Sıra Dışı İşaret

Marjorie Trumaine Mystery #1

by Larry D. Sweazy, Azime Kennedy (Translator)

1964’te Dickinson kasabasında korkunç bir cinayet işlenir. Erik ve Lida Knudsen, yataklarında boğazları kesilmiş hâlde bulunurlar. On dokuz ve yirmi yaşlarındaki çocukları Jaeger ve Peter, aileleriyle aynı evde yaşamalarına rağmen o gece hiçbir şey duymadıklarını iddia ederler.
Şerif Hilo Jenkins, olay yerine çağırılır ve Erik’in elinde bakırdan bir tılsım bulur. Arkadaşı Marjorie Trumaine’in yetenekli bir araştırmacı ve profesyonel bir indeksçi olduğunu bilen Jenkins, bu sıra dışı işaretler taşıyan tılsımın anlamını çözebilmek için ondan yardım ister.
Marjorie’nin araştırmaları, onu benzer bir tılsımı kaybetmiş bir profesöre götürür ve gerçeğe yaklaştıkça, daha çok korkmaya başlar. Çünkü katil, izini kaybettirmek için her şeyi göze almıştır.

Genres: Mystery, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Audiobook, Historical Mystery, Crime, Mystery Thriller

304 pages, Paperback

First published May 5, 2015

About the author

Larry D. Sweazy (pronounced: Swayzee) is the author of nineteen novels and five series: the Trusty Dawson series (LOST MOUNTAIN PASS, THE BROKEN BOW), WHERE I CAN SEE YOU, a standalone thriller, the Marjorie Trumaine Mystery series (SEE ALSO MURDER, SEE ALSO DECEPTION, SEE ALSO PROOF), the Sonny Burton series (A THOUSAND FALLING CROWS, THE LOST ARE THE LAST TO DIE, WINTER SEEKS OUT THE LONELY), the Lucas Fume Western series (VENGEANCE AT SUNDOWN, ESCAPE TO HANGTOWN), the Josiah Wolfe, Texas Ranger series (THE RATTLESNAKE SEASON, THE SCORPION TRAIL, THE BADGER'S REVENGE, THE COUGAR'S PREY, THE COYOTE TRACKER, THE GILA WARS, and THE RETURN OF THE WOLF), and THE DEVIL'S BONES, a standalone mystery.

He won the WWA Spur award for Best Short Fiction in 2005 and for Best Paperback Original in 2013, and the 2011 and 2012 Will Rogers Medallion Award for Western Fiction for books the Josiah Wolfe series. He was nominated for a Derringer award in 2007, and was a finalist in the Best Books of Indiana literary competition in 2010, and won in 2011 for THE SCORPION TRAIL. In 2013, Larry received the inaugural Elmer Kelton Fiction Book of the Year for THE COYOTE TRACKER, presented by the Academy of Western Artists. He received the Willa Award in 2019 and was shortlisted for the Indiana Authors Award in 2020, both for SEE ALSO PROOF. The Western Fictioneers (WF) awarded THE RETURN OF THE WOLF the Peacemaker Award for Best Western in 2020.

Larry has published over one hundred nonfiction articles and short stories, which have appeared in ELLERY QUEEN'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE; THE ADVENTURE OF THE MISSING DETECTIVE: AND 25 OF THE YEAR'S FINEST CRIME AND MYSTERY STORIES!; BOYS' LIFE; HARDBOILED; Amazon Shorts, and several other publications and anthologies. He is also a freelance indexer and written over 1000 indexes since 1998. He lives in Indiana with his wife, Rose, and is hard at work on his next novel.

Reviews

[Kay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Prairie ambiance murder mystery

It's 1964 on a North Dakota farm. Hank Trumaine is blind and paralyzed from an accident. His wife Marjorie is an indexer, something to help pay the bills.

Their good friend and neighbor the Knudsens are found murdered in their bed, with their young boys sleeping in their room next door. Sheriff Hilo Jenkins brings over a strange amulet found in the hand of a victim to see if Majorie can help with the research that may led to the killer.

