The Kingdom Where Nobody Dies

It's a miserable hot summer day somewhere in rural Michigan. Claire Hofer is eleven years old, at least chronologically. She sets out to take lunch to her father Reuben, who is haying. Township Constable John McIntire meets her before she gets to her father, who has been murdered. Claire's mother Mary Frances is morbidly obese and physically incapable of walking far enough to shoot her husband. So the first and most obvious suspect is ruled out fairly quickly. The Hofers have only been in town a few months; who else could it have been? As McIntire digs deeper into Reuben's past, he finds out that just because the family has only been here a little while doesn't mean that Reuben doesn't have history in the area. Reuben was incarcerated nearby in a Civilian Public Service camp for conscientious objectors. He knew people in town: a camp guard and a local hairdresser. But what could their motive be? Claire knows more than she is telling. She doesn't trust McIntire, and is afraid to see her family separated again as they were while her father was in the Camp. Some of her knowledge she deliberately withholds; some knowledge she doesn't realize is important. Hills has written a very well plotted mystery with characters most readers can empathize with. Not all her characters are likeable, but they are all people readers will recognize, particularly those readers of a certain age who share memories of that life in rural America. The setting is an important but not overwhelming part of KINGDOM. Readers who require justice will be happy with the resolution; readers who require legal justice . . . not so much.

Love John McIntire. In fact, I found the entire cast of Kathleen Hill's latest St. Adele mystery, "The Kingdom Where Nobody Dies" (love that title too) delivered with the deft intrigue and talent I've come to expect from Hill. In this, her fourth, Hill probes the mysteries surrounding not only the death of Reuben Hofer, who had recently brought his family to the community and is found dead in his fields, but the history of mid-century small town America as well. McIntire is the law, a tall thin figure - I picture Gregory Peck with cigarettes - with no gun, no cell phone, no computer databases as he delves into Hofer's family and past for clues, a search that uncovers layers of mystery. Hill skillfully weaves us in and around the abusive family history and the abusive politics of the war all rubbed against the good hearts (well, mostly!) of the village populace. It's easy to recognize these people. There isn't a flat character in the book. Heroics come from the least likely places - the enraged young woman, Claire, who has a lion's share of the book's voice, or Mia, unlike any character I've encountered, or even Mac's wife Leonie, absent till the end of the book but nonetheless present throughout. This book is good company. Switch on the light, settle in and let Hill transport you back to the days when the world was different, but the human hearts are all too recognizable.

This novel is the fourth in the John McIntire Mysteries series, all of which take place in a small town in Michigan during the 1950's. McIntire returned there with his English bride after many years away serving in the army. He is the town constable. In this episode, a farmer is shot in the head while on his tractor mowing hay. The man's family had moved there only a few months before, certainly not long enough to have made any enemies (or even friends). The victim, however, was not a stranger to the area. During World War II he was incarcerated a few miles away in a Civilian Public Service camp for rebellious conscientious objectors. So there are suspects from the past as well as the present. The farmer was a tough taskmaster, driving his children from dawn on, and McIntire suspects his eldest boys as well. As in past entries in the series, McIntire is low-key and drives the sheriff to push forward on the investigation, reluctantly. The investigation becomes befuddled by the unusual family--a 350-pound wife, an eight-year-old daughter functioning well beyond her years and full of secrets, a younger brother, and two older brothers with reasons to hate the father. The book is well-plotted and carefully constructed to keep the reader engrossed right up to the end.

In St. Adele, Michigan, the Hofer family is led by an abusive patriarch who treated his wife and two young offspring (Claire and Joey) as prisoners. A decade earlier, Reuben Hofer learned how to control people when he was interred at a nearby Civilian Public Service camp for those conscientious objectors the church refused to deal with. Those lessons in behavior he brought into his marriage and family. Thus for instance his eleven years old Claire knows that if the noise from the tractor goes silent hide as her bastard father is coming home, which most likely means punishment for no reason except his dictatorial rule. Thus, in that environs, someone could not take Reuben's heavy handed discipline any longer; that person shot and killed the martinet while he was on his tractor. Town constable John McIntire investigates the homicide, but finds no one who had a kind word for Reuben. Additionally almost the entire town except for Dr. Gulbard, who tendered the obese ailing wife, and Father Doucet had any dealings with the Hofer brood. John's initial reaction is that a family member could not take it anymore; but it would have had to have been a preadolescent child as the mother could not have walked that far. However, he reconsiders his assessment when strangers from the victim's camp days and Reuben's fundamentalist sister arrive in town although no new motive surfaces. The fourth John McIntire 1950s police procedural (see WITCH CRADLE), PAST IMPERFECT, and HUNTER'S DANCE) is a fabulous look at an impoverished family suffering from abuse just after WW II in Michigan. The key to this unique thriller is John's adversary Claire; a tough but frightened preadolescent protecting her younger brother and her ill ma. She proves quite a capable opponent as fans will appreciate this strong entry in one of the best 1950s series on the market today. Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Tara Hammack (age 16) for Reader Views (10/07) This book was very interesting; in a way, you can't put the book down. It started out with this young girl named Claire up in a tree just trying to have a minute of peace. While she was in that tree, she heard a loud boom of a gunshot. "People were always shooting at something around here..." she had thought. She didn't even think of the possibility of her father sitting on his tractor with a bullet through his head. The story is all about finding Reuben Hofer's killer. We find so much about Mr. Hofer like the way he treated his family, what "friends" he had, and the people who hated him which is a lot of people. Ms. Hofer is a very sick person who weighs over three-hundred pounds and when you're overweight you have heart problems. She has four kids, three sons named Jake, Sam, Joey, and a daughter Claire. They all were also Reuben's kids. He was really strict on all of them. He was mean all the time and made all the kids do chores from sunup to sundown. If Ms. Hofer needed something, she would call for Claire. McIntire is one of the people who are trying to find out and understand what happened to Mr. Hofer. He would go back and forth between suspects. Of course the family members are suspects; at least, the two older boys are. Also two people Hofer was "friends" with when he was at the CPS camps are suspects. Their names are Wanda Greely and Bruno Nickerson. They had a deal with Reuben Hofer, but Reuben betrayed both of them and ran away; then he moved back in that area with his family. Hofer came from a real protective, religious community and he left because he hated it there, but he treated his family the way he was treated in the community. Well, "The Kingdom Where Nobody Dies" was a little confusing. At times I didn't know who was talking so I would have to read it again. Also, I didn't know where the character was in parts of the book. There are a lot of things to keep track of like names and who they were. The storyline was good. I liked the part when Claire was up in the tree and talking to herself about her father. "When she got high enough she'd be able to see it, too; then she could keep an eye on the old bastard." I like that part because it was the third sentence of the book and it showed how much she hated her father. I would recommend this book to ages over 18 because I'm 16 and I couldn't really relate to anything in the book. Though I couldn't always follow the book and had to reread parts, I really liked it.