Mysterious Reviews, mysteries reviewed by the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books, is publishing a new review of An Old Chaos by Sheila Simonson. For our blog readers, we are printing it first here in advance of its publication on our website.
An Old Chaos by Sheila Simonson
A Latouche County Mystery
Perseverance Press (Trade Paperback)
ISBN-10: 1-880284-99-5 (1880284995)
ISBN-13: 978-1-880284-99-5 (9781880284995)
Publication Date: September 2009
List Price: $14.95
Review: A mudslide that buries several luxury homes, including some of their residents, touches off a scandal that may include some of the Latouche County's top officials in An Old Chaos, the second mystery in this series by Sheila Simonson.
During the spring of 2005, after a season of particularly heavy snow and ice, Mount St. Helens erupts at 5 AM, causing a small earthquake that brings down Prune Hill. Unfortunately, a small community of luxury homes, its residents mostly asleep, has been built at the base of the hill and is covered in the resulting mudslide. Six people die. The large homes were controversial anyway, constructed in a remote part of the county with spectacular vistas, and to some, a blight on the land. The disaster is only the beginning, though, as everyone involved begins to question how the homes came to be built on the land, and to identify who is to blame for the residents' deaths.
Readers expecting a whodunit in An Old Chaos may be somewhat disappointed; the mystery plot here is very thin. Rather, it is largely a study in politics: state, county, and tribal. And where there's politics, there's money. And where there's money, there's (at least the potential of) murder.
The book is divided into two parts: "Disaster", in which the characters (who include, of course, the suspects) are introduced at a dinner party at one of the homes that will ultimately be destroyed. In many ways, this first part of the book is the best, defining relationships between the characters and setting the stage for what is to come, effectively ramping up the suspense that culminates in the mudslide. The second part, "Aftermath", is the resulting investigation and is not nearly as engaging. It gets a bit tedious here, with a fair amount of finger-pointing and "I told you so"-type narrative. The outcome isn't entirely predictable, though, an interesting way to end the story.
The title comes from the poem Sunday Morning by Wallace Stevens: "We live in an old chaos of the sun, Or old dependency of day and night, Or island solitude, unsponsored, free, Of that wide water, inescapable."
Special thanks to Perseverance Press for providing an ARC of An Old Chaos for this review.
Review Copyright © 2009 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved
If you are interested in purchasing An Old Chaos from Amazon.com, please click the button to the right.
Synopsis (from the publisher): When a landslide kills six people and destroys several expensive homes, Madeline Thomas, principal chief of the Klalos tribe, and geologist Charlie O’Neill know something is rotten in Latouche County: the land should never have been built on. Sheriff’s investigator Rob Neill uncovers a suppressed hazard warning and evidence of payoffs to county government, with the help of librarian Meg McLean. Rob leads an investigation that implicates local development bigwigs and county personnel, including his boss and mentor, the sheriff. Then there's a murder to keep the cover-up covered up.
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