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Suffering Fools
When five thousand dollars and the governor's daughter disappear from the Monmouth Plantation in 1852, Natchez Sheriff Murphy is called on to interrogate three suspicious house guests:
Kitty, a minstrel actress from New York's grim Five Points district, learned the value of playing dumb and sitting pretty long ago. For Sheriff Murphy, she's all batted eyelashes and girlish innocence—
But her employer, Lord Farkas, hints at a sinister cleverness lurking behind Kitty's charm. A genteel nobleman from Hungary, Farkas may be the most respectable of the suspects, but the vast incongruities between his testimony and Kitty's force the sheriff to confront the third member of their party: a free black Londoner named Coop.
While Coop might have been naive about posing as a slave on this downstream venture, he's been in America long enough to know his word counts for nothing. It isn't even legal for a black person to testify against a white in Natchez. But Sheriff Murphy isn't fussing with legalities—not when a young girl is in danger. If Coop is willing to cooperate, Murphy might just be willing to make a deal.
Now Coop's fate hinges on convincing Murphy of a truth more tangled than Farkas and Kitty's lies.
Kitty, a minstrel actress from New York's grim Five Points district, learned the value of playing dumb and sitting pretty long ago. For Sheriff Murphy, she's all batted eyelashes and girlish innocence—
But her employer, Lord Farkas, hints at a sinister cleverness lurking behind Kitty's charm. A genteel nobleman from Hungary, Farkas may be the most respectable of the suspects, but the vast incongruities between his testimony and Kitty's force the sheriff to confront the third member of their party: a free black Londoner named Coop.
While Coop might have been naive about posing as a slave on this downstream venture, he's been in America long enough to know his word counts for nothing. It isn't even legal for a black person to testify against a white in Natchez. But Sheriff Murphy isn't fussing with legalities—not when a young girl is in danger. If Coop is willing to cooperate, Murphy might just be willing to make a deal.
Now Coop's fate hinges on convincing Murphy of a truth more tangled than Farkas and Kitty's lies.
273 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 1, 2021
1 person is currently reading
546 people want to read
About the author
Allie Ray
6 books20 followersAllie Ray is an author, educator and librarian from the little rural town of Osceola, Nebraska. She earned her BA in English from Concordia University — Seward, Nebraska, with minors in creative writing and theater arts. She is the author of HOLLER, INHERITANCE, SUFFERING FOOLS, CHILDREN OF PROMISE, and two one-act plays. She currently lives in her hometown with her daughters.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 26, 2022
DNF. This has to be the first book i have not finished in years. While this book started with an interesting concept, I found I could not get past the multiple racial and ethnic slurs used.
November 22, 2021
I won this book on goodreads. I gave it a try but had to give up. The writing needs some serious editing. In the little I read, I found so many incomplete sentences and descriptive sentences that were written in such a way that you could not determine who or what was being described.
April 14, 2021
Ray adeptly weaves real-life characters into a remarkable mystery that’s chock-full of shocking secrets, relentless lies, treachery, and engrossing historical details in her latest.
When five thousand dollars and the governor's daughter disappear from the Monmouth Plantation in 1852, Natchez Sheriff Murphy steps in to investigate the case. The three suspects: Kitty, a minstrel actress from New York's grim Five Points district, Farkas, a genteel nobleman from Hungary, and Coop, a free black Londoner, are taken into custody. As the interrogation begins, sinister secrets come to surface, revealing a tangled web of treachery and betrayal. Who will win? Who will lose? It all depends on what Murphy plans to do with the information.
The plot is ingenious, twisty, and suspenseful, the pacing measured, and the mystery at the center deeply engrossing. Ray is excellent when it comes to introducing red herrings and keeping both the tension and suspense high. She invests all her characters, including major and minor with heartbreakingly realistic humanity and aptly weaves palpable period detail, including racial and class disparity and atrocities against Black people and her protagonists’ tangled backstories into the affecting narrative.
The plot develops unpredictably, taking sudden turns, with the suspects throwing the blames on each other throughout the narrative, keeping the readers glued to their seats. The story turns dark toward the finale, with a soul-crushing ending for some characters.
The lovers of finely constructed historical mysteries won’t want to miss this powerful blend of intrigue and suspense.
Ray deserves a wide readership.
When five thousand dollars and the governor's daughter disappear from the Monmouth Plantation in 1852, Natchez Sheriff Murphy steps in to investigate the case. The three suspects: Kitty, a minstrel actress from New York's grim Five Points district, Farkas, a genteel nobleman from Hungary, and Coop, a free black Londoner, are taken into custody. As the interrogation begins, sinister secrets come to surface, revealing a tangled web of treachery and betrayal. Who will win? Who will lose? It all depends on what Murphy plans to do with the information.
The plot is ingenious, twisty, and suspenseful, the pacing measured, and the mystery at the center deeply engrossing. Ray is excellent when it comes to introducing red herrings and keeping both the tension and suspense high. She invests all her characters, including major and minor with heartbreakingly realistic humanity and aptly weaves palpable period detail, including racial and class disparity and atrocities against Black people and her protagonists’ tangled backstories into the affecting narrative.
The plot develops unpredictably, taking sudden turns, with the suspects throwing the blames on each other throughout the narrative, keeping the readers glued to their seats. The story turns dark toward the finale, with a soul-crushing ending for some characters.
The lovers of finely constructed historical mysteries won’t want to miss this powerful blend of intrigue and suspense.
Ray deserves a wide readership.
February 28, 2022
Spoiler alert: this book is actually a horror story.
The 1850’s are an often overlooked period in American history, the rising political, social, and ethical tensions ultimately exploding in the Civil War. I didn’t know what I was getting into when I started my extensive research into this time period, but what ultimately struck me was how very dark, how very grim, how very difficult this time was for marginalized people.
Contemporary sources saw the 1850’s as a morally wayward time; a time of rampant poverty, vice, corruption and disparity.
What I wanted to write was a fast-paced, Elmore Leonard-esque caper—historical fiction a la Tarantino—and I think Suffering Fools achieves that, but only because the world it’s set in really was as dark, hateful, and difficult as it’s portrayed. As such, the characters, too, are products of their time: complicated and deeply flawed—but determined, clever and resourceful.
SUFFERING FOOLS is in some ways a difficult read (it was a difficult write!), and it isn’t for everyone. But, in addition to giving a vivid picture of this world, it’s a tight, twisting crime mystery; a sharp story you have never read before.
The 1850’s are an often overlooked period in American history, the rising political, social, and ethical tensions ultimately exploding in the Civil War. I didn’t know what I was getting into when I started my extensive research into this time period, but what ultimately struck me was how very dark, how very grim, how very difficult this time was for marginalized people.
Contemporary sources saw the 1850’s as a morally wayward time; a time of rampant poverty, vice, corruption and disparity.
What I wanted to write was a fast-paced, Elmore Leonard-esque caper—historical fiction a la Tarantino—and I think Suffering Fools achieves that, but only because the world it’s set in really was as dark, hateful, and difficult as it’s portrayed. As such, the characters, too, are products of their time: complicated and deeply flawed—but determined, clever and resourceful.
SUFFERING FOOLS is in some ways a difficult read (it was a difficult write!), and it isn’t for everyone. But, in addition to giving a vivid picture of this world, it’s a tight, twisting crime mystery; a sharp story you have never read before.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews