satisfying manner.

Although the story seems at times to flounder in its forward momentum, particularly when Smolens switched too rapidly back and forth between subplots and characters, I couldn't help but picture the story in cinematic terms. The plot, the setting, the finely drawn characters, the love stories and the episodic action - which even includes a brief but violent skirmish between ships at sea - all cry out for a Technicolor transfer to the big screen.

Bottom line. This is vintage Smolens with a post-colonial flavor, i.e. a damn good book and well worth your time. I enjoyed it.

In 1796, a ship, the Miranda, was refused docking in Newburyport, Mass. and was placed in quarantine by the local surgeon because of an epidemic on board. Unfortunately, some of the ship's passengers and crew managed to evade the quarantine and reach the town. The plague quickly spread, leaving the town devastated.

I had mixed feelings about this novel. I enjoyed the parts involving the epidemic: the different points of view of the doctors, including the surgeon who gained his skills on a battlefield, the depiction of the epidemic, the religious fervour it engendered, the construction of the pest house, and the attitudes of the people as the death toll mounted.

On the other hand, I found some of the back story both annoying, uninteresting, and unnecessary. This was especially true of the ship's owner and his mother as well as the French girl who may or may not have been French aristocracy. The bit about the apothecaries all being robbed of needed medicines and then having them offered back at exorbitant prices was less than believable. These parts of the story strained my willing suspension of disbelief and did nothing to move the story along.

Still, if you push all the unnecessary debris aside, there's a very interesting story here about people's attitudes to disease in colonial America. Mr Smolens is clearly a talented writer. I hope he revisits this story someday leaving out the parts that only served to bog it down like the shipowner's dissolution and give us a story which tells us more about how epidemics shaped the New World.

I struggle when trying to review this book. It is not a bad book; it is also not what I expected. It moves very slowly, and not much occurs in the plot. It is well written, with enough character development to keep you interested, but I don't know if I would recommend it to a friend. Perhaps only avid readers such as myself who I knew would stick with it to the end. I found the ending to be kind of a let down - there was a lot of build up and then.... nothing. Just ended, over. Not a fan.

I received a copy of this book free from the publisher in exhange for an honest review. Honestly, I am glad I did not spend money on this book.

In 1796, a trading ship arrives in Newburyport, Massachusetts. The captain’s missing, crewmembers struck by a virulent fever. Vomit and shit create more victims in Newburyport. Upon inspection of the ship, doctor Giles Wiggins places the ship and port under quarantine and tries to find the source for the virus. His half-brother Enoch Summer, owner of the ship and their mother Miranda aren’t pleased at all with the situation. Horses for Thomas Jefferson need to stay on the ship, commerce falls silent and more and more victims are brought to a pest-house, some die others set fires to escape misery.
The harbormaster’s family falls victim to the fever, except for his son, Leander Hatch, who is taken in at the Sumner mansion. He turns out to be a rebel. A beautiful French woman named Marie Montpelier is rescued out of the Merrimack River, causing both Giles and Enoch fall in love. A man from Boston stockpiles medical supplies and charges a high price.
The novel or historical thriller if you want takes you along the dark circumstance in the harbour, where love and hope ultimately prevail, but death, dishonour and broken families are the sacrificies at the Revolutionary War-era Atlantic coast. The author of Quarantine, John Smolens‘ work on the book began 40 years ago, when he moved to a federalist house built in the 1790s in Newburyport. In the years that followed he came to know every inch of the house and the rich history of this harbour.
The novel isn’t an easy to read and put away book. Quarantine contains a lot of historic and maritime details, plus a set of interwoven personages. Only at the end, in a lengthy Epilogue, some clues are found. Characters could be worked out better, both at the vessel as in town. I found it hard sometimes to mention exactly where in the storyline I was. Continue reading without worrying is the best solution there.

The year: 1796
Location: Newburyport, Massachusetts
Situation: The Miranda, a ship owned by the wealthy and powerful Sumner family, now returned from a trip to the Caribbean, is at anchor in the Merrimack river basin, having been denied its request to tie up at the wharf as the town's harbourmaster, Caleb Hatch, suspects the ship may be carrying a contagion on board. A quick trip out to visit the anchored ship has Doctor Giles Wiggins demanding the yellow flag be raised and all individuals on board the Miranda quarantined and not allowed to leave the ship.

