Murder at the Red Dog (Brew Moore Mysteries)

Rating:
Summary: A great plot and lots of dash and swagger
Review: A native of Berkeley, California, John Herrmann earned his MFA in writing from the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop and went on to direct the MFA program at the University of Montana in Missoula. He has published several short stories and has over twenty years of teaching experience at the college level.

In Murder At The Red Dog we meet up with Drew Moore, a semi-retired journalist who fled the high pressure journalism game out East for the friendlier skies of Montana. Brew's main love and commitment is to his border collie Jessie, who accompanies him on his exploits. But when Brew's friends Gil and Beth Owen are found murdered in their offices at the rear of the Red Dog, he pulls himself out of his reverie of non-commitment long enough to investigate a case the local police would like to pin on the local American-Indian, Dennis O'Brien. When the F.B.I. appear suddenly out of nowhere, Brew knows it's time to start snooping:

"'Another thing,' I said, 'why are the federales in on this? I'll tell you why. It's because there was something going on before the crimes. The FBI doesn't get into the act on mere homicide. Serial murder, yes. But there's nothing on the surface here to indicate an FBI investigation. Also, Agent Pace arrived here mere hours after the bodies are found--here in this remote location, a hundred miles from the honest-to-god airport. I say the FBI was here all along, maybe doing something else, and only coincidentally were around when the murders were committed. They've been working on something here, whatever it is, a log longer than two days.'"

Hermann is a first-rate writer, with a special facility for great dialogue. His characters come across as three-dimensional, and appeal to the reader's thirst for entertainment. Brew Moore is a wise man with a lot of charisma. He doesn't pull any punches with any of the many characters with their own agendas, and it is refreshing to see someone who can work their way through a chain of enormous injustice. Brew's dog Jessie is a rare personality herself, who adds another dimension to the story; sort of a pressure release for the reader. All in all, Murder At The Red Dog is a well-written story with a great plot and lots of dash and swagger.
Rating:
Summary: A WONDERFUL DEBUT!!
Review: Brew Moore is a big city journalist who flees the NY skyline to find peace and serenity in Kootenai Falls, Montana. He soon finds out that there is no such thing as peace and serenity anywhere. As a reporter on the town newspaper he is asked to cover a double murder at the Red Dog Saloon. The investigation leads him to discover some of the intriguing residents of this picturesque town. Their diverse backgrounds give his story many dimensions. The location offers a sense of place that actually makes the setting one of the characters. It is a fine puzzle which is well planned and thought out.

This is the first mystery by John Herrmann and hopefully it will not be the last. He has written several award nominated short stories and it is great to see he has now given us a full length mystery to savor.

Rating:
Summary: a first rate mystery...
Review: Protagonist Brew Moore is a character with a flair. A tea-sippin' Yankee who goes West and drinks Moose Drool beer. New Yorkers love stories about one of their own who leaves NYC and moves to the boonies. The dog and sheep herding scenes are authentic and convincing. Once, as Brew and his dog, Jessie, are leaving the cabin, Jessie looks over at the sheep huddled against a shed "pretending they weren't there." And the dialogue of the old assistant coroner is as good as anything I've ever read.

Rating:
Summary: A Compelling Read
Review: Several times in the last few days I've tried to get some work done, but each time I felt compelled to keep reading _Murder at the Red Dog_. I finished this book in less time than protagonist, Brew Moore, takes to bed down an attractive young woman he is trying not to be smitten by. The book is full of quirky characters and the sardonic wit of the been-there-done-that Moore whose vision appears almost as sharp as that of his perceptive border collie, Jessie. I'm not generally a mystery reader, but I absolutely loved this evocatively told tale. Bravo! Encore!

Rating:
Summary: Fun to Read
Review: The Red Dog Saloon in Kootenai Falls, Montana, is the site of the brutal gun slaying of the two owners. A couple of days later, another execution-style murder takes place in a nearby town. Rural America has gone on one of its periodic killing sprees and former New York newsman Brew Moore, who has settled here his border collie Jessie always by his side, feels impelled to investigate when anti-Indian sentiment rears its ugly head.

