“Even though he was exhausted and stabs of pain pulsed through his ear, Cody refused to take the medication they’d given him because he knew, he just knew, that if he let his defenses down even a little he’d start drinking. He knew himself.  He’d find a justification to start off on another bender.  His ear hurt; he was suspended; precious hours for finding the killer had been wasted and he’d never get them back; his dog had died (granted, it was twenty years before, but it was still dead; he missed his son; his 401(k) wasn’t worth crap anymore…”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (AUG 20, 2011)

Back of Beyond by C. J. Box is just what a mystery thriller should be – a wild ride through twists and turns with rogue characters that have depth of spirit and lots of baggage. This book is a hardcore page-turner with characters the reader gets to know well. It’s well-plotted and everything comes together just when it’s supposed to; no red herrings and no deus ex machina. Box knows exactly how to plot his book so that each page brings the reader closer to crisis and then conclusion. There is the dark side that is required in order for good to prevail and there are lots of cold, dark pathways that wind their way to a fine conclusion.

Cody Hoyt is a rogue cop with a history of alcoholism and wild behavior. If he doesn’t like a suspect he will shoot him in the knee to get a confession. He’s been kicked out of the Denver police force and finds himself back in Helena, Montana where his people hail from. As he self-describes his family, they’re “white trash.” The only good thing to his credit is his son Justin, who has turned out to be a good kid raised primarily by his ex-wife, Jenny.

As the book opens, Cody has been on the wagon for 59 days and is participating in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). His AA sponsor, Hank, is a man Cody trusts and who has guided him to his tentative sobriety. Cody finds out that Hank’s cabin has been destroyed by fire and that Hank has been killed. It appears, at first, to be a suicide but after careful investigation, Cody realizes it’s a homicide. He knows Hank and he knows that Hank would never take his life. He also realizes that Hank’s AA coins are missing and Hank never kept these coins far from his person. Whoever killed Hank stole the coins and made the scene look like a suicide.

The only person who believes Cody is his partner, Larry. The clues that Cody finds lead him to an outfitter called Wilderness Adventures run by one Jed McCarthy. Jed is a narcissistic self-promoter who is about to start his longest trip of the season into Yellowstone Park. He calls this trip “Back of Beyond” because it goes so deep into the National Park. Unfortunately, Cody finds out that his son, Justin, along with Jenny’s fiancé, are on this trip. He tries to get to Yellowstone in time to prevent the trip from starting but doesn’t make it.

Meanwhile, Cody gets suspended from the Helena police force and must make the trip alone as a civilian. He realizes that he’s being followed and stalked and that his very life is in danger. As he gets closer to the park, there is an attempt on his life. Cody becomes paranoid and doesn’t know who to trust. Could his partner Larry be his nemesis?

The book has a lot of good information on alcoholism and recovery, both the disease, the confidentiality and the rehabilitation process. It shows Cody’s constant efforts to remain sober along with his slips. It also shows him picking himself up again to get on the wagon. I was impressed by how much Box knows about AA and the program.

The reader can’t help but notice the author’s love and respect for the wilderness. His descriptions of Yellowstone and its geologic formations are breathtaking. We get to see Wyoming and Montana from the eyes of a writer who loves the spaces of the great outdoors. Back of Beyond is hard to put down. It’s one of those thrillers where each page adds new information and each of the characters are interesting. The book comprises the best of both worlds – it is character and action driven. It may be a bit formulaic but it’s a great formula, one that keeps the reader on his toes and coming back for more.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 182 readers
PUBLISHER:	Minotaur Books; First Edition (August 2, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	C.J. Box
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Cold Wind

Bibliography:

Joe Pickett Series:

• Open Season (2001)
• Savage Run (2002)
• Winterkill (2003)
• Trophy Hunt (2004)
• Out of Range (2005)
• In Plain Sight (2006)
• Free Fire (2007)
• Blood Trail (2008)
• Below Zero (2009)
• Nowhere to Run (2010)
• Cold Wind (2011)
• Force of Nature (2012)