So sets the stage for Smolens' quick reading historical fiction story. Smolens presents the time period and the 'outbreak' with an eye for authenticity while maintaining a writer's skill for weaving a story designed to capture a reader's interest. As a lover of historical fiction, I found this story to be the right blend of historical facts/details and entertaining fictional story-telling for a relaxing summer read. It captures it all: the unrest in the town as the contagion shows signs of spreading, the concerns of the business community of the economic ramifications of closing the harbour to all trade as well as the religious stance that the ill brought this on themselves as God's will, all building in momentum as the community - in the form of two doctors and volunteers - tries to treat the ill and stop the disease from spreading further.

The characters have just enough personality to allow the reader to like/hate/roll eyes at what they get up to and the story has enough medical details to capture my attention. The clash of medical viewpoints of the time period are enough to cause one today to gasp in horror - to think of a fever as being caused by an individual's behavior, as a result of the imbalance of the bodies humors or as a result of a volcanic eruption on a different continent is easy to sniff at today, but are valid medical positions postulated in history.

This is more of a light read - nothing too taxing or requiring excess levels of concentration or comprehension to understand. I recommend picking up this one for a quick read if you enjoy historical fiction or have an interest in Massachusetts of the time period.

Smolens writes a novel about a small, Massachusetts harbor town in the late 1700s. A trading ship comes into port with a number of extremely crew. The authorities quarantine the ship. He shows us the action through the eyes of the son of the harbormaster. The oldest son of the richest family in town owns the ship and needs the money from its crew to carry on his profligate lifestyle. His younger brother is one of the local doctors.

The book is well-written and holds interest. It is not great literature, but it is worth a read as a good way to while away some time.½

Cold is perhaps Smolens' best known and most successful book. Although I have liked almost all of John's books, this one, about a sheriff in Michigan's Upper Peninsula in pursuit of an escaped prisoner is a particular favorite and considered by many to be his best. The dangerously polar feel of the UP winter is perhaps one of the most important 'characters' in the novel, but Sheriff Del Maki is a character you will remember for a long time. In fact, I keep hoping Smolens will bring him back in another novel. For now, however, COLD gets my very highest recommendation.

John Smolens' special niche has always been the literary thriller. In his last two books, THE ANARCHIST, and now, THE SCHOOLMASTER'S DAUGHTER, he has turned this talent toward historical fiction. With the former, it worked exceedingly well. But the latter novel lumbered laboriously along for a couple hundred pages before it began to hit its stride and lift of into the thriller mode, and even then it returned to earth too soon.

Make no mistake, I am a tried and true fan of Smolens books, so I stayed with THE SCHOOLMASTER'S DAUGHTER for the whole flight, right up until she made that final not-quite-satisfying and curiously flat touch-down. Abigail Lovell, the title character heroine had so much potential, but that potential never quite flowered. It seemed to be choked out by all the historical details, which, while I'm sure they were all accurate and authentic, served, I felt, more to slow down the narrative than to advance the storyline. Abigail's one-time almost-lover Ezra never advanced much beyond the negative stage, and her other, the redcoat officer Samuel Cleaveland, didn't fare much better, his part "prematurely" curtailed as the final big battle for Boston began. The same incompleteness plagued other characters - Abigail's brothers James and Benjamin, her father, the turncoat Corporal Lumley, the prostitute Molly Collins and others. The real historical characters - Paul Revere, Dr Warren, General Gage, Israel Putnam, and even George Washington - all seemed to mostly get in the way of what I believe could have been a much more exciting story, i.e. a John Smolens story.

I guess it felt to me like the historian strangled the novelist here. I don't mean to say the book is bad. But by Smolens standards it could have been - should have been - so much better. I suspect the book will be loved by history buffs, but perhaps not so much by literature nerds like me. No fear though, John. I will still be eagerly awaiting that next book from you. I'm still hoping for a sequel to COLD, another Michigan Upper Peninsula story reprising the great character of Sheriff Del Maki.½

In 1775 Abigail Lovell finds herself and her family torn apart by the American Revolution. Her father, headmaster of Boston Latin School, remains loyal to the crown while her brothers help the Patriots by conveying messages about British troop movements in the greater Boston area. Her younger brother is with the Minutemen in Concord and fights with the colonials at Bunker Hill. Abigail, in the meantime, is accused on murdering a British officer and is helped by another British soldier who wishes to court her. She must decide between helping colonists in their fight or following her heart. Rich in historic detail, and about a family who really lived during this time, this is a good look at the life of a young woman during the first year of the American Revolution. Smolens won the Michigan Author Award in 2010.

