I never read a mystery novel for the mystery. I don’t mind the mystery, of course. That is, after all, the reason why the novel was written in the first place. And I do care who done it. I just don’t care to try to figure it out before the denouement. I mean, after all, isn’t that the job of the protagonist detective, whether professional or amateur?
When I do read a mystery novel I usually read them for the characters, especially the character of the protagonist detective, whether professional or amateur. And I prefer my detectives to be larger-than-life or unique, stand-alone, maybe downright strange. I like detectives who are sophisticated, superior, and even supercilious. This being my preference -- some might say, burden -- I tend to prefer detectives from the past. From Sherlock Holmes to Philo Vance to Hercule Poirot to Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey DSO to Ellery Queen to Nero Wolfe, I like hanging out with characters I probably, in real life, wouldn’t like hanging out with -- but who I wouldn’t mind being.
This is not to say that I don’t like other detectives from the past, say the hard-boiled ones from the mean streets. I wouldn’t particularly like hanging out with them in real life either. As for being? Well -- they get beat up and shot a lot.
As to contemporary mysteries -- not that I am an expert -- some of the detectives seem not at all larger-than-life, although not necessarily smaller-than-life. But they do seem somewhat rooted in real life, for lack of a better term. Some come with flaws, mental disturbances from some incident in their past, drinking problems or divorces, PTSD, or what have you. I wouldn’t want to hang out with most of them. Nor would I want to be them.
Given all that, here’s a real mystery: Why have I enjoyed -- and indeed admire -- the first two novels in Jean Rabe’s new mystery series featuring the very ordinary Piper Blackwell?
At the very fresh age of twenty-three Piper Blackwell is elected the sheriff of the rural Spencer County in Indiana. The previous sheriff was her father, Paul Blackwell, who had to resign to fight cancer. Piper left the Army, where she served in the military police, to be there for him his battle. Paul, who had been a very popular sheriff, encourages Piper to run for his position. She does. She wins. She doesn’t stop wondering if she won on her father’s name value alone. Especially since her opponent was Oren Rosenberg, her father’s chief deputy and now hers. Oren is far more qualified for the job. And yet -- here she is.
A nice set-up for a new mystery series. A babe-in-the-woods sheriff (literally, as there are a lot of woods in Spencer County) who everybody is going to question.
But what’s the big deal? Really? The largest crime problem in sleepy Spencer County is a good amount of DUIs. Oh, there are some problems with drugs, which have long ago ceased to be an exclusively urban evil, but there would be state and federal help on that. So what better place to be a babe-in-the-woods sheriff?
And then only minutes into her term murder happens. And then another. Yep, Piper’s got a serial killer on her hands.
The first Piper Blackwell mystery, The Dead of Winter, documents how Piper did with this mystery. I’m not going to spoil that for you here, except to say that Rabe has just come out with her second Piper Blackwell mystery, The Dead of Night, so you can make a good guess.
The second novel takes place only about four months later. Piper is a bit more experienced, but she is still new on the job, still resented by others, still insecure. But at least Spencer County has returned to its normal uneventful self, except for DUIs and other mundane infractions, and the occasional distractions provided by the more eccentric citizens of the community. Such as “Mark the Shark” a paranoid, conspiracy-fearing, Democrats-hating “old fart” in his nineties who insists on meeting with the sheriff alone on a rainy bluff to complain that someone has hacked into his bank accounts and is stealing his money. Piper, who takes a liking -- or at least not a disliking -- to Mark sincerely promises that she’ll look into it. She, of course, assumes it’s all just a mistake. Of course, it isn’t, it is a genuine and somewhat perplexing mystery. And then, after the old man leaves, Piper trips on some bones the rain has exposed. They’ve been buried for sixty-five years. They are the bones of a nine-year-old murder victim.
So, a mysterious internet theft and a cold case. And once again Spencer County seems fully awake.
Jean Rabe calls her Piper Blackwell novels “cozy police procedurals.” Seemingly contradiction in terms, it is actually an apt description of what Rabe has created. But they are cozy not in a tea and crumpets way, but in the way Rabe writes. Her writing is beautifully rendered and effortless to read, if not effortless to achieve. She always puts her readers right in the middle of each scene and gives them observational powers they may not actually have. Her plots flow not only logically, slowly but inevitably revealing the mystery and, of course, the solution, but also moves forward the personal lives of the main characters.
And this brings us back to character.
As I said, Piper Blackwell is ordinary. Not dull or mundane or boring, just ordinary. A person, a person you might want to know. Or a person that shares nothing with you. But a person like you or me and that person sitting over there. She has her likes, she has her dislikes, she has her daily frustrations, and she has joy when it appears. She has no deep personal problems. She has no horrendous past, not that she has much of a past at all. And she is not psychologically tortured. She can be a bit anxious, of course, and she can be a bit insecure in the job, which she is having to learn as she goes, and she misses her military life and would, quite frankly, like to get back to it. This is a real possibility in the second novel as her father has beaten cancer and would like to get back in the saddle -- or police cruiser -- himself. But, as ordinary as she is, Piper has a fierce determination to do a good job, to do her duty, to not let her sex, short stature, or age prevent her from being the best sheriff she can be. She works hard, she works through physical pain, she works out of compassion and a sense of justice. She is most admirable in this.
Piper’s competition, Chief Deputy Oren Rosenberg, who is sixty-five years old and far more experienced than her and, by all rights, should be sheriff, is no less admirable in his sense of duty and in doing a good job. I suspect that this shared quality will bring them closer together in future volumes of the series and, indeed, we can see the birth of that closeness in The Dead of Night.
All the subsidiary characters in The Dead of Night are finely drawn, mainly through Rabe’s excellent ear for dialog. Almost every character speaks in their own manner, with their own cadence, with that natural illogic of spoken word that pays little heed to proper grammar and sentence structure but makes the speaker real and individual.
Jean Rabe’s great skill in her Piper Blackwell novels is to make the ordinary not extraordinary -- that would be too easy -- but to make the ordinary interesting, of the moment, and vital. All while telling, of course, a damn good story.
You can check out Jean Rabe’s Piper Blackwell Mysteries and all her novels on her Amazon Authors Page
