Tom BoumanReseñas

Henry Farrell, rural Pennsylvania police officer, has been called to the scene of a grisly murder; at least one more killing takes place, and Henry becomes a suspect – and then a fugitive.

I normally try to choose books that are the first in the series for the A to Z Mystery Tour, but the first Henry Farrell book was not available so I went with #3. I was a bit sad, upon reaching the end of the book, to find that it may be the last in this very short series, because the writing is beautiful – almost lyrical in places. The characters, including Henry, are flawed and unapologetically human.

This is not a five star book because the timeline is confusing. Since this is not the first in the series I want to be sure to avoid spoilers, so I’ll be vague: there is one ongoing event that Henry occasionally references. The way he does so seems to imply that weeks or months have passed, but then he comes back to the murder investigation and it’s clearly been only a few days. It feels almost like the author is working with two timelines, which he is not.

I alternated between my library copy of the hardcover and a Scribd audiobook. I regret not sticking to the hardcover, because the narration of the audiobook doesn’t begin to do the writing justice. I hope my suspicion that this is the series finale is incorrect.

I struggled mightily to get into the rhythm of this story. I was unsuccessful. In fact, I DNF’d at 38% because the author of a police thriller referred, not once but twice, to handguns in a casual owner’s safe as “automatics.”

I don’t know if he was attempting a political statement, didn’t do his research, or was just sloppy. No matter. It was the killing blow for my attempt to cut slack for a series-first and new author.½

I really liked Bouman's first novel, [b: Dry Bones in the Valley|22253773|Dry Bones in the Valley (Henry Farrell, #1)|Tom Bouman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1422215732l/22253773._SY75_.jpg|25993839]. I liked his second less. And this one, not at all. I was already shaking my head as I slogged through the early pages (and pages...) of Farrell's singularly cheerless wedding and minute descriptions of every guest and their family connections. A body has been found, which has been fed on by a bear. And of course, soon afterward, the bear attacks Farrell in the woods, only to be fended off by the instant and convenient appearance of Farrell's father. More meandering episodes of gas station robberies, Farrell brooding about the obnoxious woman he had an affair with, and a snotty rich couple who complain about the "hooligans" who swim in a nearby creek. Does anyone really use the word "hooligans" any more? I was done. Dreary.

Bouman's first novel, Dry Bones of the Valley, was a stunner, with prose you wrote down or got out of your chair to read to your spouse. This one... not quite so much. But still an order of magnitude better than the industrially-churned out crap that keeps popping up on my benighted public library's webpage. Henry Farrell is still morose, brooding, and alone (except for a really unfortunate inclination to jump at the booty-call texts he gets from a local married woman. Of course it ends badly...). He hunts, he drinks, he drives around in his truck, he plays a soulful bluegrass fiddle. And he wanders around, into, and through the violence, abuse, cruelty and misery of the residents of Wild Thyme township, centering around the disappearance of the female half of a pathetic couple ensnared in poverty, drugs and alcohol. Bouman's best gift is his portrait of these folks: rural, poor, enmeshed in each other's networks of cousins, siblings, in-laws, bosses... everyone is connected somehow. It sounds depressing, and it is - sometimes - but he also sees their humanity, that no one wants to rat out their brother-in-law even if he is dealing; the anguished woman who cries for her missing sister no matter how badly she's hurt her. It's a community of people we don't see, and should. There is also the beauty of the woods, the rivers, the lakes; the music, the work ethic, the legitimate beefs and conflicts.

All that said, this is a tougher read than Dry Bones. The pacing lags, drags, slows, wanders... partly to illustrate how these backwoods crimes and problems drag out because there are too few cops and lawyers, boundaries are blurred, and sometimes just because no one cares enough to pursue. But after a while, after months and seasons pass, all those cousins and strangers and drifters start to get confusing, and it's difficult for the reader to maintain a keen interest either. Farrell meets a woman. That relationship chugs into low gear, but I still gagged on the first spark of passion between them being lit by a dawn deer hunt. The musical scenes, admirably written as they are, don't seem to serve much purpose other than Bouman (also a musician) wanted to write them. A side plot about a building project may interest carpenters, and the language of wood working is often rather poetic and rich, but is peripheral.

Good writing, a vivid and important cultural portrait. A bit slow and rambly, but he does know how to write a corpse.

