Vicki Lane

Like those of Sharyn McCrumb, Deborah Grabien, Phillip DePoy and Erin Hart, Vicki Lane's books mix folklore and old crimes with contemporary mystery. In The Day of Small Things, Lane steps aside from her Elizabeth Goodweather series to explore the history of Miss Birdie, a character who has had a part to play in some of the previous books. Birdie -- who has had several different names in her long life -- richly deserved her own book.

Readers looking for a fast-paced, thrill-a-minute story will not find it here. This is a book to get lost in -- lost in another time, another place, another world. It's been clear throughout the series that Miss Birdie is something more than a kindly old country neighbor, and through this book we find just how much more she is.

The tension between old ways and new ways is a major theme in The Day of Small Things . And if you think of Appalachian forms of Christianity snake-handling for example as "old ways " you may be surprised when Miss Birdie goes back to still older ways to help her late husband's kinfolk in their time of crisis. As I said above readers who just want action and detection may not enjoy this book. There is not a lot of mystery in the detection sense but there is plenty in the spiritual sense. I loved spending these days with Miss Birdie and I know too that having read book: The Day of Small Things will deepen my appreciation for Lane's next book in the Elizabeth Goodweather series. Very highly recommended.… (meer)

Recent discussions on the DorothyL list caused me to order this book before I started my State Mystery Project. It takes place in North Carolina and I couldn't wait that long to read it; plus, having already read books by Sharyn McCrumb and Phillip DePoy, I'm familiar enough (vicariously) with the western NC mountains that, when I get to the state in my project, I'll be looking for something different, maybe coastal or the Research Triangle. Nevertheless, I hope Vicki Lane writes many more books about Elizabeth Goodweather and the area in which she lives.

SIGNS IN THE BLOOD has some structural similarities to Sharyn McCrumb's GHOST RIDERS, which I read a short time back. Both alternate a modern story with a tale from the mountain past, told in the first person. I think Ms. Lane's is by far the better book. For one thing, the present-day story in SIGNS IN THE BLOOD is a true mystery and not ashamed to be one, whereas that in Ms. McCrumb's book rambles from character to character and never seems to go anywhere either as a mystery or a novel. The story from the past in Ms. Lane's book also brings to mind the tales in Deborah Grabien's Haunted Ballad series, in that we first hear a garbled version (or versions) of the story and, bit by bit, learn the truth.
I don't mean by these comparisons to suggest that Ms. Lane's book is other than original -- quite the contrary. She has written an excellent book -- setting, characters and plot are all first-rate.

Ms. Lane's protagonist, Elizabeth Goodweather, is a complicated character and a person I'd love to know in real life. As a relative newcomer to the mountains, she has made friends with the local people and learned much from them while maintaining her own sense of who she is. When her friend Birdie's "slow" son Cletus disappears while out hunting ginseng, Elizabeth tries to help find him. When Cletus's body is found in a river, and Birdie can't believe his death was an accident as the Sheriff believes, Elizabeth begins to investigate in earnest. Her investigation leads her to some interesting and rather scary places -- to services at a snake-handling church where she encounters a prophetess with messages for her, to a "New Age" community with a sinister feel, to a group of right-wing militiamen and to a revival preacher who's also an "Outsider artist."
It's been five years since Elizabeth's husband was killed in the crash of a private plane. Only now has she really begun to allow herself to grieve for him, and perhaps because of that, she is also allowing herself to be a bit interested in men again. One of them is the preacher at the snake-handling church, to whom she is strangely attracted in spite of their having almost nothing in common; the other is an old friend of her husband's, a policeman, who shows up in nearby Asheville and wants to renew their acquaintance. When Elizabeth is the recipient of various threatening gestures, suspicion falls on both men. Indeed, there is plenty of suspicion to go around and red herrings abound. The thrilling denouement kept me up well past my bedtime.

SIGNS IN THE BLOOD is a bit longer than most mystery novels, but there was not a page I would willingly have had left out. I'm rating it five stars/excellent and highly recommend it.
… (meer)