Description:
"Place isn’t healthy," police captain Thomas Braddock says of New York City, as he and his family escape north from there in the summer of 1889, bound for a much-needed vacation in the Adirondack Mountains. But, as Braddock quickly discovers in Richard E. Crabbe's second historical thriller, The Empire of Shadows, there's nothing particularly healthy about the dark-forested expanses of upstate New York, either--not when they become the hiding place of a young Mohawk fugitive named Jim Tupper. After knifing a Manhattan construction foreman in self defense, Tupper, shepherded by the sagacious spirit of his grandfather, strives to vanish into the Adirondack wilderness of his Indian ancestors. He doesn't reckon, though, on being pursued by such a tenacious manhunter as Braddock. The Gotham cop takes a personal interest in the Tupper affair after the gruesome slaying of Lettie Burman, a maid at a luxurious Adirondacks resort who'd recently embraced Braddock's adopted teenage son, Mike, as her lover. With suspicion for this crime falling squarely on Mike, a former street gang member, Braddock seeks to clear the boy by finding the real killer. His hope for Mike's exoneration rests on a piece of plaid fabric and the murder weapon, a modified bayonet similar to one Tupper had acquired in New York. Yet even as Braddock, Mike, and a legendary Abanaki Indian guide follow a bloody backwoods trail, forces both rapacious and homicidal array to silence them--at any cost. Crabbe's absorbing debut novel, Suspension, followed Braddock's chase after a cabal of Confederate soldiers bent on destroying the Brooklyn Bridge. Much of its appeal lay in the author's colorfully detailed re-creation of 1883 Manhattan. The action in The Empire of Shadows is somewhat harder to follow, as it spins through a ruggedly exquisite terrain that's terra incognito to most readers. And this tale includes episodes that seem more shocking than likely, such as one involving an unexpectedly vicious elevator operator. Still, Crabbe shows a patient skill in expanding the characters of Braddock and Mike, and he maintains a high level of mystery and malevolence until the book's closing pages. If it's not quite a 19th-century Deliverance, The Empire of Shadows is also no peaceful walk in the woods. --J. Kingston Pierce
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