Past Imperfect
A John McIntire Mystery by Kathleen Hills
Review: Kathleen Hills' debut mystery, Past Imperfect, marks the introduction of John McIntire of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
Hills does a fine job defining the tone of the book with detailed descriptions of the landscape and its people and capturing the remoteness of area. Setting the book in the 1950's also seems appropriate for the characters and locale. The pace of the prose is just right making this a very enjoyable book to read. The mystery, while not terribly original, is sufficiently intricate to keep the reader interested, but not too difficult to follow.
The Upper Peninsula of Michigan makes an interesting setting for mysteries and Hills has carefully thought out the character of John McIntire. Past Imperfect is a terrific start to a most promising series.
Acknowledgment: Poisoned Pen Press provided an ARC of Past Imperfect for this review.
Review Copyright © 2002 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved
Selected reviews of other mysteries by this author …
The Kingdom Where Nobody Dies
Poisoned Pen Press (Hardcover), December 2007
ISBN-13: 9781590584767; ISBN-10: 1590584767
Location(s) referenced in Past Imperfect: Upper Peninsula, Michigan
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Past Imperfect by Kathleen Hills
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Format: Hardcover
ISBN-10: 1-59058-007-9
ISBN-13: 978-1-59058-007-3
Publication Date: June 2002
List Price: $24.95
Synopsis (from the publisher): A grizzled Lake Superior fisherman with a massive allergy to bees dies very early one morning alone on his boat. Was he stung to death?
John McIntire, retired from a career in military intelligence and striving to regain a place in his boyhood home after 30 years away, is serving as township constable. He questions the easy verdict. The town of St. Adele has little experience with violent death - or murder. Nor does McIntire, despite fighting in two World Wars. Worse, all the suspects are friends and neighbors, men and women he grew up with "talking Swede." The dead man, last of a Norwegian family who came to raise apples in the struggling rural township sandwiched between the Huron Mountains of Michigan's Upper Peninsula and the southern shore of Lake Superior, had no real enemies despite his gruff temper. And he had litle to leave aside from a heavily mortgaged boat. So, who wanted to kill him?
Saddened by violence striking Utopia, worried his British bride might cut and run, his task complicated by taciturn witnesses and six party telephone lines, the naturally humorous McIntire brings a murderer to justice while struggling to evolve a new perspective on a rural community he has idealized for three decades.