Thomas, Ross. Briarpatch. St. Martin’s Press, 1984.
Reason read: Ross Thomas was born in the month of February. Read in his honor.
We are introduced to Rusty/Felicity Dill as landlady and detective. Not two minutes after trying to collect on a late rent she is murdered by a car bomb outside of her building. Felicity’s brother, Benjamin Dill, while on assignment for the Senate Subcommittee for a separate matter, comes back to his hometown to investigate her murder. In the midst of grieving for his sister Dill must confront his best and oldest friend who might be an illegal arms dealer. Apart from being a great whodunnit, Briarpatch is also a game of double and triple cross. It is hard to say who can and cannot be trusted.
While the reader does not know the exact location of Dill’s hometown (somewhere in the Midwest is the guess), Thomas is sure to keep an eye on the thermometer. The constant high temperatures were almost another character in the story.
All in all, I felt that Thomas was hoping to have a trick ending; one crafty enough to surprise everyone. Unfortunately, he pulled back the curtain a little too far and a little too early in the plot. Thomas revealed too much for the ending to be much of a shock.
Odd musings: I identified with the one character who dies within the first few pages. You could say I built a rapport with her ghost. As a kid Felicity would read eight or nine books at a time…sometimes as many as ten in a week. She took notes as she read and kept a dictionary on hand. This is me to a tee.
A childhood memory – when Ben visits Felicity’s apartment he sees a TV Guide on the coffee table. When I was growing up I had a neighbor who collected TV Guides. Stacks and stacks of them lined her bedroom floor. What she ever did with them, I have no idea.
As an aside, was the misspelling of Jim Beam deliberate?
As another aside, I thought a bread knife was an odd choice for a weapon. Wasn’t there anything a little sharper lying around.
Author fact: Ross Thomas was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma which is why some people think Ben and Felicity Dill were from Oklahoma City.
Book trivia: my copy of Briarpatch promised a “television series coming soon.” That was in 1984. I had to look it up. On IMDB I found a television series starring Rosario Dawson. Briarpatch won an Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1985.
Music: “September Song,” Bach, Beatles, Beethoven, Yves Montand, “Blue Skies,” “Amazing Grace,” “Abide with Me,” “Taps,” and “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Ross Thomas: Too Good To Miss” (p 234).
~*LunaSea*~ 