See Also Murder may sound like a cozy mystery with an amateur sleuth but it's not. I feel sorry for Hank and his condition and the chance of them losing the farm and house in Dickinson. I like that this is my first novel with the MC being an indexer. The dramatized audio was fun to listen to with full-cast narrators. I think the supporting casts are all very good, but I'm still on the fence with the MC's voice. I might try another one, really curious about the farm and the characters are likable. 3.5⭐

Borrowed from Hoopla.

[La Tonya Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an enjoyable read. It was such an easy read I starterd to read it out loud to hear my voice and was completely immeresed. This gave the book a new sound and dimension. I started to use a fake North Dakota accent. It was fun.

The storyline is simple. A small town in North Dakota has three murders in two days. A farmer's wife, Marjorie Trumaine, is selected by sheriff Hilo to investigate an amulet left in the hand of one of the victims. This investigation leads to her own family tree to cousin Raymond Hurtsibese and memories of her childhood. With Hank her husband to encourage her, even with his own liimited abilities, she does not back down in the face of fear and finds the killer (sort of). A good read.

Quote:
I almost smiled, happy to see a flicker of his impish wit.

"I shot at them." I glanced over to the Remington, then back to Duke. "I took out my varmint rifle and I shot at them. What else was I supposed to do?" "You probably shouldn't a done that, Marjorie. You coulda killed someone."

Once the engine started to cool down, the pings and groans diminishing and riding on the constant breeze like the rest of the worldly noises, the comfort of the plains, of the aloneness of the land, started to return to me.

[Ivonne Rovira · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stark County, N.D., was even more isolated in 1964 than it is today: The Trumaine family doesn’t have a television or much of a public library. And they’ve had more trouble than most. Husband Hank Trumaine has been paralyzed in a hunting accident, while wife Marjorie has begun indexing books, as well as running the farm, so they — and their farm — can survive.

This peaceful, if fraught, existence is broken when the Trumaines’ next-door neighbors are murdered in their sleep, their throats neatly slit. The sheriff asks for Marjorie’s help as she’s “the smartest person I know.” It’s not a spoiler to tell you that Marjorie’s taken on more than she can handle; there wouldn’t be a book otherwise, LOL! And I was here for every twist and turn that author Larry D. Sweazy provides. How is this mystery series not better known?

Without a challenge from Foxy Vixen, I would never have sought out this mystery set in North Dakota, and I would have been worse off for not having met the clever Marjorie Trumaine. Thank you, Foxy Vixen!

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

While this series may have a slow start and one puzzles over the wisdom of continuing on with the reading, I surprised myself by liking this very much. My thanks to Col's reviews here on goodreads for recommending this author. I was around in the 60's and can attest to the authenticity of US Midwestern life in those times, though not in North Dakota myself - a very extreme locale. Normally I would not expect to find any interest in the life of ranchers who had no television and lived with party-line telephone listeners, but it drew me in. Our heroine/detective/indexer, Marjorie Trumaine, has many life challenges, including the care of disabled husband. Initially it seems that she is a bumbler, continually breaking down in tears and making poor choices, but she gains strength and brings the murderer to account. Another check for Women's Month!

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

See Also Murder is one of the best crime mystery reads for me of 2016. The time is 1964 and the location is the plains of rural North Dakota. As a reader I could feel the strong biting winds and see the wide open spaces. The area seems isolated, bleak and lonely. Not for Marjorie Trumaine the main character of the book as she loves this about the land. She grew up in North Dakota, married her high school sweetheart and is a farmer's wife.

One of the reasons that I liked this book so much is the character of Marjorie. She has a hard life and she stands up to it. If she starts to feel let down, she can hear her mother in her ear telling her to go on and be strong. Her husband is permanently bedridden due to a hunting accident. He is blind and paralyzed. Marjorie cares for him and tries to keep the farm going. She takes on a job as an indexer for a New York publishing house to supplement the farm income. Meanwhile Shep the border collie tries to watch over both Marjorie and Hank.

