Lay This Body Down, the new installment of Gideon Stoltz mystery series by Charles Fergus, is a great thriller with action-packed scenes, rich historical back-drop and interesting characters.
Lay This Body Down, the third novel in the series, takes place in 1837 during one of the most horrific periods in pre-Civil War America, when human beings were considered chattel and both northern and southern states grew rich from slave labor. A Pennsylvania sheriff like Gideon could choose to uphold the federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 or defy that racist law at great peril.
In this hard-hitting, action-packed novel, Gideon tries to protect a boy who has fled north from a Virginia plantation – and pays dearly for his principles. Written with the vivid, atmospheric prose that imbues the whole series, the life and times of an early American backwoods town and its hardscrabble citizens will grip readers as Gideon and his wife True solve a murder, bust a kidnapping ring, and help one unforgettable boy who courageously chooses freedom above all else.
A great historical thriller with a rich setting…
Gideon and his wife True are very interesting characters and we’d love to revisit them again. The setting, both historic and physical, is also beautifully portrayed.
Overall, we highly recommend this novel to fans of historical mysteries and thrillers.
*****
Charles Fergus is the author of twenty books. Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Geraldine Brooks called Fergus’s first Gideon Stoltz mystery, A Stranger Here Below, “deeply imagined and intricately plotted . . . Fergus knows certain things deep in the bone: horses, hunting, the folkways of rural places, and he weaves this wisdom into a stirring tale.” A native of Pennsylvania, Fergus now lives in Vermont’s remote Northeast Kingdom with his wife, the writer Nancy Marie Brown, and four horses.
*****
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