Legacy of Masks

Nashville City Paper BookClub Column June 2, 2005 Saralee says Did you know that one of Nashville's own, author Sallie Bissell, has been nominated for a national Shamus Award by the Private Eye Writers of America for the best paperback original of 2004? Call the Devil by His Oldest Name and her other detective novels featuring Mary Crow are some of the hottest books selling today. If you have not discovered this wonderful series, then run to your nearest bookstore or library and start reading them right now. I just love mysteries that feature characters like Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone, Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch and Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins. I am happy to say there are now four books about Crow, the feisty lawyer who finds herself not only prosecuting criminals in Atlanta but also solving murder mysteries in North Carolina. Bissell's previous books are In the Forest of Harm (Bantam), A Darker Justice, and the Shamus Award nominated Call the Devil by His Oldest Name (Dell). Legacy of Masks sends Crow back to her home of Pisgah County in North Carolina and to her former love interest Jonathan Walkingstick. Crow wants to move back home and work for the local prosecutor. However, Crow has been so successful in the big city of Atlanta and in various parts of Appalachia that she intimidates the locals, and no one will hire her. As a result, she hangs up her own shingle and soon finds herself on the other side of the law as a defense attorney rather than a prosecutor. Ridge Standingdeer, an Ani Zaguhi Cherokee, is arrested for a horrific murder. Crow believes in Standingdeer's innocence but has her hands full dealing with his mysticism and the facts of the law. Someone has been on a killing spree for sometime, and all of the victims are young girls. For such a rural area, Pisgah County has its share of strange characters. Deke Keener is a developer. Keener tricks families into moving to North Carolina to work for him so that he can get girls to play on his "special" girls softball team. Then there is Jerry Cochran, the new sheriff. Crow and Cochran were high school classmates, and they have to get used to each other in their new roles. The most interesting characters in Legacy of Masks are Kayla Daws and Avis Martin. These two girls do things that no mother wants her daughters to do in order to catch a child molester. Legacy of Masks is a page-turner sure to keep you on the edge of your seat and impossible to put down. Larry's language Mystery books come in many different disguises. Some are crime novels that feature violence and craziness such as Elmore Leonard's The Hot Kid (HarperCollins). Some are whodunits that are puzzles to solve like Nevada Barr's Hard Truth (Penguin Group). Then there are character studies that reveal the sinners among us like Mary Higgins Clark's No Place Like Home (Simon & Schuster). Still others are historical novels that show how little people's inhumanity has changed such as One Corpse Too Many

High powered ADA Mary Crowe returns to her home town in North Carolina, hoping to rekindle her romance with old love Jonathan Walkingstick, part Cherokee and total hunk, who is now a widower with a small child. As Mary is half Cherokee herself, old prejudices re emerge and when she sets up a law office in the town, the only offer of work comes from an old classmate, Deke Keener who is now the wealthiest man in town. Unknown to everyone, except his victims, Keener is a pedophile who preys upon the prepubescent daughters of his employees. He ensures the silence of these little girls by threatening to dismiss their fathers, leaving them homeless. Deke drives one girl, Bethany, over the edge by threatening to molest her younger sister, Kayla, as she herself has matured too much to suit his warped needs. Bethany's boyfriend, Ridge Standingdeer, a young Cherokee who is a member of a mystical section of the tribe called Ani Zaguhi, has hidden tapes made by Bethany as she was being molested, and when Bethany is brutally murdered,Deke encourages the police to arrest Ridge, calling him a witch and inciting the locals to villify him, using racial prejudice to urge them on. Mary agrees to act as defence lawyer for Ridge and with the unsought help of Kayla and Avis who is about to become Deke's next victim, works to unmask him and to reveal him as an unspeakable criminal. Although pedophilia and racial abuse are not pleasant subjects, Sallie Bissell writes a very readable story and I feel that more to come, featuring Mary Crowe in her new role as a defence attorney.

Mary Crow has returned to Hartsville before (see IN THE FOREST OF HARM), but this time she is serious about staying. She broke with her anthropologist boyfriend Gabe while they were in Peru and quit her job as an ADA to seek work as a prosecutor or in a law firm in the North Carolina Mountains. No offer has come as no one believes that "Killer Crow" will remain here after seventeen years in Atlanta; so she opens up her own office. Her first major case will not endear Mary with the bigwigs. The police suspect Ridge Standingdeer killed his girlfriend Bethany Daws. Mary believes her client is innocent, but her only help comes from two preadolescents including Kayla the sister of the victim. Meanwhile sexual predator Deke Keener, the wealthiest person in the country with major political ties due to his construction company, targets Kayla as his next squeeze, but needs to keep Mary occupied perhaps with some of his legal business. The fourth Mary Crow tale returns her to her hometown where with exception of Kayla and hunk Jonathan Walkingstick no one wants her to stay. Her efforts to obtain work are met with resistance because of her stellar reputation making her seem over-skilled and the fact that she did kill the corrupt sheriff on a previous visit; even the native tribe rejects her offer of council. The who-done-it is not quite as thrilling as Crow's previous efforts, but the audience will appreciate her cat and mouse game with this clever predator who uses money, contacts, and racism to hide his being a killing pedophile. Harriet Klausner