The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter
Sep. 12th, 2007 07:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
purplecatI bought this book because ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lil_shepherd mentioned that Sharyn McCrumb's had written a sequence of Appalachian mystery novels with fantasy elements. I had read and enjoyed Bimbos of the Death Sun, despite its slightly bitter depiction of fandom, but had never realised that McCrumb had gone on to write more. Where Bimbos is a straightforward whodunnit the Hangman's Beautiful Daughter is very much a whydunnit. We know whodunit from early in the first chapter.
It's a funny novel in many ways. It's beautifully written with a powerful evocation of place and emotion and a passionately felt anti-pollution message. However it's far more a straightforward novel about an Appalachian community than it is a mystery novel. In fact the resolution to the mystery is simply announced at the end, there is no sense in which any characters work towards this revelation. Structurally its very odd. Some plot threads only meet up right at the very end and in a rather perfunctory fashion. Others, in particular a plot about a group of wannabe soldiers come survivalists camping out in the hills, never go anywhere at all and are simply left dangling. Since this is part of a sequence of novels it is possible that this plot thread goes somewhere in later books. The mystery aspect feels, utlimately, rather grafted on to this tale of birth and death in the mountains. It is far more interested in the ways in which the minutiae of everyday life and our own self-centredness can cause us to neglect obligations to others in need than it is in the mystery itself. Similarly the supernatural element plays a relatively minor part in the unfolding events; its most obvious manifestation explainable away in terms of a young woman's grief. All in all its not quite what I was expecting - I enjoyed Bimbos more.
lil_shepherd mentioned that Sharyn McCrumb's had written a sequence of Appalachian mystery novels with fantasy elements. I had read and enjoyed Bimbos of the Death Sun, despite its slightly bitter depiction of fandom, but had never realised that McCrumb had gone on to write more. Where Bimbos is a straightforward whodunnit the Hangman's Beautiful Daughter is very much a whydunnit. We know whodunit from early in the first chapter. It's a funny novel in many ways. It's beautifully written with a powerful evocation of place and emotion and a passionately felt anti-pollution message. However it's far more a straightforward novel about an Appalachian community than it is a mystery novel. In fact the resolution to the mystery is simply announced at the end, there is no sense in which any characters work towards this revelation. Structurally its very odd. Some plot threads only meet up right at the very end and in a rather perfunctory fashion. Others, in particular a plot about a group of wannabe soldiers come survivalists camping out in the hills, never go anywhere at all and are simply left dangling. Since this is part of a sequence of novels it is possible that this plot thread goes somewhere in later books. The mystery aspect feels, utlimately, rather grafted on to this tale of birth and death in the mountains. It is far more interested in the ways in which the minutiae of everyday life and our own self-centredness can cause us to neglect obligations to others in need than it is in the mystery itself. Similarly the supernatural element plays a relatively minor part in the unfolding events; its most obvious manifestation explainable away in terms of a young woman's grief. All in all its not quite what I was expecting - I enjoyed Bimbos more.