read this many years ago and reread it after learning of Jane Langton's recent death, I love all her books, both the children's ones like Diamond in the Window and the adult mysteries, As someone who grew up in Concord, I really enjoyed this one with the murder occurring on Aprilfor all the local touches.
So many of the descriptions bring back vivid childhood and young adult memories,
The Homer Kelly mysteries are set in Concord, Massachusetts and its surrounding area, steeped in the history of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, Louisa May Alcott, and especially Henry David Thoreau.
There are plenty of small town "characters", some of whom want to protect the history and natural beauty Thoreau wrote about.
Other people want to exploit the Camden area for commercial and tourist purposes, and to line their own pockets, These books move slowly and are filled with literary references, but they are entertaining, If you are a patient reader with some interest in New England history and nature, try one, I've read three now, and will go back for more, Published inand still in print, this is the first of Jane Langton's Homer Kelly mysteries, This has a multitude of characters, each distinct and memorable, as is the setting in Concord, Massachusetts, I usually have a low tolerance for 'travelogue' mysteries, where the author does a cursory tourist description of the setting, but Langton's deep love and knowledge of New England gives this book authenticity.
The descriptions are gorgeous. I learned more about Thoreau, Emily Dickinson and Ralph Waldo Emerson from this book than I did in my miserable high school and I enjoyed every minute.
And it's very very funny, Been on my list for a long time, I absolutely loved the descriptions of Concord, with mentions of Acton, Lexington, Middlesex County, and Boston and Cambridge, of course.
Landmarks including Walden Pond,
the Alcott House, Old North Bridge, Assabet River, the Minute Man statue, the Bulfinch gold dome on the State House, are all so familiar.
Very fun.
But I just didn't care about the characters, And the narrator for the audio book kept pronouncing "Concord" wrong you would think they would want to get the main location right
Will not reread, which is rare for me.
So many other books and series to read, Having read several of Langton's Homer Kelly books before, I was delighted to discover that this was the first one, where Homer meets Mary for the first time.
When a Concord, Massachusetts man is killed shortly after the celebration of Patriot's Day, Homer Kelly, a former policeman and current scholar, is asked to help the locals.
Mary is a local librarian, to whom Homer is instantly attracted, but she finds him a bit of an oaf at first.
A boy scout has witnessed the murderer fleeing on a horse, dressed in costume, but is unable to identify him, since he only saw his back.
The costume belongs to the murdered man's son, who played the part in the previous celebration, His brother is also suspected, but has an alibi and does nothing to back up his brother, Their mother loses her mind from shock, The plot gets a bit convoluted, bringing in letters the dead man claimed to be genuine, which appear to show the famous Transcendentalists' love lives, greatly shocking the community which holds them Thoreau, Emerson, Dickinson, Alcott, et al in reverence.
Another murder shocks them further, and Mary herself ends up in danger when she tries to help a man trapped on an island during a hurricane.
There is a great deal about the Transcendentalists, old guns, and Concord history which you would think would bog things down, but the characters and the current events keep the story moving.
I didn't even try to figure out who did it, not that I would have guessed correctly anyway fortunately Homer gives an exposition at the end explaining everything.
I'm surprised given how much I loved the Langton family series that these books should be so "meh" for me.
I read a later one, and reviewers mentioned it had lost some of its earlier sparkle, so I went back to the beginning, and still, "meh.
" Less than "meh," really. None of the characters engaged, there seemed to be no plot to speak of in the first/of the book, which ought to be enough to get things going, and it only came alive in one sequence when a gullible dupe began quoting forged letters from literary luminariesnot enough to save it for me.
On to other booksthere's no shortage of them!
Note: amazing, wonderful,very good book,decent read,disappointing,awful, just awful.
I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot ofs, I feel a lot of readers automatically render any book they enjoy, but I grade on a curve!
She was a servant of the old school, eager to please.Synopsis: Northern New England scandal and murder, involving dead Transcendentalists, librarians, horses, islands, quotes and an elderly woman who wears squirrels and keeps chickens in her living room.