Former East Coast newsman John Herrmann, owned by his own border collie Mackie, and living across the street from a saloon in backwoods Montana where they sell a t-shirt advertising Murder at the Red Dog, knows the local topography and mores well. In this meticulously crafted first novel, which is, we hope, first in a series, Herrmann has drawn mightily on that local background. Who else would know that the drink of choice in a Montana tavern is Moose Drool Brown Ale or the extent to which the pro-white anti-everything-else sentiment continues to dominate the rugged West?

Herrmann suits his tone and pacing to the novel's structure--and somehow even to the locale he so lovingly depicts. Brew Moore is a man who has found Nirvana in a new home but who still looks back over his shoulder at the life he left behind, wondering if he's entirely done with it. But Brew has Jessie to consider, a dog whose pastimes are split between little romps in tending sheep and sharp-toothed protection of her beloved human. At last, refreshingly, a mystery with an approach intended for adults emerges, rather a relief in a market geared to unreal characters in situations that leave truth far behind.

Strong on characterization as well as plot, Murder at the Red Dog ends with a few surprises--logical ones, given the setting. In a marketplace that prefers formula over innovation, Herrmann's tale of the contemporary West breaks away from the pack. Here's a small press author who ought to find a major following. Readers seeking a bit of depth in their entertainment must be sure to acquire this one.

Rating:
Summary: A literary mystery
Review: The writer of Murder at the Reddog is a serious writer, a humorist, and seems to me to be in the company of other contemporary novelists like Kurt Vonnegut, and especially John Irving. John Herrman is new to me and I can't wait for the next one.

Rating:
Summary: A literary mystery
Review: There's much to admire in this highly readable mystery novel by John Herrmann, foremost his characters. They're fully realized individuals -- characters! -- who are a joy to get to know simply because they're so exquisitely rendered. From the moment that we're introduced to them in the no-nonsense voice of journalist Drew Moore, narrator, they're infused with local color, delightful zingers and much else that is truly genuine and thus arresting. It's great small-town stuff writ large, lifelike, real in the sophisticated voice of a city boy who has gone country. I've often found mysteries to be kind of hokey, what with the requisite crisis at the outset to ensure plot dynamic and the salting of clues -- Who dunnit!? -- and red herrings, so on. But Herrmann's masterful ability, moreover, to bring originality to his characterizations saves his people from enslavement to mystery/thriller plot. Consider this fine detailing of the town moneybags/land-owner/gossip, a woman everyone calls by her last name, one Stenopolis: "She was the size of a post-menopausal mountain, draped in layers of silk shawls. Perhaps beneath the reds and greens, peacock blues and fringes there was a kind of muu-muu. No one I know has ever seen her feet. ... her wraps and shawls trailed on the carpet beneath and behind as she would glide like a ghost through the antique-cluttered living room." Then there are the equally colorful Letwilig brothers, "camo" guys who reside on "a kind of militia playground, equipped with rifle range, and broken-down old army tank sans cannon, a jeep-like armored personnel carrier, and laundry hanging on the line always." A more menacing fellow thinks he owns a certain street and actually runs people off it with his van. Further, we get to know western men, those stoical guys who live Out West -- opposed to Back East -- and respond to jokes with a straight face and exclamation: "Now that's funny!" Herrmann's funny! Or rather witty, especially in dialogue which, when it's a fun kind of snappy patter, brings a smile to the reader -- this reader's -- face and to my mind the reassurance that I'm in good hands, under the spell of a sure voice.
The machinations of a small-town rag on which the protagonist labors are also refreshingly transcribed, as is the kindling of relationship between the young and beautiful Amy Kroll and the cantankerous journalist/leading man Drew Moore whose love interests include an old flame back East who gives good phone, the cub-reporter Kroll with her wonderful blush of femininity and Moore's sheep dog Jessie. So, yup, yup, or yip, yip, the pup as co-heroine is another literary touch that Herrmann so successfully smuggles into genre. Not just the dog, mind you, but the man's love for his dog serves to refresh plot at those rare times when it seems, well, too plotty.
Another crucial dimension of story is setting. I like, from the get-go, how Herrmann evokes place, the small Montana town and the wilderness surrounding it. I knew I was in for a good ride when I read, right at the beginning, how the train, the Burlington-Northern, "grinds slowly through, and out, and then curls east ... a two-mile long ghostly arm moving beneath the white blankets of a bed." Fog and avalanches, wildlife and weather - the writer knows his turf. In reality, he lives there, in northwest Montana, and from what I gather does his drinking at an actual saloon called the Red Dog. In fictional reality, you can't find a better guide than John Herrmann to show you around today's wild western town -- while introducing you to all its wacky characters. Murder at the Red Dog is a fine novel. Instead of making the easy reach to Grisham, read Herrmann. He gives better bang for the buck. #

