Detective Story a Fine Late Film Noir/Drama

 

 

Detective Story (1951)

Directed by William Weyler

Paramount, 103 minutes, not-rated

★★★★

 

Detective Story can be tagged, “Who is Mary” Mary McLeod isn’t the central character of Detective Story, but she is its pivot. We first meet her (Eleanor Parker) outside of the police precinct in which her husband James (Kirk Douglas) is a detective. The two sit in a car and make out like teenagers before James returns to work.

 

Inside the station house we see a different side of James. First, though, another officer brings in a shoplifter (Lee Grant) who is like a second pair of eyes for viewers. She’s also a sarcastic and funny New Yorker and we suspect her outward naivete might be an act. We see precinct life largely from her POV with all of its noise, confusion, seriousness, and absurdity.

 

James reveals himself as a throw-the-book-at-‘em hard-nose, a product of the fact that his father was a criminal who drove his mother mad. We see James’ zealousness when young Arthur Hill (Craig Hill) is being booked for stealing money from his employer. His was an impulsive act for which he is embarrassed. Although he has a character witness and his employer is willing to drop the charges if he’s paid back, James wants Arthur in handcuffs and prosecuted for his theft. We learn from other detectives that James has a history of being too serious for his own good, but James convinces Arthur’s boss he should not drop the charges. To hear James tell it, the very moral fiber of America is at stake.

 

James also has a bee in his bonnet for Dr. Karl Schneider (George Macready), who he thinks is an abortionist responsible for a young woman's death. In 1951, abortion was illegal and, as Schneider’s attorney Endicott Sims (Warner Anderson) asserts, has been roughhoused by James several times in the past. Sims agrees to bring Schneider in for questioning, but comes armed with photos he took of his client an hour earlier and threatens to sue everyone in sight if his client has a mark on him after his interview.

 

To add another level of chaos, police also bring in two men accused of burglary, including career crook Charley Gennini (Joseph Wiseman). “Guilty” is practically etched on Charley’s face, despite his not-so-convincing insistence he’s as pure as a baby. Everyone knows Charley’s rap sheet and rumor has it he’s associated with gangster Tami Giacoppetti (Gerard Mohr).

 

You don’t have to look very hard to find a major logic error in this film. During Schneider’s interview, he drops some information about Mary that drives James into a state of rage. He also slips up enough to warrant a trip to the lockup, but if you’re the duty lieutenant (Horace McMahon) do you send the not-so-good doctor to the hoosegow in the back of a van with McLeod as his guard?

 

James hears things about Mary and comes to suspect he doesn’t know his new bride very well at all. At this point I must remind you that gender relations in 1951 were quite different that they are today, especially for a guy who is strung as tightly as James and is used to taking justice into his own hands. Is he irredeemable? Detective Story will surprise you in several ways.

 

Detective Story is a very good late black and white film noir. It didn’t win any of the four Academy Awards for which it was nominated–hardly surprising in a year it was up against An American in Paris, A Street Car Named Desire, The African Queen, and Quo Vadis–though it arguably stands up better than An American in Paris.

 

I should add that it’s not a typical film noir. I suspect it was labeled as such because of gritty themes, not an interplay of light and shadow. Visually the film’s most notable characteristic is the use of deep focus; that is, shots in which foreground, middle grounds, and background are all in focus. Director Willam Weyler was a legendary Hollywood talent. Today we’d probably label this movie a drama, but in 1951, the Hollywood Code simply didn’t cotton to themes of abortion or shooting cops. Weyler had to alter a few things to get it past Hollywood’s moral guardians and drew upon his considerable reputation to bring it the screen.

 

 

Rob Weir

 

The Bog Wife: Strange and Haunting

 

 

The Bog Wife (2024)

By Kay Chronister

Counterpoint, 307pages.

★★★★

 

The Bog Wife Is one of the most unusual books of last year. It’s set in West Virginia whose license plates proclaim: “Wild, wonderful.” Author Kay Chronister's tale is wild;  you can judge whether it's wonderful. I guarantee, though, that it's unlike anything you've read lately.

 

There remain pockets of Appalachia where time has stood still. In the early 20th century, folklorists combed the hills for ballads, customs, and vernacular speech in such places. Speaking of customs, the Haddesley family takes the cake for uniqueness. As we meet them in the not-so-distant past, the family consists of a dying father, sons Charlie and Percy, and daughters Eda, Wenna, and Nora. It is a patriarchal family that lives in the novel's namesake bog. In family lore, their ramshackle manor house has been owned by the h Haddesleys since a royal ancestor came to America and built it.

