BANKS OF THE RIVER

The joys of simple pleasures, the complexity of family life, and the investigation into a local man’s murder weave through this midcentury mystery.

The characters are different and the era is earlier by two decades, but, aside from murder, what connects the first book in Litton’s Kansas Murder Trilogy, King Harvest (2022), and this one is sense of place—rural Kansas (“the smell of rich earth, of worms and roots and growing plants rising in the sunbaked air”). Recent widower Willis Thurman, aided by his peculiar 14-year-old son, Riley, farms that land. Like a lot of boys, Riley crushes on 15-year-old Bonny Marshal. When Bonny’s father, Jack, learns his daughter is pregnant with Willis’ child, he is enraged. So he is naturally the prime suspect when Deputy Guy Craig finds Willis dead in his barn with a head wound and Jack rushing from the scene. After a day on the run, police locate Jack on the ranch of Lyle Sewter—a “man measured by what he owned and what he could buy.” What Lyle couldn’t do is keep his wife away from married Jack; the two once had an affair known around town as “the scandal of ’53.” The popular coach of the Wolves, a baseball team comprised of “sons of working men and farmers,” Jack “The Lion” Marshal had his way with many willing women. Jack tells Guy he touched the murder weapon but didn’t kill Willis; he ran from the barn because he looked guilty. But Sheriff Charlie Simms doesn’t buy it. This character-driven mystery overflows with smart dialogue and rich description. Although hard times and poverty fill many pages, so do small-town pleasures, like watching for Sputnik while lying on soft grass on a summer night. The cast members’ backstories easily lace through the text, and sex, love, and the loss of both are well presented.

A well-crafted mystery and look at small-town Kansas life.