Marjorie is asked to do some research for the sheriff when her next door neighbors are murdered in their beds. The sheriff asks for Marjorie help due to her intelligence. The mystery is very good. Marjorie stands up to some very intense and threatening situations. Her main concern is the protection of her husband Hank.

There is also the feel of the sixties in rural North Dakota. They are on a party line, drive a Studebaker pickup, type on a Underwood typewriter and Marjorie smokes Salems when stressed. There is one scene where Marjorie makes lefse, a Norwegian flat bread to take to visit a family where a murder had occurred. It is interesting what she uses a blind slat for. A food that was always a holiday comfort food now will have a different memory for her.

It was well written and the mystery was very good. Marjorie however was the star for me. I look forward to the next book.

[Elif · Rating 1 out of 5]

Son zamanlarda okuduğum kötü kitaplardan biri daha. Okurken fenalıklar geldi. Akmadı, sıktı, süründürdü.
Marjorie ve Hank kendi hallerinde çiftliklerinde yaşayan bir çifttir. Hank yatalaktır ve Marjorie çiftlik işlerine ek indeksçilik yaparak para kazanır. En yakın komşuları vahşice öldürülür ve Marjorie istemese de bu davanın içine düşer. Konu bir tılsımla ilgilidir ve araştırdıkça çok farklı şeyler ortaya çıkar.
İskandinav mitolojisini severim ama bu kitabı yine de kurtaramadı.
Sevmedim. Kötü bir kitaptı. Okumayın. Marjorie’nin iç dünyası sizi sıkıntıdan öldürebilir 😑

[Lindsay (thebibliophileandtheboxer) · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars The unique main character and setting held promise, but the murder-mystery fell completely flat for me. Interesting story, terrible mystery. (I do love the cover, though!)

As far as amateur sleuths go, Marjorie Trumaine is one of the most novel I've read about. In 1964, she lives with her husband, Hank -- who is paralyzed from the neck down after a hunting accident -- on their rural North Dakota farm. To make extra money, she works as a professional indexer, creating indexes for the backs of nonfiction books, a perfect task for a booklover with an organized and analytical mind. Life has thrown a lot of challenges Marjorie's way, and her perseverance and take-it-as-it-comes attitude are admirable.

When her friends at the neighboring farm are horrifically murdered -- their throats slit while they slept -- Marjorie gets drawn into the into the investigation when the sheriff asks her to look into an element of Norse mythology found at the scene. Eventually, realizing she's the only person with all the pieces to the puzzle, she knows it's up to her to find the killer.

Interestingly, Marjorie creates an index to organize her thoughts when the time comes to solve the murder, which was completely new to me. I also liked that the book was set in a rural location in the '60s -- post-horse-drawn carriage and telegram, pre-computer -- which added an element of interest to the story. In this age of smartphones, can you imagine making a phone call on a party line where any of your neighbors could be listening in, with the quality of the call subject to the wind's swaying of the phone lines?

Unfortunately, despite the clever characterization and choice of location and time period, I didn't love this mystery in the end -- because the mystery didn't seem to be the focus of the story. It was like: meet Marjorie, indexer, farmer and wife to an invalid husband who, oh, just so happens to solve a string of grisly murders in her quiet North Dakota town. Hardly any detective work happened. And, once all was revealed, the killer's motive was barely explained and rather confusing. I didn't feel I got a satisfying conclusion to the mystery at all. I learned a lot about Marjorie, but not what drove a person to commit several murders.

I had a hard time choosing a rating for "See Also Murder." On the one hand, the writing was better than adequate (though there were a few times I was irritated by clumsy sentences or repetitive wording), Marjorie was an interesting and likeable main character, and the setting was unique. And I even learned something -- I really had no idea what goes into creating back-of-the-book indexes (and the author himself is a professional indexer by trade). But this book is advertised as a mystery -- it says so right in the title -- and I was wholeheartedly disappointed in that aspect.

From my blog, Lindsay's Library.