Stand-alone:

• Blue Heaven (2008) /  / / 
• Three Weeks to Say Goodbye (2009)
• Back of Beyond (2011)

“The fifth of July, they went down to the river, RL and June, sat on the rocks with a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red and talked about Taylor. The fifth of July was Taylor’s birthday and they did this every year. He would have been fifty. RL had been his boyhood friend and June was married to him. He’d been dead eleven years.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (JUL 6, 2010)

Kevin Canty writes with a spare beauty. The book is designed so that there is a lot of white space on the pages and this space carries meaning. Everything is about people who are lost, looking for love, recovering from poor choices and yet have a resiliency that carries them through their damaged lives with strength and a certain dignity. Canty’s characters are able to tell us as much about themselves in their silences as when they speak.

The characters that comprise this novel overlap, and each chapter is primarily about one or two of the characters. There is RL, owner of a bait, tackle and guiding shop who has not had a loving relationship in years. He is a big man – in girth, spirit and appetites. He likes his booze and he wishes desperately for a woman. He was married for a while to a Dead Head who followed the Grateful Dead for years, leaving him to raise their daughter, Layla, on his own. Layla gives meaning to his life. She is nineteen years old and a college student. When not at school, she spends her summers in the Montana wilderness with RL where most of this novel takes place. Layla is recovering from a love affair gone amiss. RL realizes that Layla is not likely to be with him for much longer. He is trying to learn how to let her go.

RL decides to take in an old lover of his who is having chemotherapy for melanoma. In the back of his mind he hopes to resurrect some sort of relationship with her despite the fact that she is married. Betsy helps give some meaning to RL’s life because, with Layla in college, he faces the empty nest syndrome. With his big heart, he needs to give. However, with his huge appetites, he also expects a lot from others.

June is a close friend of RL’s. She was married to RL’s best friend who died eleven years ago. As the book begins, June decides to give up her widowhood. Her husband, Taylor, was her great love but now she wants another love. Eleven years of grieving is a long time. On top of that, she is a hospice worker, spending her days with the nearly dead.

Edgar is RL’s employee, an artist and lover of fishing. He knows fish and feels at one with the trout that inhabit the rivers of Montana. He is married with one child and another on the way. He is trying to make some difficult decisions in his life.

Canty has an inimitable sense of place. The reader feels like the Montana mountains are looming. I felt the lushness of the land, along with the hard life the inhabitants face. This is not a land for the weak but it can be a land for the lost – an end of the road place where people depend on one another. There is a lot of alcohol consumption in the book but there is rarely a mention of television or movies. Despite the loneliness of all the characters, they depend on one another for sustenance.

The characters speak to us in what they don’t say as much as what they tell us. This is a book about everything that makes us human – love, work, life, money, pain, joy, loneliness and connection. Canty gets it. His characters run the gamut of the soul. They are not sweet, nor are they urbanized. I pictured them in Carrhartts and jeans, rubber boots and down parkas. I felt their hands get cold and traveled with them on the dirt roads that were slick with mud or snow. I felt their pain and I soared with them in those rare moments of joy. It takes a fine author to take me to the depths of despair and soar the height of joy with his characters.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 6 readers
PUBLISHER:	Nan A. Talese (July 6, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Kevin Canty
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of:  Where the Money Went

Bibliography:

• Below Zero (1999)
• A Stranger in the World: Stories (1994)
• Honeymoon and Other Stories (2001)
• Into the Great Wide Open (1996)
• Winslow in Love (2005)
• Where the Money Went: Stories (July 2009)
• Everything (July 2010)

“Allegiance to a cause is a prickly thing. Put your hand to it just right, and there is the matchless feeling of being part of something greater than yourself. Grab on to it the wrong way, though, and it draws blood. ”

Book Review:

Review by Poornima Apte (JUN 29, 2010)

These days, one of the more famous attractions in Butte, Montana, is the Berkeley pit—a crater full of acidic water and toxic heavy metals. Now one of the costliest Superfund sites in the country, the pit is a remnant of what was once a roaring industry in the city—copper mining. Before the open pit mining technique as exemplified by the Berkeley pit took over the countryside, much of the copper mining in Butte was carried out underground.