A deputy finds himself compelled to investigate a death that at first seems due to a bear attack but in the end was a different sort of violence. Many characters. Sometimes I was confused by that.

The Bramble and the Rose is a short, but beautifully written mystery set in rural northern Pennsylvania. Henry Farrell, the only police officer in a small town is called to a local property when a headless body is found. While first thought to be a bear attack, Farrell recognizes that the severed head was brutally removed post-mortem. This discovery leads him through the eclectic collection of residents in his rural community, questioning the motives of new and long-time residents alike.

At the same time, Farrell is getting married, starting a new life with the daughter of one of the leading businessmen of the area. His marriage is complicated, at least for him, by all the intertwining threads running through the community and increasingly, as he learns, tied to the murder of the headless outsider.

Family drama, community secrets, and outside interests lead Farrell headlong into a mystery in which he finds himself overly involved. An intricately woven story, deftly told in a somewhat dark narrative, The Bramble and the Rose doesn’t fail to live up to Bouman’s reputation for amazingly written literary mysteries.½

Not realizing this was the third book in a series, I gave it a go anyway. I haven't decided whether I like the main character of Henry Farrell enough yet to read the other books in the series. Farrell is a small town policeman - when a decapitated stranger is found dead in the PA back woods, he starts looking into the case. When his nephew inadvertently goes missing, he knows that things are about to come to a head.

But here's the rub, you don't quite know what the backstory is on one of the characters involved, only a piece of it, and the entire thing just feels like maybe I'm missing something.

This is the first I have read in the Henry Farrell series. I found it to be disjointed and had to force myself to finish it and it did not make me want to go back and read the prior novels in the series.

The mutilated, headless man's body is found in the woods in Wild Thyme Pennsylvania. While initial evidence points to the man being mauled by a bear. Further evidence points to murder.

Policeman Henry Farrell along with Pennsylvania State Police are looking into the situation in which several of the townspeople are involved.

the thing I like about The Bramble and the Rose, my first Tom Bouman book, is the characters, especially Henry Farrell. He's a real person. He's got his faults, his secrets and his morals. Henry gives you background, events of his life that got him to the point he's at. There's a little back and forth between times but that adds to the flavor of the book.

I'd highly recommend the Bramble and the Rose for the mystery and the people.

Probably a 3.5
Folks who like CJ Box may enjoy this (better written than Box), or Nevada Barr....
I had an issue with one thing on the 4th page from the end.. won't spoil it, but I actually said Oh BULLSHIT! out loud, so glad I was at home.
I didn't label this as Police Procedural, as they really didn't follow such. I liked the main character, so may try more?

I almost didn't label it Police Procedural, because Henry sure doesn't feel compelled to follow the rules to the letter. He's a local boy, back after military, experience life & love, and then heartbreak/death.
Music is much of his life.
He's a good ol' boy, and yet not...
2nd of this line, still enjoyable.

I read a rave review in July 2017 of Tom Bouman's newly released "Fateful Mornings"(FM), his second Henry Farrell novel. I did a little research and found that the first one, "Dry Bones in the Valley"(DB),released about a year+ earlier, had received a number of prestigious awards. I decided to read DB though I wasn't overwhelmed by the plot summaries I found.

Henry is a cop in his 30s in a small Northeast Pennsylvania township that has seen better days, or not. This is Appalachia Mountain territory and most of the book's characters are scraping by. Some are on drugs and everybody has guns, lots of guns. When Henry calls on a few people "of interest" in the murder he is investigating, he invites himself in and details each weapon he finds - pistols, hunting sense of rifles, shotguns. Everybody hunts and knows more about hunting and animal behavior than Smokey the Bear. Because there's not a lot of money in the area, there's not a very big budget for local law enforcement, so things are not exactly up to date, e.g., police communications systems. Deep into the book, Henry sidetracks a minute from his crime solving and starts a fresh page with "Here's how you make squirrel pie"; it did not make my mouth water.

The story starts when an old coot, demented and alcoholic, reveals to Henry that he has found a body on his property, wedged in deep snow and rocks, an arm and eye missing, the eye recently consumed by one of the turkey vultures hovering nearby (this is the first of a number of grizzly, earthy scenes that lend an uncomfortable sense of well done you-are-there to the reader). Later that night Henry's only deputy is found shot dead near a burning heap in a junk yard. Henry calls for assistance from other jurisdictions and the investigation begins.

