‘This Wild, Wild Country’ by Inga Vesper.

Published by Manilla Press,
25 May 2023. 
ISBN:978 1 83877-669-5 (PB)  

Boldville is a small town in the New Mexico Desert.  In the 1930s Cornelia Stover is trying to run a business there when she mysteriously vanishes.  In the 1970s Joanna Riley, a former cop, flees from an abusive marriage and runs out of gas in Boldville.  She is looking for somewhere to hide and finds a room locally. 

There’s a commune on the edge of the town, which is not popular with the local residents and one of its members, a young man, has been found dead.  The police decide the death is the result of an overdose, but Joanna suspects a cover-up.  She meets Glitter, a young woman who has links to the commune and who was a close friend of the dead man.  Together they become caught in a mystery that reaches back many years to the unexplained disappearance of Cornelia, who is revealed to be Glitter’s Grandmother.

The story seethes with secrets and lies, with mysterious family history and with supressed threats and violence.  The descriptions of the country and its inhabitants are atmospheric and convey the feeling of heat and dust, and the claustrophobia of a small town from the 1930s to the 1970s.  The commune and its members evoke the moods and feelings of the 1970s. The story manages to mix slow country life with the tension of the hunt, and keeps the reader’s attention to the end.
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Reviewer: Jo Hesslewood
Other books by this author:  The Long, Long Afternoon

Inga Vesper is a journalist and editor. She moved to the UK from Germany to work as a carer, before the urge to write and explore brought her to journalism. As a reporter, she covered the coroner's court and was able to observe how family, neighbours and police react to a suspicious death. 

Jo Hesslewood.  Crime fiction has been my favourite reading material since as a teenager I first spotted Agatha Christie on the library bookshelves.  For twenty-five years the commute to and from London provided plenty of reading time.  I am fortunate to live in Cambridge, where my local crime fiction book club, Crimecrackers, meets at Heffers Bookshop .  I enjoy attending crime fiction events and currently organise events for the Margery Allingham Society.