DEAD LETTER

Convinced that the death of Amel Pilkin, last seen at the Corner Bar and Grill, was not an accident, Garth Ryland--editor of the "Oakalla Reporter"--begins an investigation of his own, sifting through the town's eccentric characters

Riggs's ( The Last Laugh ) seventh story featuring Garth Ryland encases an authentic depiction of rural Wisconsin life in a thinly stretched plot. The morning after the local trash collector, deaf dwarf Amel Pilkin, is seen celebrating in the Corner Bar and Grill, he is found dead in his truck, the garbage barrels missing from the truck and a contusion on the back of his head. Nobody, including new sheriff Whitey Huffer, agrees with Ryland that Pilkin was murdered. But bull-headed Ryland, editor of the Oakalla Reporter , questions everyone who could have seen Pilkin on the day he died. Only Huffer, who is angry that Ryland didn't back him in a recent election, takes exception to Ryland's investigation. As he scrapes back the town's harmonious veneer, Ryland discovers rivalries, love affairs and jealousies as well as proof that Pilkin was indeed murdered. Flimsy clues and Ryland's failure to turn up new information until the finale leave readers with little incentive to stick with the languid pace and mundane characters of Oakalla.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Oakalla, Wisconsin, newspaper editor Garth Ryland (One Man's Poison, etc.), who lobbied against the election of the new sheriff, Whitey Huffer, is now at odds with him over the accidental death-- or murder?--of deaf trashman Amel Pilkin, who seemed awfully excited about some good news just before he died. But what was it? As Garth goes searching, he collides with lost-love Claire (now married to Whitey); her best friend (and Whitey's mistress) Carolyn; Carolyn's drug-addicted brother Ray; and his own housekeeper, the crotchety, geriatric Ruth. The resolution involves a letter that was pocketed to deny one inheritance and protect another; a spot of unintentional voyeurism; several runs to various dumps; a last-resort suicide, and a promise not to shoot--that's broken. A slow, measured appraisal of rural America and its idiosyncratic citizenry. Riggs's cast of eccentrics are edgy, despairing, and believable--particularly Clark, the sheriff's deputy. Overall, though, the plot is less interesting than the people who frequent it. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The seventh Garth Ryland mystery details the Wisconsin journalist's investigation of the "accidental" death of a deaf man.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.