The Murderer Vine

A great read, and a powerful message. HCC just keeps getting better. This is one of their best with plenty of hard-boiled noir action. You're read it in a couple of sits. It's that good. Rifkin is up there with the best of them. Buy it. Steal it. Whatever you do, read it.

As one reviewer already stated, this is not a political novel. This is not a novel about the civil rights movement in the South in the 1960s. The fact is Joe Dunne is a unique private detective, someone who is willing to be hired to stop bad things from happening to good people by decidedly evil people. He'll allow himself to be hired out to destroy a drug ringleader in a high school in order to save the high school from a drug infestation. He will also allow himself to be a hired killer if it means killing the murderers of three innocent young men (who were civil rights protestors) in the South in the 1960s and he will be handsomely rewarded for his efforts. It's the voice of Joe Dunne who here confidently carries the novel away. The private-eye palaver employed by this detective's voice is confident, riveting, convincing, and ultimately soothing. He even makes literary comparisons between himself and other, more famous private-eyes in pulp fiction, and, decidedly, Joe Dunne comes out smelling sweeter than the roses he opts to buy his gorgeous assistant, Kirby (before she gets knocked off at the novel's conclusion ) - and has more charm than those more handsome pulp detectives who like to wear shoulder holsters instead of the hip holster he wears. While some reviewers have stated that the novel makes a long wind-up before the plot is pitched, I noticed no problem at all in that the reader early on learns and knows he or she is in the presence of an extremely skilled and highly confident P.I. Much of the first half of the novel involves the sheer joy to be obtained when witnessing a pro prepare his job - like watching a master violinist's final rehearsal before his debut performance. What is peculiar is that the reader barely notices how "coincidental" it is that this job is executed without a hitch. There are no mistakes before the job or during the job - none that he knows of nor none that he can clearly surmise once the job is done. Joe Dunne plans to find and murder the five men who killed those three young men and he does find and murder them by plot's end, and he does not get caught, and he does collect his pay. The drama at this plot-point is merely the suspense of how much time will it take to complete this "crime." Only near the near-end of the novel does the reader learn, and only through the death of his assistant, Kirby, that somewhere along the line, Joe Dunne must have done something to mess things up - but no one learns exactly where, when or how. Joe Dunne is the man who played to win, but it cost him a broken heart in the end. The reader is left wanting more of Joe Dunne and more by Shepard Rifkin.

Hiding out in Puerto Lagarto as the novel opens, our hero Joe Dunne begins a detailed confession to a traveling American priest. He has been hiding out for two years with no one to talk to and clearly is a bit lonely. Besides that, he has been watching the American in a clerical collar chasing butterflies with a net and thought it was funny. As the pages turn, he tells his story and explains how e got a job that was to set him up money wise pretty good as well as cause his exile far from home. After handing a case that pushed the bounds, his name is passed on to an angry father by a client who really should have kept his big fat mouth firmly shut. The father is aware of some of the details of the other case and thinks that Joe Dunne could be willing to do what he wants done. It seems his boy was one of three men who went down to Mississippi to help with voter registration. His son, who was a good student at Harvard, along with two friends are now missing and presumed dead. Dad knows who did it thanks to another contact and Dad wants justice. "'I know they're dead. I don't know what your political views are and I don't care. But I think you know what justice is. If it doesn't exist, then you make it. I want my boy's body. And I want justice." "You mean revenge." "I don't make any distinction. Shall we talk business?'" (page 34) Dad also knows that the legal system in 1970 Mississippi isn't going to do anything to the five that local gossip says were involved. He wants proof of their guilt and he wants justice. Justice he is willing to pay for and justice of a kind that means Dunne will have to close his private investigation business, send his receptionist, Kirby, on her way and disappear. The father is willing to pay for finding the bodies of the victims, another higher amount for proof of the guilty and a still higher amount for their execution--no matter how many are ultimately guilty of the crime. Justice that he is wiling to pay for and will pay well for once he has the proof he needs of their guilt. Justice that can be bought at these prices and justice that Dunne is willing to deliver. Like most releases from Hard Case Crime, this recent re-release is a dark atmospheric one. One knows from the opening page something went horribly wrong and the only real question as the pain filled narrative begins from Joe Dunne is exactly what went wrong. Everything and everyone is flawed in some fatal way and that certainly is the case here. Like many from this publisher, there is a certain inevitability in the read that means all the hard work, the meticulous planning of every last detail, in the end truly did not matter. Joe Dunne is a complex character and as this slow moving novel tells the tale, a character that the reader begins to identify with more and more. A character, that while one knows is probably doomed, one that the reader pulls for all the way to the bitter end. The novel is a read full of rich detailed characters, a time that wasn

As a member of the Hard Case Crime book club I received THE MURDERER VINE in the mail six weeks ago and promptly put it on the shelf. I had a few books to read before I could get to it, even though I found the description on the back cover very engaging. It was an angle that I hadn't heard before- the father of a young man murdered while he helped fight for civil rights sounded pretty darned good to me. I was even more excited when I finally got to reading it and found it was every bit as good as I'd hoped it would be. It's true that it takes some time to build things up and get the protagonist to Mississippi, but it's worth every word. This is the first book I've read by Shepard Rifkin and I was happy to discover that his technique of plotting was very effective. While the first half of the book sets up at a slower pace the second half takes off like a bat out of heck, ending not the way you expect but possibly the way it would really happen. There are several dangling subplots, but what's great about that is it leaves you guessing until the last page. Not every character you meet plays into the climax, but to me that just adds to the realism. Call 'em red herrings or rabbit trails, I don't care. It works well. One other reviewer said that this was not one of the best Hard Case books. I disagree. I think it's one of my top five. Granted, there's a few I've yet to read but now the measuring rod is going to be a little higher. THE MURDERER VINE is definitely a favorite. I've described it in broad strokes to people, ranging in age from 17 to 65, and they are all interested in reading it. And while it does include some politically charged ideas it isn't a "political" book. It's an adventure/mystery that can be enjoyed by everyone, though some folks from the deep south may take slight offense at the broad brush used to describe the people in this particular town.

I've read every book in the HCC series to date, and this is definitely one of the best. The book's focus on racism in the South circa 1970 (when the book was originally written) was a surprise, especially for this genre. However, you'll still find a beautiful dame, a crooked cop, an evil mastermind, plenty of hardboiled characters and of course first person writing that prove that this book very much belongs in the Hard Case Crime canon. If you have seen the film Mississippi Burning (or are familiar with the events depicted in that film), this is a very different take on the subject of 3 missing civil rights workers. An enjoyable read.