[Gloria Feit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Life in July of 1964 in the small prairie town of Dickinson, North Dakota, might seem to be quiet and unthreatening. Until one morning the bodies of Erik and Lida Knudsen are found murdered in their beds, their throats slit, their young sons sleeping in nearby rooms. When Marjorie Trumaine, Lida’s closest friend, and a skilled researcher and professional indexer, who lives in the farm adjacent to the Knudsens, is asked by Stark County Sheriff Hilo Jenkins to investigate the strange copper amulet discovered clutched in the dead man’s hand, Marjorie can hardly refuse.

Marjorie has enough on her plate: taking care of her husband, Hank (her former high school sweetheart - they re both now in their mid-thirties), bedridden for years since the accident that left him blind and paralyzed. In order to try to make ends meet, after taking a correspondence course offered by the Department of Agriculture, she has worked for New York publishing houses indexing tomes on unusual subjects (such as her present project dealing with African headhunters), at which she has become somewhat surprisingly good. The amulet takes her into research on Norse mythology and orthography, lores and legends and myths of the Old West. I must admit I stumbled at times over some of the rather arcane (to me) terminology, but the writing is otherwise lyrical, making farmland and the prairie come to life, with their “fierce, unrelenting winters” when “the stars seemed too cold to sparkle,” and summers when “daylight seemed to go on forever.”

The suspense mounts when another murder takes place, chillingly similar to the first two, shockingly – they are the first murders to take place there in over 25 years, in a town with a population of 10,000 souls. There is no graphic violence, at least not on the page, in this novel, just a menacing green Chevy that keeps reappearing in Marjorie’s path. And as someone once said, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean someone isn’t after you. The novel is interesting and well-plotted, and is recommended.

[Martha · Rating 3 out of 5]

The sense of place in this mystery was very strong, and permeated the whole book. I also really enjoyed the details of Marjorie Trumaine's career as an indexer (having gone a few steps down that path myself)--how many mysteries, or really any novels, do you find with an indexer as the main character? On the other hand, the mystery itself was not always completely comprehensible, at least to me (why were the first two murders committed? Why was Peter in the trunk of the car, instead of just murdered?), the Norse mythology part seemed to get a little out of hand, and Marjorie's internal musings got pretty repetitive. But all in all, I'm interested to try the next one, if only to see how Marjorie manages to become involved in more murders in such an isolated region.

[ME · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was intrigued enough by the protagonist's career, setting, and backstory of this book to pick it up, and those aspects of the book did not disappoint. Overall, however, I thought the pace drug along like a prairie summer afternoon, and not in the spine-tingling suspenseful kind of way that a good book will do, but rather like walking a long dusty plow row. Then, as many mystery novels tend to do, after walking that long hoed row, the ending was abrupt and unsatisfying. Where Sweazy should have drawn out the scene, it was too short. Where he needed to cut to the chase, he just went on so long you didn't care what was around the corner of the barn...or you knew full well what was there so the "reveal" was redundant.
There were also some grammatical issues: misplaced modifiers, and a societally prevalent inability to name oneself and another. Is it Hank and I, or Hank and me? Sweazy really needs to figure this one out!
In the end, probably not compelling enough to look for another installment.

[Randy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Author Larry D. Sweazy takes a break from westerns with this mystery, a Marjorie Trumaine tale. Marjorie caries on that tradition of the amateur detective. The Setting is 1964, North Dakota, and Marjorie works as a book indexer. Syhe Lives on a farm, looking after her quadriplegic husband, the result of an accident.

There's a horrific murder on the farm beside theirs, Marjorie's two best friend brutally slain, the two teenage boys asleep upstairs and not hearing anything.

The sheriff asks for her help. An old amulet with odd markings had been found in the father's hand and the sheriff wants her to use her research skills to find a clue.

Before it's all over, more murders occur, someone is following Marjorie and tries to kill her, the publisher she works for is pressing her to complete the index on the headhunters book, and she keeps plugging along trying to find the murderer.

I have a sneaking suspicion Marjorie may appear again. I hope so.