 

Lots of people go to Ancestry.com in search of august relatives–much of which is of dubious authenticity–but the Haddesleys are anomalous.  Their origins are supposedly contained in a book written in old French that none can read, though the patriarch is the keeper of oral lore. The bog has allegedly always provided what the family needs except for a few things the patriarch buys in a nearby town. They keep a few scrawny animals but rely on gardens and harvested bog bounty. Rituals are needed for the bog to sustain the Haddesleys.

 

Not weirded out yet? When the patriarch’s death is imminent, it’s the eldest son’s duty to administer a slow poison, place the dying body in the bog and wait for the sphagnum moss and algae to grow over him. From this will emerge a bog wife for the eldest son/new patriarch who digs her from the bog and vitiates her by spitting into her mouth. At least that's what the family believes the big black book says. Only Nora has much world experience, which she acquired by running off to Chicago, but did not acquire any old French! She is skeptical of family legends, though she returns to help the family perform their father's death ritual.

 

Wenna is also a symbol of how the bog has withdrawn its blessings–weeds have choked it, Wenna’s flight might be a curse, and a tree fell upon the room where slovenly Charlie slept and crushed the family jewels. Before he was placed in the bog, papa Haddesley told Percy that Charlie is a fool incapable of taking over and asked Percy to kill his brother. Everyone has issues that threaten to break the pact between the family and the bog. Oldest daughter Eda is a whiner who thinks she does all the work, Wenna doesn’t want to be there, and Nora, the youngest is naïve and willing to do anything to keep the family together. (Call Nora’s attempts unusual and distressing.) Meek Percy becomes a mystic survivalist, their inheritance money is nearly gone, and they are forced to sell items in the house that are old but don't yield a lot of money.

 

It is easy for us to identify a way of life in decline with five inept people adrift in a world that has passed them by. They are so isolated that many locals assume the manor is empty and consider it haunted. In a way, they are right; a few more crises and the withering House of Vegetation will fall down. The novel turns in ways that could be imaginary or perhaps magical. Stir in a visitation, a few revelations, and it spells change or perish.

 

It's never entirely clear what Chronister wants us to take away from all of this. For me,  the book is a metaphor for the clash between traditionalism and modernity with the Haddesleys representing a decaying pioneer spirit versus the encroaching outside world, the veritable serpent in the bog. Chronister never romanticizes life in the decaying manor house and played out bog, nor does she juxtapose modern life as a new Eden.

 

Disclaimer: My take could be nuts! The Bog Wife could be read as an environmental novel, or just an odd story populated by eccentrics. One blurb mentions “honoring family commitments and the drive to strike out on one's own... a haunting evocation of the arcane power of the habits and habitats that bind us.” That doesn't really help! Whatever you conclude, I suspect this book will stick with you like bog mud.

 

Rob Weir

 

After the Fog: The Donora Story

 

 

After the Fog (2012)

 By Kathleen Shoop

CreateSpace Publishing, 405 pages.

★★★ ½

 

I grew up in Pennsylvania and have long been fascinated by the town of Donora, though it’s 20 miles south of Pittsburgh and I’ve never been there. My interest in this borough of 4,500 comes from strange places. As a kid I knew it as where baseball great Stan Musial was raised–and more recently Ken Griffey Sr. and Jr.–but the bigger draw is related to a historical event that occurred in 1948, a temperature inversion.

 

No, I’m not planning a post-retirement career in meteorology. I was in elementary school when I first heard about what happened in Donora before I was born. Donora’s proximity to Pittsburgh and location along the Monongahela River meant that it was once part of the black smoke “Mon Valley” industrial corridor devoted to zinc, iron, and steel; in its case, Donora had a very large wire factory. A temperature inversion can occur when warm air is trapped by a passing upper atmosphere cold front that “seals” the air people breathe. In essence, the black smoke, particulates, coal fumes, and other types of pollution have nowhere to go. Donora then had a population of over 13,000 and the trapped, filthy air killed 20 and sickened 6,000. I suppose one could say that such numbers aren’t a patch on the inversion in London in 1952 that killed more than 10,000 and sent ten times that many to the hospital, but Donora’s 75 percent population decline is a testament to the long-term impact (along with deindustrialization) of the toxic fog. How many places do you know that try to draw tourists to its Smog Museum?

