{"id":12816,"date":"2019-09-20T18:39:11","date_gmt":"2019-09-20T22:39:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=12816"},"modified":"2019-09-20T18:39:11","modified_gmt":"2019-09-20T22:39:11","slug":"bury-the-dead-in-driftwood-by-scott-william-carter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=12816","title":{"rendered":"‘Bury the Dead in Driftwood,’ by Scott William Carter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The gray sky, which often broke up or dissolved by midmorning, remained as solid as fresh paint.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I had read and reviewed <\/strong>a previous novel in Scott William Carter\u2019s Garrison Gage mystery series, and decided not to read any more. I don\u2019t clearly recall why; it likely had something to do with the main character\u2019s open (though not obnoxious) atheism. But Bury the Dead in Driftwood <\/a><\/em>sounded intriguing, and I bought it. I have to admit, it was pretty good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Garrison Gage is a small-time private eye who relocated to\nBarnacle Bluffs, a town on the Oregon coast, to get away from his past. He\nwalks with a limp (often with a cane), due to an old knee injury. A widower, he\nhas adopted a daughter, who is now away in college. He finds, to his amusement,\nthat he\u2019s become a local character, \u201cthe detective.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He didn\u2019t know Harriet Abel, the high school teacher whose\nbody was found under a pile of driftwood on the beach. But she had his name on\na piece of paper in her possession, and apparently wanted to hire him. Gage is\ncurious what she wanted from him, and impressed with the universal respect she\nseemed to command. So he decides to investigate, even without a client.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Property and development money will appear as motives, but things\naren\u2019t as simple as they appear. Amusingly, Gage finds beautiful women \u2013\nincluding the police chief\u2019s daughter \u2013 throwing themselves at him in an almost\nembarrassing way. A mysterious professional killer appears to make chilling\nthreats. And the one woman Gage cares about more than life itself \u2013 his adopted\ndaughter \u2013 refuses to keep a safe distance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I enjoyed Bury the Dead in Driftwood <\/em>far more than I expected. The one scene involving religion \u2013 in a syncretistic Universalist church \u2013 took no skin off my nose. The multiple women with Gage in their sights worked up to a very funny scene of embarrassment. And at the end, Gage was able to deliver a fairly non-PC defense of a man\u2019s sense of obligation to protect women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark Twain said of Huckleberry Finn that he had attempted to do a book without weather. Bury the Dead in Driftwood<\/em> is nothing like that. The weather and geography of coastal Oregon are active characters in this book, beautifully described. Readers will feel as if they\u2019ve been there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cautions for the usual, including one \u201csex\u201d scene that\nactually involves no sex at all. Pretty good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The gray sky, which often broke up or dissolved by midmorning, remained as solid as fresh paint. I had read and reviewed a previous novel in Scott William Carter\u2019s Garrison Gage mystery series, and decided not to read any more. I don\u2019t clearly recall why; it likely had something to do with the main character\u2019s … Continue reading ‘Bury the Dead in Driftwood,’ by Scott William Carter<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,15],"tags":[425,1045,2516],"class_list":["post-12816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-bury-the-dead-in-driftwood","tag-garrison-gage","tag-scott-william-carter"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12816\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}