But she had one wellknown flaw, Gwen beheld Mrs. Bewley sticking the sugar tongs coyly into her bosom, the dear old kleptomaniac, It was just a habit she had, She didn't mean anything by it, Mrs. Goss always frisked her sternly before she went home, Mrs. Bewley never seemed to mind at all, "WHY, HOW DID THAT GET THERE, OH, TAKE IT, TAKE IT," she would say nobly, when the frying pan turned up in her shirtfront,
Quite simply lovely.
The tiny town of Concord, Mass, continues to cheerfully live in the past, Specifically, the inhabitants revel in the fact that Concord was a hotbed of Transcendentalism, theth century American literary movement where Ralph Waldo Emerson considered himself to be a giant transparent eyeball, bouncing merrily across the green.
Needless to say, his spiritual descendents are themselves a little different,
There's the guy who believes he might possibly be Thoreau reincarnated, and who holds his ragged clothes together with staples.
There's Ernest Goss, a mean old man who delights in tricking his eldest son into shooting the younger, There's a bonafide sex maniac,
And there's Homer Kelly, a police detective who happens to dabble in Emersonian scholarship when not solving crimes.
Both these skills come in handy when someone offs the 'orrible Mr, Goss and Kelly falls hard for the local spinster, Mary Morgan, who spends most of her time in theth century.
It's fantastic.
It's a book I'd term "fluff" of the nicest sort, The sentences are all neat and very, very precise:
"A noisy flock of grackles had filled the elm tree like a convention of Shriners using up all the available hotels.
The sky was blowing away like a silk scarf caught in the branches, "
"In Monument Hall the Lions were struggling heroically with a fantastic bottleneck in the shape of a tide of hungry people and one small grill.
"
"Everything seemed to fit the image of the woman Elizabeth Goss had been before she had gone out of her mind.
"
I could go on and on,
The characters, all quirky and appealing, overrun the murder plot, and in the last third of the book, when the whole thing performs a spectacular faceplant, you don't really care, because at that point you're just rooting for Mary to get organized and realize Homer's in love with her.
And then we can get back to hearing about the assorted strange townspeople, And that's a good thing, because as a murder mystery, it really does come terrifically apart,
Nonetheless, Langton has a way with place and the people who inhabit it, and for me, that's a perfect fit.
I wouldn't say this book was as good as her seminal lovesong to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Murder at the Gardner, but it's darn close.
I'll definitely be keeping this around to reread, First book in Langton's Homer Kelly series set in Concord, Massachusetts, Full of references to the local, early U, S. political and literary history. Many quotations from and mentions of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, Louisa May Alcott, and Henry David Thoreau, As can be the case in older books, some things don't age well, One of the main characters is being stalked and sexually harassed and this is not identified as an issue, Significant amount of derogatory language about women and others in the book, Homer Kelly was not that attractive a character in this book, Perhaps he warms up in the series,.STARS Jane Langton is an artist as well as writer, so her books have long beckoned to me, What I didn't realize is how much of a scholar she is, Reading this novel, I felt lacking in my knowledge of Thoreau, Emerson, Dickinson and the Alcotts, however it wasn't offputting, but fun and done with humor.
Set in Concord, Mass, where the famous Minuteman statue stands in the square, the mystery revolves around secret love letters supposedly written within that small circle ofth century Transcendentalists.
A murder occurs during the annual Patriot Day celebration, The only things that kept me from giving thiswere the lengthy descriptions which slowed down the story, but equally added atmosphere and a strong sense of place.
Most of Langton's Homer Kelly scholar/lawyer/detective mysteries include her own line drawings, however this first in the series did not.
I think English majors and American history buffs will be drawn to her books, I will certainly read more, I'd give this one.stars. I enjoyed the quotes that opened each chapter, However, these characters are not ones I want to spend time with, Mary is inexplicably weak and emotionally volatile, Homer is confusingly learned and crude in turns, .