 

Novelist Kathleen Shoop populates After the Fog with fictionalized characters, but if you read into Donora’s history you will quickly conclude that the book’s cast is a stand-in for real-life personalities. The novel revolves around Rose Pavlesic, a community nurse devoted to helping poor working-class families. She operates as a combination social worker, midwife, free medical care provider, and social statistics collector. She is also mother to two growing children, Magdalena and John(ny), and is the wife of wire worker Henry. Unlike soft-hearted Henry, Rose is as hard as a coil of multi-strand wire. As if she didn’t already have plenty on her plate, Henry’s lazy gambler brother and pampered wife live in the same household.

 

A reader’s first impression, though, is that Rose is an unsympathetic human being. She’s a nag and complainer who henpecks Henry, tries to map out her children’s futures, and stops at nothing in pursuit of things that she thinks should be. She wants Johnny, the high school football quarterback, to win a sports scholarship to college; never mind that he’d much rather be a musician. She insists on maintaining a moral family life to (over) compensate for her childhood as an orphan, and tries to badger the Sebastian family into underwriting community health services rather than the opera.

 

Rose is devoted, but like Donora she is rough around the edges. Donora is a tough town loaded with bars (not “taverns”), Catholic churches, gossipers, children wearing hand-me-downs, ethnic families, and rivalries. Even when Rose is right, her persuasion skills left much to be desired. And, as you might expect, she can’t possibly control all the things she tries to command. It doesn’t help that she holds a deep secret.

 

The weakest part of the novel is the after part of After the Fog. I’m sure the character shifts will please readers who like tidy endings, but I am suspicious of personality turnarounds–even when intervening forces dictate a Plan B. People can and do change, but not quickly. After the Fog ends on notes that seem too upbeat and convenient.

 

This was book one of Shoop’s “Donora Series.” You should definitely read it before moving onto the next installment. For the record, Rose bears some resemblance to famed public health researcher Mary Amdur (1921-98) if you can picture a less educated and less academic version of Amdur. The rich Sebastian family is a composite of the robber barons who founded U.S. Steel. If you know your history, the sort of folks who ran U.S. Steel were more prone to favor their own kind than to care about a place like Donora.

 

Rob Weir

Experience the Art of John Wilson at MFA Boston

 

My Brother

 

 

Witnessing Humanity: The Art of John Wilson

Museum of Fine Arts (Boston)

Through June 22, 2025

 

There is a small portrait at the Smith College Museum of Arts that has long captivated me. It’s titled “My Brother,” a young man named Frederick, whose older sibling was John Wilson (1922-2015). I show it here but if you live in Western Massachusetts and can see it later this summer at Smith, do so. As you can see, the MFA lighting puts a lot of sheen on the painting, a constant problem for museum portraits of black people.

 

 

"Nefertiti"

 

That said, get yourself to Boston in the next month to see Witnessing Humanity: The Art of John Wilson. Wilson spent much of his life in the Roxbury section of Boston depicting black street life, social issues, his family, and self-portraits. As is the case with most black artists, he fixated upon racism, prejudice, and injustices, though his primary goal was always to show–as the title of the MFA show suggests–the humanity of African Americans and the dignity of their everyday lives. 

 

"Streetcar Scene." This man is on his way to work at the Navy yard.

 

The MFA show is the largest show yet of Wilson’s work. That’s not to say this is a huge exhibition. Wilson is at long last getting his due as major artist. The MFA spotlights paintings, drawings, book illustrations, and sculptures from his 60 years of making art. Only now is Wilson being considered in the same breath as better known black artists such as Romare Beardon and Jacob Lawrence.

 

John Wilson was born in Roxbury but his parents were from what was then the colony of British Guiana (now Guyana). They lived a middle-class existence there, as two generations of Wilsons managed sugar refineries. They immigrated to Boston shortly before John was born.

 

John Wilson had intriguing influences before finding his own style. He studied with surrealist Fernand Léger in Paris and he also developed a deep admiration for the works of Mexican muralist José Orozco. It’s always interesting to see how artists channeled their influences for a time and then gave nods to them in more subtle ways. 

