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High Lonesome Road Hardcover – January 1, 2001

by Betsy Thornton (Author)

3.8 18 ratings

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Victim's counselor Chloe Newcomb is called in to work with the woman who discovered the local bookmobile driver's murdered body, and is stunned to learn that the slain woman was a friend of her brother.

Print length

233 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Minotaur Books
Publication date

January 1, 2001
Dimensions

6 x 0.75 x 8.5 inches
ISBN-10

0312268610
ISBN-13

978-0312268619
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Penzler Pick, March 2001: To talk about murder in a bookmobile is to invite jokes about those cozy mysteries where "hard-boiled" describes only the deviled egg platter at some PTA lunch. However, in Betsy Thornton's High Lonesome Road, that's just where it does occur, mere pages into her second novel featuring Chloe Newcombe.

This complicated, stubborn, and likeable heroine, who made her debut in The Cowboy Rides Away, is a divorced New Yorker now transplanted to Arizona's high desert region where she's taken a job as a victim's advocate with the county attorney's office. (Her creator writes from on-the-job experience: Thornton herself works helping crime victims and witnesses in a rural Arizona county.) Here Chloe must again endure a wrenching personal involvement, this time because the murdered woman (the bookmobile driver whose body has been found riddled with bullets, a book clutched to her chest) had long ago been a friend of Chloe's adored older brother, himself also now dead and deeply mourned.

Thornton has been described as a writer possessing "a real feeling for those whose nerves have been rubbed raw by life" (Publishers Weekly). Cochise County, Arizona, after all, is a catchment area for the outcast, the oddball, the loner, and the lost soul, a place where even the ordinary citizens have made a definite choice about how much--or how little--mileage to keep between themselves and the dangerous edge. And, as Chloe Newcombe says, "Let's face it, none of us goes that innocently about our lives. We live with anger and pain every day, live in secrecy; it's just part of living." Her quest for the truth leads to the usual scabbed-over ancient crime and the usual desperate need to forget/remember, and Chloe holds our attention because she is an unusual figure keeping to a set of rules all her own. Like Elwood Reid's Midnight Sun, another recent book set in a vividly evoked harsh landscape (off-the-map Alaskan back country), High Lonesome Road is as compelling for its psychic geography as it is for its unspooling mystery plot. Thornton's noir is desert-bleached, touched with a feminine sensibility, but tough all the same. --Otto Penzler

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Following her impressive debut, The Cowboy Rides Away (1996), Thornton triumphs in this sequel, which makes even minor characters memorable and firmly places them in the stark but weighted atmosphere of the Southwest desert. Chloe Newcombe, a victim's counselor for the Dudley, Ariz., police department, is reluctant to reconnect with bookmobile driver Erica Hill, because Erica was an old friend of Chloe's dead brother, James. Weeks later, after someone shoots Erica in her bookmobile, Chloe wonders if a phone call from her could have saved the woman's life. Feeling culpable, Chloe starts to investigate and discovers that Erica had been reaching out to many in her last days. Although the police are holding Erica's golden son, Troy, Chloe can't believe the teenager had anything to do with his mother's death. And Stuart Ross, the ponytailed defense attorney, didn't admit his past relationship with Erica, but that doesn't mean he killed her. The more Chloe digs, the more she realizes that the strong, free-spirited Erica antagonized--as well as intrigued--just about everyone she met. As Chloe closes in on the killer, she feels the strain of an earlier death she inadvertently participated in--committed by a man she once loved. The refusal of the author to neatly tie up that earlier event is one of the many strengths of this book. Its ability to succeed as both a mystery and character study is certainly another, and if Thornton, a victim's advocate in Bisbee, Ariz., can be persuaded to produce books more regularly, she could establish herself as a major new voice.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Minotaur Books; First Edition (January 1, 2001)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 233 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0312268610
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0312268619
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.75 x 8.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #8,649,799 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #98,305 in Women Sleuths (Books)

Customer Reviews:
3.8 18 ratings

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Betsy Thornton
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Thornton was born in Wilmington, North Carolina, the oldest of four children born to Dr. Mary Elizabeth (Kelly) Thornton, PhD a professor of Classics at Miami University of Ohio and Colonel Robert L. Thornton, PhD, who became professor of Business at Miami of Ohio following his retirement from the USAF. Her sister Alix was an attorney and her brother is historian John Thornton. Her family traveled extensively, living in Europe for several years, where Thornton attended Lady Eden's School in London and Cours Ste. Geneviève in Fonteney sur Bois, a suburb of Paris. She graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University with a degree in English, married, and lived in New York City, where her son Alex Chapin, now an academic technologist at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, was born. She later moved to Venice, California, where she worked as a story analyst for ABC Pictures, and then moved to Europe with her second husband, the artist Rafe Ropek. They lived in Rome and on a small Greek island, Skopelos.
Eventually, after a stint back in New York City, Thornton moved to Bisbee, Arizona, where she ran Cochise Fine Arts, a community arts center that sponsored, among other things, the Bisbee Poetry Festival.
Thornton was employed for fifteen years with the Cochise County Attorney's office in Cochise County, Arizona, where she worked as an advocate for crime victims.
Thornton's first published work was a chapbook of poems, published by Binturong, On Davis Road. In 1982, she was awarded a Poetry Fellowship by the Arizona Commission on the Arts.
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Betsy Thornton
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Customer reviews

3.8 out of 5

18 global ratings

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Sandra Lee

great story!

