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Steeplechase: A Homer Kelly Mystery Steeplechase: A Homer Kelly Mystery

Steeplechase: A Homer Kelly Mystery Steeplechase: A Homer Kelly Mystery

By Jane Langton. Thomas Dunne Books; St. Martin’s Minotaur, New York, 2005. 295 pages.

Lincoln, Massachusetts, writer Jane Langton’s newest mystery, “Steeplechase,” has to do with a couple of Civil War-era ministers in a small Massachusetts village whose animosity for each other results in death and destruction. Not exactly what you’d expect from New England village life, but therein lies the fun. Langton’s witty, irreverent books dredge up irrevocable truths that are provocatively distributed amid the fictional imaginings.

 

Langton is a masterful plotter. This time her story hitches a ride on a hot air balloon operated by twin brothers—entrepreneurial photographers whose bird’s-eye view of Nashoba yields opportunity and, for Langton, twists to the plot. Her charming illustrations and the brothers’ portrait photography add another layer to the story, as do Homer and Mary Kelly, Langton’s present-day protagonists who lurk on the fringes of the past searching for material for a follow-up book to Homer’s bestseller about old churches.

 

There’s a lot of fun to be found in the sparring between Reverends Josiah Gideon and Horatio Biddle. Biddle fumes and tries to get even whenever he’s one-upped by the more composed, more ethical Josiah. The first treasure to be destroyed is the Great Nashoba Chestnut, immortalized in a poem, so Langton’s story contends, by Oliver Wendell Holmes. Biddle chops it down merely because Gideon treasures it so and the bedeviled pastor then has hell to pay.

 

Langton isn’t all fun and games. The felling of the tree is sobering as is the plight of Gideon’s son-in-law, James, who was horribly disfigured in the war. Much of his face and both hands were blown off. Gideon’s daughter Isabelle reads to her husband once he is home, to distract him from his terrible situation. But you know this agony can’t go on much longer. Poor James is doomed and we sense it from the start.

 

Langton’s short and lively chapters, with their dramatic titles intensifying the suspense, keep the pace fast and fresh. Her research, her wonderful way with words, her innate sense of humor, and, of course, her storytelling talents make her one of the best in the business.