Cathy C. (cathyskye) -
In my opinion, Sheriff Virgil Dalton ranks right up there with others in my Sheriff's Pantheon. What others? Try Walt Longmire and Joanna Brady for starters. I just wish there were more than three books in this series because the message these books convey is much greater than the sum of their parts.
There's a slow, steady unfolding of the mystery in Shattered Dreams, but the mystery is just the tip of the iceberg. We experience the age-old problem of fighting a city council that wants the sheriff's department to perform miracles on a broken shoestring budget-- a city council that took ten years to decide to spend money to install a stoplight at a dangerous intersection. Times are changing, and the problems of the world are coming to this small town where that old yellow dog used to be able to sleep out in the middle of Main Street. No matter how much the city council wants to live in the past, they must be dragged into the here and now.
What makes Shattered Dreams and the other two books in the series (Death at the Black Bull and Death on the High Lonesome) so good is what I call the People Angle. The characters draw you in and keep you wanting more. Rosie, the dispatcher who keeps the office shipshape and everyone in line, puts me in mind of Walt Longmire's Ruby. Something happens to another character, and readers will be left reeling in shock but ultimately comforted by how everyone draws together.
Sheriff Virgil Dalton is the type of lawman readers can respect and grow to love. He's quiet and observant. He sees value in the sorts of people that most folks write off, people whom others believe are only fit to gossip about. He's always putting everyone else ahead of himself, sometimes to his own detriment. And, like Sheriff Joanna Brady over in Cochise County, Arizona, he knows that his "job is about way more than just catching bad people; it's about helping good people, too, and about putting broken lives back together."
Even more than the solution of the mystery, it's how Frank Hayes, in often evocative and poetic language, has created a world and characters who, despite it all, focuses on the good that means the most to me. When I read a Virgil Dalton mystery, I am in Hayes' world. Want to know how deep? Shattered Dreams made me forget that I was stranded in a lonely hospital room, that's how deep. And this will keep me coming back time after time after time. I long for more books in this series, and I sincerely hope that this is one wish that comes true.
There's a slow, steady unfolding of the mystery in Shattered Dreams, but the mystery is just the tip of the iceberg. We experience the age-old problem of fighting a city council that wants the sheriff's department to perform miracles on a broken shoestring budget-- a city council that took ten years to decide to spend money to install a stoplight at a dangerous intersection. Times are changing, and the problems of the world are coming to this small town where that old yellow dog used to be able to sleep out in the middle of Main Street. No matter how much the city council wants to live in the past, they must be dragged into the here and now.
What makes Shattered Dreams and the other two books in the series (Death at the Black Bull and Death on the High Lonesome) so good is what I call the People Angle. The characters draw you in and keep you wanting more. Rosie, the dispatcher who keeps the office shipshape and everyone in line, puts me in mind of Walt Longmire's Ruby. Something happens to another character, and readers will be left reeling in shock but ultimately comforted by how everyone draws together.
Sheriff Virgil Dalton is the type of lawman readers can respect and grow to love. He's quiet and observant. He sees value in the sorts of people that most folks write off, people whom others believe are only fit to gossip about. He's always putting everyone else ahead of himself, sometimes to his own detriment. And, like Sheriff Joanna Brady over in Cochise County, Arizona, he knows that his "job is about way more than just catching bad people; it's about helping good people, too, and about putting broken lives back together."
Even more than the solution of the mystery, it's how Frank Hayes, in often evocative and poetic language, has created a world and characters who, despite it all, focuses on the good that means the most to me. When I read a Virgil Dalton mystery, I am in Hayes' world. Want to know how deep? Shattered Dreams made me forget that I was stranded in a lonely hospital room, that's how deep. And this will keep me coming back time after time after time. I long for more books in this series, and I sincerely hope that this is one wish that comes true.
