For fans of C.J. Box’s Joe Pickett series, a fabulous historical mystery series set in early America. “Deeply imagined and intricately plotted, A Stranger Here Below marries richly textured historical fiction with the urgency of a mystery novel. Fergus knows certain things, deep in the bone: horses, hunting, the folkways of rural places, and he weaves this wisdom into a stirring tale.” – … a stirring tale.” – Geraldine Brooks, author of March and People of the Book
Set in 1835 in the Pennsylvania town of Adamant, Fergus’s first novel in a new mystery series introduces Sheriff Gideon Stoltz, who, as a young deputy, is thrust into his position by the death of the previous sheriff. Gideon faces his first real challenge as death rocks the small town again when the respected judge Hiram Biddle commits suicide. No one is more distraught than Gideon, whom the old judge had befriended as a mentor and hunting partner. Gideon is regarded with suspicion as an outsider: he’s new to town, and Pennsylvania Dutch in the back-country Scotch-Irish settlement. And he found the judge’s body.
Making things even tougher is the way the judge’s death stirs up vivid memories of Gideon’s mother’s murder, the trauma that drove him west from his home in the settled Dutch country of eastern Pennsylvania. He had also discovered her body.
At first Gideon simply wants to learn why Judge Biddle killed himself. But as he finds out more about the judge’s past, he realizes that his friend’s suicide was spurred by much more than the man’s despair. Gideon’s quest soon becomes more complex as it takes him down a dangerous path into the past.
A Stranger Here Below is so atmospheric, so compelling and convincing, that readers will taste the grit of the dirt roads, cringe at the unsanitary conditions and medical superstitions that inflame a flu epidemic, and marvel at the immensely arduous task of carrying out an investigation using the primitive tools of the early 1800s. Fergus leaves us breathlessly waiting for the next Gideon Stoltz mystery.
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Deeply imagined and intricately plotted, A Stranger Here Below marries richly textured historical fiction with the urgency of a mystery novel. Fergus knows certain things, deep in the bone: horses, hunting, the folkways of rural places, and he weaves this wisdom into a stirring tale.
I found it to be confusing and never did figure out the murder of the judge.
Some writers are natural story tellers and have an instinct for the reader’s interest. Others have the ability to invoke mood or a sense of place. Still others are able to handle landscape or have the ability to invoke precise imagery. Every now and then you will find a writer who has all of these qualities, and because of that they invoke the magic of fiction. They make the chair you are sitting on disappear. Charles Fergus is one of those writers, and A Stranger Here Below is one of those books.
Imbued with Michael Connelly’s gumshoe skills and the vivid historical descriptions of Charles Frazier, A Stranger Here Below is a stark procedural set in the backwoods of Pennsylvania circa 1830. Charles Fergus displays a deft touch in detailing the rough and tumble life of everyday 19th-century America.
In Gideon Stoltz, Charles Fergus has created a unique 19th-century Eastern lawman who struggles not only with wrongdoers but with his own griefs and travails. A Stranger Here Below kept me reading late into the night.
Fergus puts you firmly in Gideon Stoltz’s rough-hewn world where a ‘foreigner’ with the wrong accent has to watch his back even if he wears a sheriff’s badge. A cracking good mystery, and a window to the time when our young country was still a dark and treacherous place.
A dark, engrossing tale that introduces a decent, sympathetic hero in the young sheriff Gideon Stoltz. The novel’s special strength, however, is its imaginative saturation in the community of Adamant, a violent, haunted place of dreams and visions, a place as hard and unforgiving as its name.
With luminous and deftly sketched prose, Charles Fergus takes us into an American past that is both deeply familiar and utterly strange, through the eyes and thoughts of a young man who is a stranger to his newly chosen community. Sheriff Gideon Stoltz patiently unravels a series of crimes and secrets, while also examining his own life, his past, and the beauties and tragedies of life itself.
This was slow and predictable. Characters were one-dimensional.
Eloquent and compelling. I’m looking forward to following on further cases. A great window on 1830s hardscrabble Pennsylvania with moments of deep grace provided by a principled Gideon Stoltz and the beauty of Shape Note verses pulling the reader through dark, decades old mystery.
If you like historical who-done-its, and I do, give A Stranger Here Below a read. It is excellent.
I enjoyed the story and the writing. It was a slow pace but the characters were well developed.
Love ‘A Stranger Here Below’, set in central Pennsylvania in 1835 with a good guy sheriff and plenty of bad guys. This author, Charles Fergus, is new to me but I’ll be reading his next book.
Fergus has created a convincing and likable sheriff of the early 1800’s. He exposes his readers to the sorts of ethnic biases prevalent at the time which I found both interesting and depressing (some things never change). Given the total lack of crime scene protocol, it’s amazing that Fergus’ sheriff solves any crimes–but he does, by sheer grit and brains. Enjoyed the book a lot and intend to read more.
slow beginning. Absorbing after a time. I would read another in the series.
No spoiler alert here! A real page turner with good character development and a strong, complex main character . I understand this is the first in a series. I will be eagerly awaiting the second!