{"id":318,"date":"2017-04-02T16:56:04","date_gmt":"2017-04-02T21:56:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/?p=318"},"modified":"2017-04-02T16:56:04","modified_gmt":"2017-04-02T21:56:04","slug":"when-a-murder-is-welcome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/when-a-murder-is-welcome\/","title":{"rendered":"When a Murder is Welcome"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A Welcome Murder<\/em><\/a>
\nRobin Yocum<\/a>
\nSeventh Street Books<\/a>
\nTrade Paperback $15.99 US\/$17.99 CAN
\nEbook $9.99 US\/$11.99 CAN<\/p>\n

Robin Yocum’s A Brillian Death<\/em><\/a> was probably my favorite book last year.\u00a0 He returns with another tale of murder in set in a rustbelt Ohio town.\u00a0 A Brilliant Death<\/em> was a coming of age story wrapped in a murder mystery.\u00a0 As such, the profanity and sexual content were pretty minimal; its content would not be inappropriate for younger readers.\u00a0 This one deals with what happens when the dreams of youth and high school turn to disappointment and death.\u00a0 The content in A Welcome Murder<\/em> is much more raw than that of A Brilliant Death<\/em> and may not be appropriate for readers under twenty-one<\/del> eighteen.<\/p>\n

The books are both well written, with compelling stories that knocked all other reading commitments aside, but they are told in such different ways that I was quite impressed with Yocum’s versatility and range.\u00a0 Permit me to elaborate.<\/p>\n

The story is told through the eyes of five different characters in the town of Steubenville, Ohio.\u00a0 First there’s Johnny Earl, the former hometown sports hero, just released from prison after blowing a major league baseball career by selling drugs.\u00a0 He’s in town for a couple of days, trying to duck his former high school girlfriend, Dena Marie, while he gets back on his feet.\u00a0 Dena Maire was the proverbial cheerleader with the comic book body and rampaging libido, and she still thinks she and Johnny will get married.\u00a0 The fact that she’s now married to a former classmate with the nickname of “Smoochie” doesn’t seem to faze her.<\/p>\n

The problem isn’t simply that the former high school buddy turned FBI informant, Rayce, the guy who turned Johnny in, has been found dead. It’s that they had a very public physical altercation just a few days before.\u00a0 There is no shortage of suspects, including Smoochie, who got his butt kicked when he confronted Rayce over the affair he was having with Dena Maire.\u00a0 (That Dena Marie, she sure gets around.)\u00a0 Johnny is the front runner, however.<\/p>\n

The sheriff investigating the murder is Francis Roberson.\u00a0 He played football in high school with Johnny.\u00a0 Francis is a former FBI agent, and although he had nothing to do with Johnny’s drug arrest, he’s a good man who intends to make a thorough investigation.\u00a0 Aiding him, in her own way, is his wife Allison, who is also the dispatcher for the sheriff’s department.\u00a0 They met when she was working at the FBI Academy, and she resents that they’ve moved back to Steubenville.\u00a0 Francis has political ambitions.\u00a0 Allison sees them as her ticket out of this burg.\u00a0 So she’s doing what she thinks is best to accomplish this, including holding her knowledge of Francis’s indiscretion with Dena Marie over his head.\u00a0 (I told you Dena Marie gets around.)<\/p>\n

So Johnny, Dena Marie, Smoochie, Francis, and Allison are the viewpoint characters, and they have some very different viewpoints, especially the two married couples.\u00a0 The way Yocum balances the different perspectives is impressive.<\/p>\n

So is the humor.\u00a0 This is a pretty grim and dark book, with at least one unlikeable character (YMMV).\u00a0 I had an urge to take a shower after Dena Marie’s first chapter, which is a compliment.\u00a0 It takes a good writer to elicit that type of reaction.\u00a0 Youcm leavens the darkness with some screwball humor worthy of a Cary Grant movie.\u00a0 I especially like Johnny’s reaction when his former cellmate, a white supremacist with ambitions of forming his own nation in Montana, shows up at his bail hearing to collect some money he thinks Johnny has stashed away somewhere.\u00a0 It’s not easy to make me laugh out loud, but I did more than once.<\/p>\n

I mentioned there are five characters with different viewpoints.\u00a0 I could as easily said five characters with secrets.\u00a0 Each of them has something they’re trying to hide.\u00a0 The clues are placed naturally, so that when the reader gets to certain revelations, rather than feel cheated the reaction is “Oh, of course.\u00a0 I should have seen that.”\u00a0\u00a0 Pay attention to the details.\u00a0 They’ll be important.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0 Welcome Murder<\/em> was a compelling story I found hard to put down.\u00a0 I’d like to thank Seventh Street Books for the review copy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Welcome Murder Robin Yocum Seventh Street Books Trade Paperback $15.99 US\/$17.99 CAN Ebook $9.99 US\/$11.99 CAN Robin Yocum’s A Brillian Death was probably my favorite book last year.\u00a0 He returns with another tale of murder in set in a rustbelt Ohio town.\u00a0 A Brilliant Death was a coming of age story wrapped in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[83,84],"class_list":["post-318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-seventh-street-books","tag-robin-yocum","tag-seventh-street-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3P58L-58","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":323,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318\/revisions\/323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}