Rating:
Summary: City Boy Goes Country ...
Review: There's much to admire in this highly readable mystery novel by John Herrmann, foremost his characters. They're fully realized individuals -- characters! -- who are a joy to get to know simply because they're so exquisitely rendered. From the moment that we're introduced to them in the no-nonsense voice of journalist Drew Moore, narrator, they're infused with local color, delightful zingers and much else that is truly genuine and thus arresting. It's great small-town stuff writ large, lifelike, real in the sophisticated voice of a city boy who has gone country. I've often found mysteries to be kind of hokey, what with the requisite crisis at the outset to ensure plot dynamic and the salting of clues -- Who dunnit!? -- and red herrings, so on. But Herrmann's masterful ability, moreover, to bring originality to his characterizations saves his people from enslavement to mystery/thriller plot. Consider this fine detailing of the town moneybags/land-owner/gossip, a woman everyone calls by her last name, one Stenopolis: "She was the size of a post-menopausal mountain, draped in layers of silk shawls. Perhaps beneath the reds and greens, peacock blues and fringes there was a kind of muu-muu. No one I know has ever seen her feet. ... her wraps and shawls trailed on the carpet beneath and behind as she would glide like a ghost through the antique-cluttered living room." Then there are the equally colorful Letwilig brothers, "camo" guys who reside on "a kind of militia playground, equipped with rifle range, and broken-down old army tank sans cannon, a jeep-like armored personnel carrier, and laundry hanging on the line always." A more menacing fellow thinks he owns a certain street and actually runs people off it with his van. Further, we get to know western men, those stoical guys who live Out West -- opposed to Back East -- and respond to jokes with a straight face and exclamation: "Now that's funny!" Herrmann's funny! Or rather witty, especially in dialogue which, when it's a fun kind of snappy patter, brings a smile to the reader -- this reader's -- face and to my mind the reassurance that I'm in good hands, under the spell of a sure voice.
The machinations of a small-town rag on which the protagonist labors are also refreshingly transcribed, as is the kindling of relationship between the young and beautiful Amy Kroll and the cantankerous journalist/leading man Drew Moore whose love interests include an old flame back East who gives good phone, the cub-reporter Kroll with her wonderful blush of femininity and Moore's sheep dog Jessie. So, yup, yup, or yip, yip, the pup as co-heroine is another literary touch that Herrmann so successfully smuggles into genre. Not just the dog, mind you, but the man's love for his dog serves to refresh plot at those rare times when it seems, well, too plotty.
Another crucial dimension of story is setting. I like, from the get-go, how Herrmann evokes place, the small Montana town and the wilderness surrounding it. I knew I was in for a good ride when I read, right at the beginning, how the train, the Burlington-Northern, "grinds slowly through, and out, and then curls east ... a two-mile long ghostly arm moving beneath the white blankets of a bed." Fog and avalanches, wildlife and weather - the writer knows his turf. In reality, he lives there, in northwest Montana, and from what I gather does his drinking at an actual saloon called the Red Dog. In fictional reality, you can't find a better guide than John Herrmann to show you around today's wild western town -- while introducing you to all its wacky characters. Murder at the Red Dog is a fine novel. Instead of making the easy reach to Grisham, read Herrmann. He gives better bang for the buck. #

Rating:
Summary: A native of Kootenai Falls speaks
Review: What a delightful treat! Colorful and descriptive characters,
masterful plot twists, well written and enormously satisfying.
The Red Dog does exist in NW Montana and so does the storyline and suspense. All of my children and siblings will find copies of this book in their Christmas stockings.