There are some rather interesting diversions as the story unfolds. There are huge pockets of natural gas throughout the area (Henry explains why) and companies are pressuring land owners to sell drilling and fracking rights, and suddenly we are learning all about fracking. Then there's the shootout. Then Henry reflects of his late wife, Polly - meeting her, falling in love, marriage, her cancer, her passing. There's also a bust in a drug camp, complete with rusted out old RVs, crazies, lab equipment, filth. Needless to say this is not your typical police procedural.

This is not an upbeat book, not a lot of laughs, jokes, smiles, but there is a pearl every so often. Henry tells the story of an elk which could no longer run, fight, mate. Henry shot it on the first day of hunting season to put it out of its misery. Henry observes: "With most human beings it's not so simple. We have to limp along no matter the wound."

I recommend this book, but oddly I am not sure if I will read FM. I don't know that it can tell me too much I don't already know about Henry and Wild Thyme Township and I'm not sure I want to go back.

FATEFUL MORNINGS(HENRY FARRELL #2) BY TOM BOUMAN is the second in the Henry Farrell mysteries set in Wild Thyme Pennsylvania a small town but a town that is now seeing the dangers of drugs. Farrell is not only fighting the crime related to drugs, but now he has a missing person,possible murder on his hands.

This is the first in the Henry Farrell books I've read and I liked it so much I'm going to looking for the first book so I can really enjoy the series, in other words I'm hooked! Boumans main character, Henry Farrell is not your perfect law enforcement officer . He fools around with married women, & he drinks, sometimes too much, which makes Farrell seem just like regular folks. Maybe that's why he's such a good law officer & a good main character for this series.

I recieved this book free from goodreads in exchange for an honest review.

Henry Farrell is the lone policeman who patrols the back roads of Wild Thyme township in rural northeastern Pennsylvania. Mostly his job isn’t too demanding. He can park his vehicle and spend time enjoying the local lakes and forests without anyone much missing him. He can even take on an illegal after-hours job. He helps dismantle old barns and salvage the wood for new barns designed by his best friend, wordworking genius Ed Brennan.
In Bouman’s fine descriptions of Henry’s world, you can just about smell the trees and ponds along with Henry, who narrates most chapters. In Henry and several other principal characters in this rural noir novel, Bouman has created well-rounded, complex individuals. Henry also plays fiddle in a roots music trio, for example.
These bucolic images coexist uneasily alongside the dirty business of hydraulic fracking and the even dirtier practice of drug dealing, which are ravaging the natural and human resources of Wild Thyme. As a result, law enforcement in the township is about to face some serious challenges. At first, it’s an uptick in burglaries and motor vehicle accidents, which Henry attributes to the rise in drug abuse.
But then a young woman goes missing. Penny Pellings is a sometimes heroin user who lives in a trailer with her boyfriend. The pair has lost custody of their infant daughter. Though they want her back, they aren’t on a road that can lead to that outcome.
The search for Penny Pellings requires the casting of a rather wide net, which takes Henry out of his jurisdiction. He has a thoughtful, amiable demeanor that helps him interact well with nearby departments that have many more resources than he does in Wild Thyme. So many crime novels focus on the turf battles and stonewalling between police agencies, it’s refreshing to see real cooperation.
Investigating Penny’s fate is an almost geological endeavor. Each layer excavated reveals another, with its own mysteries. In the end, the resolution of her story seems almost secondary to the 360-degree picture of the community of Wild Thyme that the author has created.
Bouman won an Edgar Award in 2015 for his first novel, Dry Bones in the Valley, also featuring Henry Farrell.

Received an ARC of the book from the publisher.

If you like your crime novels to be of the meandering it's a boys life variety, this is the book for you. It certainly felt as if more time was spent on telling the protagonists life history, personality quirts, hobbies, and foibles than was spent trying to solve the various crimes that were committed. For what it was, it was well written; however, what it was wasn't really my cup of tea.

I know this was an Edgar Award winner for first novel, but I found it a bit disappointing. Nice depiction of the methland of rural NE Pennsylvania. Too much tramping about in the woods for me. I had trouble keeping the characters straight. The main plot had little to do with the many sub plots that I also had a hard time keeping straight. All that said, I would not write off Tom Bouman and would probably try another.

