THE KILLER WHO HATED SOUP

The IRB's Celebrating 10 Years of Intelligent Reviews October 2007-October 2017

Fiction

A zesty gumbo

THE KILLER WHO HATED SOUP

The Killer Who Series, Book 1

By Bill A. Brier

307 pp. Black Opal Books

Reviewed by Eric Petersen

Mystery writer Bill A. Brier, who made a memorable debut with his first novel The Devil Orders Takeout, (also reviewed on this site) is back with the first in a new series of mysteries set in an unusual time and place and featuring an unusual and colorful sleuth.

The story begins with an ominous prologue, as a teenage girl named Marybeth runs through the woods with her baby, desperately trying to evade the man that’s pursuing them – the girl’s own father, who wants to take her child away from her.

In the first chapter, we meet our unlikely sleuth. It’s January 1957, and an eager, scrappy young go-getter named Bucky Ontario has arrived in the prairie town of Defiance, Oklahoma. Convinced that Defiance is the next great American boomtown, he left his home in the Louisiana bayou for bigger and better things.

Now, riding his broken down, secondhand motorcycle with his trusty camera by his side, Bucky is ready for success in Defiance. But first, he needs a better job than the one he had at the local grocery store:

Bucky grabbed his coat and camera, mounted his motorcycle, and headed toward the Chrysler dealership. The cold air stung his face like porcupine pricks, and it felt electrical. He loved the outdoors, and he loved Defiance. It was his kind of town – a town primed for growth. A town where folks were friendly and waved to one another. Where they drove fast in town to show off their cars or pickups and slow on the highway to save gas. Where a cashier would start a detailed conversation about anything from paving sidewalks to building racetracks when someone only wanted to buy gas and enjoy a Nehi pop.

Using his charm and gift of gab, (and armed with a copy of Dale Carnegie’s classic book How To Win Friends and Influence People) Bucky talks Chrysler dealership owner Cal Alsop into giving him a job as a car salesman. Then one fateful night, he attends a party at his boss’s house, thrown in honor of his co-worker, shop foreman Will Chambers, who’s just back from surgery.

Also in attendance is Miss Iris, Bucky’s neighbor – a sweet little old lady who treats him like a grandson – and Kansas Karradine, (Great character names, eh?) another co-worker. Kansas is a nasty, snarling piece of work and the father of the aforementioned Marybeth.

When Will gets sick at the party, he decides to leave, and gives Miss Iris a lift. Not long after Will pulls out of Alsop’s driveway, he and his passenger are killed in a horrific car accident. Rushing to the scene, Bucky Ontario suspects that this was no accident, and later, the police confirm that someone cut Will Chambers’ brake lines, killing both him and Miss Iris.

It was no secret that Kansas Karradine had wanted Will’s job at the dealership and was furious when he didn’t get it. He becomes a suspect in the murders, but there’s no evidence to prove his guilt. Bucky determines to nail the killer, but there’s far more skulduggery afoot in Defiance than this ghastly crime.

Cal Alsop, also a town councilman, has a unique plan in mind for commemorating Defiance’s 50^th anniversary: he’ll turn one of his most expensive cars into a time capsule, which will be filled with memorabilia, buried, and exhumed 50 years later during the town’s centennial in 2007.

There are a couple of major problems with this plan: it’s opposed by two very different, potentially dangerous factions. One is Maynard Johnston, a local rancher. A vile racist, conservative Christian hypocrite and right-wing political rival of the mayor, Johnston has his own plans for the land where the time capsule will be buried.

That land once belonged to the local Caddo Indian tribe, who don’t want a time capsule buried in their sacred ground. They want the land, which was stolen from them by the white man, returned to the tribe. When the time capsule project is approved, the Caddo tribe plans a big demonstration.

Meanwhile, Bucky Ontario teams up with Kindra Gustafson, a nice but none too bright young girl who’s latched onto him like the kid sister he never wanted. But he can’t help feeling affection for her. Together, they’re more like Abbott and Costello (or Shaggy and Scooby-Doo) than Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.

Kindra wants Bucky to help find her grandmother’s wedding ring, which she lent to her friend Marybeth Karradine, so that Marybeth could pretend to be married to her boyfriend Vester “V.O.” Overstreet in order to give their baby up for adoption. But Marybeth lost the ring, V.O. isn’t the baby’s father, and he doesn’t know what happened to the infant after the adoption fell through. His advice to Bucky and Kindra is “Find the baby, find the ring.”

When the time capsule ceremony turns into a bloody nightmare, with Indian protesters brutally gunned down by trigger happy cops right in front of CBS network news cameras, it’s up to plucky Bucky Ontario to uncover the skulduggery, save his adopted town from ruin, and bring a depraved murderer to justice…

Filled with irresistible charm, great period detail, eccentric country characters, and snappy dialogue, The Killer Who Hated Soup is a zesty gumbo of a mystery – a prairie potboiler seasoned with chuckles and chills. Highly recommended!

Eric Petersen is an administrator and blogmaster for the Internet Writing Workshop, an international, online writer’s group run out of Penn State University. You can reach him by e-mail at EricPetersen1970@hotmail.com