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THE DRIFTER'S WHEEL
by Phillip DePoy
St Martin's Minotaur, July 2008
288 pages
$24.95
ISBN: 031236203X


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

There are no books to compare to this series featuring folklorist Fever Devilin. Author Phillip DePoy has created a unique personality, a slightly spooky setting, and a good story. What are they like? They aren't like any others I know of.

The writing is damn good, although it might not be that obvious to most of us because I think DePoy is subtle. He gets there quietly. He definitely gets points from this reader because he does not equate odd or quaint with laughable. His characters, often full of small-town energies and small town prejudices are not figures of fun. There's no "look at the funny people" here, which I find hugely refreshing. I strongly dislike many mysteries set in the American South for the precise reason that often, weird or eccentric behavior is considered laughable and rudeness is passed off as funny. Here, concern for neighbors, and respect for individuality. The laughter usually comes at your own expense. There's some winking going on here, and I appreciated it because it plays with assumptions in some fun ways.

In this story, Fever's visited by a very odd man who seems vaguely threatening. The man, however, is gone before long and when what seems to be his body shows up nearby, it gets very confusing. The dead man appears to be dressed like Fever's visitor but it's not the same man. There are touches like this all through the book, in which some people see evil personified in the man who has died. There are stories of long-ago, and stories of people from long-ago. The lines between the present and the days of the Civil War are often blurred in the histories told here. It's weird, but it's a good sort of weird.

Fever spends time with a long-time friend, Winton Andrews, and I enjoyed watching the two of them. They are true friends in the ways that matter and when they can finish each other‛s sentences and kid each other about behavior, well, Fever Devilin isn't a very lighthearted character so this showed a side of him I wasn't expecting. He is a little tiresome in his assumption that anything and everything he knows or wants here is important, but usually the people on the receiving end of those 2:00 am phone calls end up agreeing that they are glad he called. Still, he needs to slow down at times. At other times, he shows charm and wit and you understand how it is that he's been able to charm his way into peoples' lives and to get their stories.

Devilin is an academic and it shows from time to time in some slightly pompous language. While some books portray academics in tired clichés as "absent-minded professors," others recognize that when you know a lot about something, you do have a tendency to go off on a tangent or three.

I like that Fever has real friends. The fact that he grew up in Blue Mountain and watched his best friend become the sheriff is something he gripes about (when Skid calls him at ungodly hours), but he is a friend and that's really nice to read about. Many mysteries, in their rush to show and get everything done, sometimes skimp on characterization. DePoy does this well. He also uses the whole "amateur sleuth" effectively: as a folklorist, Devilin has learned to gain people‛s trust when he's asking about an old story, or a song that comes out of the Appalachians, and he can listen and ask the questions that even someone in authority cannot ask of some old-time, backwoods people who don't trust newcomers or who have secrets.

If you are a reader who needs things tied up neatly at the end of the novel (lots of us prefer that in our mystery fiction) this book might not work for you. Not everything makes sense, and it's left to the reader how much to believe. Fine by me. I liked what I read.

Reviewed by Andi Shechter, August 2008

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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