The Mysteries of Reverend Dean
A Reverend
Dean Short Story Collection
Hal
White
Lighthouse Books (Trade Paperback)
ISBN-10: 0-9797863-5-5 (0979786355)
ISBN-13: 978-0-9797863-5-8 (9780979786358)
Publication Date: May 2008
List Price: $14.95
Synopsis (from
the publisher): The Reverend Thaddeus Dean has just retired as pastor
of a small church at the foot of the Cascade Mountains. He is lonely,
poor and desperately misses his wife who died years ago. Fortunately,
he has a pastime.
He solves murders which are so bizarre as to seem impossible.
In each of the stories collected in this volume, Reverend Dean is
challenged by a seemingly “impossible” crime. Readers won't
just have to guess who the criminals are, they'll have to guess how
they committed their crimes.
Review: Hal
White introduces Reverend Dean, the retired pastor of a small community
church in the foothills of Washington's Cascade Mountains, in a
collection of six short stories, The
Mysteries of Reverend Dean.
Each of the stories features either a locked room or other impossible
crime mystery and range in length from about 30 to 50 pages. All the
mysteries involve the solution to a murder and for their relative
brevity, are surprisingly intricate in both the setup of the crime and
the steps taken by Reverend Dean to solve it. As the stories progress,
the character of Reverend Dean continues to develop in depth and
complexity; by the end, he's like an old friend of the family. Though
four of the stories take place locally, two are set in other places: a
solitary mansion on a private island, and aboard a cruise ship sailing
the Caribbean. These latter two are among the most interesting and
memorable, possibly because the venue adds its own sense of isolation,
contributing to the impossibility of the crime being committed (and
solved).
Fans of impossible crime stories will be pleased and delighted with
those presented in The Mysteries of
Reverend Dean. It is so important to "play fair" in plots of
this sort, even more so than in other typical mysteries, and the author
does just that. All the clues are available to the reader and the
solutions can, in retrospect, be reasoned out just as Reverend Dean
does. The only advantage the pastor holds in some of the stories is a
long-held knowledge of either the suspect or the victim that he uses to
determine a motive, always helpful in solving a crime. That some of the
solutions seem a bit far-fetched is perfectly acceptable since they
never cross over the line into implausibility.
A second volume of impossible crime stories featuring Reverend Dean
would be most welcome. As a suggestion to the author, adding non-murder
mysteries would, as was accomplished with a change in locale for two of
the stories in this book, provide additional variety and interest for
readers.
Special thanks to Hal White for providing a copy of The Mysteries of Reverend Dean for this review.
Review Copyright © 2008 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved
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Mysteries in this series ...
The Mysteries of Reverend Dean
Lighthouse Books (Trade Paperback), May 2008
ISBN-10: 0-9797863-5-5 (0979786355)
ISBN-13: 978-0-9797863-5-8 (9780979786358)
Omnimystery keywords for The Mysteries of Reverend Dean ...
Location(s) referenced: Washington State.
