04/10/2017 Officer Henry Farrell, the affable lone lawman of rural Wild Thyme Township, Pa., has a flair for stirring up trouble, as shown in Edgar-winner Bouman’s atmospheric sequel to 2014’s Dry Bones in the Valley. When waiflike heroin addict Penny Pellings disappears near Maiden’s Grove Lake, Henry’s gut tells him that the most obvious suspect—Penny’s alcoholic partner Kevin O’Keeffe—didn’t abduct her. Soon after drug dealer Charles Michael Heffernan’s corpse surfaces in the Susquehanna River, undercover sleuthing in nearby Binghamton, N.Y., nearly lands Henry behind bars himself, and a car crash springs Heffernan’s kidnapped companion, Vicki Jelinski, from the vehicle’s trunk. As Henry continues to push for information from a plethora of local dirtbags at increasing personal risk, life continues to unspool for the young widower in this scenic but economically depressed patch: playing his fiddle with friends, hunting, moonlighting construction, occasionally hooking up. With time, too, answers gradually emerge. But they prove less compelling than the novel’s poetic, pitch-perfect sense of place. Agent: Neil Olson, Donadio & Olson. (June)
"A terrific writer. Definitely one to keep an eye on."
"[A] vivid visit to a depressed region."
"Leisurely but hard-edged… Officer Farrell, who thinks a lot but speaks so little… proves to be excellent company."
Wall Street Journal - Tom Nolan
"What makes this book—all of Bouman’s writing—so memorable, beyond the cunning plot and painful portrait of this ‘Rust Belt’ region, is the emotion invested in each scene....[I]rrestible characters make this book a compelling read."
"You would be hard-pressed to find a finer new series than Tom Bouman’s Henry Farrell novels because of the complexity of the plots or the richness of the characters, but what it really comes down to is just damn good writing."
"Rich and satisfying… [A] relentless thriller that reads like a literary novel."
"Fateful Mornings is a haunting dissection of the broken heart of America."
"Henry Farrell casts an eye both dry and weary. What he sees is a people no less troubled than their rust-belt landscape: drug addicts and drug dealers, drunks and grifters. In Wild Thyme, vice and virtue seem locked in an epic bar brawl of astonishingly high stakes, where the losers keep their money and the winners keep their souls."
04/01/2017 When troubled local carpenter Kevin O'Keefe reports that his girlfriend Penny is missing and that he may have shot someone, Officer Henry Farrell is pulled into an extensive investigation involving a multistate vice ring and a shadowy, murderous hit man. Over many fateful mornings long-held secrets are unraveled, and political, cultural, and environmental realities continue to impact the Rust Belt town of Wild Thyme, PA. Meanwhile, widowed Henry's long-ended affair with married Shelly Bray threatens to derail his personal and professional life as he begins a relationship with Miss Julie Meagher. VERDICT In this follow-up to the Edgar Award-winning Dry Bones in the Valley, character and sense of place remain paramount. Bouman's evocative language draws readers into Henry's world, appealing to fans of rural noir/grit lit and Julia Keller, Wiley Cash, and John W. Billheimer. [See Prepub Alert, 11/14/16.]—ACT
"Fateful Mornings is terrific reading, a keeper that you’ll want to read at least twice and maybe even more frequently. You’ll wish that everything was this good."
Book Reporter - Joe Hartlaub
"Fateful Mornings unfolds in a less hectic and more novelistic manner than many police-procedurals, leaving space for meditations on natural history… investigatory digressions and dead ends, lucky chances, and the vicissitudes of the lonely narrator’s love-life.… Officer Farrell… proves to be excellent company."
"An uncommonly intelligent whodunit, haunted by the presence of an unforgettable villain who slinks through the pages with the lubricious evil of Cape Fear ’s Max Cady. With meditations on folk music, ornithology, and the art of timber-framing, Fateful Mornings is the kind of novel that feels more like a porch-sitting conversation with an old friend. Tom Bouman is my new favorite mystery writer."
"My father always said that you can judge people by the way they keep their tools: clean and sharp or soiled and soft. Tom Bouman’s tools—the words he uses to make Fateful Mornings —cut straight and true, in this riveting mystery about a good man caught in the ruined Eden of rural America."
"Fateful Mornings is that long sought-after gem, the place where the literary meets the crime novel in beautiful symmetry. Henry Farrell is an existential everyman, as clueless as the rest of us about life’s meaning, and his so very human stumbling in search of the elusive truths is one of the many beauties of this fine novel."
"More than a mystery, Fateful Mornings is a portrait of the rusted pocket of northeastern Pennsylvania that Henry Farrell calls home. Bouman’s tender portrait of a widower remaking his life infuses his crime fiction with a level of intimacy that is both rare and winning. I was happy to ride shotgun with Henry Farrell again."