Still Waters is one of Tami Hoag’s earlier novels, but doesn’t suffer a bit for it. We meet Dane Jantzen, ex-pro ball player and now sheriff of a small county in Minnesota. We also meet Elizabeth Stuart, ex-rodeo queen and single mom, who has recently been smeared in the press by her philandering ex-husband. Add in a gossiping town, a murdered real estate developer and sometimes loan shark, and a group of Amish folks who are not as separate from society as they would prefer to be, and the plot becomes thicker than some of the Southern analogies out of Elizabeth’s mouth.

At times, the plot seemed a little clunky but misled me into thinking I had it all figured out. The Truth is that nothing is as it seems – something Elizabeth, the new publisher of the town’s newspaper, keeps pointing out. I realized the error of my ways, though, in the last ten pages when none of my assumptions were true and everything unraveled into “the Truth.” While this is not an overly heavy read, it is a thoroughly enjoyable one. If you want something entertaining and not dumbed down, this is one of the good ones.

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Created Oct 03, 2006 at 12:22pm • Submit your own review...