 

Leger influences

 

 

Wilson, not Leger

"Worker" Note Orozco influences

 

Given the intractable problems of race in the United States, though, it comes as no surprise that Wilson used his brushes, pens, and chisels to comment upon what, in 1944, Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal dubbed “an American dilemma.” In the 1940s, Wilson contributed illustrations dealing with racism for the leftist publication New Masses, a communist art and political journal. Please note that, at the time, the Communist Party USA was a legal political party that drew tens of thousands of voters during the Great Depression and World War II when the Soviet Union and the USA were allies. From what we can determine, Wilson’s politics settled into more of a socialist democratic position. 

 

"Study for Lynching, 1946"

 

Black Despair 1946

"The Incident" 1952

 

Racism was all the more personal for Wilson given his marriage to white Bronx College graduate Julie Kowtich in 1951. Suffice it to say that Boston wasn’t the most welcoming city for an interracial couple with biracial children in the 1950s, 60s, and beyond. They often had to drive in separate cars and decamped to Mexico for five years to make art and gain a reprieve from discrimination. Wilson painted his children from time to time and these are some of the more touching works in the show. 

 

Julie and Erica"

 

MLK (maquette)

Wilson lived to the ripe old age of 93. This means he got to see the flowering of the civil rights movement. His statue of Martin Luther King Jr. graces the U.S. Capitol and a maquette of that work is in the exhibit. Perhaps the best way of thinking of Wilson as a black artist is the show’s largest work, a sculpture often jocularly called “Big Head.” Wilson had a better name that bespeaks the fact that African Americans have endured and aren’t going away: “Eternal Presence.”

 

"Eternal Presence"

 

 

Rob Weir

Rififi the Standard for Heist Films?

 

 

 Rififi (1955/2000)

Directed by Jules Dassin

Pathé, 122 minutes, not-rated

Black & white; in English, French, Italian with subtitles

★★★★ ½

 

 

Rififi is considered one of the greatest heist films ever made and has been heralded for other reasons as well. It was released in France in 1955, but its director Jules Dassin was an American blacklisted during the Red Scare for refusing to reveal his political views or those of his friends. The film is based on a novel by Auguste Le Breton, but was altered because Dassin felt Le Breton was racist—not to mention there was no way Dassin could depict the novel’s necrophilia. The novel depicted mobsters as Arabs and Berbers; Dassin’s heavy, Pierre Grutter (Marcel Lupovic), is instead vaguely Germanic. Even then Dassin had to make a few cuts to get the script past the censorious Catholic League of Decency, which worried the heist would inspire copycats. Several countries banned it for the same reason.

 

 “Rififi” means violent show of force and takes its name from a war in the 1920s between Berbers and Spain. Dassin ordered cinematographer Philippe Agostini to shoot only in overcast or foul weather because he wanted the film’s tones bathed in grey in order to show the seedy side of post-World War II Paris. Agostini followed orders brilliantly. Few film noirs use sharp angles, shadows, and contrast as well as Rififi. Paris appears as a mobbed-up city in which a few hustlers have wealth to throw around in nightclubs, but most citizens are living close to the margins. The latter includes Jo the Swede (Carl Mohner), a smalltime thief, who recently endured a five-year stretch in prison and finds his former girlfriend Mado (Magali Noel) is now the paramour of a bigtime crook, Grutter (Lupovic). Jo tries to win back Mado, but in a distressing scene beats her when she tells Jo he can’t keep her in a mink and luxury.

 

Jo contemplates a smash-and-grab at a jewelry store, as he has few prospects of moving out of his shabby apartment. He contacts aging underworld friend Tony (Jean Servais), who has a better idea: break into the jewelry store, bag really valuable jewels, and fence them through a London contact. They also enlist a master safecracker, Mario Farrati (Robert Manuel), an egotistical Italian with a lust for women. Their problem is that the store has state-of-the-art security.

 

That dilemma leads to the film’s most innovative half hour. After careful stakeouts, the crew assembles duplicate systems and figures out how to bypass them. The scheme shifts to an overnight job involving an assault of the store from above. There is a half hour of near-complete silence to detail the intricacies of the burglary. After watching it, you can understand why some feared Dassin had provided a how-to guide for a successful theft. Indeed, the plan was brilliant. Almost all the t’s are crossed and all the i’s are dotted.

 

Another controversial element in Rififi is Jo’s invocation of the criminals’ code of honor, a veritable imperative despite Jo’s reluctance to implement it. Criminality notwithstanding, Rififi was hailed for its “humanity.” It was a huge success and, in Dassin’s mind, a blow that helped erode McCarthyism and the blacklist. Ironically, it also inspired other directors to scour Le Breton’s backlist for story ideas.