[Erica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am torn by this author. I enjoyed the story, and especially the detective character Marjorie Trumaine. The mystery was handled well and left me guessing right up to the end. But there were several editing errors that made it appear a computer or a very lazy human edited the book (in one place, the word subtlety - a noun - was used where the context required the word subtly - an adverb. And then there was the phrase "over Hank and I" which is like nails on a chalkboard to me - and no, it was not in a portion of dialogue where substandard English might work. It was in a narrative portion of the work. Maybe I'm too much of a grammarian, but I really do like to see the objective form of pronouns used after prepositions. There were a few other errors as well, but not quite as bad.

[Margi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the character of Marjorie. She is a woman who's life has been dealt a hard hand but she continues to carry on and persevere. She is given a clue by the local sheriff that was left at a crime scene. In researching this clue that deals with Nordic legends she, little by little, pieces together the crime, at times using her indexing skills to figure things out. I must say I was surprised by the ending and I love that fact. I don't like investing in a mystery that I know the answer to after a few chapters. The characters are very well written as is the small town sense of living. I would definitely be interested in reading more adventures with this character at the helm.

[Joan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really good book. Marjorie Trumaine is a likable character who struggles to care for an invalid husband while writing indexes for books and trying keep the farm running. Her near neighbors are murdered in their bed while their sons sleep down the hall. Devastated by the death of her good friends, Marjorie agrees to research a mysterious coin for the local sheriff. The coin had been found clutched in the hand of one of the victims. But when the sheriff's wife is murdered while staying at Majorie's home with her bedridden husband, Marjorie wonders if she has become involved in something beyond her abilities. A great ending that came as a surprise.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read it! Seriously, a well-crafted mystery with a unique spin on the investigator.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was lucky enough to read an advanced copy of this one…and it was excellent. A great mystery with great characters. Check it out when you get the chance!

[Tracyk · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is closer to 5 stars than 4 stars. Too bad Goodreads doesn't allow 1/2 stars.

[Lori Rader-Day · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great new mystery series character!

[Anne Egbert · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was a pretty silly mystery. Would not read any more of this author.

[Cornerofmadness · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, I picked this one up for a literary destinations challenge and I needed North Dakota. I had never heard of this series but it's one I'm going to be hanging with to gobble up more. It was more like a 4 star read for the mystery but I gave it that extra star because Sweazy captures life on the Dakota plains so well (I lived in South Dakota though, similar enough). This is 1964 and it is not an easy life. In fact it's a pretty sad one for the lead character Marjorie Trumaine (and grinding over and over the same angst was one of the reasons the mystery itself is a 4 star read).

Marjorie's life is even harder than most farm house wives in the 60s. Her husband Hank had an accident while hunting, not only catching birdshot in the face costing him his sight, when he fell he broke his neck leaving him a quadriplegic in need of total care. Marjorie is barely hanging onto the farm with the help of her friends' the Knudsons and their two young sons. Also Marjorie - whose father wanted her to be an academic but she fell in love with a farmer - is an indexer, someone who makes the indexes at the back of books. She loves it being of an orderly sort of mind and the books she loves to read are her escape to worlds beyond Dakotan farm life.

And then the Knudsons are murdered, leaving their teenaged sons orphaned. Even more shocking, Erik Knudson is found with a bizarre Nordic amulet in his hand. Marjorie is brought into the investigation by her friend, Sheriff Hilo because she's 'the smartest person he knows.' He believes the amulet is somehow related to the murder and he knows she can handle the academic side of things to find out what the amulet is and why the murderer would have left it at the crime scene.

Marjorie is facing not only a mounting body count but also the worries of Hank dying on her (though he pretty much wishes he was dead) the loss of her friends, the chance she'll lose the farm and then someone starts to stalk her.

It was a very satisfying, if morose mystery. I found Marjorie convincing as an investigator and person (all the little details, like finding solace in a cigarette, the feel of the wind blowing across the prairie really made this novel. It was one of the most surprising finds all year. Looking forward to more.

[Bev · Rating 3 out of 5]

Marjorie Trumaine is trying to get used to her new life. Farming in 1964 North Dakota has never been easy, but everything is much harder after her husband Hank had an accident that left him blind and paralyzed. In order to help meet the bills, she took up a job as a free-lance professional indexer. She's under deadline for a book on the myth of headhunter civilizations when Sheriff Hilo Jenkins comes to her with horrific news.

