THE CHALK TOWN TRAIN
& OTHER TALES by Daniel Elton Harmon
Trafford - 2001 (On demand publisher)
ISBN 155212990X PB
Historical Crime - South Carolina, 1890s
Reviewed by Rachel
A Hyde, MyShelf.com
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Trafford
Harper is a crime reporter
for a South Carolina newspaper called The Challenge during the Reconstruction
era. He not only reports on crimes and mysteries but sometimes even has
a hand in solving them and in this slim volume of short stories he gets
to the bottom of a murderous ghostly Redcoat, a soi-disant Devil's Island
escapee who intrudes on his camping holiday, finds out who lies buried
in six unmarked graves that nobody will talk about and saves the President's
bacon among other things. This is what the book is about, but it conveys
nothing of the magic of these tales. I am not normally a short story fan
and always say I like a longer novel to get my teeth into but there is
plenty in these brief tales to satisfy several sets of teeth. Drawing
on a rich heritage of fiction Harmon has come up with a unique character
that although he is never physically described comes to vivid life from
his first introduction, and a way of telling the stories that kept making
me think they were written back in the 1890s instead of just being set
then. Think of Davidson Post's Uncle Abner stories or Blackwood's John
Silence, mix them together and you have something like Harper and something
of the ambience of these laconic - but well realised - vignettes. Harmon
has taken words and crafted them into something that ought to be called
literature. This isn't a literary novel - there is nothing obscure here
- but I think literary fans would find much to applaud.
A few words and a bold
stroke of the pen and it all leaps to life in a way that many wordier
writers must surely envy. I read a lot of historical crime but this has
to be one of the best - and most imaginative - books I have read this
year. One for the keeper shelf (it doesn't even take up much room).
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