 

Rififi was one of the great noir films. I will caution, though, that it is a period piece in the respect that you are likely to find the nightclub songs and its shadow screen dances rally naff. (You can tell it’s French in that nudity can be inferred in the female dancer!) I’m not sure what Dassin had in mind with these scenes beyond showing the decadence of those with money to burn. To speculate, he might have sought to imbue Rafifi with bit “hipness” at a time in which Beatnik culture was en vogue. If those scenes bug you, go ahead and fast forward them; you’ll not miss anything important.

 

To add a contemporary footnote, watching this Jules Dassin film is a warning that banning art hurts the censors and the audience they think they are protecting more than a creative mind willing to defy arbitrary power. It was eventually released in North America and the rest, as they say, is history. If you liked Oceans Eleven but don’t need to see “stars” or color on your screen, Rififi is a far better film. That's why it was re-released.

 

Rob Weir

Sleeping Dogs an Overlooked Thriller

 

 

 

Sleeping Dogs (2024)

Directed by Adam Cooper

The Avenue, R (sexuality, violence), 112 minutes.

★★★★

 

Sleeping Dogs was one of the biggest duds on 2024 insofar as attracting an audience goes. Not many would expect a Russell Crowe film to make a mere $1.9 million worldwide. I blame this on poor marketing because it’s a very good thriller. Maybe the youth crowd got confused as there is a popular video game of the same name whose creators considered and then sandbagged a movie based on the game.

 

The film’s title comes from the aphorism for non-interference: “Let sleeping dogs lie.” That’s not advice that Roy Freeman (Crowe) wishes to follow. He’s a retired homicide cop but has Alzheimer’s disease and lives alone in an apartment filled with masking tape instructions for simple things, such as “My name is Roy Freeman” and how to heat frozen dinners safely. He also has two wicked scars atop his shaved head from experimental deep brain stimulation that might help him regain some memory. Now would be a good time for that to occur as he is contacted by a social worker to see Issac Samuel (Pachero Mzembe), a young black man on death row. He confessed to murder of high-profile Professor Joseph Wieder (Marton Csokas) ten years ago, but insists he didn’t do it. He’s only alive because of a delay of his execution.

 

Roy lost his marbles, but kept his files. Still, he has no memory of anything he reads. He tracks down former partner Jimmy Remis (Tommy Flanagan) who tells him to let it alone; Samuel confessed and his fingerprints were all over Wieder’s apartment. Against his better judgment, Jimmy agrees to help. Roy has a memory snippet of a guy who showed up the day Wieder’s body was removed, his face beaten to a broken, bloody pulp. That’s a real dead end, as he turns out to be Richard Finn (Harry Greenwood) whose body lies in the morgue. So who else was close to Wieder? Quite a few, it seems; Wieder preyed on his graduate student assistants, including Laura Baines (Karen Gillan) who claims she wrote the paper Wieder planned to publish as his. Roy and Jimmy also wonder about her and a handyman named Wayne Devereaux (Thomas M. Wright), one of Wieder’s patients who had undergone one of the professor’s controversial treatments to recover from PTSD from his time in Iraq. And whatever happened Diane Lynch (Lynn Gilmartin), a barmaid who seemed to know all of the principals, some of them in the Biblical sense.

 

Whew! Try solving all of this with one and half brains. Director Adam Cooper tells all this in the time-tested way of now-then-now. We surmise what Roy cannot; Wieder was a creep, the investigation was fishy, Finn was a bit of a weirdo, and Baines was a hot mess. So, to pose the big question in all mysteries: Who done it? An additional conundrum is why can’t Roy let the sleeping dog lie given his lack of memory?

 

Sleeping Dogs is not a perfect film. Crowe is often unconvincing as an Alzheimer’s sufferer. He is seen poring over old files and trying to find his cop mojo, but anyone who has seen someone in the thralls of Alzheimer’s will find Crowe too rational and too lucid. Likewise, the deep brain stimulation he undergoes is real, but when it “works,” it merely slows down the advance of the disease; it’s not a cure and it does not reverse preexisting damage. (Where’s Daniel Day Lewis when you need an actor who understands how to show disability?) You might also find that it stretches credulity that it took so long for anyone to realize that a new hotshot in the field of psychology is Baines under a new name. She and her alter ego look identical with only a box of Miss Clairol’s difference.

