by Tom Bouman
"A terrific writer. Definitely one to keep an eye on."—Dennis Lehane
In Wild Thyme, Pennsylvania, summer has brought Officer Henry Farrell nothing but trouble. Heroin has arrived with a surge in crime. When local carpenter Kevin O'Keeffe admits that he shot a man and that his girlfriend, Penny, is missing, the search leads the small-town cop to an industrial vice district across state lines that has already ensnared more than one of his neighbors. With the patience of a hunter, Farrell ventures into a world of shadow beyond the fields and forests of home.
Fateful Mornings is the second book in the Henry Farrell series. Tom Bouman's Officer Farrell returns in The Bramble and the Rose.
"A terrific writer. Definitely one to keep an eye on."—Dennis Lehane
In Wild Thyme, Pennsylvania, summer has brought Officer Henry Farrell nothing but trouble. Heroin has arrived with a surge in crime. When local carpenter Kevin O'Keeffe admits that he shot a man and that his girlfriend, Penny, is missing, the search leads the small-town cop to an industrial vice district across state lines that has already ensnared more than one of his neighbors. With the patience of a hunter, Farrell ventures into a world of shadow beyond the fields and forests of home.
Fateful Mornings is the second book in the Henry Farrell series. Tom Bouman's Officer Farrell returns in The Bramble and the Rose.
Reviews-
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April 10, 2017
Officer Henry Farrell, the affable lone lawman of rural Wild Thyme Township, Pa., has a flair for stirring up trouble, as shown in Edgar-winner Bouman’s atmospheric sequel to 2014’s Dry Bones in the Valley. When waiflike heroin addict Penny Pellings disappears near Maiden’s Grove Lake, Henry’s gut tells him that the most obvious suspect—Penny’s alcoholic partner Kevin O’Keeffe—didn’t abduct her. Soon after drug dealer Charles Michael Heffernan’s corpse surfaces in the Susquehanna River, undercover sleuthing in nearby Binghamton, N.Y., nearly lands Henry behind bars himself, and a car crash springs Heffernan’s kidnapped companion, Vicki Jelinski, from the vehicle’s trunk. As Henry continues to push for information from a plethora of local dirtbags at increasing personal risk, life continues to unspool for the young widower in this scenic but economically depressed patch: playing his fiddle with friends, hunting, moonlighting construction, occasionally hooking up. With time, too, answers gradually emerge. But they prove less compelling than the novel’s poetic, pitch-perfect sense of place. Agent: Neil Olson, Donadio & Olson. -
May 1, 2017
Some crime fiction engages readers with its breakneck pace, but Bouman proceeds at a meander in this sequel to his Edgar-winning debut, Dry Bones in the Valley (2014). Henry Farrell is the law by himself in Wild Thyme, Pennsylvania, near the New York border, an area generally plagued only with drug use and burglaries. Then local carpenter Kevin O'Keeffe admits that he doesn't remember whether he shot a man the night before, when he was drunk, but he does know that he didn't kill his live-in girlfriend, Penny Pellings, who disappeared at the same time. Farrell keeps searching for Pellings, along with helping build a luxury barn, playing the fiddle with friends, and working with other county and state officials on an increasing number of murders. Still, Farrell has time to appreciate the lovingly described land around him, as he ends an affair with a woman unhappy in her marriage and begins a new relationship, all the while remembering his wife, Polly, who died too young. This change of pace from adrenaline-fueled thrillers offers a relaxing, character-driven reading experience.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.) -
December 1, 2016
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller and the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, as well as LibraryReads honors and a John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger, Bouman's Dry Bones in the Valley featured rural Pennsylvania police officer Henry Farrell. Here, when hard-living carpenter Gordy O'Baire is suspected in the disappearance of girlfriend Penny, Henry's investigation leads him to scummy drug dealers and big-deal involvement with the FBI.
Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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April 1, 2017
When troubled local carpenter Kevin O'Keefe reports that his girlfriend Penny is missing and that he may have shot someone, Officer Henry Farrell is pulled into an extensive investigation involving a multistate vice ring and a shadowy, murderous hit man. Over many fateful mornings long-held secrets are unraveled, and political, cultural, and environmental realities continue to impact the Rust Belt town of Wild Thyme, PA. Meanwhile, widowed Henry's long-ended affair with married Shelly Bray threatens to derail his personal and professional life as he begins a relationship with Miss Julie Meagher. VERDICT In this follow-up to the Edgar Award-winning Dry Bones in the Valley, character and sense of place remain paramount. Bouman's evocative language draws readers into Henry's world, appealing to fans of rural noir/grit lit and Julia Keller, Wiley Cash, and John W. Billheimer. [See Prepub Alert, 11/14/16.]--ACT
Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
- Val McDermid Fateful Mornings is a haunting dissection of the broken heart of America.
- Tom Nolan;Wall Street Journal Leisurely but hard-edged.... Officer Farrell, who thinks a lot but speaks so little... proves to be excellent company.
- Joe Hartlaub;Book Reporter Fateful Mornings is terrific reading, a keeper that you'll want to read at least twice and maybe even more frequently. You'll wish that everything was this good.
- Craig Johnson, author of the Walt Longmire novels, the basis for the Netflix series Longmire You would be hard-pressed to find a finer new series than Tom Bouman's Henry Farrell novels because of the complexity of the plots or the richness of the characters, but what it really comes down to is just damn good writing.
- Thomas H. Cook, Edgar Award–winning author of The Chatham School Affair Henry Farrell casts an eye both dry and weary. What he sees is a people no less troubled than their rust-belt landscape: drug addicts and drug dealers, drunks and grifters. In Wild Thyme, vice and virtue seem locked in an epic bar brawl of astonishingly high stakes, where the losers keep their money and the winners keep their souls.
- William Kent Krueger, New York Times best-selling author of the Cork O'Connor series and Ordinary Grace Fateful Mornings is that long sought-after gem, the place where the literary meets the crime novel in beautiful symmetry. Henry Farrell is an existential everyman, as clueless as the rest of us about life's meaning, and his so very human stumbling in search of the elusive truths is one of the many beauties of this fine novel.
- Julia Keller, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Sorrow Road My father always said that you can judge people by the way they keep their tools: clean and sharp or soiled and soft. Tom Bouman's tools—the words he uses to make Fateful Mornings—cut straight and true, in this riveting mystery about a good man caught in the ruined Eden of rural America.
- Nickolas Butler, internationally best-selling author of Shotgun Lovesongs, Beneath the Bonfire, and The Hearts of Men An uncommonly intelligent whodunit, haunted by the presence of an unforgettable villain who slinks through the pages with the lubricious evil of Cape Fear's Max Cady. With meditations on folk music, ornithology, and the art of timber-framing, Fateful Mornings is the kind of novel that feels more like a porch-sitting conversation with an old friend. Tom Bouman is my new favorite mystery writer.
- Attica Locke, author of Black Water Rising and The Cutting Season More than a mystery, Fateful Mornings is a portrait of the rusted pocket of northeastern Pennsylvania that Henry Farrell calls home. Bouman's tender portrait of a widower remaking his life infuses his crime fiction with a level of intimacy that is both rare and winning. I was happy to ride shotgun with Henry Farrell again.
- Wall Street Journal Fateful Mornings unfolds in a less hectic and more novelistic manner than many police-procedurals, leaving space for meditations on natural history... investigatory digressions and dead ends, lucky chances, and the vicissitudes of the lonely narrator's love-life.... Officer Farrell... proves to be excellent company.
