Copper Kettle

October 24, 2016
Set in 1920, Ramsey’s satisfying prequel to his contemporary Ike Schwartz series (The Vulture, etc.) provides fascinating details of a soldier’s life during WWI. Jesse Sutherlin has returned to his home on Buffalo Mountain in Virginia as a war hero. His experiences in the trenches have changed him, setting him apart from his hill-folk kin. He no longer shares their shoot-first-ask-questions-later attitude. When his shell-shocked army buddy and cousin, Solomon McAdoo, is found shot to death near the illegal still owned by Jesse’s grandpa Big Tom McAdoo, trouble starts brewing. The McAdoos grab their guns and are ready to wreak vengeance on their longtime rivals, the Bruin clan. Jesse intercedes, telling his bellicose relatives that proof is needed before any bullets fly. Big Tom gives him four days to find Solomon’s killer. It’s a genuine pleasure to read a story of detection that depends purely on observation and logical deduction to reach its conclusions.

December 1, 2016
A decorated World War I veteran returns to Buffalo Mountain, Virginia, dissatisfied with the life he finds there after he's seen Gay Paree and a whole lot more.Jesse Sutherlin and his extended McAdoo family have spent generations scraping a living out of poor farming country, making moonshine and continuing their ongoing feud with the equally poor Lebrun clan, who live on the other side of the mountain. When a shellshocked veteran is killed while tending Big Tom McAdoo's illegal still, Jesse's hotheaded relatives overrule his reasonable objections and jump to the conclusion that the killer must have been a Lebrun. Big Tom gives Jesse, who's seen too many men die in the killing fields of Europe, four days to find out the truth before a battle breaks out. Jesse, a brevet second lieutenant awarded a Distinguished Service Cross, has found himself a good job as foreman of the nearby lumber mill and quickly sees an opportunity to make some money by acquiring a well-timbered parcel of land whose ownership is in limbo. He's also renewed his old friendship with mill secretary Serena Barker, who's distantly related to the Lebruns. Jesse and his brother Abel arrive just in time to stop his cousin Anse and his drunken friends from lynching Serena's brother. When Jesse is arrested for the murder of the one Lebrun who's agreed to work with him to solve the original murder, a local lawyer fights to get him released and help him acquire the property he wants. Before Jesse can get on with his job and his pursuit of Serena, though, he still has to catch a killer. Though this sort-of prequel to Ramsay's Ike Schwartz series (The Vulture, 2015, etc.) isn't much of a mystery, it's memorable for its powerful portrayal of the difficult lives of proud but poorly educated people too set in their ways to change.

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February 1, 2017
Forget the Hatfields and the McCoys: here are the Lebruns and the McAdoos, two feuding Virginia mountain families in the years following WWI. Solomon McAdoo has been killed, shot in the back by an unknown assailant. Jesse Sutherlin, a member of the McAdoo extended family (Solomon was his cousin) and a WWI veteran, wants to investigate the killing and find out whodunit. But the McAdoos say they already know who's responsible: the Lebruns. Can Jesse nail the culprit before war breaks about between the clans? Set in the same locale as the author's popular Ike Schwartz series, but years earlier, the novel is colorfully written, with an engaging cast of characters and some pretty serious themes: death, poverty, and the strength required to persevere in the face of virtually insurmountable odds. This one pairs nicely with Daniel Woodrell's Give Us a Kiss (1996).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)