Pineland Serenade

by Larry Millett

Welcome to Paradise County, Minnesota. No, it doesn't resemble the original Garden of Eden. It was named after a nineteenth-century lumberman who turned its towering groves of virgin pines into stumps, setting the stage for a huge forest fire that killed 400 people. After that catastrophe, settlers arrived to build hardscrabble farms out of the ashes, and the county became just another lonely, quiet place in the cold heart of flyover land. But that all changed one day when a baffling mystery began to unfold in the county seat of Pineland, a small town of under three thousand people on the banks of the Paradise River. The county's richest man, Peter Swindell, vanishes after his hilltop mansion is blown to bits. Soon, vaguely threatening messages appear all around town, posted by a shadowy figure who calls himself the Serenader. A high-powered lawyer from Chicago suddenly appears in Pineland, with a mysterious story of her own to tell. Murder and mayhem follow, set to the curious music of an old and all-but-forgotten song called "Pineland Serenade." Local and state law enforcement officials appear unable to solve the mystery-or perhaps they are part of it, hiding old and deep secrets. It's left to the newly elected county attorney, Paul Zweifel, to solve the case. A sharp-tongued loner whose best friend is an existential border collie named Camus, Zweifel begins digging into the mystery even as he becomes a suspect in the crimes. The case leads him down a winding trail into the pure heart of evil and a final, chilling confrontation with the Serenader.

Genres: Mystery, Mystery Thriller

392 pages, Paperback

Published October 7, 2020

About the author

Larry Millett has combined his interest in journalism, architectural history, and mystery fiction to create an unusual writing career. A native of Minneapolis, he attended school there and then went on to obtain a bachelor’s degrees in English from St. John’s University and a master’s degree from the University of Chicago.

He began working as a general assignment reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press in 1972 and became the newspaper’s first architecture critic after a year of study on a fellowship to the University of Michigan.

Larry’s first book, The Curve of the Arch, appeared in 1985. Since then, he’s written eleven other works of nonfiction, including Lost Twin Cities, which has been in continuous print for more than twenty years.

Larry began writing mystery fiction in 1996 by bringing the world’s most famous consulting detective to Minnesota for The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon. He’s published six other novels featuring Holmes, Dr. Watson, and St. Paul saloonkeeper Shadwell Rafferty.

Larry lives in St. Paul’s historic West Seventh Street neighborhood with his wife and occasional writing partner, Jodie Ahern, who is also an accomplished painter and a freelance copy editor.

Reviews

[Karl Jorgenson]

Sigh. Millett is still a poor fiction writer. He's known for his research and writing about historic buildings in Minneapolis and St. Paul, satisfying and interesting true stories from the early days of the city. But that writing skill doesn't translate to engaging fiction--his prose is as flat as journalism. Worse, he doesn't have the imagination to invent a mystery-worthy story, nor the detailed imagination for twists, surprises, and clever solutions.
Millett is also known (in MN, probably nowhere else) for his Sherlock-Holmes-visits-the-Midwest series. Really, really dreadful. Pineland Serenade is better, but only marginally. The bigger failure of the Sherlock series is that they include none of the Sherlock essence--Holmes's ability to make inferences based on small details that lead to a solution. Writing Sherlock is a challenging business, one which even a skilled mystery writer should consider carefully before attempting. Millett simply settled for not even trying, with the result that his Sherlock is no better than a dull frontier sheriff, who finds a body and says, 'By God, somebody's killed 'im!'
The Sherlock novels are published by the local University Press, the people who take a manuscript with no general appeal, but fitting some other, special agenda. Huh. Did they really think Sherlock visiting Minnesota was meaningful, outside of the story?
Pineland is the town of Hinckley, MN. Millett doesn't say so, but the events and history make it clear. The author couldn't say so because everybody in Pineland, from the town sheriff to the leading citizens are assholes and morons. Somebody is killing the rich and powerful in Pineland, and also taunting the inept police with cryptic notes and snippets of an unknown melody. Sound intriguing? It isn't. Why does the killer do this? Because he's crazy. But for being crazy, he efficiently kills and destroys at will, planning so perfectly he leaves no clues. Meanwhile, all the investigative idiots think the County Attorney, (the protagonist) must be the killer. Why? Because he found a couple of the notes and received a text on his phone. Well, I guess when you have no clues at all, this is what you use. The story blunders along from murder to murder, the protagonist constantly repeating that he's done nothing (though it obviously doesn't bother him--he's sarcastic and rude to everyone he meets, all of whom treat him like the town bully.) When the book mercifully ends, we see there was a story there, complicated and connected across generations. Too bad somebody didn't write a mystery based on it.

[Larry Millett]

A note to readers: the first version of Pineland Serenade contained quite a few typos that somehow managed to sneak in during the printing process. Thanks to readers for bringing this to my attention. A new, corrected version is now available with the typos fixed (I dearly hope).

[David]

The lack of editing of simple spelling, missing words, and 3rd grade grammar, renders this book almost unreadable. Not to mention the gratuitous simple minded politics.

[Kerry]

Soo close to a five star. Very readable, sometimes cheesy suspense lines at the end of chapters, but still good. A twist on the who dunnit leaves one not knowing until the end. I may look into more by this author! AND he's a Minnesotan!
One caveat for those who have read it, I do not think it was good for the storyline or very understandable that the main character was thought to be guilty.

[Ana Saffrin]

Was not a bad read necessarily, just kind of slow and sometimes confusing? But it could have also just been me since I would wait long periods between reading and then forgot who everyone was in the story haha. I also felt like there was some loose ends but it still had a really good conclusion.

[ajoyim]

A most excellent 5 star read! My hope is this is NOT the last we hear from Paul or Pineland!
this was so very good and so funny...:)

[Sharon]

Excellent mystery. Love the characters and the location in Minnesota

[Peggy]

I really enjoy Larry Miller’s writing! Kept me wondering until almost the end. Yes, there were a few typos but it didn’t take away from the good read!

[Andrea Trenary]

DNF 46%

[Elisabeth]

A rollicking MN whodunit ... fast paced .. thanks for skipping heavily painted gore and violence.

[Carol]

Read it because it was a Minnesota mystery.

[Laura]

Good read once you ignore the misspellings and missing words in the book. Read it in 12 hours. Could not put the book down.

[Lisa Horner]

3 1/2 stars. A pretty decent mystery.

[Gerry]

Good story but the typos and grammatical errors are very distracting.