So a couple of weeks ago I eschewed reviewing sequels but I’m going to tell you today about a sequel. No News Is Bad News is the second Bernie O’Dea mystery by Maureen Milliken. She recalled that I had written about the first book, Cold Hard News, in The Mindful Reader column, and recently got in touch to let me know about the sequel. As you all know, because I can’t help constantly going on about it, I admire small presses. And as a writer, I know that to sell a book published with a small press, an author has to reach out to everyone she knows, even remotely. So I told her sure, I’d be glad to take a look.
I really like Bernie O’Dea. She’s owner/editor of a small town newspaper in fictional Redimere, Maine.She likes to walk at night, looking at “porch lights or lit windows blinking through the trees.” Her handwriting is a mess and she’s often thinking about too many things at once. She’s been diagnosed with adult ADD, but she isn’t wild about how the medicine makes her feel.
When No News Is Bad News opens Bernie is wondering about that and about her cranky psychiatrist, who seems just a little too anxious to pack her out the door with a new prescription and not terribly interested in how she feels. In fact he suggests more drugs. But Bernie is too busy to question him — she needs to get the paper out and she’s short staffed. She needs to figure out her friendship with Redimere’s police chief, Pete Novotny. And to chase down some leads. What was Tim Shaw so angry with his wife about? Could she do a piece on domestic violence without endangering anyone? Who was brutally murdered, gutted, and ensanguinated in the woods? Who did it? And what was going on with her little brother Sal, who last she knew was a college professor, but has turned up at her house jobless and unannounced? And why are the police interested in him?
Yes, Bernie’s a reporter but her quest for the facts often leads her headlong into investigations. Much to Pete’s bemusement, frustration, and sometimes, annoyance. There are a few other twists to this story — the eviscerated body in the woods seems to be connected to the case that first brought Pete to Redimere, a missing boy who has haunted Pete for some time. Bernie needs help at the paper and she allows “Feckless” Fergus Kelley, a reporter from her former paper, to talk his way into a job. She also hires an intern, Carrie, who I hope will appear in the next book.
I don’t read a lot of mysteries, and I admit that parts of this book did get me down. It’s depressing to think about the kinds of people who commit the crimes Milliken writes about. I avoid real news about crime (which may be good for me, according to this NPR article I heard on the way home from work yesterday). So I found some of the tougher bits hard to read. But I hung in because Milliken is a good storyteller and Bernie O’Dea is a terrific character, as are the other inhabitants of Redimere.
So look for Cold Hard News and No News Is Bad News. Get to know Bernie O’Dea.
bookconscious 
Dead Presidents by Brady Carlson
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Brady Carlson, burial, Calvin Coolidge, cultural commentary, Dead Presidents, death, Founding Fathers Pub, George Cleveland, Grover Cleveland, Marshfield Missouri, New Hampshire, NHPR, nonfiction, NPR, Plymouth Cheese Company, presidential history, presidents, reviews, trivia, Ulysses S. Grant, Vermont, William Howard Taft on January 31, 2016| Leave a Comment »
Full disclosure — I know Brady Carlson and his family, he thanks me and a colleague in charge of interlibrary loans and the rest of the library staff in his acknowledgements, and his publicist sent me a copy of Dead Presidents: An American Adventure Into the Strange Deaths and Surprising Afterlives of Our Nation’s Leaders. Regardless of these facts, I feel I can fairly review the book, because as a reviewer and a librarian, I’m patently opposed to people reading bad books.
And this is not one of those. Brady is a kick ass writer, which you can see for yourself by checking out his pieces on NHPR, a few of which have made the national NPR broadcast lately. Or by reading Dead Presidents, which I highly recommend. His tone reminds me a little bit of A.J. Jacobs — informative and funny, but in a very humane rather than biting or snarky way.
The thing I love most about Dead Presidents is how much Brady is into his subject. I knew this — for awhile several years ago we attended a meet-up of local media makers, and even when this project was in its formative stage, I had a sense that he was going to create something cool, because he has been interested in the presidents since childhood. In fact, in his introduction he notes that a book — Mr. President by George Sullivan — and a teacher who allowed him to conduct an “impromptu lesson” on presidential trivia in fifth grade were keys to his lifelong interest. I am a big fan of people pursuing what they love, and as a fellow member of the book tribe, I love this origin story.
(Aside: this is why cookie cutter curriculums are inferior. Imagine if Brady’s teacher was hamstrung teaching to the test or to “core competencies,” and couldn’t accommodate his budding interest?)
That genuine enthusiasm makes a topic that let’s face it, most of us probably don’t think sounds super exciting — dead presidents — come, dare I say it, alive. I couldn’t resist. Seriously though, the stories of places famous (like Grant’s tomb) and obscure (Grant’s cottage, where the former president finished his well known memoirs) are equally fascinating in Brady’s book. Did you know, for instance, that Grant was nearly moved from New York to Illinois, because the tomb site in Manhattan was so poorly cared for? Or for that matter, that several presidents’ remains have in fact been moved, sometimes a good distance?
Two of my favorite stories: in Plymouth, Vermont, you can see — and sample — one of the oldest cheesemaking operations in the U.S., where artisanal cheese is made just as it was when Calvin Coolidge’s father co-founded the place in the 1890’s. President Coolidge is buried nearby, in “the hilltop cemetery where his family had been buried for four generations.”
And there is a gathering of presidential descendants: “the Marshfield, Missouri Cherry Blossom Festival and Presidential Family Reunion and Missouri Walk of Fame Celebration.” One of the people Brady meets there is George Cleveland, a grandson of Grover Cleveland who lives only about an hour from here. In his travels, Brady had seen photos of George in various other sites related to presidential history, like on the wall of the Founding Fathers Pub in Buffalo, where the proprietor was unable to stump Brady on presidential trivia (he didn’t know Brady taught his fifth grade class this stuff, after all).
The thread that ties all of the stories together is Brady’s admiration for the presidents — even those who didn’t do such a great job in office — and his illuminating, thoughtful insights into their work habits, interests, values, and post-presidential pursuits, as well as their deaths, burials, and legacies. I especially loved the way he debunked the popular opinion of Taft as “the Fat President” and his commentary on how our culture’s views of obesity influenced public opinion of Taft unfairly. It’s the way Brady combines the weird and the wonderful that makes Dead Presidents both entertaining and truly interesting.
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