The Prairie Grass Murders A Sylvia and Willie Mystery edition by Patricia Stoltey Mystery Thriller Suspense eBooks
Download As PDF : The Prairie Grass Murders A Sylvia and Willie Mystery edition by Patricia Stoltey Mystery Thriller Suspense eBooks 
Sylvia Thorn, circuit court judge in Palm Beach County, Florida, takes an unexpected trip to Sangamon City, Illinois, when her older brother, Willie Grisseljon, is confined to a county hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. A Vietnam veteran with a few lingering side effects from the war, Willie was on vacation, exploring the countryside where he and Sylvia had grown up. There he found a body, and when he tried to report his discovery to a deputy sheriff, he was locked up as a vagrant with delusions.
Willie is released from the hospital when Sylvia arrives. She is reluctantly drawn into the mystery when Willie insists on revisiting the site where the body is hidden. When the two also discover a local businessman is missing, they make the connection and notify the sheriff.
Soon, the two discover clues about the murdered farm manager and his wife, a tenant farmer, concealed Indian artifacts, and uprooted prairie grass plots that may help the sheriff solve the crime. But Sylvia runs into trouble when she's caught nosing around the old homestead. She hides, but overhears a second murder take place.
She escapes one gun-toting suspect, only to join up with Willie and confront another. Relieved when the sheriff releases them to return to Florida, Sylvia doesn't realize at first that she and her brother are still in danger. A mysterious new neighbor with a menacing bodyguard, and new information Sylvia finds in her legal system database, provide her with the incentive to pursue a search for the truth. Sylvia must use her contacts with the Illinois sheriff and Florida security personnel, as well as Willie's intuitive skills, to remove the threat to herself and her family and provide the missing links to state and federal authorities.
The Prairie Grass Murders A Sylvia and Willie Mystery edition by Patricia Stoltey Mystery Thriller Suspense eBooks
A clever heroine who never gives up and a thrilling mystery with twist after twist. Never underestimate those baby boomers. Will be reading more by this author.Product details
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The Prairie Grass Murders A Sylvia and Willie Mystery edition by Patricia Stoltey Mystery Thriller Suspense eBooks Reviews
First Line Willie narrowed his eyes against the sun's glare as he watched the huge bird circle overhead.
Willie Grisseljon is taking a well-deserved vacation back in central Illinois where he grew up. Hiking through the backroads and fields that he knew as a child, he finds a dead body beneath a pile of debris. As he's walking to town to tell the police of his discovery, he's stopped by a policeman. The policeman's reaction is to take Willie's identification and haul him off to the county hospital for a psychiatric evaluation.
When he can get to a phone, he calls his sister, Sylvia Thorn, who just happens to be a circuit court judge in Palm Beach County, Florida. Sylvia clears her docket and heads to central Illinois. When she and her brother go to find the body, the pile of debris is much higher, and the body can't be seen. The two go to town to tell the sheriff-- and Sylvia finds out he's her old high school flame. It also isn't long before she knows that something's not right in Sangamon City, Illinois, and that trouble is going to follow them both all the way back to Florida.
I really liked the two main characters. Sylvia is a level-headed woman in her fifties who doesn't panic. Her profession has taught her how to deal with all the various law enforcement agencies, and she uses her contacts to good effect. Her brother, Willie, is a Vietnam vet who suffers from post traumatic stress disorder. This has given him a few quirks, but he deals with them. He's a highly intelligent man who has built and run a successful small business, and he does his bit to help those in need. Sylvia knows that it's always a good idea to follow Willie's intuition.
Although I thought the villains were rather easy to identify in this book, "who" didn't matter as much as "why", and I found the "why" very interesting. With two very strong main characters, I hope this series is in for a good, long run.
Vietnam veteran Willie Grisseljon is hiking through the rural Illinois countryside of his youth when he stumbles over a dead body hidden in a raspberry patch. When Willie reports his discovery, the local deputy takes one look at the wild-eyed veteran--still suffering from post-traumatic stress--and locks him up in the psychiatric ward. Luckily, Willie has family in high places. His sister, Palm Beach, Florida, Judge Sylvia Thorn,brings her investigative skills to the scene.