Reviewed in the United States on June 19, 2014

Verified Purchase

This story had realistic interesting characters you could really care about. The mystery kept me guessing to the last page.

Reviewed in the United States on January 12, 2013

Verified Purchase

This is a very easy read but with a lot of characters which were, for me, a little hard to keep track of. It isn't a book that I would urge someone to read. It's not bad, but not exceptional either.

Reviewed in the United States on October 10, 2021

Verified Purchase

Good plot and story interesting but needed a good editor. Not sure why proper names for cities used for everywhere but Bisbee. Felt a bit bizarre

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M. C. Crammer

Betsy Thornton ought to be better known than she is

Reviewed in the United States on February 15, 2005

I recently discovered Thornton's books and think she deserves a lot more attention as a writer than she gets. She has a wonderful ability to create a sense of place and populate that place with memorable, three dimensional characters. She's not one of those writers were you have trouble keeping track of who is who because you quickly get to know each of the characters and they stand out as unique individuals with their own personalities.

Thornton's mysteries are set in Old Dudley, an old mining town near the Mexican border of Arizona. Old Dudley has become sort of an artist's colony, although New Dudley is where the long-time residents of the area live. Chloe Newcombe, Thornton's "detective," is a Victim's Advocate who lives in Old Dudley. Her job brings her into contact with murders and the people who have been touched by violence. In this mystery, the victim is an old friend (aging hippy) from her Venice Beach days, a good friend of her deceased brother whom she has lost contact with until shortly before the murder. Because of that relationship, she finds herself getting involved in trying to prove that the woman's son was not the killer.

Thornton's books are relatively short (no 600 page blockbusters) but each scene, each sentence helps paint a fascinating desert landscape populated by aging hippies, aging rodeo riders, hard-bitten sheriffs, artists, and small town civil servants. I would love to go to the area she describes (think Tony Hillerman landscaping here) and find it hard to believe that I wouldn't find Old Dudley and Chloe Newcombe and her cat Big Foot.

I highly recommend this author in general and this book in particular.

5 people found this helpful

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Spicy

BETTER

Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2015

Verified Purchase

BETTER, but room to grow. Lots of editing mistakes. The main character to me is very wishy washy. She is sel_ish. Changes boyfriends every book.

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booksforabuck

Excellent mystery with great characters

Reviewed in the United States on June 8, 2001

Erica Hill could get on your nerves. She certainly got on victim advocate Chloe Newcombe's nerves and, when Erica suggested getting together, Chloe made it a point not to call her. Two weeks later, Erica was dead and Chloe felt responsible. Her responsibility grew when the local police named Erica's precious son as a suspect.
The more Chloe investigated the case, the more she found that Erica had been to bed with just about every man she met. Yet, until recently, Erica had loved them and left them. Suddenly, about the time she'd contacted Chloe, she'd also contacted many of her former acquaintences looking for something. Like Chloe, however, few of them had bothered to listen. Except maybe someone had. Chloe can't believe that the murder is a coincidence. It has to be connected with whatever Erica was looking for.
Betsy Thornton has written a small gem of a mystery here. Her characters are well developed with both flaws and virtues that make the reader concerned for their safety and success. Her occasional use of poetic language is actually useful. I especially enjoyed her description of Arizona where old cowboys and aging hippies live side-by-side but in complete misunderstanding of one another.
As a mystery, HIGH LONESOME ROAD is one of the best I've read this year. Thornton disguises her red herrings well enough that even an experienced mystery reader will be confused.
I very much enjoyed this fine novel.

8 people found this helpful

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Julie daunis

... was said prior to that but the story was good and I liked the main character

Reviewed in the United States on June 20, 2015

It doesn't seem as if the book was edited very well because there was a lot of misspellings and parts that were contrary to what was said prior to that but the story was good and I liked the main character.

Helpful

Amazon Customer

Another winning mystery for this talented author

Reviewed in the United States on January 19, 2001

Two years ago, Chloe Newcomb left New York to relocate to Dudley, Arizona. Chloe inherited a home in the Old Dudley section of town from her deceased sibling's gay lover, who was like a big brother to her too. Chloe works a part-time schedule as a victim's counselor for the local police department. She not only helps individuals cope with crime, but also teaches classes.

Attending one of her classes is Erica Hill, a former neighbor of her brother in Venice, California. They agree to talk about old times, but Chloe never called. Chloe comes across old letters from her sibling that includes a comment wondering what happened to Erica. The next day, Chloe arrives at the murder scene of the bookmobile driver to provide comfort to retired schoolteacher Dot Stone, who discovered the corpse. To Chloe's shock, the body is Erica. Unable to mind her business, especially after rereading her brother's old letter, Chloe needs to know what happened to Erica, why it happened and what will happen to her teenage son?

As with her debut novel THE COWBOY RIDES AGAIN, Betsy Thornton provides readers with a deep feel for the smaller Southwest communities. Entities like bookmobiles make it seem like the 1950s to this aging urban boomer. The story line is entertaining and the characters appear genuine due to the secondary cast's interactions with Chloe. Ms. Thornton escorts her audience down the HIGH LONESOME ROAD with a strong regional cozy.

Harriet Klausner

17 people found this helpful

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