2016
NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
DARK TALES OF CAMPBELL COUNTY a review by Wanda Canada Sallie Bissell. Deadliest of Sins. Woodbury: Midnight Ink, 2014.
WANDA CANADA is a Wilmington, NC, author of Island Murders (Coastal Carolina Press, 2001), and Cape Fear Murders (Coastal Carolina Press, 2003), a mystery series set in southeastern North Carolina. Read an interview with Canada about her novels in NCLR 2010. SALLIE BISSELL, born in Tennessee, found the inspiration for her Mary Crow series in the Appalachian forests. Bissell currently lives in Asheville, NC, and published her first Mary Crow novel, In the Forest of Harm, in 2001 with Bantam. She published two more novels, A Darker Justice (2002; reviewed in NCLR 2002) and Legacy of Masks (2005), also with Bantam and Call the Devil by his Oldest Name (2004) with Dell. After seven years Bissell continued Mary Crow’s story with The Music of Ghosts, published in 2013 by Midnight Ink, which then published Deadliest of Sins and Bissell’s seventh novel, A Judgment of Whispers, in 2015.
ABOVE RIGHT Sallie Bissell at a reading for her new book at Malaprop’s, Asheville, NC, 20 Apr. 2013
How did I overlook Sallie Bissell, author of seven suspense novels set in North Carolina’s Appalachian Mountains? Just when I thought I knew all our state’s mystery writers, I found such sheer, gritty delight in reading Deadliest of Sins, the sixth novel in her Mary Crow series, that I vowed to read them all while I wait for the seventh to come out in September. At some point while enjoying Deadliest of Sins, I made notes about a brief mention of Mary Crow’s Indian heritage and an equally brief comment regarding a former lover who doesn’t seem to be coming back – as if I needed any more encouragement to satisfy my curiosity about Sallie Bissell’s other six books as soon as possible. In Deadliest of Sins, Samantha Buchanan has one last year of high school before she can escape a cruel stepfather who keeps the family living in fear. It is mid-summer in Campbell County, fields are lush green, and all seems serene in the countryside – only it isn’t, not behind closed doors. There’s a lot going on that may never be revealed until more tragedy occurs, and even then, the whole truth is often never known. Despite years of email warnings about people disappearing while traveling a particular road, in an area with no cell phone reception, Sam stops to check on a seemingly abandoned baby crying in a car seat at the edge of a dark, uninhabited road. I first blamed such risky behavior on her age and inexperience; instead, I should have asked myself what kind of person would not stop to check. Sam’s disappearance leads her younger brother, Chase, to hitchhike on a peach truck to find Mary Crow, Special Prosecutor to North Carolina’s governor,
PHOTOGRAPH BY GREG BOSELY
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and report that his stepfather stole his sister. He is convinced his sister would never run away to Charlotte with a boyfriend, despite what their stepfather claims. After all, Samantha swore on the Bible that she would tell him before she decided to leave. What else is a young brother to believe? Or is everyone, including Mary Crow, dismissing him because he’s only eleven and they think he’s making up tall tales for attention? There really are boogey men in the neighborhood other than Chase’s stepfather, including Russian sex traffickers kidnapping and smuggling young virgins to other continents for the pleasure of rich men. Campbell County is also home to at least one murderer (and he plays on the local baseball team). And Mary Crow is investigating anti-gay activities in the area: a preacher who advises corporal punishment for young children showing any suspicious homosexual tendencies. The governor declares Reverend Herman Trull to be North Carolina’s latest embarrassment, a man of God who preaches internment camps for gay people, resulting in a ranting YouTube video that has gone