This is an Edgar Award finalist for best first mystery. The body of an unknown man is found on a reclusive man's (Aub) rural property. Shortly after this body is discovered a local law enforcement officer is killed. So, there are dual mysteries and we don't know whether or not they are interconnected. The land owner is taken to jail as the initial suspect. A small town policeman, Henry Farrell, is the point man in unraveling the murders. The novel has a very good surprise ending and I really enjoyed the book.

Based on the number of 5 star reviews I wonder if I read a different book, than everyone else? This book came highly recommended and even had an author blurb from Donald Ray Pollack whose books are fantastic. This for me was not a fantastic book. It was way too slow, and the story was not that interesting. I am getting tired of the character who is a lost soul who served in the military, and for one reason or another is a premature widower. I am also tired of authors with an axe to grind ( in this case against "fracking") trying to weave their beliefs into the story. In the case of Dry Bones in the Valley, the fracking issue ultimately has nothing to do with the story. Add to this a main character with little to no authority, as a like weekend police officer, who is and poorly, if at all developed, supporting characters, and you have a book that was an extremely slow read, and a 3 on a scale of 1-10 adventurous conclusion. This story just didn't offer anything for this reader to care about.½

Astonishing. I think the term is "pitch perfect". This may be northeastern Pennsylvania, but he's got the smells and sights and sounds of rural poverty/drug addiction exactly the way I found them in Idaho.

The story of “Dry Bones in the Valley” takes place in a small rural town and is told by Officer Henry Farrell. There’s a body, an investigation that manages to turn up more bodies without too much effort, and a lot of tramping through the back woods. As mysteries go, this one manages to keep the reader guessing since the killer remains unidentified through most of the story. In due time, most of the loose ends are tied up and it’s only fair to assume there will be more Henry Farrell tales to be told.

Some of the best writing in “Dry Bones in the Valley” comes in the description of Wild Thyme Township; in fact, the setting is so vividly described it takes on a persona of its own. As for the people meandering through the story, some of the characters are fairly well-defined while others are in need of some serious fleshing-out. Still, by the end of the tale, the mystery has been solved, the murderer has been revealed, and the “why” explanations have come to light.

Nevertheless, as the narrative tromps along the deer trails and wanders through back roads and fields, the reader, rather than being drawn into the tale, is simply along for the ride. Yes, it’s an inventive plot, one that definitely keeps the pages turning. It just never really matters.

Dry Bones in the Valley by Tom Bouman is set in rural Pennsylvania and was a big step out of the ordinary for me. I am not used to reading about characters who have large selection of rifles, muskets and other guns. Also I am not comfortable when the conversation turns to hunting. I found this out when I once visited my cousin and saw a whole wall of rabbit skins displayed where the stairs were. By whole wall, I mean about fifty of them. I have to get this confession off my plate before this review. Also my stomach turned some during the description of how to cook a squirrel.

At the beginning even through the middle, I had some trouble getting keeping the characters straight. I was fine remembering the main character, Officer Henry Farrell, the murder victims and other main characters but I was lost with the secondary characters, who they were and their family connections. The main character is developed by flashbacks to when he met his future wife and special memories of her. I liked her character the most. If I was giving advice to the author, I would try to trim the character list and give more i development to the main characters.

I did like the historical background of the area and description of the cultural clash between the backwoods people and description of the wealthier people living in high end houses. I also loved the portrait of Aub, a man living on his ancestral home place who was clearly deep into dementia. Also it was very interesting to see how the people around him reacted to him. Also loved the references to old time music in the area, especially the parts about fiddle music.

I would recommend this book to people would want to read a mystery that is fully of regional history and culture. That some of the history is edgy and dark is just the way it is. I have found it to be true in rural Indiana also. If the author could tighten up on the number of characters, I think that he would reach more readers. It is a great start!

I received this book as a win from FirstReads but that in no way influenced my thoughts or feelings in this review.

An excellent first foray in the murder mystery genre for Bouman. You could smell the mustiness of wet woods and decaying flora with a delicate bouquet of petroleum not so far off. You could easily imagine the hilly terrain of the Pennsylvania/New York border and sense the desperate empty lives of its inhabitants. Two murders leave you guessing right up until the end. My only criticism is that there were a number of loose ends which hopefully will be resolved in later installments of this series. (There will be a series, right?) I look forward to the next installment in the life and service of Officer Henry Farrell.