The Trumaines' nearest neighbors, Erik and Lida Knudsen, have been found murdered in their beds. Their boys Peter and Jaeger are fine--well, as fine as they can be after the discovery--and the only clue is an ancient Norse amulet that was found clutched in Erik's hand. Jenkins knows that Marjorie's job involves research and asks her to try and find out what she can about the strange object.

As Marjorie dives into Norse mythology more murders occur and each seems to have a connection with what she finds. The Sheriff's wife is killed and found holding a sprig of mistletoe. Then a professor from the local university who had an interest in Norse history and folklore is also murdered. What is the connection? Marjorie, who is used to cross-referencing and finding connections, feels like she ought to know, but her personal troubles and the looming deadline for her job keep distracting her. Will she find the right reference before it's too late?

The mystery plot is good--Sweazy lays down the clues (although I missed several important ones) and gives the kaleidoscope a final shake and twist that keeps the solution on theme but provides an interesting surprise. I also like Marjorie a lot--she's a strong female character in a time when women weren't expected to be quite so tough. I did have a bit of trouble with the depressing atmosphere. Poor Hank, it's difficult in the scenes with him in them. The murders are also quite brutal.

Sweazy does a great job capturing the time period and the North Dakota setting is quite vivid. I've only been to the state once (in the 70s), but the scenes in the book had a definite familiarity. A good, solid first book in the series.

First posted on my blog My Reader's Block.

[Kathy KS · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure I'd call this mystery a "cozy." Taking place in rural North Dakota in 1964, Marjorie Trumaine lives a life with stress. Her farmer husband had an accident several years ago and is now blind and paralyzed, so Marjorie begins to work as a freelance indexer for various publishers. The farming is done by friends and hired help. Unfortunately, they are in danger of losing the farm and their home.

But the have each other and friends. Until someone viciously kills two of their best friends and neighbors. And more murders begin to occur. Marjorie begins to try to find out more about an amulet that is left, then mistletoe; these items lead her to learn more about Norse mythology, which seems to connect everything. But how? The suspense of who is the killer continues until pretty much the end. Marjorie uses her indexing skills to collect and review her evidence as she discovers more.

I will continue the series with the second volume because I find the 1960s rural North Dakota setting interesting and life in the community.

Since this audiobook was read by a number of individuals, readers have a good sense of the individuals. I liked the slight bit of a Swedish accent given to Marjorie; this definitely sounded realistic for the area. My main concern with audio is the background noise throughout most of it. This is meant to add more drama to the presentation, but I found it irritating, distracting, and invasive. It definitely made it more difficult to hear. Listening in a car would have made it even more difficult. Good idea, but it just didn't work for me.

[Stephen Terrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you enjoy cozy mysteries with an intriguing protagonists, and a unique engrossing setting, See Also: Murder is a MUST read.

In Marjorie Trumaine, author Larry Sweazy has created an unforgettable character. A farm wife in the early 1960s bleak plains of North Dakota, Marjorie has as much on her plate as one can imagine. Her husband is a blind quadriplegic as a result of a tragic hunting accident. Their farm was struggling even before her husband's accident. Now the financial pressures and the pressures of looking after her husband are stressing Marjorie.

She finds comfort and extra income in working as a book indexer, something that actually was encouraged for farm wives the the US Department of Agriculture (you can look it up).

Marjorie's world becomes even more complex and fearful when the couple on the neighboring farm are found dead with their throats slit. Long-time county sheriff and friend shows up seeking Marjorie's skills at research, handing her a Norse amulet that was found at the crime scene.

Marjorie's talents for organizing and seeing links becomes invaluable as she investigates the history of the object. But when the sheriff's own wife is found murdered on Marjorie's farm, her world nearly collapses.

See Also: Murder is a wonderful read, mostly for the intriguing central character of Marjorie Trumaine and the 1960s North Dakota world in which she lives. It is a journey worth taking.

