Crime fiction becomes native

Marcie Rendon was in the mid -1960s when her first novel, Murder on the Red Riverwas released in 2017. She had written for the theater, as well as a few children's books, and her biography also described her as a “community arts activist”, but nothing that she had done until this point had suggested that she had described with what Louise Erdrich – the Doyenne of the American Romanists described as “addicted matchical, a most, most, most, a most, a most Mostly, a most, a most, a master, a master, a master, a master, a master, a master, a master, a master, as an authentic, a master, a master, as an authentic crime “. and intuitive Ojibwe woman. “

Murder on the Red River followed Girl disappeared (2019), Dark graves (2022) and – only from –Broken fields. “I want a shelf of Cash Blackbear novels,” Erdrich wrote and her wish is fulfilled. Additionally, When we last saw them –A novel that is not part of the series – was published last year. If you routinely have a lot of crime fiction and a number of books with American indigenous people, you should check out Murder on the Red River for the earliest opportunity. If you do it like me, you will enjoy the series as a whole like me; If not, not.

There are a lot of overlap from one book to the next, as is common in the fiction of this kind, but especially here, even more. In the first novel, which plays around 1970, Cash is 19 years old-over the same age, which at that time would have been rendon. They pursue certain recurring memories. “Back when she was three years old,” we read early in the first book, “her mother had rolled the car – with her three children in it – in the large ditch north of the city.” Her mother seems to be okay immediately after the accident, but she dies and the family broke, the three children broke up.

“After that night, a number of white nursing homes came.” This becomes a drumbbeat in the series – not only the experience of cash and its siblings, but the unbound evil, as Rendon IT IT, the Indian children raise. And that in turn becomes proof of a larger pattern of white perfidy and hypocrisy, especially in church people. “Cash did not like the word God,” we read on the first page of the first book in the series.

As someone who prays every day, more than ever in old age and as a reader who has known exemplary foster parents over the years, I see our common world very different from a perspective than rendons. However, this does not prevent me from learning from this series and immediately enjoying its remarkable protagonists down -to -earth and visionary. Also the occasional disorders in the text, which a publisher should have been remedied. (Example: p. 108, “Overwhelming sadness enveloped the room around them”; p. 215, “loneliness, although cash did not know the word to describe how she felt, she wrapped.”)

I have not yet mentioned Wheaton, an important presence, the connection with cash returned to the car accident when she was three years old and he was a young policewoman. At the time of time Broken fieldsHe is the district sheriff. He is calm, modest, sometimes a bit cumbersome, but not to be recognized, and his role in the new book is the Romanism corresponds to an Oscar profit performance as best supportive actor.

Rendon's ability to create the fields and the cities, the pool connections and the long motorways of the Red River Valley Broken fields An grounding in everyday life. Her representation of the heart of the darkness of the novel, a prime white church lady, which is not only greasy, but also a murderer with a psychotic strip is less convincing. Who knew it? .

But there are also new ingredients, including an unconventional trio of bank robbers. Many readers will enjoy Jonesy, an “old Indian woman who knew something about things about things”, as Cash himself (subject to visions she takes seriously). “Jonesy, the men's jeans and a red flannel shirt, rolled the sleeves to her elbows, swung a long -stemmed ax over the head in the courtyard. A two -foot tree trunk that divided into half when she brought the ax down with a clear slot.”

I am sure I'm not the only one who hopes that rendon, if there is a long-stemmed ax, will give us at least two or three more cash blackbear books. May it be so.

Broken fields: a cash Blackbear Mystery
By Marcie R. Rendon
Soho Crime, 272 pages, $ 28.95

John Wilson writes about books for Important, Prufrock News, National Review, The American Conservative, and other outlets