Death in the Great Dismal

January 1, 2019
Weaver Will Rees seeks sanctuary for his family after fleeing his home and charges of murder against him, and witchcraft against his wife, Lydia, as described in The Devil's Cold Dish (2016). What could be safer for his heavily pregnant wife and their five adopted children than the Maine Shaker community of Zion? But the day after Rees arrives at Zion, one of the brethren is found murdered. Within days, a teenager and an elderly woman also are killed, and attempts are made on the lives of the murdered woman's husband and finally on Will himself. Shaker elders want to believe the killer is a visitor and not one of their own, while Rees is doubtful. Reasoning that subsequent crimes are attempts to cover up the original murder, he is faced with solving the killings as a means of ensuring his family's future safety. This sixth Will Rees entry illuminates post-Revolutionary Shaker life, providing backstory that gives Rees nightmares, as it hints at the future for the family in this readable historical-mystery series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2021
William and Lydia Rees are asked to accompany a friend on a rescue mission into the pro-slavery state of Virginia. Upon arrival in the Great Dismal Swamp, one of the residents is murdered, and William is tasked with finding who committed the heinous act. Then a second body is found. Tensions are high, and trust is running low. Kuhns' ninth entry in the Will Rees series provides a fictional account of a little-known, real-life event from the early 1800s. At the time, the Great Dismal Swamp was a haven for runaway slaves, the dense and tangled landscape offering a protective area. Kuhns' vivid portrayal of the community that developed inside the swamp captures a group of naturally cunning and vigilant people who provided a family for one another when most had none. The mystery itself is drawn out and a bit dry, but the story shines for its historical backbone and atmospheric details. Those factors make it perfect for readers of Margaret Lawrence's Hannah Trevor novels and Eliot Pattison's Bone Rattler series.

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November 9, 2020
Set in 1800, Kuhns’s middling ninth novel featuring weaver-turned-sleuth Will Rees (after 2019’s A Circle of Dead Girls) takes Rees from Maine, where he and his wife, Lydia, have recently joined a Shaker community, to Virginia’s Great Dismal Swamp, at the behest of his Black friend Tobias
, a former slave. Rees agrees to accompany Tobias south and help him get the woman he loves, Ruth
, north to safety. Lydia comes along, so that the party can pose as a couple traveling first with one slave then with two slaves on the return trip. But when Rees and company arrive at a refuge in the swamp set up by escaped slaves, Ruth’s reluctant to join them. Before she can decide what to do, a man in the refuge is fatally shot in the back. A planned slave revolt raises the ante as Rees uses his deductive gifts to seek the truth. Both the puzzle and the characterizations fall short of Kuhns’s usual standard. Fans can hope this intriguing series will rebound in the next volume. Agent: Mitchell S. Waters, Brandt & Hochman.

October 15, 2020
Maine farmer/weaver Will Rees is drawn into the wilds of Virginia for a rescue mission that turns murderous in September 1800. When Rees' friend Tobias escaped slavery with some help from the Underground Railroad, Ruth, his lover, was afraid to accompany him because she was pregnant. So Tobias wants Rees to return to Virginia with him to help Ruth make the trip north. Lydia Rees, still smarting from Rees' attraction to the circus rope dancer who beguiled him in A Circle of Dead Girls (2020), insists on accompanying the men. The trip is hard, and when they catch up with Ruth, who's hiding with several other escaped slaves in a swamp encampment, she's still unwilling to leave. Even worse, Scipio, one of her companions who's an enslaved person with a $200 price on his head, is soon shot in the back. Of course Rees decides to investigate, because "solving murders was what he did." But apart from the fact that Scipio cheated his friend Neptune out of money in a dice game, there's precious little evidence against anyone. Scipio's brother, Cinte, seems preoccupied with his unrequited attraction to Sandy, who's run away from the nearby Sechrest plantation, and Rees can't believe that the quiet elder Toney or the healer Aunt Suke could have killed anyone. Then Scipio's body vanishes. Rees is convinced that swamp-dweller Quaco saw something important but can't figure out how to communicate with a man who speaks only Ibo. Both the characters and the mystery are smothered by that all-consuming swamp.

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