[Viva · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read #3 in this series and really liked it so I decided to try the first one in the series. I still remember what I wrote was that the mystery part wasn't that great but I really enjoyed the characters and the setting of rural North Dakota in the 60's.

Turns out the first book was a bit similar. I thought the mystery part was very meh. The murderer was just a straight reveal, without any deduction or suspense and a forced twist at that. What I liked a lot about the first book: the life of a housewife in rural N. Dakota was also pretty meh in this book. So overall the book was a disappointment. I had already reserved #2 in the series to read but now I'm going to give that a pass.

I would only recommend this book if you like a the-way-we-were theme of rural farming America and only want a mildly entertaining mystery.

As an aside, I've been finding a lot of mystery series like this, a mystery series that is only sustained by the characters and setting. I'm finding out how hard it really is to write a suspenseful mystery.

[Imjussayin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A gritty novel which brings pain and hope to life.

😉

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Book Rating
Sexual Content: U
Language: U
Violent: U
Would I read the next one or reread ?: Yes

My rating system (* = star)
0* Could not finish this book (waste of time)
1*Finished the book but didn't like it not fulfilled
2* Finished the book it was okay.
3* A good read worth your time.
4* An excellent read often with a novel concept or unusual plot.
5* A magnificent read. A prominent example of the genre.

[Kathleen Bianchi · Rating 4 out of 5]

1964 North Dakota, I've never read a mystery in this setting or time period. I found that it added a nice touch to the reading of the book. Marjorie Trumaine is a farmers wife who does indexing for a NY Publisher. Her husband is severely disabled so they are having serious financial difficulties. It's a small town and people get to know each other and when the neighboring farm's couple(parents) are gruesomely killed Marjorie is asked for her help by their long time sheriff. She is the "smartest woman he has ever known". Two more people are killed and her indexing with her head-hunting book and the Norse mythology are helpful in her solving this murder. I recommend this book, I read it in two days, you could read it in one if you wanted to.

[Rica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having worked as a back-of-the-book indexer myself, I was most intrigued by this aspect of the protagonist's life--especially given the 1960s setting, long before the advent of the software I used. Author is himself a career indexer.

A fine little mystery, on the whole, marred for me (a professional copyeditor and proofreader) only by a high number of typos/errors: for example, "I subtlety shook my head"; "accidently"; "straddled" instead of "saddled"; missing words; faulty parallels; misplaced/dangling modifiers ("I couldn't recall a time when [our border collie] had tried to herd me while driving the truck"); and many more.

In fairness, Sweazy also includes many lovely turns of phrase. So 4.5 stars is probably a better rating.

[Liz V. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marjorie has been an avid reader since childhood, so when the need to earn money to keep her farm afloat arises and the farm extension agent suggests indexing, it seems a natural fit. Little did Marjorie dream that indexing would become a haven after an accident leaves her husband blind and paralyzed or that indexing would teach her new problem solving skills, enabling her to ferret out a murderer.

Somehow I started with the fourth in the series. Glad I backtracked.

Nits:
* p. 61, hands over a quarter and two pennies for 27¢ purchase but p. 108, gets change.
* p. 161 ¶ 1 line 9: delete "a".
* p. 225 ¶ 4 line 2: substitute "me" for "I".

[Nancy H · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent murder mystery set in North Dakota, and both the story and the prose are evocative of the North Dakota landscape. The main character, who does indexing to earn money to support herself and her invalid husband (the indexing is something of interest to me, a retired librarian!), is a complex but very likeable character who unwittingly gets involved in the investigation when her neighbors are brutally murdered. She only solves the murder as she narrowly misses being killed herself. This is definitely a good read.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

More enjoyable than I was expecting. Sweazy writes a very distinct, very comfortable voice when it comes to Marjorie. I would never have guessed this was the first in the series, considering how complete a character she felt like. And she was so different from the mystery protagonists in the books I usually pick up--a woman who's faced real hardship beyond a cheating boyfriend/husband.

At first I wasn't sure I was going to pick up more (how many murders can there be in small town North Dakota) but by the end I knew I'd read the next one for sure.