This is my seventh Smolens boook and his newest. I've reviewed all of them, except, I think, his collection of stories called My One and Only Bomb Shelter. I read that back before I began reviewing, I think, but it's equally good. I'm running out of superlatives for Smolens' work. This one is every bit as good as the others, and bears the Smolens stamp of superlative (there's that word again), plot, pacing, suspense and - especially - characters. The extra element here is an obvious attention to extensive and careful research about the era - 1901. One would think that an "historical" novel like this would be difficult to present as a "suspense" novel, since you kinda know what happened. But nope. Smolens pulls it off. I'm not sure exactly how he did this hat trick either. Probably a combination of things. One, he introduces a few fictional characters and subplots which all come stunningly together in a powerful conclusion. Two, probably not too many people actually know a whole lot anymore about the McKinley assassination now, over a hundred years later. It never got the attention of, say, Lincoln's murder. Since this is a book about the assassination of President McKinley in 1901, the historical figures are there too. McKinley, his wife, his personal physician and a few other minor political figures. But it's the assassin who takes center stage among these real-life figures, and I suspect because not a whole lot was ever known about Leon Czolgosz, there may be more literary license taken with him. And Smolens uses that license to drive much of the story. I might say the story appealed to me even more because of the Midwestern characters - McKinley from Ohio, and Czolgosz from Detroit and Cleveland. But that really didn't figure into my appreciation of the story, since most of it took place in and around Buffalo during the Exposition. Like all of Smolens' books, this is simply flat-out terrific writing. There is something very cinematic about Smolens' novels. As you read them, you can easily picture them playing out on a big screen. The descriptions of places, people and action are like script directions, and the dialogue is simply pitch-perfect. What a fantastic film The Anarchist would make. I don't go to many movies anymore, but I would gladly get off my old duff to go see this one. How about it, Hollywood?

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER

Man, can this guy Smolens write! I'm not your typical mystery-thriller kind of reader. I know that because I've tried a couple of times to read Grisham and just couldn't stand his writing; too simple and formulaic. And I tried very hard to read The DaVinci Code because so many people urged me to, telling me what a "terrific book" it was. I struggled through maybe 60 or 70 pages before giving up on Dan Brown. The reason? Characters. In both writers' work the characters are simply too flat, cardboard, unrealized. I just couldn't bring myself to care about any of them. Action and plot are not enough to carry a novel. Not for me, anyway. For me, characters and their development are the most absolutely essential element in a work of fiction. And John Smolens characters always ring true. They are always fully human, three-, no, FOUR-dimensional people that the reader can immediately feel a kinship with.

Angel's Head is the fifth Smolens novel I have read. It was his second, following his debut novel, Winter by Degrees, which was also excellent. Like that first work, Angel's Head again gives us a Massachusetts setting (and again in The Invisible World). And in all three books, it is immediately evident that Smolens knows New England, its cities, villages, and coastline - that he is writing about an area where he grew up and has spent a lot of time; has studied his landscape with the eye of an artist. This is evident from the first page, as an omniscient narrator describes the look of the bay and the island of Angel's Head -

"From the steep bluffs above the beaches it's easy to read the bay water by its changing colors - in sunlight the jade green shallows fan out to foaming rip currents, which mark the sudden drop to an ink blue channel."

An eye for colors, an ear for the natural rhythm and sounds of language - this is vintage John Smolens, and is typical of everything he writes.

But make no mistake, Smolens also knows his genre of choice, which has always been mystery, and especially Suspense - with that capital 'S.' Because there are murders here and they are not easily solved, not even by the discerning student of mysteries. Red herrings crop up everywhere throughout the story, making nearly everyone suspect in the gruesome murders - one victim gutted like a fish, heart cut out; the other bled dry, his throat cruelly cut.

