Broken Promises

When the body of Maggie McFarland, an 86-year old widow, is found among the rubble of the once-famous, landmark Artemis Hotel leveled by fire nearly seventy years ago, residents of Roscoe are shocked. However, it is not the location where Maggie is found, but rather the manner of her demise, that has everyone puzzled. For it isn't a heart attack that has felled her; nor has she suffered a stroke, or taken a fatal fall from a porch. Her life has not ended that peacefully. Maggie has been killed by a bullet to the heart, fired from a pistol at close range. Who would possibly want to kill this kind, gentle woman, known throughout the area as one of the best trout fly tiers within a hundred miles of the famed Beaverkill River? That is the mystery that confronts Matt Davis in Broken Promises, one of the most baffling cases of his career.EDITORIAL REVIEW: "If ever a mystery novel could turn this reader into a fly fisherman, "Broken Promises" by Joe Perrone Jr. would do it.This is Joe Perrone Jr.'s fourth novel set in small town Roscoe, N.Y. (a real place fictionalized without being mythologized), and his sleuth is Chief of Police Matt Davis, an avid fisherman who solves crimes when he'd rather be on the river.This is my first foray into the world of Matt Davis (and won't be my last) and serious trout fishing. Perrone's expertise as a professional fly-fishing guide in the Catskill Mountains lends authenticity to the skill and the art of fishing and to the appreciation of the fishermen who practice it. (Yes, all those fishing in this book were men.)His leisurely style complements the laid-back nature of Matt Davis, a careful and meticulous cop. He follows all the possible strings/clues of a death that might be a murder without any readily visible reason for such an elderly woman to be in such an abandoned burned-out hotel site in the first place.Perrone's narrative style, pleasant though it is and clear though it is, might take some getting used to. The novel shifts from the present day to the days of World War II (1944). From the first-person voice of Matt as he deals with the death of a woman with no enemies and, at 86, mostly a life in the past (and in the past tense), it shifts to the present tense with the action of young factory workers of more than 50 years ago. Never mind: It's done with the smoothness of a well-balanced seesaw.The story carries the reader along, and the past explains the present as much as the past can. The characters who deserve sympathy get it, and those who don't, get some empathy for a crime gone awry, then and now.Fast paced it is not, but "Broken Promises" arrives at a conclusion both sad and satisfying - and that's life, that's realism. In Roscoe, crime is not high-speed car chases, crazed mobsters, mutilating madmen - and crimes are solved by dint of perseverance, compassion, shrewd common sense. And I welcomed the setting, the pacing, the detecting by a police chief who does his job, even if he'd rather be fishing...