In Jasper County, West Virginia, Mary-Beth Cain is a hands-on sheriff who isn’t afraid of scraping her knuckles. Her husband was a legendary sheriff in his own right, and Mary-Beth considers the job her legacy in contrast to the rest of her family. Her mother, Mountain Mamie, is a ruthless crime boss dealing drugs in adjacent McCray county, and her brother, Sawyer, is a paranoid conspiracy nut known as THE MOONSHINE MESSIAH living in a militia-like compound and ranting on the radio about the federal government’s overreach. When a small army of bikers invades Jasper, speaking in code and using various distraction techniques to keep Mary-Beth busy, she resorts to some surgically-applied violence to convince them to seek friendlier places. But the murder of a local legend leads her and her loyal deputy, Izzy, into a dangerous conspiracy involving Sawyer—who’s compound is suddenly home to the bikers, as well as a large number of other well-armed revolutionaries. When an old flame representing the Feds arrives to dangle a carrot (and apply a stick) to get Mary-Beth to lure her brother out for arrest, she soon finds herself trapped in a complex web of lies, violence, and family trauma.
THE MOONSHINE MESSIAH moves at a fast and nimble pace, and the characters are lively and fun to spend time with. Mary-Beth is determined to prove to everyone that a woman can be a respected—even feared—agent of the law, and pulls it off with aplomb. There are a few genuinely surprising twists; just when readers think they know where it’s headed, it swerves without losing cohesion. The setting of rural West Virginia should be a lot more interesting, however; aside from a few references to moonshine, coal digging, and inserting “by God” between every other utterance of West and Virginia, however, the story could take place in any relatively rural area of the U.S., which is a lost opportunity. And while the characters are distinct and fun to be around, none of them are explored in any kind of emotional depth, resulting in all of them existing as archetypes more than anything else. As a whole, it feels a lot like an extended, gender-swapped episode of Justified, right down to the sweet old lady who’s actually a ruthless crime boss and the small potatoes crime setup that leads to a much larger scheme. Fans of slick, Elmore Leonard-esque crime stories will find a lot of to like here.
Action scenes pop off the page in Russell W. Johnson’s THE MOONSHINE MESSIAH, a story with crackling personality that romps along at a brisk pace in a universe where the morality is delightfully gray.
~Jeff Somers for IndieReader