But once again, characters are at the heart of this book. From Mark Emmons, the disillusioned newspaper man, drawn back to the island from his years-long exile in the Midwest by a cryptic newspaper clipping and Anne Flood, a woman from his past he's been unable to put out of his mind to her father, Emerson Flood, keeper of the island's history, hopelessly entangled with that of his own family, and who still mourns the loss of his wife, dead by her own hand. And there is the brain-damaged Randall Flood, Mark's boyhood friend. There are others here. But my point is, as a reader I cared about all of these major characters. If there is one "hero" - or antihero - it is Emmons, of course. But the island's inkeeper family of Floods are key to the plot, right down to Anne's illegitmate fifteen year-old daughter, Rachel, who is struggling with her own pangs of developing womanhood.

Does this sound like a typical murder mystery thriller? Hell, no, it doesn't. Because there's nothing "typical" about the writing of John Smolens. I hate to "brand" his books with the label of "literary" fiction, because it tends to scare away the more casual reader. But Smolens knows his literature, has studied it; you can tell.

One of the recurring devices Smolens employs here is that of internal dialogue between a living character and one who has died. It happens in the mind of Emerson Flood, as he carries on a running conversation with his deceased wife. And later on, in the closing pages, inside the head of Mark Emmons. I recognize the validity of such things. I still have such conversations with my father, who died over twenty years ago. And I know my mother does too. I believe these continuing dialogues - conversations with the dead - are universal. We all have them. Smolens uses them well. They further develop the characters and even serve to move the story forward

There is one line in Angel's Head which is particularly telling. Emerson Flood asks Mark Emmons what he believes in. Emmons replies: "I think I believe in the story. Telling the story."

If there is one thing John Smolens believes in, it is the story. It is a kind of religion with him. He is a devout believer and his devotion is nearly palpable in everything he writes. He has made me a believer too.

Liesl lost her husband and daughter in an automobile accident during a blizzard. Another snowstorm years later brings back those memories. This storm will also change her life forever when she allows Norman, an escapee from the Marquette Prison, to warm up in her home and a series of unforeseen events is set into motion. In the process of taking him to the sheriff in town, Liesl falls, and Norman abandons her to the cold. She is found by the sheriff, and the manhunt for Norman continues. As the cold permeates a U.P. winter, so does the tension in this thriller. Norman returns to the scene of the crime as love, greed, and hope for another chance in life lead the characters back to their pasts as well as towards a future reckoning.

