Katie's Will

What a read. The Mystery Library sent me this book and I read it in one sitting. I am now going to read Mitcheltree's other book. This book is a wonderful blend of character study and mystery. Don't read it if you like nothing left to the imagination at the end of a book. If, however, you are looking for a mystery with a different twist to it, this is the book for you.

This book was the Winner of the Friends of Mystery's 1998 Spotted Owl Award.The setting for Katie's Will, a historical mystery, is interesting. It's in Jacksonville, a well-preserved, small town in southern Oregon, which was once upon a time a booming gold rush town. This is a very enjoyable book, one that has left me thinking about it days later. I can imagine a movie based upon this book. I hope that Tom Mitcheltree's next book, "Dataman", is as engaging as this book is.

Dr. Paul Fisher has received a generous university grant to travel to Jacksonville, Oregon in order to write the definitive biography of one of the school's most illustrative graduates, Dr. Harry Hollingsworth, the inventor of the pill form of providing medicine. Paul begins his research at the famous Jacksonville Museum where he meets the sixty-four year old curator of the small museum, Nora Ryan, who thinks that the twenty-five year old Ph.D. is too young to appreciate anything historical. They negotiate a price for Nora's help, even as she offers him a "better" story about Kathleen Day Baker and her sisters, who are intimately tied to Hollingsworth. On the other side of the spectrum Paul meets Pamela Livingston, attorney for the Baker estate. She warns him to stay away from the Baker sisters because he probably will infringe on copyright laws. ....... As Paul conducts his research, he quickly realizes that Nora is right when she says that Hollingsworth and the Bakers are connected, and that the siblings seem to be the better story. Additionally, even Hollingsworth's granddaughter is not interested in a book about her ancestor, making the research more difficult to amass. Paul continues to dig into the backgrounds of Dr. Hollingsworth and the Baker siblings, hoping to uncover their secret, including the hiding place of millions. ........ KATIE'S WILL is a strange mystery tale that will satisfy the reader who enjoys speculating what could happen. Likewise, anyone who wants a nice neat mystery tied together with a ribbon needs to avoid this novel. Tom Mitcheltree shows much talent as he brilliantly facilitates shifts between the present and the past that adds much to the overall tale and explains the various characters and their motives. A great novel, but clearly not for everyone. .....Harriet Klausner