It is this underground copper mining industry that forms the backdrop for Ivan Doig’s latest novel, Work Song. Set around 1918 and early 1919, shortly after the end of World War I, it includes a colorful assortment of characters and backdrops. Chief among these is the protagonist, Morrie Morgan, who, as the novel opens, has just arrived in Butte to make a fortune from “The Richest Hill on Earth.”

Morrie is also hoping the loud and raucous Butte will help him hide. He used to be Morgan Llewellyn of Chicago with a brother famous in the sport of boxing. A bet gone awry in a boxing contest has the Chicago mob hot on his heels so Morrie decides to escape.

Morrie soon finds boarding and lodging at the home of a widower, Grace Faraday. Grace also has two other renters who are on the last legs of their mining careers. Having lost his only belongings on the train up to Butte, Morrie must find work quickly. He takes up a job at a local undertaker’s and attends many a loud Irish wake in this capacity. Soon the crazy hours get to him and when he gets offered a job at the local library, Morrie jumps ship.

The head librarian is a legendary figure—an intimidating man both in stature and spirit, called Sam Sandison. He plays a major role in the book and his past history as a rancher adds a lot of color to the storyline.

The copper mining company in town is called Anaconda (just like its real-life counterpart) and soon enough, Morrie finds himself a part of the politics of work in Butte. Even if he is himself not a miner, through an old friend, Morrie meets Jared Evans, a union organizer. All the while, Morrie must watch his back not only for the Chicago mob who might have followed him here, but for Anaconda loyals who might do away with him if they found out about his union meddling.

Doig, who has visited the Montana countryside in his earlier book, Whistling Season, does a good job of painting the Butte from a time long past. “If America was a melting pot, Butte seemed to be its boiling point,” he writes. For it was here that the Serbians, Italians, Welsh, Polish, Irish and various other nationalities lived and worked together.

Butte around the time of the copper boom was also a hotbed of union activity. That same activism is described in these pages as Jared Evans tries to get a good wage and decent working conditions passed. Not only does he have to contend with the bosses of course, but also competing unions.

As the book nears its end, it feels like Doig doesn’t quite know where to take the story. The entire focus of the story line shifts to the composition of a song—a work song (this explains the title). Jared believes that a good and powerful workers’ song—one that can appeal to the various nationalities in Butte—will work wonders in improving unity and morale among union members. He asks Morrie to help him write it.

A good portion of the final pages is spent on this song and the story here really tries hard to tie it all together. There’s even a part where Morrie ventures down into the mines so he can meet with the miners and initiate talk about the song. The reasoning behind this adventure is flimsy at best. You can see that Doig is trying to make full use of his research about mines but is not quite sure how to integrate it into the plot.

Overall, Work Song suffers from a disjointed storyline. The colorful assortment of characters redeems the story somewhat. So does the Butte described within these pages. It is fascinating to get a sneak peek at history and to see how well Butte did before reckless exploitation of natural resources lead to severe environmental degradation. With similar unfortunate stories unfolding all around us, it’s easy to believe that history does have a way of repeating itself.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 40 readers
PUBLISHER:	Riverhead Hardcover (June 29, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Poornima Apte
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Ivan Doig
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Eleventh Man

Bibliography:

• English Creek (1984)
• Dancing at the Rascal Fair (1987)
• Ride with Me, Mariah Montana (1990
• The Sea Runners (1991)
• Bucking the Sun (1996)
• Mountain Time (1999)
• Prairie Nocturne (2003)
• The Whistling Season (2006)
• The Eleventh Man (October 2008)
• Work Song (June 2010)
• The Bartender’s Tale (August 2012)

Autobiographical:

• This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind (1979)
• Winter Brothers: A Season at the Edge of America (1980)
• Heart Earth (1993)