The Drop Edge of Yonder: An Alafair Tucker Mystery

I was so excited about this 3rd entry into Donis Casey's Alafair Tucker series after The Old Buzzard Had It Coming and Hornswoggled. I have loved each and every book in this series. They are set in Muskogee County, Oklahoma in the early part of the 1900's. Alafair Tucker is the mother of 10 children and a fascinating character. This series reminds me of my grandmother so much. She was from Oklahoma and grew up in the same area and same time period. She was from a large family like the Tuckers and her speech patterns were much the same as those used in this series. The recipes included are familiar to me as is the way of life depicted. It's like having a nice visit with my grandmother. I love it! The covers are great too! I hope that Ms. Casey has planned many more Alafair Tucker mysteries.

Donis Casey has done it again! THE DROP EDGE OF YONDER is the best mystery I've read this year, and I read lots of mysteries. This book has it all: a gripping plot in a great setting with well developed characters. And like the first two books in the Alafair Tucker series, THE OLD BUZZARD HAD IT COMING and HORNSWOGGLED, THE DROP EDGE OF YONDER has lots of heart. In fact, it has more heart than most novels and certainly more than most mysteries. Reading it is like visiting family that you love and have missed. Like the first two books, THE DROP EDGE OF YONDER is set on the Tucker farm just outside of the small town of Boynton, Oklahoma, a few years after Oklahoma was admitted as a state in 1907. Like the author, I'm a third generation Oklahoman, and my maternal grandparents owned a small farm not far where the story takes place. My mother who grew up on the farm loves the Alafair Tucker books and vouches for their accuracy. If you read just one mystery this year, make it this one. I assure you that you won't be disappointed.

In the year 1914 in a little town in Oklahoma, a group of young people were taking a ride when they spotted a beehive. They stopped in an attempt to gather honey from the hive and a shot rang out, killing one. His fiancée was abducted and later found in a state of hysteria. Young Mary's scalp was creased by a bullet and she was unconscious. Thus, the beginning of a simple tale, recounting an event which led up to the incident. In this, the author's third novel, set in small farms and towns in Oklahoma, Alafair Tucker, mother to 12 children including Mary, shows true grit in trying to protect her family and seeking answers to the crime. Meanwhile Mary has to emerge from the fog she is in and recount past stories bit by bit to come up with the clues to identify the killer. She writes in her journal, recounting stories told at the Fourth of July celebration. With each entry more disclosures are told in the novel. Descriptions of the new state of Oklahoma and life at the turn of the 20th century are real, and the language spoken is authentic frontier-speak. Life, as it was lived at the time, is described with all the hardship and primitiveness that existed at the start of World War I out in the West. If this novel is any indication, maybe we should go back and look at the previous two entries, which we missed.

In 1914 Oklahoma Alafair Tucker thinks the summer so far has been quiet, dry and hot on the farm as she and her spouse Shaw raise their horde of offspring. Life can be hard as she knows having two children of the twelve she birthed die on her, but right now Alafair kicks off her shoes having a child under one year old after a seven year gap. However, the idyll of the summer of 14 ends when someone kills her half-brother-in-law Bill McBride and rapes his fiancée Laura Ross. With them riding at the time were Alafair's daughters, twenty-one years old Mary whose head was grazed by a bullet and fifteen years old Ruth. Mary suffers from partial amnesia. The killer-rapist tries to murder Laura. Sheriff Scott Tucker officially leads the investigation, but knows his cousin by marriage Alafair will solve the case as she has done before (see HORNSWOGGLED and THE OLD BUZZARD HAD IT COMING); he needs to stay near her and keep her safe. As with the previous Tucker tales, the atmosphere is incredible so much so that the audience will believe they are spending the summer of 1914 on the Tucker farm. The whodunit is cleverly devised as Alafair knows Mary has the truth if she can only remember. Fans of historical mysteries will appreciate this superb Sooner story as it is Oklahoma just before WW I that makes Donis Casey's saga an excellent read. Harriet Klausner