 

Of much more relevance, though, is that the film’s resolution is shocking on several levels. By the time it rolled around I was engrossed in a “Holy smokes!” kind of way. So why did it bomb? Theory: It’s billed as an “American crime thriller,” but it’s not. You might detect that you don’t know most of the actors and–to add an air of mystery of my own–the tone doesn’t “feel” American. It was actually made in Australia and none of the actors are from the USA. But don’t let that deter you.

 

Rob Weir  

The Quiet Librarian Worthy of Its Hype

 

 

 

The Quiet Librarian (2025)

By Allen Eskens

Mulholland Books, 305 pages.

★★★★★

 

The Quiet Librarian has been highly acclaimed and deservedly so. It is moving, tragic, and deceptively titled. Its main character, Hana Babìc, is indeed a cardigan-wearing cataloger living on a farm outside of St. Paul, Minnesota, but she’s so much more. Her colleagues like Hana and assume she prefers a quiet life, but even that’s not quite right.

 

This new novel from Allen Eskens takes us back to the 1990s when Yugoslavia dissolved and independent nations such as Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Srpska emerged. You might think that growing up Yugoslav would bind citizens no matter what flag they flew, but that’s not what happened. The former Yugoslavia exploded amidst sectarian violence defined largely by religion and ethnicity. Some of the worst violence took place in 1995, when Serbia (Eastern Orthodox) abruptly shelled Tuzla in Bosnia (Muslim), and killed 71 people; shortly thereafter the Serbs entered Srebrenica, rounded up more than 1,000 boys and men and slaughtered them. Eskens’ book is a work of fiction, but he adroitly revisits the sorrows of Bosnia thorough a powerful tale with teenager Nura Divjak as his foil. She grew up in a town of both Christians and Muslims, Serbs and Bosniaks. She attended a school that was primarily Serb, but few thought of her as a Muslim. Her little brother Danis’ played with a Serbian boy, Luka. In 1995, though, Bosnia and Serbia were at war and former neighbors Luka, Stanko, and Zorvic return to murder the Divjak family and burn down their home. Only Nura escaped by hiding in a crawlspace, though her arms were badly burned in the fire.

 

If you think the Serbs were brutal, they came to rue the wrath of Nura. She transforms herself as a veritable teenage Ninja to hunt down her family’s killers. At least that was the plan–before she becomes a spy and solider in a Bosniak unit. Such is her fierceness that she is known as “Night Mora” and a price is on her head. In Slavic mythology, Mora is a dark, beautiful woman who visits men in their dreams and then kills them. You might notice that “mora” is close to the English “mare,” as in nightmare.

 

Eskens employs an every-other-chapter structure of “Minnesota After Everything” and “Bosnia 1995 (or 1977or 1992).” So what’s all this have to do with a meek Minnesota librarian? Hana is drawn into her own nightmare when her best friend in the world, Amina, falls out of a window to her death. Or was she pushed? One witness says a man was at the window. Hana’s immediate concern, though, is for Dylan, Amina’s grandson, Dylan. Hana always promised to take care of him if anything happened to her. He is too young to remember his mother, who died six years earlier. It’s one thing to be a godmother in the abstract, but the independent Hana has never married and is vague on what raising a pre-teen means. Nor is she psychologically prepared to be drawn into an investigation led by Detective David Claypool.

 

As I have noted in other reviews, novelists often remind us that wars don’t simply end when a treaty is signed. (And isn’t it a pity that fiction writers understand this better than policymakers, generals, and conscience-challenged soldiers?) In a proverbial flash, Hana faces mourning, substitute motherhood, a creep who might have been Amina’s executioner, developing feelings for a detective, worries about her immigrant identity, and haunted by her own past. If you have read this far and are thinking romance, heart melted by a little boy, and being drawn into a world of violence, that’s not quite right either.

 

The Quiet Librarian is partly about trust, but it’s also a heart-pounding thriller, a mystery,  and a hall of horrors. Don’t even think of trying to read this book leisurely; it’s more like a two-day obsession, a proverbial page-turner. I suspect this book will be optioned for a movie very soon, but shame on you if you watch the TV version or wait for the movie. If it’s not on the shelf, ask your local (yes!) librarian to score an interlibrary loan copy for you.

 

Rob Weir