June 26, 2009
BOOK REVIEW: 'Seneca Wood': Mayhem, Mishaps, Murder and Mirth in the Mountain State
By David M. Kinchen
Huntingtonnews.net Book Critic
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." -- Henry David Thoreau, "Walden," 1854
Add to the list of West Virginia gothic books "Seneca Wood" by Gary Clites (Casperian Books, 264 pages, $15.00).
It's an often comic thriller that brings to my mind Donald E. Westlake, Elmore Leonard and Lawrence Block, masters at combining serious crime and clueless bumblers.
Woodrow (Wood) Garrett is a disgraced big city investigative reporter who lives in a cabin on his property adjacent to the Monongahela National Forest near the Seneca Rocks area of Grant and Pendleton counties, West Virginia. He left the Baltimore Star and went directly to state prison in Maryland for assaulting a security guard and torching the terminal of a mobbed-up trucking firm that he believed was responsible for the highway death of his wife and infant child.
Released after serving two years, Wood buys the cabin and tries, more or less, to follow the path of Thoreau. He just wants to be left alone, but trouble follows him when Victor Bane, CEO of a chicken processing plant, sends his agent, Randall Pratt, to the area to buy up property for a resort development. His neighbor, free-range chicken farmer Frank Ashby, turns up dead on Wood's property and two corrupt local cops, Skinner and Wiley, try to pin the crime on him.
Wood Garrett is also a babe magnet, to the disgust of Wayne Zirk, a local who prowls around, peeping in windows, firing his guns, abusing animals and generally making a nuisance of himself. Wayne wonders why an old guy like Garrett (he's all of 36) can attract such attractive women. One of the women attracted to Garrett is Stephanie Harden, free-spirited graduate student from West Virginia University who runs around the woods topless. Another is Erin Ashby, a state lawyer from Charleston, who comes up to Grant County to find out what happened to her dad. It goes without saying that both are very attractive women, the blonde Stephanie and the brunette Erin.
Wayne Zirk's prowling brings him into contact with Scrag Lynch, Bane's enforcer and the man responsible for eight years of dumping bodies of people like EPA agents and federal food inspectors in Cheat Lake. This brings the FBI into the picture, in the form of Special Agent in Charge of the Charleston office Robert Webster. Fortunately for Wood Garrett, Webster doesn't believe the cabin dweller who makes friends with cave-dwelling bears is guilty.
Unlikely help comes to Wood Garrett with Roarke, a biker who doesn't like what the mobsters are doing to the motorcycle gang's partying area at the lake. Wood's best friend at his former newspaper, Milt Carroll, a sportswriter and computer maven, also comes to his aid, standing out as a black man in an overwhelmingly white part of West Virginia. Milt's skills come in handy at the end of the novel.
"Seneca Wood" is a page-turner, with a fast-moving plot, snappy dialogue and some of the craziest people you'll ever encounter.
So suspend your belief in logical behavior, pick up a copy of this book, available on Amazon.com and many bookstores and enjoy. Who knows, maybe "Seneca Wood" will end up like Lee Maynard's 1988 novel "Crum," a cult classic.
About the author: Gary Clites is a native of West Virginia, a journalism graduate of WVU, with a master's degree in journalism from the University of Maryland and is a high school teacher in Maryland. He says he was inspired to write "Seneca Wood" when, while he was a student at WVU, scuba divers from the university found a body in Cheat Lake.
Publisher's website: www.casperianbooks.com
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BOOK REVIEW: 'Seneca Wood': Mayhem, Mishaps, Murder and Mirth in the Mountain State
By David M. Kinchen
Huntingtonnews.net Book Critic
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." -- Henry David Thoreau, "Walden," 1854
Add to the list of West Virginia gothic books "Seneca Wood" by Gary Clites (Casperian Books, 264 pages, $15.00).
It's an often comic thriller that brings to my mind Donald E. Westlake, Elmore Leonard and Lawrence Block, masters at combining serious crime and clueless bumblers.
Woodrow (Wood) Garrett is a disgraced big city investigative reporter who lives in a cabin on his property adjacent to the Monongahela National Forest near the Seneca Rocks area of Grant and Pendleton counties, West Virginia. He left the Baltimore Star and went directly to state prison in Maryland for assaulting a security guard and torching the terminal of a mobbed-up trucking firm that he believed was responsible for the highway death of his wife and infant child.
Released after serving two years, Wood buys the cabin and tries, more or less, to follow the path of Thoreau. He just wants to be left alone, but trouble follows him when Victor Bane, CEO of a chicken processing plant, sends his agent, Randall Pratt, to the area to buy up property for a resort development. His neighbor, free-range chicken farmer Frank Ashby, turns up dead on Wood's property and two corrupt local cops, Skinner and Wiley, try to pin the crime on him.
Wood Garrett is also a babe magnet, to the disgust of Wayne Zirk, a local who prowls around, peeping in windows, firing his guns, abusing animals and generally making a nuisance of himself. Wayne wonders why an old guy like Garrett (he's all of 36) can attract such attractive women. One of the women attracted to Garrett is Stephanie Harden, free-spirited graduate student from West Virginia University who runs around the woods topless. Another is Erin Ashby, a state lawyer from Charleston, who comes up to Grant County to find out what happened to her dad. It goes without saying that both are very attractive women, the blonde Stephanie and the brunette Erin.
Wayne Zirk's prowling brings him into contact with Scrag Lynch, Bane's enforcer and the man responsible for eight years of dumping bodies of people like EPA agents and federal food inspectors in Cheat Lake. This brings the FBI into the picture, in the form of Special Agent in Charge of the Charleston office Robert Webster. Fortunately for Wood Garrett, Webster doesn't believe the cabin dweller who makes friends with cave-dwelling bears is guilty.
Unlikely help comes to Wood Garrett with Roarke, a biker who doesn't like what the mobsters are doing to the motorcycle gang's partying area at the lake. Wood's best friend at his former newspaper, Milt Carroll, a sportswriter and computer maven, also comes to his aid, standing out as a black man in an overwhelmingly white part of West Virginia. Milt's skills come in handy at the end of the novel.
"Seneca Wood" is a page-turner, with a fast-moving plot, snappy dialogue and some of the craziest people you'll ever encounter.
So suspend your belief in logical behavior, pick up a copy of this book, available on Amazon.com and many bookstores and enjoy. Who knows, maybe "Seneca Wood" will end up like Lee Maynard's 1988 novel "Crum," a cult classic.
About the author: Gary Clites is a native of West Virginia, a journalism graduate of WVU, with a master's degree in journalism from the University of Maryland and is a high school teacher in Maryland. He says he was inspired to write "Seneca Wood" when, while he was a student at WVU, scuba divers from the university found a body in Cheat Lake.
Publisher's website: www.casperianbooks.com
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