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Reviewed by Jane Allen Petrick for Readers' Favorite
Pete Shasta is a vulnerable, believable, likable police inspector. He is the kind of book cop you really want to get to know. And get to know him you do in the five tightly crafted crime tales that comprise "Falcon’s Bend Case Files, Volume 1: The Early Cases" written by Karen Wiesner and Chris Spindler. For a little town of only 8000 souls, Falcon’s Bend, Wisconsin, experiences some exquisite occurrences of wrongdoing. In the summer of 1994, while his marriage is decomposing, Inspector Shasta rushes to the tanks of the local water treatment plant where a body has been found in one of the tanks, decomposing. In the summer of 1996, Shasta takes on the task of picking up the cold trail of a missing teen who had disappeared from Falcon’s Bend sixteen years before, even though some of the “parties of interest” may have mixed feelings about her being found. In 1998, Falcon’s Bend is traumatized when an unwed mother’s new born is kidnapped from the local hospital maternity ward. During the course of the investigation, Inspector Shasta’s heart is kidnapped by the bewitching eyes of the teen mother’s social worker. The last case in the volume, occurring in 2000, recounts the descent of absolute evil onto Falcon’s Bend: a young woman seems to just lie down and let herself be slaughtered on her own kitchen floor.
"Falcon’s Bend Case Files, Volume 1: The Early Cases" is a smooth, easy read. Occasionally, poor editing left me straightening out phrases in my head. But well-turned phrases appear unexpectedly as well, statements such as “A person who trusted the call of the wind either lived like a peasant or a king--never anything in between.” Wiesner and Spindler’s clear, short, targeted descriptions put me right into the picture (including, memorably, even the sewage treatment tanks). The authors have fashioned the people of Falcon’s Bend in such a way that they appear so real. Their human natures, clearly delineated, give credence to the fact that such awful things happen in such a nice place. Under the protection of Inspector Shasta, "Falcon’s Bend Case Files, Volume 1: The Early Cases" is a safe and cozy way to experience them.