A hike back to the spot reveals newly plowed soil and no corpse. Suspecting a cover-up, Sylvia turns to the sheriff, her old flame, to begin piecing together clues surrounding a missing business developer and the corruption and secrets he may have taken to his grave. For Sylvia, the seemingly obvious solution has a darker spectre--one that follows her home to Florida,where danger stalks her in her own backyard.
I was intrigued. I was even more intrigued when I read the first page of the book, an excerpt from chapter one.
***
"Damn." Willie let his breath go with a whoosh."Bird, dead bodies have given me nightmares ever since 'Nam." He took a deep breath. "But I guess I better check this out."
Moving closer to the brambles, Willie leaned over and pulled some of the stalks apart, painfully snagging his fingers in the process.Above the shoe, a strip of black sock led to the bottom edge of a black pant leg. Willie dropped the brush back into place.
Good place to hide a body, he thought. A raspberry patch picked clean of berries wouldn't get any attention before next year's berry-picking season. And if this patch had been pulled and stacked up for burning, or hauling, the body might never turn up.
Willie shook his head in disbelief. Why did this keep happening to him?
***
In chapter one, with a keen eye for descriptive narration and dialogue, Patricia Stoltey takes us with Willie to the body, and then into the Lincoln County Hospital where he's going to be subjected to a psychiatric evaluation, thanks to the local deputy who caught him in the grass. But first, he's going to call his sister, a Florida judge. I know exactly what she'll say, he thinks at the end of the chapter.
This is a thought that foreshadows an important insight about him that will be useful later in the plot. It's an insight that comes from his sister at the end of chapter two "The other thing he's good at is readingpeople--feeling vibes and sensing when something isn't right."
Chapter one is third person viewpoint, through Willie's eyes. At the end of the chapter when Willie thinks he knows what his sister will say,"he shrugged and blew a little puff of air through his lips as he imagined Judge Sylvia Thorn's reaction." And then, the next sentence we read is the beginning of chapter two.
"Ow, ouch! Blast it, Tak!" I shouted.
Is this Willie talking? Doesn't sound like him. But through snappy dialogue we immediately know we're now in first person viewpoint, and Sylvia is talking with Tequila Picon(Tak), a colorful character who will soon disappear and then reappear near the end of the novel at one of the crucial twists and turns of the plot.
I'm expecting the rest of the novel to be first person. But it's not. However, since Willie is a man of fewer words than his sister is, it makes sense that his third-person sections are few.
The viewpoint also serves to emphasize the differences between the protagonists. Willie is the reticent Vietnam veteran who suffers from a traumatic war shock and eats healthy food. Outgoing Sylvia is nine years younger than her sibling, and the savvy Florida judge who, in the words of her doting mother with whom she concurs, has "a wild side." She eats a lot of junk food while Willie silently rolls his eyes.
There are many colorful characters, snappy dialogue, and descriptive passages in this story that twists and turns to the last suspenseful page. A very satisfying read.
The Prairie Grass Murders by Patricia Stoltey starts as a straight forward mystery, simplistic even. Nam vet discovers corpse at his family's old farm while on vacation. When he runs afoul a corrupt cop, his little sister, who happens to be a judge in another jurisdiction, comes to the rescue. Stoltey piles the clues as the perps do their best to silence the sister/brother sleuths. But as in the best mysteries, nothing is as it first seems. There're plenty of red herrings to chase, but the best parts come after the reader learns who-done-it.
What makes this book so engrossing is the well-rounded characters. Sure some of the bad guys are telegraphed from the git-go, but Stolety is deft at adding motivational twists to the action that keep the reader guessing. When you think the story line has settled onto a well-trod path, Stoltey lurches off in another direction that adds a new interpretation of the facts.
The above isn't a criticism. Most mysteries are linear A influences B, B influences C, etc. The Prairie Grass Murders' storyline twists and turns like any good mystery, but Stoltey takes it one step further. Reading her plotline is more like peeling an onion or opening a set of nesting dolls. You never quite know what you're going to find even though you have a fair idea about where the story is going.
This is an excellant first mystery novel by a new author. The plot moves quickly within interesting twists & turns. I think she has set this for a series of books with an interesting set of key characters.
A clever heroine who never gives up and a thrilling mystery with twist after twist. Never underestimate those baby boomers. Will be reading more by this author.
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