Dead Letter

Dead Letter
Frank Shima
Beaver’s Pond Press
ISBN: 1-59298-245-X
Fiction, Mystery
Reviewed by Ruby G. Krautsack

Frank Shima, author of the book, Dead Letter, did his best to make it a likable and believable story. He has a terrific sense of humor, which he often injected into the book. Evidently he knows a lot about farms and what it takes to keep a farm productive.

His main character, Martin the mail carrier, is not a good detective and his boss, Ike, and Sheriff Trout are portrayed as laughable. Trout weighs three hundred and fifty pounds and it is difficult for him to get around. May be too much of a charter tag here.

Sarah was a likeable person and Diane Crowely was a mystery all through the story. I was flabbergasted reading about the bars and the people who frequented them. Are there really such places and that kind of people?

I find it hard to review this book because parts of it were confusing, like the dead letter. I don’t remember ever finding out what was in it or why the book carried the title.

I get the impression that Frank is struggling to keep the book on track about the deaths of two neighbors and insisting it was murder, but as a reader of many, many mysteries, I was able to guess the culprit early on in the story. That kind of takes the mystery out of the mystery, so to speak.

There are parts of the book that are enjoyable, but on the whole, it is so dull and confusing. I am sad for having to say this, but Frank Shima needs more experience to be able to write a good mystery. The part about Diane as she kept popping up as a friend and then an enemy kept me guessing about her. That was good writing. But in so many other areas, Shima needs to practice a bit more because mystery readers are a niche market and they know immediately if a mystery is written correctly.

All I can say is, Frank should keep trying. He needs to make his plot and story heavier, more in depth, and more “mysterious.” He has potential.