A few years ago I sat next to John Smolens at a table in the "authors tent" at the annual Wild Blueberry Festival in Paradise, Michigan, near the top of the eastern U.P. It seemed an unlikely locale for the world-wide release of his latest novel, "Fire Point". But then, perhaps it wasn't after all. Smolens is an English professor at Northern Michigan University, and the setting for his new book is, once again, the U.P. The town, Whitefish Harbor, is fictional. As he did in his previous novel, "Cold", Smolens tantalizes readers like me who read with an atlas close at hand with town names that are "almost" real, employing parts of real place names, but putting them in slightly the wrong place. All you know for sure is that the story takes place somewhere near Marquette, on the shores of Lake Superior.
Whitefish Harbor, like the real villages of Paradise, Trout Lake or Grand Marais, is instantly recognizable as one of those small, isolated often soul-deadening communities surrounded by sand, swamps and second-growth scrub pine forests, which survives mostly on the tourist trade during the brief months of summer. This insular small-town setting is key to the novel's events (which take place over a six-month period from April to September), as they delicately and inevitably unfold in the inimitable prose style Smolens has established and perfected in his earlier work. Employment opportunities are few and severely limited. A key character is introduced in the following manner: "Places like Whitefish Harbor send kids like Sean Colby out into the world after high school. They go to college, they enlist in the service."
Sean Colby could easily be listed as the villain of "Fire Point", but that would be oversimplifying an extremely intricate feat of story-telling, because as the plot evolves, you learn a bit about his childhood and are privy to a not very pretty picture of his parents' marriage and their own particular disappointments and failings. You quickly come to the conclusion that there are no clear-cut good guys or bad guys in this tale, only regular people with all the usual complexities who are trying to find their place in a life they didn't necessarily choose.
Hannah LeClaire, a mature 19 year-old, is the girl all the boys and men in town follow longingly with their eyes, but she had given herself, too soon, to Sean Colby the previous year. A fatherless loner herself, Hannah was drawn to Sean's "leader of the pack" aura. But something was "twisted" in Sean, and when Hannah became pregnant, he gave in to the "solution" proposed by his parents, then disappeared into the army. Ten months later, discharged early for not yet clear reasons, Sean shows up back in Whitefish Harbor and begins stalking Hannah and her new boyfriend, 29 year-old Martin Reed, a Chicago man who had spent his childhood summers in the village, his mother's hometown.
Early on in the narrative, Reed would appear to be the obvious hero of the piece, but nothing is ever quite what it appears to be in Smolens' fiction. Likely heroes become victims and unlikely people become heroes.
Joseph "Pearly" Blankenship Jr., 44 years old, part Ojibwa Indian, loner, barfly, and sometime carpenter, is such an unlikely hero. Involved in an inertia-fed listless affair with a local bartender, who is yet another single mom in a sea of failed relationships, Pearly is almost a stereotypical product of his town, except for one thing. He reads. Probably the most prolific borrower from the town library, he knows his Shakespeare, as well as when to use "whom vs. who." An anomaly in a town of non-readers and small-minded failures, Pearly has become the primary "usual suspect" any time a civic prank or petty crime occurs. He is regularly detained, harrassed and humiliated by Frank Colby, Sean's father and a frustrated long-time cop who knows he will never be chief of police. That post is held by Buzz Gagnon, an overweight cartoon of a law enforcement officer who can't stop himself from snacking on whatever is at hand as he questions suspects and is more concerned with maintaining the status quo than with solving crimes. Hounded by Colby, Pearly is regularly defended by Owen Nault III, who, like Frank Colby, grew up in Whitefish Harbor with Pearly. Owen went away to college and law school, but ended up back in the family practice, doomed to defend people like Pearly who can't afford lawyers, so he has learned to take his fees in trade -- a remodeled bathroom or a properly hung door. And even at that, Naught undoubtedly gets the better end of the deal, since Pearly is, despite his questionable reputation, a very competent carpenter whose personal philosophy, if he has one, is "that things in this world ought to be plumb, level, and square, but seldom are."
Pearly is hired by Martin (a distant cousin) to help restore a large old house in town where Martin and Hannah plan to live and rent the two upper floors for income. The jealously obsessive Sean, hired by the village as a summer cop, lurks about the fringes of their lives and attempts, with increasingly violent acts of vandalism and sabotage, to disrupt their plans.
Every detail and every character fit seamlessly into the rapidly spiraling events that draw the reader full bore into the escalating violence that moves inexorably toward an unexpected and shocking climax Smolens' writing is spare and direct, with that stripped-to-the-bone clarity and precision that his readers have come to expect. "Fire Point" is not just another thriller, or "a novel of suspense", as its jacket proclaims. It is finely crafted, good -- perhaps even great -- literature. Pearly Blankenship and Hannah LeClaire are characters who will stay with you for a long time after closing the covers.

My copy of WINTER BY DEGREES is a ratty, water-damaged mass market paperback I found. It's out of print, obviously, but it shouldn't be. This is the fifth John Smolens book I have read and I can't figure out why this guy isn't a nationally known and bestselling author. He is a master at creating a well-defined sense of place, whether it's in New England (where Smolens grew up) or northern Michigan (where he has lived for many years). His characters are equally well-written, people who seem so real you would almost swear you know them. Two families dominate the plot and action in WINTER BY DEGREES - the aristocratic 'old Yankee' family of the Smyths, whose class has become a bit frayed around the edges over the last several generations; and the Rideouts, more lately arrived Irish working class types. Nelson Rideout is the protagonist and his younger brother, Tuna, is a kind of lesser sidekick. Both have had little luck in making any success of their lives, failed at jobs, college education, marriage and relationships, etc. Forbes Smyth is the villain, and Pell is the hired gun, or enforcer, from "outside," come to collect bad debts left by another Smyth, who has died under mysterious circumstances. So yeah, there's a murder mystery here, but the characters are what make this novel so, so ... well, so GOOD. Smolens writes like a screenwriter. You can picture these guys, both the good ones and the bad ones. And you can imagine it all as a chilling suspense film, or perhaps as a TV miniseries. His dialogue is spot on and his people are all so just so REAL, so precisely realized. I have said this about Smolens' other books, but I'll say it again. I want more of these people. I want sequels. I want a whole SERIES of books about these people, and I mean this about the characters in not just THIS novel, but the ones from COLD, FIRE POINT, and THE INVISIBLE WORLD too. I'm rambling here, I know, so I'll wrap this up by simply saying that this is not just another mystery or suspense thriller (although they are that too); this is simply fiction writing of the highest caliber. Period.